From Jewish resistance to intercultural solidarity: Antiracism and identity politics in immediate postwar France
2020 (English)In: Jews in dialogue: Jewish responses to the challenges of multicultural contemporaneity / [ed] Magdalena Dziaczkowska & Adele Valeria Messina, Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2020, p. 141-162Chapter in book (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
This article investigates how French antiracism and its main organizations redefined their identities and developed new strategies to confront racism after the liberation of France in 1944 up until the early 1950s. The purpose is to understand to what extent the antiracist movement and its main organizations (MNCR, LICA, MRAP and the umbrella organization Alliance Antiraciste) left room for the specific interests of Jews and other groups, and to look at arguments for intercultural solidarity. The article shows how already in the immediate postwar period the antiracist movement, with a strong representation of Jews, became increasingly concerned with colonial issues and discrimination against people from the colonies, which was expressed through various acts of solidarity. There are, however, only a few indications that people from the colonies were directly involved in such activities despite attempts to establish activi- ties in North Africa for this purpose. Although the memory of the Holocaust, as well as the opposition towards antisemitism, was strong within the antiracist movement, these organizations had a shifting and ambivalent attitude towards particular Jewish concerns and the general tendency was to emphasize the universal character of antiracism in discourses intended for a broader audience.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2020. p. 141-162
Series
Studies in Jewish History and Culture, ISSN 1568-5004 ; 61/02
Keywords [en]
Alliance Antiraciste, antiracism, Arabs, Jews, colonialism, France, intercultural solidarity, LICA, MNCR, MRAP
National Category
Humanities and the Arts
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-47685ISBN: 978-90-04-42594-1 (print)ISBN: 978-90-04-42595-8 (electronic)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hj-47685DiVA, id: diva2:1390536
Funder
Swedish Research Council, 2014-067592020-02-012020-02-012020-02-03