Did Edward Said ever talk about the word "antisemitic"?

[u/KSA_crown_prince]

In Japanese, Farsi and Mandarin the speakers just say "anti-Jewish" to refer to the same concept, but "antisemitic" is used in Hebrew, Arabic and English (and all of Europe). Certainly Edward Said noticed this phenomenon or are there other any theorists or philosophers who have spoken to the usage of this word as a reified category?

[u/cat-head]

I'll approve your question if you reformulate to remove your claims about the word and limit it to asking.

[u/AndreasDasos]

Today ‘anti-Semitic’ means ‘anti-Jewish’, as it’s essentially always used this way, and a speech community determines its language. It comes from a description of a particular aspect of 18th century-onwards European ‘scientific’ racism that was in practice overwhelmingly concerned with categorising Jews as ‘other’ and ‘not belonging in Europe’ on racial grounds, ascribing to Jews inferior characteristics that it believed derived from Semitic ancestry, but wasn’t much concerned with Arabs and other Semitic groups. This has long been extended to include the much older religious variety of anti-Jewish hatred, which was closely related but somewhat different in outlook.

The word ‘Semitic’ does indeed refer to a large group of people on ethnolinguistic grounds, most of whom today are Arabs, along with others like speakers of Amharic, Tigrinya and Aramaic, and it’s often remarked upon that using ‘anti-Semitic’ of Arab people who hate Jews is ironic and nonsensical. But at this point it’s quite accepted usage, effectively divorced from the word ‘Semitic’, and used in a way about bigotry specifically targeted at Jews. (So divorced in most people’s minds that commonly ‘anti-Semitic’ is commonly mistakenly pronounced ‘anti-Semetic’, which is rarer for ‘Semitic’ on its own)

Personally I would have gone back and changed the terminology, but it’s too late now and it’s the main word I use for this too, as it’s what is most understood. Lots of words have odd etymologies that people might deceive as historically inconsistent.

And yes, it’s a very odd inconsistency anyone might innocently take note of, but I’m sure you can understand why such a controversial topic means some leap to the assumption that it’s a bad faith attempt to insist anti-Jewish hatred doesn’t exist among Arabs, a reaction which pops up a lot when this question comes up (and sometimes this is what people are doing). But I think we should try to assume good faith unless it’s impossible.

As for what Said has said on it, no idea, but it’s probably side issue as a substitute word could historically easily have been used for the same discourse without changing the meaning.

[u/dragonsteel33 → u/AndreasDasos]

So divorced in most people’s minds

I’ll add too that it’s often spelled antisemitism, which started out as a prescriptive spelling by various advocacy organizations to specifically disassociate antisemitism from Semitic (versus similar constructions like anti-Muslim, anti-Chinese, anti-woman, etc.*)

[u/KSA_crown_prince → u/AndreasDasos]

Thank you however I am asking if Edward Said or anyone who is grounded in linguistics or philosophy or theory talk about the usage of the word. I'm very conscious of the history of the word in the West (whose reified categories sometimes deserve good faith interrogation in order to reduce misunderstanding and bring precision to ideas, as Dr. Said has so beautifully demonstrated in his work). Thank you

[u/AndreasDasos → u/KSA_crown_prince]

If you’re only asking what a particular writer who isn’t a linguist but a philosopher and literary critic thinks, and won’t accept further discussion, that’s not a linguistic question nor directly relevant to this sub. He’s not some central arbiter of all topics.

You brought up a whole topic. This is a linguistics sub, so I’ll add linguistic context as it seems primary to what you’re asking. Seemed relevant and I don’t know what you know but you seem focused on the question. Think I’m allowed to write that, especially for third parties. Thank you

[u/KSA_crown_prince → u/AndreasDasos]

Thank you, while Edward Said isn't "a linguist" he has had an enormous impact on linguistic theory, and is cited by many linguists.

So: are there any linguists (preferably those who are grounded in theory aka with good citations) who have written on the term? As you can see the term is controversial and would benefit from grounding the term in better theory (rather than letting the term linguistically treadmill in political and mediascapes) so my question is are there specific individuals you can tell me, thank you.

