Paper short abstract:

I will relate the complex views of the historian Elie Kedourie and the ways he negotiated, internalized and discussed cardinal European modern ideals, while exploring his Jewish Baghdadi background in explaining the inner conflicts contradictions and dialectics embedded in his historical writings.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation relates to the compound views of the intellectual and historian Elie Kedourie. The multifaceted and multicultural background that shaped him as a descendant of one of the Jewish elite families in Baghdad of the 1930' and 1940', can explain this complexity. Kedourie was shaped by British colonialism and its encounter with Middle East Jews. His Jewish-Arab tradition and culture were wedded to and embedded in Englishness, while his professional scholarship reflected a modernist approach to history and to its hegemonic Eurocentric and temporal narrative. This approach is evidenced by using modernist terms and methodologies in his historical writings on the Middle East, as well as in his critique on some of the political ideals of European modernity such as Imperialism, Liberalism, Nationalism and British Orientalism. Kedourie discussed these issues from diverse points of view while fracturing common boundaries of acceptable categories. He was an anti-colonial conservative who politically and epistemologically preferred Empire over Nationalism. He severely discussed Nationalism through its multifaceted and dialectical connections to Imperialism and religion. He was an Orientalist, but anticipated Said's critique of Orientalism. What is more, he was committed to religious Jewish life but at the same time was an anti-Zionist who preferred Jewish existence in the European diaspora. To wit, many of Kedourie's views corresponded to current critical evaluations and epitomize the extent to which European ideas were negotiated and internalized by native, including Jewish Middle Easterners.