again to the conclusion of “The Jews in Contemporary Lit-
erature,” Derrida writes the following astounding words:
“Without wanting to attenuate the violence of this paragraph
that for me remains disastrous... the manner in which he
describes the ‘Jewish spirit’ remains unquestionably positive”
( 146 ). Unquestionably positive? Yes, because, in “their cere-
bralness, their capacity to assimilate doctrines while maintain-
ing a certain coldness in the face of them,” these Jews strangely
resemble (so Derrida concludes) Paul de Man himself.
As Derrida knew, the idea that the Jew coldly adopts a
point of view but doesn’t believe it, doesn’t feel it in his heart,
is one of the familiar clichés of European anti-Semitism.
Richard Wagner’s book on the Jews in contemporary music,
which was surely a source for de Man, demonstrates the power
of this image.
De Man’s article on the Jews is sophisticated and neutral
in tone, rather than propagandistic. (In this sense, it is indeed
distinct from vulgar anti-Semitism.) As Alice Kaplan writes,
“De Man does not angrily demand the expulsion of the Jews
from Europe, but rather refers to it in passing, as a likely de-
velopment in the near future. He reassures the public that
should it happen—the assumption being that it may well
happen—the disappearance of the Jews wouldn’t be bad for
Western literature. This is collaborationist ‘realism’ at its
worst” ( 275 ). If so many had not reflected neutrally, as de Man
did, on the possibility of a JudenfreiEurope, then the Shoah
might never have occurred.
Kaplan should have the last word on “The Jews in Con-
temporary Literature,” since she has studied closely the anti-
Semitic French and Belgian collaborators of the Nazi era. (This
topic was Kaplan’s dissertation project when she was de Man’s
student in the 1980 s; one can only imagine de Man’s inward re-
Gadamer, Celan, de Man, Heidegger 205