Race, Class, and Critical Race Theory, Part 2, Geraldine Heng and The Expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290, Section B, the Blood Libel

 




As mentioned in the previous essay, materialists believe that racism arises from material conditions, from economic activity. Fascists say that racial difference is hard-wired into all of us and that these differences are what makes races, and racism is the recognition of that reality. CRT, dismissing both, needs an explanation. In  Invention of race in the European Middle Ages Geraldine Heng relies heavily on religion, which she conveniently regards as a racial category. In her book, the religious abuse the Jews endured is fittingly and pointedly reproached. However, her presentation of the conflict is utterly out of balance and partisan. There was a competition, a "cold war between the religions" transpiring, but Heng's impassioned scorn for the intolerant falls on one side only.

Given that this issue is central to Heng's race-making theory, and where she is most deeply in error, a discussion of religion must follow. Moreover, perhaps the ugliest defamation of all is the misanthropy known as the blood libel, and no discussion of the medieval Anglo-Jewry can neglect it.

Race, Class, and Critical Race Theory, Part 2, Geraldine Heng and The Expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290, Section A, The Norman Conquest to the Anarchy.

[Blogger's note: I have never had anything I submitted for online publication rejected. However, I submitted part one of this essay to multiple sites and nobody would post it. So I no longer have length limits and have decided to break part two up into sections for convenience.]

In part 1, I presented a critique of Geraldine Heng's race-making theory. One of the chapters in her book, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, examines the English expulsion of its entire Jewish community in 1290, which she sees a result of race-making. I hope to demonstrate that the expulsion doesn't validate Heng's thesis, but rather undermines it and exposes it as right-wing ideology; racism masquerading as antiracism. Critical race theory is Fascism Lite. Those racial canards that rallied enough support to defeat the workers' movement in the 20th century can't go goose-stepping down the strasse anymore--not yet anyway--but rather are softened, re-normalized and reproduced in more innocuous, palatable form--as is seen broadly in post-modern thought and most conspicuously in critical race theory. And there can be no better example than Geraldine Heng whose book is riven with racist ideas, some quite explicit. As was argued in part one and will be below, race theory is inherently atavistic, regardless of whether its theorists understand it as such. It has an aporia at its heart which cannot be exorcised by the mere addition of the word "critical," nor can the effects of its racist genealogy be neutralized by sanctimonious disavowals. The vestiges of this legacy, its unacknowledged assumptions, its heuristics, its "racial logic," are still common in contemporary critical race theory discourse. One cannot rehabilitate a racist idea by disclaimer. By Heng's own definition, she is guilty of racism.

Race, Class, and Critical Race Theory, Part 1, Geraldine Heng and The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages

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