Is Theory Good for the Jews? French Thought and the Challenge of the New Antisemitism by Bruno Chaouat (review)

“Is X good for the Jews?” This is the formula Bruno Chaouat borrows for the title of his recent book. It’s a cliché of a question, one that suggests notes of antisemitic caricature as well as Jewish self-parody. The formula may be imagined in the voice of the antisemite, whose perennial accusation against the Jews is that they are insular and parochial, exclusively concerned for their own, tribal welfare. Alternatively, it may be imagined in the voice of the shlemiehl, the Jewish version of the fool archetype, scripted to say such things by a self-reflective and self-parodic Jewish comedy writer. So, it’s a question that antisemites may imagine Jews to ask, and one that Jews may imagine antisemites imagine Jews to ask, and which Chaouat here asks both in winking reference to the stereotypes and, at the same time, in all sincerity. That is: Has “Theory” – which Chaouat defines as the canon of philosophy, literature, and social thought that grew largely out of Heideggerian roots and which continues to find wide purchase – been good for the Jews?

The book does not answer this question so much as demonstrate its legitimacy. Bringing to bear not only philosophical texts, but also public discussions surrounding their publications, as well as excerpts from personal letters and memoirs, the book could profitably be read as a history of French Theory, albeit from the strange angle that the “Jewish Question” gives it.

For example, the non-specialist may learn here about “l’affaire Camus,” a significant literary event of the 2000s. This “affair” exposed the classically antisemitic beliefs of respected journalist Renaud Camus. Camus’s antisemitism, revealed through the publication of his private diary, consisted of accusing Jews of anti-secular parochialism – that is, of being exactly the kind of people who ask, “Is X good for the Jews?” Following this publication, the French press as well as France’s most renowned public intellectuals condemned Camus. Jacques Derrida even co-authored a book about it: 2003’s De quoi demain … Dialogue (with Elizabeth Rodinescou).

It should be comforting to the French and Jewish intellectual that so many of France’s most respected thinkers stood up so forcefully against antisemitism, even when it came from an insider such as Renaud Camus. But Chaouat does not find it so. Rather, Chaouat suggests that the interest garnered by events like the “Camus affair,” which evoked memories of Nazism, fascism, and Vichy collaboration, may have been “a way of avoiding genuine engagement with the present” (15). That is, by over-discussing such a classic example of racist antisemitism and European chauvinism, and by spending their deconstructive energies on breaking down old fantasies of national purity, theorists may reinforce the kind of dualistic thinking that they had been credited with killing off. For example, theory today is likely to describe the world in binary and uni-directional terms as a world where European colonialists oppress non-European victims. While this is a true description, Theory all too often stops there, and thereby evades addressing dynamics of imperialism, dogmatism, or scapegoating that spin in other directions. One may note, for example, that there are few works of political theory that deal with the plight of the Armenians, Kurds or Yazidis – it seems plausible that that is because the “oppressor” slot in the equation is occupied by people that would otherwise be in the “oppressed victim” quadrant.

And so, the question that the “Camus affair,” and much of this book, turns on is whether or not there is a new antisemitism – an antisemitism that is resurgent, global, and supported by the European intellectual left. This question is made complicated from the start because the existence of and relevance of contemporary antisemitism has been doubted by some of the leading lights of contemporary French Theory. As an example of this trend, Chaouat comments on Alain Badiou and Erik Hazan’s 2011 book...