BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online

    Powers of suggestion: Svengali and the Fin de Siècle

    Pick, Daniel (1998) Powers of suggestion: Svengali and the Fin de Siècle. In: Cheyette, B. and Marcus, L. (eds.) Modernity, Culture and 'The Jew'. Cambridge, UK: Polity, pp. 105-125. ISBN 9780745620411.

    Full text not available from this repository.

    Abstract

    Book synopsis: This book provides a rich and wide-ranging analysis of Jewish history and culture, relating them to theories of modernity and postmodernity and to recent debates on ethnicity and postcolonialism. Issues addressed include psychoanalysis and gender, literary anti-semitism, (post)modernity and 'the Jew', and the memory of the Holocaust. A Foreword by Homi Bhabha and an Afterword by Paul Gilroy place these concerns in an extended multicultural and postcolonial context. The book examines the work of past and present cultural theorists who have placed the figure of 'the Jew' at the heart of their version of modernity and postmodernity. Many of the essays locate 'the Jew' at the centre of Western metropolitan culture. But they also explore the ways in which Jews have historically been excluded in order for ascendant racial and sexual identities to be formed and maintained. Cheyette and Marcus argue that there is a virtue in the ambivalent positioning which characterizes Jewish history and culture both then and now. The volume places a disruptive and uncontainable Jewish history and culture in the context of current debates about gendered, sexual and ethnic identities. It challenges postcolonial and postmodern revisions of modernity which locate Jews in a dominant Judeo-Christian tradition or appropriate them to signify the universality of the modern subject. It will be of interest to students and scholars in Jewish studies, cultural studies, sociology, history, literature and philosophy.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Book Section
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Historical Studies
    Depositing User: Sarah Hall
    Date Deposited: 13 Mar 2017 12:04
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:32
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/18337

    Statistics

    Activity Overview
    6 month trend
    0Downloads
    6 month trend
    279Hits

    Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

    Archive Staff Only (login required)

    Edit/View Item
    Edit/View Item