Use of the word "Zhid"

Sat Aug 22 21:38:27 UTC 1998

Jim,
It's ok, I think, to have arguments on SEELangs.  I've done my "homework,"
as the citations to Dostoevskii in my last posting indicate, and as the
many more references to Dostoevskii would indicate in my book-in-progress
on Russian ethnicity (about 300 typewritten pages to date).  The book is
tentatively titled "Imagining Russia" (as announced in the AAASS
Newsletter, issue on research in progress).  The first part of the book is
about what Russians think Russia is (focus on Slavophiles, Eurasianists,
current sociological surveys of post-Soviet Russia, etc.).  The second part
of the book is about what Russians (like Dostoevskii) think is not Russia,
or what they think non-Russians are.  This is where xenophobia and
anti-Semitism come in, as many Russian nationalists are just that -
xenophobic and anti-Semitic.  Not all Russians are, of course, but those
who are nationalist tend to follow a pattern of being hostile to what is
"chuzhoi."  There is an extensive literature on this, from the Soviet
semioticians to Western psychoanalysts (I especially recommend Vamik
Volkan's 1988 book titled _The Need to Have Enemies and Allies_ - it's all
about "us" and "them" mentality, i.e., "svoi" vs. "chuzhoi").  Dostoevskii
is of course a complex and interesting individual in his own right.  His
anti-Semitism, including abusive use of the word "zhid" constituted one
pole of his underlying ambivalence toward Jews.  There is a positive pole
as well - as is so often the case with anti-Semites.  This is well-known to
clinicians who study ethnic issues today, and it is just as important to do
"homework" in this area as in the philological field.  I might also mention
that high scores on anti-Semitism scales have been correlated with paranoid
tendencies.  If you wish (or if anyone else out there wishes), I can
provide you with a bibliography of work in this area.

Good arguing with you.

Daniel

At 06:57 PM 8/21/98 -0700, you wrote:
>Colleagues:                          Dinnertime+, Friday, 21 August 1998
>
>I promised to say no more about Dostoevsky and the Jews on SEELANGS, but I
>can allow myself to quote IN FULL the 5-line sentence from my book,
>DOSTOEVSKY & THE HEALING ART (1985), from which Dan Rancour-Laferriere has
>lifted a snippet -- thoroughly distorting the meaning, and discarding the
>main point -- to serve his own hasty ends.  I wrote, 13 years ago:
>
>"The APPARENT behavior change of his last decades, in the direction of
>heightened anxiety and suspicion, with episodes of paranoid delusion,

>DESERVES TO BE CAREFULLY CONSIDERED not only as A PROBABLE PSYCHIATRIC
>COMPLICATION OF HIS EPILEPSY, but against <the> background of quite real
>harassment by the state security agencies."  <Op. cit., page 81>
>
>The main point here is that there are various (medical and human) ways of
>understanding the sporadically documented outbursts of abusive language from
>Dostoevsky, some of which were observed during or after the genuinely
>psychotic interludes of 3 to 10 days (with paranoid hallucinations of
>unknown content) that ROUTINELY concluded his epileptic seizures; others of
>which deployed antisemitic stereotypes (especially in letters), but in many
>different ways. Readers who are interested in Dostoevsky's personality,
>intellect, and motivation as a writer of journalism, or fiction (where Jews
>figure mainly positively, if rarely, and on quite different levels of
>abstraction), should look carefully at each context in the letters, to
>consider what effects he MAY HAVE wanted to achieve, including -- as I see
>it -- not only at times seemingly knee-jerk signals of xenophobia, but also
>exasperation at the spectacle of Russia falling face down in the mud, and at
>his own political impotence.  Some of us read Dostoevsky as Russia's most
>seditiously satirical novelist and journalist, who was determined above all
>to "dissect anatomically all Russian attitudes toward authority," and not as
>a compulsively xenophobic paranoid.  (Dostoevsky's underlying contempt for
>Russia surfaces most clearly, I think, in his last piece of journalism, on
>Geok-Tepe.)
>
>So, when I referred (in an elaborately qualified speculation of 1985) to
>"episodes of paranoid delusion" deserving "to be carefully considered," I
>meant IN ALL THEIR COMPLEXITY, and not at all in order to support the
>relatively limited arguments of Dan Rancour-Laferriere, as transmitted
>lately on SEELANGS.  It might be added that one line of medical thinking
>denies the use of terms for standard clinical psychopathology for the
>neurological phenomena of epilepsy.  It may be splitting hairs, but I am not
>the one who first proposed this distinction -- for ethical reasons.
>
>I can only repeat that SEELANGS goads us into blurting out scraps of the
>whole picture, when it would be far better -- in certain complex issues like
>this one -- to get our act together first, and publish with careful
>documentation.  Of course I don't pretend that my own squeals here above
>are adequately documented, and if I'm out here yapping again I guess my

