The Jew-Moor split in Shakespeare precedes and enables the theology-politics separation

Evidence

I cannot conclude without pointing out that as Shakespeare writes and as the separation between the two Venetian enemies is reinscribed and sedimented, what comes undone with it is the unity of the theologicopolitical. What was previously considered a complex (if difficult) unity, the coming apart of which represented catastrophe or senselessness itself (“the body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing-”), this unity of theology and politics has come apart in such a way as to become invisible even to those who argue against it. But this coming apart occurs in a particular staging, the staging of a separation that logically, historically, and rhetorically precedes the separation of theology from politics. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 554 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Beginning with the title, Shakespeare marked the distance between the two dimensions of the body politic, the two dimensions of the polis of Venice, and he did so under the figure of two enemies: the theological enemy and the political enemy, the merchant of Venice and the Moor of Venice. … The arbitrariness of the decision that separates between Moor and Jew, and historically between Muslim and Jew, between Arab and Jew, however, could not have failed to appear in Shakespeare’s own text. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 555 (#expands, via linked claim)

From its double theologico-political source, as a doubled and redoubled source, the Abrahamic did demand another reading, another reading of the name of Abraham and Ibrahim. … The pursuit of Abraham is the pursuit of a name that works the texts and that raises while renewing it the question of the rapport of religion and politics, the question of the theologico-political. This question is the Abrahamic, which worries and unsettles the hyphen of the Judea-Christian in its positive and negative incarnations, which worries and unsettles, at least since the biblical Abraham, the being-Christian and the being-political of Europe, as well as the meaning of the words “Judaism,” “Christianity,” “Islam.” — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 334 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Shakespeare’s Moor and Jew characters encoded pre-modern racialized difference. — Nasar Meer, Racialization and Religion: Race,…, 27; Europe read colonial others through its binary of Jew and Moor; Shakespeare framed the theological and political enemy as Jew and Moor — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab: A History of the…, 555 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• The Jew-Arab separation precedes and enables the theology-politics split #corroborates (0.98) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 554
• Shakespeare framed the theological and political enemy as Jew and Moor #expands (0.92) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 555
• The shared figure of Abraham unsettles the Judeo-Christian hyphen and the politics of Europe #complicates (0.80) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 334