Connections of antisemitism and misogyny have been widely examined from the present back to the 19th century. Going back to pre-Christian antiquity the article examines connections between exclusion and suppression of female and Jewish humans. Antique Greek tales of male child killing by Amazons and roman infanticidal practices correspond to accusations of Jewish human sacrifice. The age of crusades generated the blood libel and fixed it to the feminized, menstruating Jewish man. Pogroms, witch trials and Hexenhammer use the same words to accuse females and Jews of witchcraft, non-reproductive medicine and sexuality, as Jews and witches are marked with the same iconography. Finally post Shoa narration invents the Jewish witch and infanticidal Jewish mother.
The Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October has intensified the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Since then, antisemitic incidents have increased in Germany, in which Israel serves as a target for antisemitic projection. At the same time, however, the numerous public controversies demonstrate that the distinction between legitimate criticism and Israel-related antisemitism is controversial. Discussions about the appropriateness of criticism, the use of historically and morally charged terms and their ability to connect to antisemitic semantics are carried out in public as well as in academia. The article discusses the contribution of regional and comparative area studies to a differentiated debate that takes both Israel-related antisemitism and the conflict and its dynamics seriously.
Following Raymond Williams’ notion of keywords, we explore the extent to which antisemitism is part of the cultural and social vocabulary of Britain, explicitly and implicitly. We establish a conception of rhetoric as the theory-praxis of becoming attentive to speech and its workings in individual and collective life, both in speaking as well as in listening. In the form of a dialogic exploration of the articulation of antisemitism in individual, lived experience, we explore how what is said and what is not said determines cultural memory, belonging, identity and difference. The resulting text puts the new conception of rhetoric we propose into practice. Antisemitism emerges as a keyword in the discursive formations regarding particularity, embodiment and care. It thus transcends the bounds of ethnic, religious or migrant discrimination and shows us an essential feature of the nature of human communication.
For some years now (and increasingly since the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023), postcolonial theory has been the focus of criticism. The accusations are widely known: relativization of the Holocaust, anti-Zionism, Israel-related antisemitism. However, it sometimes seems as if there is a disparity between strong and strongly pejorative opinions about postcolonialism and the actual level of knowledge or understanding. In addition, the question arises as to whether the criticism of postcolonial critique reproduces Eurocentric ideas and epistemological asymmetries. This article will complicate the debate by suggesting its entanglement in the dynamics and mechanisms that have always been the focus of postcolonial theory.
The focus of this article is on “antisemitism” as a “political language”, as suggested by Gadi Luzzatto Voghera (2024). Benito Mussolini’s 1938 racist and antisemitic speeches (held in Forlì, Trieste and prior to the National Council of National Fascist Party ) are now compared for the first time with contemporary antisemitic political language in Italy, especially in the aftermath of the Hamas Attack on the 7 October 2023. A rhetorical linguistic analysis of this uncommon comparison shows that the structure of old antisemitism remains in its new form. The main argument of this article is that the rhetorical figure of the ἐπανόρϑωσις can represent the whole antisemitic Mussolinian rhetoric in a symbolic manner, both in its formal and content terms. The Greek word ἐπανόρϑωσις, which means “correction” or “improvement”, is a useful tool here to demonstrate how Mussolini gradually developed hateful content in his discourse. Moreover, the ἐπανόρθωσις is morphologically functional to the construction of an enemy and the manipulation of the sense of words in order to achieve set political objectives. Finally, our assumption is that the current political antisemitic language is essentially a worsening of the previous language of Mussolini in 1938, due to the use of digital artifacts that subtly whisper antisemitism, like a whistling for a dog.
In recent years (since approx. 2018), a new genre for the dissemination of far-right concepts, ideological fragments and argumentation patterns has developed within the spectrum of the far right, or more precisely: its (mostly male) intellectual protagonists, ‘masterminds’ and international networkers. Books as well as weblogs are published that arouse the impression of being academical and seem to be presenting academic texts in Philosophy, Theology or Social Ethics, but actually spread identitarian and anti-universalist world views, trivialise extreme right ideologies of inequality and even serve to normalize far-right terminology, Nazi rhetoric and antisemitic conspiracy narratives. Protagonists of the right-wing extremist Identitarian Movement , as well as the international traditionalistic (and extrem right) Movement for Tradition, Family and Property TFP and philosophers of a post-liberal Neo-Integralism seem united, with the aim of an authoritarian society. One such weblog, europa-aeterna.org , and a text published there (Godehard Michaelis, “Volk und Nation aus biblisch-theologischer Sicht”) will be analysed as an example.
During the last years, the rejection of Israel has become an identity-forming factor in left-winged movements: Anti-fascist, queer and climate-protection groups perceive activism against Israel as an element of connection. Anti-Israel and antisemitic messages spread via social media at high speed and find new followers especially in the Generation Z. The authors of this content are using recurring visual-rhethoric techniques which will be analysed in the present text. The visual strategies are divided in three categories: First the ones that emphasize diversity, inclusion and human rights which makes them connectable to a young, unradicalised audience. Second, strategies that advertise with left-winged revolutionary romanticism and use freedom fighter aesthetics of militant movements. Third, content that appeals to an arabic-muslim collective identity and uses folkish and religious symbols. In addition, the text shows how propaganda motifs of the Hamas are used and differently interpreted by different groups. Finally, the question is raised to what extent the anti-Israel-activism actually tries to help the people in the Palestinian territories and wether the authoritarian longing for a group identity plays a role for many activists.
