Dirty Subjects: Shaping Jewish Colonial Subjectivities in Early Twentieth-Century South Africa. Issue 1 (7th April 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hunter, Mitchel Joffe
• Is Part Of: Horizontes decoloniales. Number 7:Issue 1(2022)
• Page Start: 7
• Page End: 40
• Publication Date: 2022-04-07
• Subjects: Judíos -- Sudáfrica -- Peruanos -- Peruvnik -- Suciedad -- Memmi -- Blancura -- Colonialista -- Colonialismo de colonos -- Subjetividad; Judeus -- África do Sul -- Peruanos -- Peruvnik -- Sujeira -- Memmi -- Brancura -- Colonialista -- Colonialismo de colonos -- Subjetividade; Jews -- South Africa -- Peruvian -- Peruvnik -- dirt -- Memmi -- Whiteness -- colonialist -- settler colonialism -- subjectivity; Religion and politics -- Periodicals; Postcolonial theology -- Periodicals; Postcolonial theology; Religion and politics; Periodicals; 201.72
• DOI: 10.13169/decohori.7.1.0007
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2422-6343

Abstract

Abstract : In the early 1900s in the settler colonial states in Southern Africa, the nascent Jewish community institutions took actions to avoid the racialised accusation of dirtiness, thus shaping the community into adopting white colonialist subjectivities. Using Albert Memmi's analytic framework of colonisers and colonialists, and Anne McClintock's conceptualisation of the racial function of dirt, this article reassesses existing archival sources through the lens of dirty bodies, dirty sex, and dirty work to show how communal subjectivities were formed through close collusion with the colonial state and the internal enforcing of the social habits of Whiteness. This article argues that this colonial subject formation foreclosed the possibilities of a peruvnik : a potential South African anticolonial Jewish barbarism.