ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the constellation of antisemitism and antifeminism within the historical formation of the nation-state and its contemporary transformations. It argues that both ideologies emerge as modern reaction formations to the emancipatory promises of Enlightenment universalism, particularly equality before the law, and function to stabilise unresolved contradictions between formal equality and persistent social, economic, and gender hierarchies. Tracing the intertwined histories of Jewish and women's emancipation, the chapter shows how assimilation and the erosion of visible difference paradoxically intensified hostility, leading to the refabrication of Jewish and female ‘otherness’ as threats to national cohesion. A central argument is that nationalism and gender ideology mutually reinforce one another: women are positioned as biological and symbolic reproducers of the nation, while Jews are constructed as anti-national, abstract, and corrosive of collective identity. The analysis extends from nineteenth-century European nationalism to National Socialism and Islamism, conceptualised as anti- or supranational projects that negate individual rights in favour of ethnic or religious community. The chapter further demonstrates how contemporary antizionism functions as a post- and supranational reconfiguration of antisemitic projection, with Israel serving as a screen for unresolved ambivalences towards modern statehood, abstraction, and sovereignty.
