Sensationalism and the Jew in Antebellum American literature

• Verfasst von: Anthony, David [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: Sensationalism and the Jew in Antebellum American literature
• Verf.angabe: David Anthony
• Verlagsort: Oxford
• Verlag: Oxford University Press
• E-Jahr: 2023
• Jahr: [2023]
• Umfang: 200 Seiten
• Illustrationen: Illustrationen
• Gesamttitel/Reihe: Oxford studies in American literary history
• Fussnoten: Includes bibliographical references and index
• ISBN: 978-0-19-287173-2
• Schlagwörter: (s)Literatur / (s)Antijudaismus / (s)Antisemitismus / (s)Antizionismus / (g)USA
• Sprache: eng
• RVK-Notation: HS 1520
• K10plus-PPN: 185395702X

Abstract

"This section provides the theoretical foundation for the ensuing chapters by examining economic antisemitism in antebellum culture, and in sensationalism most specifically. After tracing the historical background of the stereotype of the Jew as threatening moneylender and usurer, the Introduction outlines the ways in which the sensational Jew acts less as a figure of alterity than as a dopplegänger for Gentile capitalist culture. In this, the sensational Jew embodies two fears. The first is "proteophobia"-the fear not of Otherness, but rather of disorder and ambivalence. The second is capitalist alienation. Narratives that stage the persecution of financially straitened Gentiles by Shylock-styled villains are in fact stories of Christian self-hatred. But the Introduction also outlines how stories about the threatening sensational Jew involve the fantasy of a capitalist economy that can be purged somehow of greed and avariciousness, that is, the very qualities said to inhere in the Jew. This notion of "capitalism without capitalism" is especially evident in a genre like sensationalism. Like its close relative melodrama, sensationalism relies on affective excess and on Manichean plotlines in which good and evil are clearly delineated. The conceptual foundation for this book is that sensationalism is the cultural space that frequently offers the emotionally harrowing but also reassuring fantasy of the Jew as effigy, one that is burned down or driven out. But this oft-repeated dynamic reflects the anxiety by which it is driven. Ultimately, these texts give the lie to the ideal of a cleansable monetary system in the US and reflect instead a culture contending with a flawed and often chaotic capitalist world"--