Read Professor Susannah Heschel's article "Antisemitism as Cultural Sadism"

Professor Susannah Heschel, Chair Jewish Studies program, has recently contributed an article in Grasping Emotions – Approaches to Emotions in Interreligious and Interdisciplinary Discourse (Religiöse Positionierungen in Judentum, Christentum und Islam), ed. Ute E. Eisen, Heidrun Mader, and Melanie Peetz (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2024), 51-75. Her article is titled, "Antisemitism as Cultural Sadism: An Erohistorical Approach." 

The article can be accessed here: Antisemitism as Cultural Sadism

Excerpt:

Drawing from Freeman and from the extensive and sophisticated scholarship on anti-Black racism in the United States, and from theorists of queer temporality, emotion, sexuality, gender, affect, and psychoanalysis, I propose we approach anti-semitism as "a politics of unpredictable, deeply embodied pleasures that counters the logic of development," as Freeman defines "erotohistoriography." An erotohistorical approach to antisemitism, for example, considers the emotions of an antisemitic text, the sadistic pleasure associated with violence, the gendering of antisemitic violence, the impact of witnessing horrific Jewish trauma in spurring further acts of violence, the role of sexuality and the erotic, including bodily experiences of both antisemitic violence and Jewish trauma, the enduring emotional and physical impact of rape, and the creation of an antisemitic culture of sadism, among other elements.