Performing Legality in Service of Colonialism: Anti-Antisemitism as Censorship

Lena Salaymeh — Performing Legality in Service of Colonialism: ‘Anti-Antisemitism’ as Censorship This talk analyzes recent quasi-legal “definitions of antisemitism” that function as proxies for debates about Zionist colonialism. I propose that procedural and substantive intellectual colonialism (i.e., coloniality) entrap both proponents and opponents of Zionist colonialism. Thus, debates about “new antisemitism“ illustrate some of the epistemological difficulties of overcoming coloniality. I argue that anti-colonial heuristics are more consequential than anti-colonial intentions or objectives. Lena Salaymeh is a British Academy Global Professor in the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (University of Oxford) and Professor in the Section des Sciences Religieuses of the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris Sciences et Lettres). She is also Co-Organizer of the Decolonial Comparative Law Project at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and Private International Law (H