Thursday, February 17, 2022

French Jews and Muslims Face Intersectionality Issues

 The New York Times recently reviewed a new play about French Jews that one can see as thematically related to a post I recently wrote about a book called "The Last One." 

The play, "Prayer for the French Republic," by Joshua Harmon, is about a Jewish family agonizing over their identity in the face of what they view as rising antisemitism in France. As the NYT reviewer puts it, "they want to be part of country that may never fully accept them" and after an ugly incident, at least one member of the family wants to move to Israel.  "It's the suitcase or the coffin," he says.

In "The Last One," a young Muslim woman living in a Paris Suburb agonizes over whether she can be fully a French citizen without giving up other parts of what she views as elements of her identity.

Other Muslims living in France are apparently increasingly coming to the conclusion one can't if a Feb. 13, 2022 New York Times Story entitled "The Quiet Flight of Muslims from France" is correct. 

In both the play and the book, the individuals in question are dealing with what is increasingly being called intersectionality. People see themselves as having various strands of identity that insect in certain ways -- sometimes positively, sometimes negatively -- that often fail to comport with a national identity of shared sociopolitical and cultural values. 

There is arguably nothing new about this -- I'm thinking of Leopold Bloom's encounter with "the citizen" -- in James Joyce's "Ulysses" -- but for some reasons these issues seem to be increasingly coming to the fore.

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