THE CROSS OF ANTI-SEMITISM - ON THE COUNT ER-CATHEXIS OF MEMORY, ORIGINS AND TRADITION

The Crux of Anti-Semitism. On the counter-cathexis of memory, origins and tradition. - Taking up the ''inability to mourn'' as analyzed by A lexander and Margarete Mitscherlich, the author focusses his remarks o n the (non-)remembering and the (non-)working through of anti-Semitism which, albeit in a distorted form - as a counter-cathexis - does expr ess a species of relation to Judaism. In Blumenberg's view, the diffic ulties of decoding this counter-cathexis and relating to the ''Jews'' via memory stem from three factors in the cultural history of Europe, each representing a repression of Judaism: the institutionalization of Christianity, the Englightenment, and National Socialism. This tradit ion, with its devaluation of the Jewish roots of Western civilization, takes refuge in purifying tendencies hostile to any kind of ambivalen ce; as such, it carries the germ of its own destruction within itself. Obliterating the memory of one's own origins - a central dimension in Jewish thinking - proves to be the germinal locus of antiSemitism. On ly in the working through of anti-Semitism, i.e. in the restoration of memory, will it be possible to write (cultural) history.