2016/01/25 by Larry Ray, Maria Diemling · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy #Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism #Political Theology and Sovereignty #Pariah group #Modernity #Subaltern #Judaism #Resistance (ecology) #Universalism #Sociology #Dialectic #Consciousness #Psychoanalysis #Gender studies #Epistemology #Philosophy #Law #Psychology #Theology #Political science #Politics
paper · doi:10.1177/1368431016628261
openalex publication_date 2016/01/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
Hannah Arendt’s Jewish writings were central to her thinking about the human condition and engaged with the dialectics of modernity, universalism and identity. Her concept of the ‘conscious pariah’ attempted both to define a role for the public intellectual and understand the relationship between Jews and modernity. Controversially she accused Jewish victims of lack of resistance to the Nazis and argued that their victimization resulted from apolitical ‘worldlessness’. We argue that although Arendt’s analysis was original and challenging, her characterization of Jewish history as one of ‘powerlessness’ is exaggerated but, more importantly, her underdeveloped concept of ‘the social’ is insensitive to the complex modalities of resistance and consciousness among subaltern Jewish communities. Furthermore, her lack of interest in religious observance obscures the importance of Judaism as a resource for resistance. This is illustrated by the ‘hidden transcripts’ of Jewish resistance from the early modern period.