Work, Colonial Racism, Anti-Semitism: Historical Relations

• Applicant: Dr. Felix Axster
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2014 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 262563613

Starting from current debates about the comparability of colonialism and National Socialism the research project deals with the relations between colonial racism and anti-Semitism. It is assumed that both, colonial and anti-Semitic definitions of 'the Self' and 'the Other' were based among other things on the topos of 'work'. Therefore, I will focus on attributions that constituted a specific coherence between work (or diligence, laziness, self-interest) and belonging. The task is to demonstrate how these attributions interfered mutually although the differences between the formations of knowledge in question will be addressed, too.This research project will concentrate mainly on German speaking authors. It is designed as a diachronic analysis starting around 1800 and ending with the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933. The reconstruction of colonial and anti-Semitic shapings of the relations between work, self and other is central to this study. The following hypothesis is taken as a basis: While the colonized were situated in a (natural) state so to speak 'before work', Jews were associated with allegedly destructive activities, which can be described as 'anti-work'. Both attributions corresponded with the idea that a specific Christian/white/Aryan work ethics had emerged throughout the centuries as a result of a process of disciplining, and that this work ethics is characterized through diligence and public interest and therefore contains a general higher value. In the colonial setting this work ethics functioned as some kind of export hit: To 'raise the colonized to and through work' was an essential part of almost every colonial program. In turn, anti-Semitism called for the protection of this work ethics against the effects of 'anti-work'.This research project will differentiate between these articulations of work ethics in question. Simultaneously, it will show that and how these articulations referred to each other. In this respect my aim is to outline a research perspective that combines the diverse mechanisms of in- and exclusion. This is also meant as an effort to overcome the disciplinary boundaries between research in racism on the one hand and anti-Semitism on the other hand.In methodological terms the research project is orientated on the intersectional approach as well as on the historical discourse analysis. Accordingly, I emanate from the premise that different forms of social inequality are often linked to each other empirically. I also presuppose that specific historical formations of assertions, in which inequality was established, refer to the interactions between knowledge and power and to the corresponding boundaries of the limits of what can be said and thought.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants