INVOKING RACISM IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE - 2 TAKES ON NATIONAL SELF-CRITICISM

Invocations of ''racism'' are treated here as socially and historicall y situated acts of societal criticism. Getting away from arguments abo ut the ''truth-value'' of particular accusations and from worries abou t the diffuse or polysemic nature of the term racism, this essay recom mends focusing on what the invocation of ''racism'' accomplishes conte xtually given a field of available options that range from its silenci ng to its naming as a different ''thing.'' Drawing on noticeable recen t shifts in the naming of particular social phenomena in Israel and th e United States, the analysis highlights both the way these new public discourses (on Israeli Jewish racism and U.S. multiculturalism) criti que habitual categories of understanding and the ways they inadvertent ly reproduce them.