Narratives of exclusion, performances of belonging: Jews and the Greek War of Independence, 1871-1941
Item
Title
Narratives of exclusion, performances of belonging: Jews and the Greek War of Independence, 1871-1941
Spatial Coverage
Subject - keywords
Date
03 December 2021
Abstract
This paper considers the multifaceted place of Jews and the “Jew” in popular narratives and commemorative practices of the Greek War of Independence throughout the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. It argues that the war and its subsequent memorialisation “othered” the Jews by generating strong images of them as Greek-haters (μισέλληνες) rather than deicides alone. These images reshaped Greek Judeophobia in the post-independence period and proved remarkably enduring being still with us today. However, in the interwar period, those “othered” Jews (chief among them the Zionists in Thessaloniki) engaged with the Greek Revolution in highly creative ways as they attempted to craft a new and legitimate identity for themselves as Jews and Greeks, or else, as “Greek Jews”, brothers to their Christian neighbours. Although the project eventually proved futile, Jewish engagement with the Greek Revolution can nevertheless help us rethink how we can craft new narratives about the Revolution better fit for the multi-cultural Greece of the twenty-first century.
(Abstract from organiser’s website)
(Abstract from organiser’s website)
Type specialization
Format
Text
Language
Bibliographic Citation
Number Of Pages - Duration
00:20:00
Rights
BY-NC-SA Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Position: 5693 (11 views)