>excuse is that I'm only human.
>
>As for Daniel, I don't mind saying that I've been his friend since 1978, and
>can't imagine anyone I'd rather argue with about this, in public or private.
>He's a worthy interlocutor.  The only question is (for you folks out there
>in cyberspace): has he done his homework?  For the time being, you see,
>there's just no telling.
>
>Jim Rice
>
>At 04:35 PM 8/21/98 -0700, you wrote:
>>21 Aug 98
>>
>>Colleagues,
>>I am glad to see that Jim Rice will be publishing his study on Dostoevsky's
>>use of the word "zhid."  In the meantime I feel obliged to object to his
>>negative evaluation of Felix Dreizin's book, and in particular to his
>>reluctance to translate Dostoevsky's "zhid" as "yid" or "kike."
>>
>>Dostoevsky resorted to denial as one way to deal with his anti-Semitism.
>>In his 1877 essay on "The Jewish Question" in _Diary of a Writer_ he
>>declares that "in my heart this hatred has never existed."  Yet he then
>>asks: "Is it because I sometimes call a Jew a 'yid' [nazyvaiu inogda evreia
>>'zhidom'] that I am accused of 'hatred'?  But, in the first place, I didn't
>>think this was so offensive, and in the second place, as far as I can
>>recall, I always used the word 'yid' in reference to a certain idea: 'yid,'
>>'yidism,' 'the reign of the yids,' and so on.  This was a reference to the
>>well-known notion, orientation, or characteristic of the times.  One can
>>dispute this idea, or disagree with it, but one shouldn't be offended by a
>>word" (Dostoevskii 1972-88, vol. 25, p. 75).  However, Dostoevsky knew
>>perfectly well that the word was offensive, and he used the word in an
>>openly contemptuous way in his private correspondence (see Dreizin).  It is
>>not as if Dostoevsky were operating in a semantic vacuum.  He knew about
>>the anti-Semitism around him ("well-known notion").  Even here he says that
>>he doesn't think the term "zhid" is SO offensive ["TAK obidno"] - which is
>>to say that he admits that it is at least SOMEWHAT offensive.
>>
>>In my previous posting I mentioned how the anti-Semitism fit in with
>>Dostoevsky's projective tendencies.  Here is an example, again from _Diary
>>of a Writer_: the jews are guilty of  "mercilessness" and of "disrespect
>>for every people and race, and for every human creature who is not a Jew"
>>(p. 84).  Since this claim is manifestly false (only an anti-Semite would
>>believe it), then it must originate not in external reality (real Jews),
>>but in some split-off portion of Dostoevsky's own mind.  It must, in short,
>>be projected from within from some internal source - and what more likely
>>source than Dostoevsky's own "mercilessness" and "disrespect" for Jews?
>>(Dreizin, Rosenthal, Breger, and others have written about projective
>>mechanisms in Dostoevsky).
>>
>>Jim Rice objects to my use of the term "paranoid tendencies" to
>>characterize Dostoevsky.  Yet Rice himself writes of Dostoevsky's "episodes
>>of paranoid delusion" (_Dostoevsky and the Healing Art_, 1985, p. 81;
>>quoted by Dreizin, 106).  Clinicians generally agree that sporadic paranoia
>>is common in the lives of epileptics.  Anti-Semitism is a form of paranoia.

>> It is a paranoid delusion to believe that Jews as a class are hostile to
>>you.  Of course anti-Semitic beliefs became increasingly common in the
>>second half of the nineteenth century in Russia, and not everyone who held
>>such a belief was epileptic.  But there are historical contexts which
>>foster ethnic hatred and make it almost "normal," e.g., anti-Negro
>>hostility among whites in the antebellum south.  Indeed, as psychologists
>>Robert Robins and Jerrold Post observe in a recent book: "No one is ever
>>completely free from the paranoid dynamic.  It is an innate human tendency,
>>and under stress, otherwise psychologically healthy individuals, groups,
>>and societies are susceptible to the paranoid appeal."
>>
>>There is nothing shameful about Dostoevsky's paranoid tendencies when they
>>grace the pages of his literary art (let us call it the Golyadkin
>>phenomenon, or let us even agree with Bakhtin's notion of "polyphony").
>>But real life is something else, and in _Diary of a Writer_ Dostoevsky was
>>making falsifiable (and false, and hateful) claims about reality.
>>
>>Daniel Rancour-Laferriere
>>Professor of Russian
>>Director, Russian Program
>>University of California, Davis
>>darancourlaferriere at ucdavis.edu
>>
>>
>