Biographical Perspectives on the Nexus of Antisemitism and Genderpolitics

Antisemitism is not merely prejudice against Jews, it is also an ideology itself and therefore a worldview. Its efficacy is not only historically evident, but also contemporarily visible. It intersects with racism, anti-feminism and misogyny, and is linked to societal dynamics. This can be seen particularly well in social gender relations in liberal democracies. It is precisely against the background of the flexibilization of gender relations, and the simultaneous persistence of traditional gender roles that a field of tension and struggle is emerging. This brings ambivalences and uncertainties to the fore. These, in turn, provide fertile ground for antisemitic and anti-modernist responses (visible e.g. in the TradWife Phenomenon), going hand in hand with wider developments of de-solidarization and nationalization. I argue, that in order to understand these kinds of phenomena they have to be embedded in the biographical as well as the socio-historical context. Biographical research is particularly suitable for this purpose as it claims to reconstruct the interrelationship between the individual and society. Lived experiences are the place where society inflicts its pain and thus becomes tangible as a universal framework (Adorno 1993). Against this background, I argue that antisemitism serves as a cohesive force during times of changing gender relations and that a biographical approach is critical to understanding the function of antisemitism within societal dynamics. In this contribution, I will provide an overview of my ongoing dissertation project, outlining the research design and its underlaying explanatory potential in addressing the following questions: What function do antisemitic patterns of interpretation fulfil within biographical meaning making? How do they relate to regressive gender political orientations? And what insights do they offer regarding the way subjects orient themselves within and respond to dynamics of changing gender orders?