In this seminar, Professor Adam Sutcliffe will chart the increasing emphasis across the West since the 1990s of ‘redemptive anti-antisemitism’. This association of opposition to antisemitism with the historical lessons of the Holocaust has important conceptual and cultural roots in the deep history of the special signification of Jewish collective purpose in the world. Sutcliffe will particularly focus on the redemptive dimension of this outlook, exploring the importance of this to the psychological appeal of redemptive anti-antisemitism, and in its extremely problematic role in contemporary politics.
Adam Sutcliffe is Professor of European History at King’s College London. He is the co-editor of Philosemitism in History (CUP, 2011), and the author, most recently, of What Are Jews For? History, Peoplehood and Purpose (Princeton UP, 2020). He is currently working on a history of the idea of historical empathy.