Jews, Theory, and Ends

This introductory chapter discusses the intersections of the terms Jews, theory, and ends. These intersections have informed strategies of scholarly and intellectual engagements with society, culture, history, and politics that informed the “human sciences” in Western and Central Europe and North America. Often, such strategies came to be grouped together under the monikers criticism, theory, or, at times, critical theory. The chapter then considers the question of Jewishness in relation to critical theory. Tracing the spectral figure of the Jew in theory, the chapters put forward “spectral reading,” one that entails appellation: identification and naming. In light of the great catastrophes that have befallen Jews, which were often accompanied by the endeavor to extricate culture from the figure of the Jew and the Jewishness of the figure, spectral reading has often been an endeavor to excavate traces of a past that cannot be thought of but under the sign of violence.