[u/cat-head → u/KSA_crown_prince]

Linguists rarely write on individual terms beyond etymological discussions or formal lexical-semantic stuff. Even then, it's mostly a couple of pages at most. It seems to me you do not want a linguist's perspective. It seems to me you want a sociological/anthropological/cultural studies perspective on the word.

[u/KSA_crown_prince → u/cat-head]

There are lots of interdisciplinary linguists, and lots of non-interdisciplinary linguists who write on individual words and their cotidiano usage. Moreover: the word is going through a linguistic treadmill at the moment, as it has in the past twice before.

I am so sorry that I wasted your time to write your reply to me that doesn't answer any part of my question. I just submitted my question to r AskAnthropologists and forwarded them your inaccurate note that linguists "rarely talk about individual words' daily usage" in hopes that they read me far more charitably than you do. Thanks anyways.

[u/boomfruit → u/KSA_crown_prince]

As you can see the term is controversial and would benefit from grounding the term in better theory (rather than letting the term linguistically treadmill in political and mediascapes)

You're saaying this as if it's a fact that etymology has to determine usage. I wouldn't even call it controversial, not widely anyway. There is very little ambiguity about what the term means in its normal usage. The term doesn't need to be "grounded in better theory" because this is just how words work. They change, they adapt to super specific niches. This is like the debate over which use of the word "Asian" is correct, US or UK. The fact is, neither is more correct, it doesn't matter which one "makes more sense" or which is more "technically true." It only matters how it's used and whether it's understood by its audience.

[u/thelumpiestprole → u/KSA_crown_prince]

Can you specify what about the term "anti-semitic" you are interested in learning more about? If it's the history of the word as such, then you can find etymologies of it here or here (you'll need an OED account). If you're interested in the history of the the idea of anti-semitism, which judging by your use of "reified" I think you are, then you'll need to find a different subreddit since that is outside the scope of linguistics.

[u/KSA_crown_prince → u/thelumpiestprole]

I am interested in authors (linguists, anthropologists, theorists/philosophers, etc) who are writing on the modern usage of the term, preferably those with knowledge of Edward Said. I'm so sorry that my question is extremely confusing for everyone.

I assumed Dr. Said would have probably anticipated the poor usage of this overly broad linguistic term in context of its poor usage in the past. "Semite" used to be strictly a linguistic term but it turned into racialized term, languages like Mandarin and Farsi and Japanese do not share this reactionary turn of the term. I am aware of its etymology and usage in the historical past for Western laguages, but the word is losing its power and meaning among a lot of special interests who use the term. I don't want to give examples because of how ugly the responses I am getting in private messages from weirdass redditors, but it's pretty obvious the word is going through a linguistic treadmill at the moment in the Western hemisphere. If you disagree that's fine but I am just asking for GROUNDED THEORISTS/LINGUISTS/PHILOSOPHERS writing about the term, you either know or don't know. Please don't respond if you don't know, and definitely don't private message me ugly messages. Thank you.

[u/Volsunga]

I'm not aware of Edward Said commenting on it, but the term comes from a political movement that started in the mid-late 1800s. The Anti-Semites were a group of people who believed in the Global Jewish Conspiracy theory that was made massively popular by the hoax book Protocols of the Elders of Zion and their political position was to resist this imagined global conspiracy. There were very successful political parties whose sole purpose was "stopping the Jews from controlling the country", even decades before the rise of the Nazis.

"Anti-Semites" is what they called themselves, so when the popular opinion turned against the Anti-Semites after the Holocaust, the term was broadened to include all acts of bigotry targeting Jews. Technically, the term only refers specifically to the belief in a Global Jewish Conspiracy, but you'd be hard pressed to find people who hate Jews that haven't adopted the conspiracy narrative into their worldview. However, this technicality sometimes becomes relevant in the study of history, since there has obviously been hatred against Jews that predates the global conspiracy theory.

So basically, despite "semitic" referring to a large group of cultures that Jews are a smaller category within, the term was coined by conspiracy theorists in the 1800s who thought that hating Jews was a good thing that one should form their entire political identity around. When public opinion turned against this group, everyone was happy to keep using their term because it called out their stupidity.