A History of the Enemy in the Present: 25 years after Gil Anidjar’s The Jew, The Arab

Just over twenty-years ago, Gil Anidjar published The Jew, The Arab: A History of the Enemy (Stanford UP, 2003), his groundbreaking examination of the (absent) concept of the enemy in the Western canon. Europe and so-called Western civilization, Anidjar argued, was structured by its relation to the figure of the enemy, divided in two: ”the Jew” as the theological adversary and ”the Arab” the political opponent. This separation is emblematic of how the Western canon sought to separate the theological and the political. As this book became foundational for many in understanding the nature of secularism, its limits, and the drive to distinguish nation from ethnicity from race. This panel brings together three scholars from different subfields, but with a shared disrespect for disciplinary boundaries, to reflect on the significance and questions raised by the book today, followed by a response from Gil Anidjar.