Every week this summer, K. brings you a selection of six texts that have already appeared in our pages, and have been brought together for the occasion around a few key themes. This week, we invite you to (re)discover interviews with Etgar Keret, Jean-Frédéric Schaub and Silvia Sebastiani, Tal Bruttmann, Shira Klein and Jan Grabowski, David Nirenberg and André Markowicz.
Etgar Keret: “When you say Israel is committing genocide, it means you don’t want to have any conversation.”
Emmy Barouh – Published June 14th,
Etgar Keret is a leading Israeli writer, whose talent for blending the mundane with the magical is appreciated both in Israel and abroad. In this interview conducted by Emmy Barouh a week ago, Keret evokes the feeling that, since October 7 and as the government plunges the country into war, the reality experienced by Israelis is losing its consistency, and escaping any grip they may have had on it.
>>> Read the interview by Emmy Barouh
About ‘Race and history in Western societies’. Interview with J.-F. Schaub and S. Sebastiani
Julia Christ & Bruno Karsenti – Published July 6th,
The book by historians Jean-Frédéric Schaub and Silvia Sebastiani – Race et histoire dans les sociétés occidentales (XVe-XVIIIe siècle) [Race and History in Western Societies (15th-18th centuries)] – intersects with many issues familiar to readers of Revue K. It recounts the construction of the concept of “race”, as it plays out in racist thought, as a process spanning several centuries, from the imperialist Ancien Régime to the modern period. It thus offers a much richer history of racism than those often limited to the scientistic theories of the late 19th century. Above all, the book places the “Jewish question” at the heart of its history of the concept of race: election, obstinacy and the invisibility of differences are all problems that Christian societies have encountered in their relationship with the Jews, and whose mark racism bears. Interview with the authors.
>>> Read the interview by Julia Christ & Bruno Karsenti
Interview with Tal Bruttmann. Holocaust Historian facing October 7
Stéphane Bou – Published February 3rd,
After October 7, Holocaust historians were called upon by the media to comment on the event. Beyond these requests, many, especially in the American world, spoke out directly to defend positions of a political nature. The tribunes mushroomed, giving rise to polemics within the academic world about the use of history and the memory of the Shoah, and how they are making a comeback and could be instrumentalized in the current conflict. What is the significance of this massive return to the history and memory of the Holocaust as a point of reference since the October 7 massacres, and what is the significance of the proliferation of the word “genocide” to condemn Israel’s war on Gaza? How should we understand speeches that claim that Israel is instrumentalizing the memory of the Holocaust to justify a war that is considered genocidal, echoing the trope that the victims have become the executioners? We asked Tal Bruttmann to shed some light on these questions.
>>> Read the interview by Stéphane Bou
When Wikipedia Distorts the Holocaust. Interview with Shira Klein and Jan Grabowski.
Ewa Tartakowsky – Published September 21st,
Historians Shira Klein and Jan Grabowski have published an important article on the distortions of the history of the Holocaust — particularly in Poland — present on a large number of Wikipedia pages. They analyze the practices of certain Wikipedians, those volunteers who contribute to the editing of the open encyclopedia, who aim to minimize, omit or even deny a series of historical facts; in particular those that affect the image of a victimized and heroic Poland, with a large number of Righteous who saved Jews during the war. Interview conducted by Ewa Tartakowsky.
>>> Read the interview by Ewa Tartakowsky
David Nirenberg: ‘Anti-Judaism Is a Means of Thinking the World’
David Haziza – Published September 15th,
David Nirenberg’s Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition proved an instant classic of Jewish studies on its publication a decade ago. Nirenberg, a scholar of the Middle Ages and Director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, presents anti-Judaism as a structural discourse in the history of the West (and arguably in the history of the world at large). The figure of the “Jew,” and the bugbear of “Judaism,” he maintains, have served as epistemic tools for philosophers and theologians to define themselves – and Western civilization – over and against. In such a scheme, Judaism morphs from religion into foil, the Jew from living being into abstraction; and even societies hosting few or no Jews can entertain “Jewish questions.” Nirenberg’s study starts in the Egypt of the Hellenistic Period and ends in our own time.
> Read the interview by David Haziza
“‘The Jews’ by Tchirikov is the first text written by a Russian from inside a Jewish home.” Interview with André Markowicz
Stéphane Bou – Published May 18th,
The great translator André Markowicz had never heard of The Jews, a forgotten play by Evgeny Tchirikov, written in 1903 after the pogrom of Kishinev. He translated it into French and had it published by Mesures. In partnership with Akadem, we have produced an interview – with English subtitles – which gives an account of the importance and singularity of this work.
>>> Read the interview by Stéphane Bou
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