Antisemitism and Racism

Reviews / Votes

Committed to a thoroughly relational understanding of subjectivity and group life, an ethical relationality respectful of both the singular and the universal, Frosh puts into revealing and complex conversation racism, antisemitism and, as grounding for understanding and combatting both of these 'isms,' an emancipatory psychoanalysis. Frosh argues that Judaism and emancipatory psychoanalysis share an ethical project that - crucially important in times like ours - resists all fundamentalisms. Introducing the reader to numerous philosophers, analysts, and political theorists, Frosh makes a compelling case for a 'solidarity of the oppressed.' * Lynne Layton, author of Toward a Social Psychoanalysis: Culture, Character and Normative Unconscious Processes * Racism thrives on division. This bold new book challenges a division, invoked from time to time, between anti-black racism and antisemitism, in which Jewishness is firmly yoked to whiteness. Working from an ethical base rooted in his Jewish identity, which has psychoanalytic resonances, Stephen Frosh interrogates this assumption and builds a compelling case that the experience of antisemitism provides a basis for solidarity with those othered by anti-black racism. Frosh's scholarship is erudite and deep, his writing elegant and accessible, his scope broad and inclusive and his discourse nuanced and complex, creating a work with wide relevance that is a must read for all aspiring to advance the cause of anti-racism today. * M. Fakhry Davids, Supervising and Training Analyst, British Psychoanalytical Society, and author of Internal Racism: A PsychoanalytIc Approach to Race and Difference * In this lucid and timely book, Stephen Frosh pursues an ethic of antiracist solidarity for psychoanalysis. Interrogating the conflation of Jewishness and whiteness, he locates a fundamental concern for otherness as well as a sensitivity to racialized suffering within the Jewish heritage of psychoanalysis. Frosh deftly examines the vexed issues at the crossroads of his three concerns (racism, antisemitism, psychoanalysis), providing a valuable, insightful resource for psychoanalysis as it seeks to overcome its past exclusions and meet the challenges of contemporary antiblack racism. * Celia Brickman, Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, and author of Race in Psychoanalysis: Aboriginal Populations in the Mind *