Abstract This article focusses on the Great Replacement as that narrative of the New Right that currently constitutes the centerpiece of many inter-related and implicitly or explicitly racist discourses about migrants and refugees. As a discourse, the narrative of a Great Replacement encapsulates and reflects the desire for an „ethnocultural identity“ that is antagonistically realized it in such a way that uncountable others are declared to be (non-identical) „foreign bodies“, so that their violent removal appears justified. The main aim of this article is to assess and criticize the rhetorical and stylistic strategies of the New Right, which repeatedly refer to aspects of an alleged naturalness (the „ethno-plural nature“ of Europe) while attempting to conceal how artificial their argumentation is. In contrast to a dissimulazione onesta, as formulated as a concept by Torquato Accetto, in the case of the Great Replacement one could thus speak of a dissimulazione dis-onesta, i. e. of a constitutive dishonesty or strategic deception.
Abstract This article understands dissimulatio artis as a link between political rhetoric, early modern courtly behavioural theory and the theatre of the 17th century. Using the example of Pierre Corneille’s Pompée, it is shown that dissimulatio artis found its way into French theatre along two lines of development: On the one hand, dissimulatio artis as the basis of courtly behavioural theory (in Pompée, above all gallantry) becomes a dramatic model of interaction and dialogue; on the other hand, it becomes a category of evaluation in debates on drama theory. To this end, the observations and evaluations of the characters’ politic-rhetorical and gallant dissimulatio artis that take place in the dramatic dialogue are examined at first, which point to the interdependence of early modern savoir-vivre and rhetoric through dissimulatio artis. Finally, Corneille’s poetological writings are used to derive the dissimulation artis as a criterion of drama genesis.
Abstract The dissimulatio artis follows, at least, two different traditions since antiquity: on the one hand, it is integrated in the tradition of rhetoric, one the other hand, it is part of the ars amatoria. Furthermore, the dissimulatio artis is neither a theoria nor a praxis in the Aristotelian sense, but could be considered as a poiesis. Ariosto takes advantage of this specific status of the dissimulation artis in his Orlando furioso, especially in the Rocca du Tristano-Episode, in order to present its potential to ennoble specific artistic techniques and to transform these techniques into art: ars est celare artes. By doing this, Ariosto creates an ars fabula narrandi that demonstrates its own capacities by using the dissimulatio artis for the presentation of different arts: ars fabula narrandi est celare artes.
Abstract Dissimulation of the human being can never be fully achieved by an actor, as the actor’s body always remains present as a medium. This knowledge of the non-fictional character of the actors and actresses on stage makes the audience accomplices to the performed play. In his Le Jeu de lʼamour et du hasard, Marivaux creates a specific procedure of his poetics based on dissimulation by simply addressing the apparent impossibility of bringing a theater audience into a complete illusion. This way, he can paradoxically use the spectators’ knowledge and exploit it for his own purposes. With this procedure of addressing the purpose in the dialogue, which originates from rhetoric, the play as a procedure is reinforced and naturalized. Marivaux thus cures the deficiency of dissimulation and additionally binds it to an ethical premise that legitimizes the procedure itself and thus also dignifies and intensifies the simulation of the play itself.
Abstract In our paper, we discuss the role of deception (apáte) in the conflict between rhetoric and philosophy. While Parmenides and Plato seek to escape the possibility of being deceived in general, their counterparts, the sophists and early theorists of rhetoric, emphasize that this is neither possible nor desirable. In contrast to their philosophical contemporaries, they do not assume a dualism of truth and deception, but rather a gradualist spectrum that contains many shades of gray. Furthermore, they emphasize a certain productivity of particular deceptions that can help us increase our imagination and prefigure possibilities of life and praxis that would not be possible without being deceived. Moreover, we ask whether and how the potential of classical rhetoric for theorizing deception can be used for a critique of deception that is aware of its own proneness to illusions. The guiding hypothesis is that rhetoric, as a technique of verbal deception, can also provide an important key for criticizing deceptive strategies. This applies in particular to the concept of dissimulatio artis, which goes back to Aristotle’s Rhetoric and had been developed further by Quintilian, Ovid, and the anonymous author of the treatise Perí hýpsous. This concept makes it possible to describe simulations of unsimulatedness in philosophy as well as in politics.
Abstract Early modern manuals of courtly conduct offer advice on successful behavior and communication for courtiers, emphasizing masquerade and the concealment of intentions through dissimulatio and simulatio as rhetorical key techniques of the courtier. Important works include Castiglione’s Libro del Cortegiano, Machiavelli’s Principe, and Gracián’s Oráculo manual. Their reception in the German early Enlightenment, especially by Thomasius and Müller, demonstrates the development and recontextualization of these ideas within practical philosophy.
Abstract This paper reconstructs and discusses a shift in meaning that has taken place in the modern history of the concealment of art, a history that begins in classical rhetoric. It first shows how the ars-est-celare-artem doctrine was taken up in the early modern period by authors such as Accetto, Castiglione and Gracián and translated into a concept of sprezzatura, an art of disguising that has both aesthetic and political implications. The authors in question emphasize the difference between manipulative deception (simulazione) and an ethically acceptable disguise (dissimulazione), a deliberate concealment of one’s own arts, skills and abilities, which on the one hand provides protection in a power-dominated courtly culture, and on the other is linked to the aesthetic ideals of grace and naturalness. The distinction between simulazione and dissimulazione, which was very common in the Baroque period in particular, faded into oblivion in the 18th century. Dissimulation now tended to be fully integrated into the concept of simulation.
