The Jew Inside Us: an Outline of Cultural History

The acknowledged representations of the Jews in the collective imaginary are broadly a matter of cultural stereotyping. This academic study contends that, far from remaining Manichaeistically positioned, the Jew can rather be viewed as a hybridiz-/ed/-ing self of sorts, if not even as a construct, who has got diachronically actuated, ?modulated' or re-/contextualized according to ideological variables or epistemes, whose contradictions, overlappings or paradoxes are here subtly explored and eloquently demonstrated, with evidence from thought-patterns in history, from Western iconography and literature, from cultural rituals or practices, as well as from linguistics. In an implicit and relatively consistent way, a polemical stance is getting voiced on some micro-structural as well as macro-structural issues. What is thus authoritatively updated refers to a/the dialectically ingrained ?Jew inside' all of us. Professionally translated from Romanian, this study will be of great interest not only to under-/post-/graduates, researchers and specialists in history, cultural and art studies, religious and philosophic studies or in sociology, but also to the ?lay' readership.