Antisemitism as a semiotic problem of the prehistory of the definitions of antisemitism.

In an attempt to locate the roots of the curious idea that defining antisemitism can be a means of fighting it, this article unearths the post-1945 process by which antisemitism has evolved into a semiotic problem. Historically, this article locates the prehistory of the definitions in a broad but somewhat elusive change in post-1945 European culture and the emergence of ambiguous, but potentially negative, statements about Jews, without which the definitions cannot be understood. Conceptually, this discussion is intended to explain why the issue now takes the form of a semiotic problem. The first part of the article attempts to elaborate an Israeli perspective on antisemitism. The second part reconstructs Shulamit Volkov’s influential conceptualization of antisemitism in Wilhelmine Germany as “a cultural code” in order to show that it is incapable of addressing the post-1945 situation. The concluding part of this article attempts to articulate a way out of the semiotic morass by distinguishing between ambiguity and ambivalence.

Amos Morris-Reich is the Geza Roth Chair in Modern Jewish History and a Professor in the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University and, until recently, the Director of the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University. Prof. Morris – Reich’s research brings together 19th and 20th century Jewish history and the history of science and ideas. He is the author of the forthcoming book “Nazi Fantasy”: Vilém Flusser and History as Site of Experiment (New York and London: Routledge: 2025). His previous books include Photography and Jewish History: Five Twentieth-Century Cases (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022); Race and Photography: Racial Photography as Scientific Evidence, 1876–1980 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2016); The Quest for Jewish Assimilation in Modern Social Science (New York and London: Routledge, 2008).