The word of God must be infinite, or, to put it in a different way, the absolute word is as such meaningless, but it is pregnant with meaning. Under human eyes it enters into significant finite embodiments which mark the innumerable layers of meaning… The key itself may be lost, but an immense desire to look for it remains alive.

In this essay I investigate Jean-François Lyotard's thinking on the related questions of anti-semitism and the Holocaust. However, as a way in it is useful to locate his thought within the context of social theory's reflections on these issues as a whole.

Background

Beginning with Marx's On the Jewish Question and continuing to the present day, social theory has reflected upon the causes of modern anti-Jewish hostility. However, despite the many varied ways in which social theory has approached the issue of anti-semitism, one theme constantly re-appears. Drawing on the fact that the term ‘anti-semitism’ first gained popular acceptance in 1879, social theory has recognised some connection between anti-semitism, political emancipation and the granting to Jews of political and civil rights. Yet this enduring thematic should not mask the fact that the way in which the relationship has been theorised has changed considerably over the past century and a half. Perhaps the most dramatic change has been brought about as a result of the events that occurred in the middle of the twentieth century and which have since come to be known as ‘the Holocaust’. If we compare social theory's accounts of anti-semitism before the Holocaust with those that came after, we are struck but not surprised by a definite change in tone. It is as if the Holocaust has inflicted a trauma upon social theory which is most evident in its increasingly negative (even nihilistic) attitude adopted toward emancipation.

Reflections on anti-semitism can be delineated into three distinct periods. The first period covers the period of the struggle for Jewish emancipation and its immediate success. According to Marx and Nietzsche the causes of antisemitism are understood as connected with the shortcomings of emancipation. However, it is also the case that they stress the potentialityof emancipation in the sense that whilst anti-semitism maybe oneof the outcomes of the limits of emancipation, it is not necessarily the only possible outcome.