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Images of the Self and the Other in the Nationalist Writing of H ouston S tewart C hamberlain
Author(s) -
Rash Felicity
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
studies in ethnicity and nationalism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.204
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1754-9469
pISSN - 1473-8481
DOI - 10.1111/j.1754-9469.2012.01177.x
Subject(s) - nationalism , adversary , spanish civil war , subject (documents) , censorship , world war ii , literature , classics , law , history , art , political science , computer science , politics , library science , computer security
H ouston S tewart C hamberlain is best known as an anti‐ S emite; however, the B ritish‐born independent scholar was also a fervent G erman nationalist. His major anti‐ S emitic work, D ie G rundlagen des 19. J ahrhunderts (The F oundations of the N ineteenth C entury), was first published in 1899 and masqueraded as a history of E urope. His most important nationalist works were his K riegsaufsätze (war essays), published beginning in 1914. This article examines the discursive methods used by C hamberlain to create images of the G erman S elf and its enemy Other in both D ie G rundlagen and the war essays. The enemy Other in D ie G rundlagen was portrayed as the destructive force represented by J ews; the S elf was the creative or regenerative will and abilities of Aryans. In the war essays, the enemy Other was, to start with, the R ussians, F rench, and E nglish, and, later on, just the E nglish (Chamberlain did not refer to the B ritish). The war essays were subject to censorship and so could only make negative references to Jews ‘between the lines’; C hamberlain, however, was careful to point out to his readers that they should look for hidden messages.