Antisemitism and Racism: Ethical Challenges for Psychoanalysis

This book's stated rationale is that there has never been a more urgent moment to attempt to build or rebuild the alliance between Jews and Black people in opposing racism and antisemitism.An important part of that project is understanding the complex but intertwined as well as allied relations between antisemitism and racism, as well as -and as part of -the role of psychoanalysis.Frosh lays out the problem at the outset: 'alliances are essential, a solidarity of the oppressed is necessary; and if we cannot imagine the experience of people other than ourselves and respond to the demands that are made on us by those experiences and by their articulation, then we are lost' (p.4).Indeed, the book could not be timelier, albeit inadvertently.Its 2023 publication was before the onset of the current and ongoing genocide of Palestinians perpetrated by the Israeli state since 8 October 2023, following the Hamas-led attacks on Israel and hostage-taking.Even before that date, claims about antisemitism have been taken up, 'weaponised', in many directions, to ward off criticisms of Zionist aggression, notably by the Israeli state itself.This is an important context for both the formulation and reception of this book, since, as Frosh discusses, such claims rely on an assumed but erroneous conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism, alongside a -largely correct, but with notable exceptions -perception that most European and North American Jewish communities share this understanding.Beyond these, the fear of being (perceived to be) antisemitic operates powerfully, arising in part alongside the misuse of various institutional regulatory mechanisms such as the International Holocaust Remem-