Chinese Modernity in German Jewish Thought

Too often, critical discussions around antisemitism and anticolonialism seem completely at odds with one another. This workshop asks whether a consideration of the images of 'China' that circulated amongst German Jewish thinkers might help complicate or resolve this impasse by suggesting a different orientation to both the Christian-colonial project and the racialisation of work. How were these images of China used to imagine different ways of organising social, political, and economic life in a context of intensifying antisemitism, capital-critical sentiment, and ambivalence towards the European legacies of imperialism and colonialism in the 'Orient'?

Free and open to all, though registration is required.

This event is the second of three associated with Dr. Julia Ng's British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship project (MCFSS23\230039). Thanks also go to Goldsmiths' Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought and Royal Holloway's Centre for Continental Philosophy for their generous support.

About the speakers

Agata Bielik-Robson is Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Nottingham. She has published widely on all areas of Jewish philosophy with special emphasis paid on modern Jewish thought, from Spinoza to Derrida. She is the author of Another Finitude: Messianic Vitalism and Philosophy (Bloomsbury 2019), Jewish Cryptotheologies of Late Modernity: Philosophical Marranos (Routledge 2014), and co-editor of Judaism in Contemporary Thought: Traces and Influences (Routledge 2014) and Tsimstum and Modernity (2021).

Daniel H. Weiss is is Polonsky-Coexist Senior Lecturer in Jewish Studies, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge. He is author of Paradox and the Prophets: Hermann Cohen and the Indirect Communication of Religion (2012) and Modern Jewish Philosophy and the Politics of Divine Violence (2023), among other publications, and co-editor of multiple books, including Scripture and Violence (2020) and Tsimtsum and Modernity (2021). Actively involved in the Cambridge Interfaith Programme, he is a recent recipient of a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers.

Julia Ng is Reader in Critical Theory and founding Co-Director of the Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought at Goldsmiths, University of London. She specialises in philosophical approaches to literature, modern German-Jewish thought, early 20th-century Germanophone literatures in their transnational contexts, and history of critical theory. Recent publications include her translation and critical edition of Walter Benjamin's "Toward the Critique of Violence" (with P. Fenves; Stanford UP, 2021) and articles in Theory Culture & Society, Paragraph, CR: New Centennial Review, Modern Language Notes, diacritics, and Critical Times. Funded by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship, she is currently completing a book on , which has also received support from the Leverhulme Trust, the Center for Jewish History (NYC), and the British Society for the History of Philosophy.

Host or Publisher Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought