Resistance, Renewal, Reimagination:
100 Years of Race & Resistance in Britain
Friday 7 March 2025
Kellogg College, University of Oxford
cryptojewish speculations: for a black planetary
Ben Spatz
This paper argues that contemporary discussions of race and resistance must incorporate a robust analysis of the re-racialisation of jews and jewishness across the twentieth century. Most current discussions of jews and race founder upon oversimplified and dehistorised binaries, leading to serious political fractures and failures on the left, from the ousting of Jeremy Corbyn to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. But the problems associated with thinking jewishness in racial terms also demonstrate the need to do so: The changing racial meaning of jewishness across time and place can offer profound insight into the making and unmaking of whiteness.
Following the groundbreaking work of Santiago Slabodsky in Decolonial Judaism (2015), this paper approaches contemporary jewishness as a key standpoint from which to understand the workings of capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy. It draws heavily on critical black studies — inclusive of black feminism, the radical black tradition, afropessimism, and afrofuturism — but does not attempt to examine jews and blacks as parallel demographic objects. Rather, blackness is understood here as a radical critique of western civilisation (as Cedric Robinson said) and a rigorous methodology through which which to analyse the present. Rather than comparing jewish and black histories or experiences, I look to critical black studies to help imagine what steps might be taken to bring jewishness (back) into a decolonial position.
My presentation draws on more than two decades of scholarly and artistic research to speculate on how the figure of the cryptojew can participate in black reimaginings of the world. In addition to discussing the historical and contemporary figure of the cryptojew and speculating on how it might be reintegrated into ongoing decolonial scholarship and activism, I will share excerpts from my ongoing audiovisual cryptojudaica project, which attempts to reimagine jewishness in solidarity with black planetary futures.