Stefan Vogt

Jewish History as a "Subaltern Past"

In his much-discussed book Provincializing Europe, the historian Dipesh Chakrabarty developed the concept of “subaltern pasts”: histories of marginalized and discriminated minorities that resist integration into the holistic and linear perspectives of both European and postcolonial historical narratives. He describes them as “stubborn knots that stand out and break up the otherwise evenly woven surface" of these narratives. As such, they also serve as starting points for the provincializing of European history that Chakrabarty advocates.

While Chakrabarty primarily locates these pasts among the non-hegemonic strata of colonial and postcolonial societies, this lecture puts forward the thesis that European Jewish history can also be understood as such a subaltern past. In many respects, European Jewish history undermines and disrupts the linear logic of development inherent in historicism and challenges the Euro-Christian hegemony in the interpretation of history.

This deliberate linkage of Jewish history with insights from postcolonial studies allows for an understanding of Jewish history as a key protagonist in the provincializing of Europe and thus as part of an emancipatory approach to historiography.

die veranstaltung ist teil der reihe "zukunft der geschichte", die bis januar 2026 regelmäßig bei basis e.v. stattfinden wird. hier gehts zum programm!