Episode 5: Agata Bielik-Robson Lecture - a podcast by Anthony Paul Smith

Ontoday’s episode(74 mins) we are lucky to have the recording ofAgata Bielik-Robson’skeynote address to the joint conference of theMystical Theology Networkand theAssociation for Continental Philosophy of Religion. Most of Agata’s work is out in Polish, but listeners will likely be very interested in her forthcomingJewish Cryptotheologies in Late Modernity: Philosophical Marranos (which hopefully will eventually come out in paperback). You will hear Steven Shakespeare’s voice introduce Agata before her keynote, something I forgot to mention in the program. I also open the podcast with a short discussion of some materials that I think may help us think towards protesting Israel without falling into anti-semitism, though I do not claim to have that figured out. I think anti-semitism, like anti-black racism (which I see as a more virulent and primary antagonism in the construction of the West), is less dangerous if we classify it as something one intentionally does. It is instead something that we find ourselves structured by and so recognizing and naming it is far more difficult. Still, I hope my comments there are taken in the spirit in which they are offered, which is towards a conversation that would find some way to account for Isreali racism as well as anti-Jewish prejudice. While I think it is incumbent for us to remember the scores of Palestinians and the experience of genocide they are being and have been subjected to, it is also important we recognize the surge in anti-semitism in Europe and elsewhere. As Mao said, we must fight on two fronts (if only we were so lucky and it was only two). 

I hope you may also take some time today and, if nothing else, remember thenames of the murdered. 

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Website of Anthony Paul Smith