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      On the Political History of Destruction

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      ReOrient
      Pluto Journals
      Orientalism, Islamophobia, history, destruction, Muselmänner
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            Abstract

            This essay seeks to reframe the question of continuity (or discontinuity) between Orientalism and Islamophobia as, underlying the question, is an enduring conception of history as agentive, as a “making,” a “construction,” or a “production” (“Men make their own history …”). Turning our attention instead toward destructive power—distinct from repressive and coercive and from productive and enabling modes of power (Foucault, Said)—a distinct history, or anti-history, emerges, which necessitates a different lexicon. Political or subject formations might still be at stake, but another logic or illogic, a different politics may become visible where the main concern is not the making of world (Arendt), but its undoing; not the production of collectives or of individual subjects, but their destruction. Torture, as Jean Améry described it, is one such destruction of world. It may thus become possible to ask whether, between Orientalism and Islamophobia, the Muslims or Muselmänner of the Nazi camps were a “product,” whether they were “made” into subjects. The essay builds on earlier reflections where elements of a lexicon and analytics of destruction were considered (Heidegger, Derrida), along with preliminary answers to the question: what is destruction? Or here: is there a history of destruction?

            Content

            Author and article information

            Journal
            10.2307/j50009694
            reorient
            ReOrient
            Pluto Journals
            2055-5601
            2055-561X
            1 April 2019
            : 4
            : 2 ( doiID: 10.13169/reorient.4.issue-2 )
            : 144-165
            Affiliations
            Columbia University, USA
            Article
            reorient.4.2.0144
            10.13169/reorient.4.2.0144
            02e3ae44-3a20-4634-8779-08de19c1d195
            © 2019 Pluto Journals

            All content is freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission of the publisher or the author. Articles published in the journal are distributed under a http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

            History
            Custom metadata
            eng

            Literary studies,Religious studies & Theology,Social & Behavioral Sciences,History,Philosophy
            Orientalism,destruction,Islamophobia, Muselmänner ,history

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