CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Lipman, Jillian Sara |
|---|---|
| Title | Negotiating Consciousness, Pariahness, and Parvenuness through Social Justice Praxis: Towards an anti-racist configuration of Jewish victimization |
| Summary | In the wake of the 2016 election cycle and Trump’s election, Jewish Americans have experienced the integration of anti-Semitic rhetoric within political discourse, marking a climate shift for Jewish Americans. This has caused a tension not only discursively, but also within the Jewish community, a tension that is particularly palpable in Baltimore, which in combination with the Baltimore Uprising, has led to a divided experience and perception of what justice or a more equal society looks like. Through semi-structured interviews with ten white-Jewish Baltimoreans, this study will explore the phenomenology of social justice praxis, with a specific focus on Jewish participation or non-participation in anti-racist work. Hannah Arendt’s typologies of the pariah and parvenu, as well as her emancipatory figure of the conscious-pariah, offer a way of thinking about Jewish emancipatory praxis while reimagining Jewish victimization. Given the contemporary context, this research seeks to understand how Jewish victimization impacts Jewish social justice praxis and how can a contemporary conscious pariah figure contribute to the abolition of the racial hierarchy and a more just society. The integration of critical race studies and interviews reveal an emancipatory typology outlined by participants from Jews United for Justice: (i) race-consciousness contextualizes anti-Semitism as an ideology of white supremacy and anti-black racism as a systemic issue, (ii) pariahness is situated as a chosen identity, not as pariah to systems of power, understands Jewish-pariahness in solidarity with black oppression, and sees themselves as pariah with parvenus, and (iii) a parvenu consciousness, as access to white power, is integrated into the emancipatory typology. |
| Supervisor | Kovacs, Maria |
| Department | Nationalism Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/lipman_jillian.pdf |
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