"Kritische Theorie und Zionismus – Befreite Gesellschaft und Israel" - Vortrag von Stephan Grigat

In the organizer's words:

If anti-Semitism is not to be trivialized as a mere prejudice, but rather deciphered as a delusional projection in an ideology-critical sense, it is important to remember the concept of the "anti-Semitic society", which was developed by Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer with reference to Karl Marx's critique of political economy. Zionism is a direct response to European as well as Arab and Islamic anti-Semitism. It inevitably contains a tension between a universalist claim to emancipation and a necessarily particular organization in the form of a nation state. How can Zionism be understood as a national liberation movement of Jews against the background of a critical theory of society? What did the critical theorists have to say about Israel and Zionism? To what extent is anti-Zionism the geopolitical reproduction of anti-Semitism? And what does the new categorical imperative formulated by Adorno, to organize all action and thought in a state of unfreedom in such a way that Auschwitz cannot be repeated, mean in view of the current threat to the Jewish state?

Stephan Grigat is Professor of Theories and Criticism of Anti-Semitism at the Catholic University of Applied Sciences North Rhine-Westphalia (katho) and Director of the Center for Anti-Semitism and Racism Studies (CARS) in Aachen and Cologne. He is a Research Fellow at the University of Haifa and at the London Center for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and author of the book "Vom Antijudaismus zum Hass auf Israel: Interventionen zur Kritik des Antisemitismus" (Barbara Budrich 2025) and editor of the volume "Kritik des Antisemitismus in der Gegenwart" (Nomos 2023.)

This event is part of the Action Weeks against Anti-Semitism and is sponsored by the AStA of the University of Cologne. Information on the series can be found at https://www.instagram.com/bga_koeln and https://bga-koeln.tumblr.com