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Orientalism and the Jews Edited by Ivan Davidson |
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In spite of growing
globalization there remains in the world a split between the West and the
rest. The manner in which this split has been represented in Western civilization
was the subject of Edward Said's Orientalism
(1978). In this groundbreaking work, Said identified the "Orient"
as the Islamic world and to the lesser extant Hindu India.
"Orientalism" signifies the way the West imagined this terrain. Going beyond Said's
framework, Kalmar and Penslar argue that orientalism is based on the
Christian West's attempt to understand and manage its relations with both of
its monotheistic Others - Muslims and Jews. According to the editors, Jews
have almost always been present whenever occidentals talked about or imagined
the East; and the Western image of the Muslim Orient has been formed and
continues to be formed in inextricable conjunction with Western perceptions
of the Jewish people. Ivan Davidson Kalmar is Associate Professor
of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. His publications include The
Trotskys, and Woody Allens: Portrait of a Culture (1994).
Derek J. Penslar is Zacks Professor of
History and Director of the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Toronto.
His most recent publication is Shylock's Children: Economics and Jewish
Identity in Modern Europe (2001). |
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