Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe: the constellation as an analytic tool for the critical study of race and religion

The steadfast assumption that racism is about skin-colour and other phenotypical features continues to fuel debates about whether antisemitism and Islamophobia are forms of racism, and if so, how to conceptualise the religious element in these forms of racism. In this article, we draw on Walter Benjamin’s notion of the “constellation” to engage with this question and provide a new analytic tool for the critical study of race. We argue that racism is a system of dehumanising hierarchical differentiation sustained through the production of elusive racial figures (“the Jew”, “the Muslim”, etc.). We contend that a racial figure should be understood as a dynamic relationship between different markers of difference, from phenotypical features to religion. By engaging with a long-term European history of antisemitism and Islamophobia, and the contemporary experiences of racialised people, we challenge simplistic distinctions between “biological” and “cultural” racism and provide a more refined definition of “racialisation”.