The following is a research paper I wrote for my social theory course relating Simmel’s piece “The Stranger” to the reality of my experience as a Jew in Europe.
April 27, 2017
Georg Simmel, in his piece “The Stranger”, discusses anti-Semitism in Europe, explaining that Jews in Europe are seen as the “enemy within” due to the intermediary space that they occupy which places them paradoxically both close and far socially. Simmel’s explanation of this transitional space can be applied to contemporary France to understand their continuing anti-Semitism. This distinct social place can be demonstrated in the Jew’s alternate relationship to the land, their economic role as well as their visibility within French culture as outsiders. Simmel’s theory will be applied to modern French depictions of French anti-Semitism, as well as ethnographic evidence of my own experience as a Jewish person living in the Alsatian region of France. Jewish people’s historical connection to land and ownership, Simmel explains, is historically different from the hegemonic concept of private property, which is greatly influenced by John Locke. Although there are many explicit examples of violence towards French Jews, Simmel, in his book: “On Individuality and Social Forms”, in his chapter “The Stranger” focuses on the more complex, insidious, and subtle presentations of anti-Semitism, as it relates to space, property and belonging.
Georg Simmel discusses the concept of “The Stranger” as a social identity based living in the unclear life of simultaneously being an outsider who also lives within the community. He describes the stranger as “wanderer who comes today and stays tomorrow” (Simmel 1971: 143). Specifically, the following “stranger” discussed will be focused on the French Jew and their place within the French civilization. Simmel focuses on the importance of space as representative of belonging and productive of social relationships. He explains that the stranger’s atypical relationship to the land, “is another indication that spatial relationships not only are determining of conditions among men, but are also symbolic of those relationships” (Simmel 1971: 143). Continuing his discussion of space, Simmel writes that the stranger “is fixed within a certain spatial circle”, “but his position within it is fundamentally affected by the fact that he brings qualities to it that are not, and cannot be, indigenous to it” (Simmel 1971: 143). This person is anyone who does not have a direct legal or ethnic tie to the land. Historically, this role has been occupied by the Jewish person, the nomad, the Gypsy, the refugee, and the immigrant. Simmel explains that these people, who are viewed as outsiders because they have a non-indigenous relationship to land.
The stranger’s nomadic connection to the land complicates the widely accepted Lockeian perspective of private property. John Locke’s concept of property dominates the governed view of land and property in the Global North. Locke sees great importance in space and property and in his writing, “The Second Treatise of Government” he names chapter five: “Property”. In this chapter, he describes property that has been labored upon as God- given and denial of this inherent right to a denial of a natural human privilege. He states: “God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life and convenience. The earth and all that is therein is given to men for the support and comfort of their being” (Locke 1690: 56). In this phrase, Locke explains that humans have the authority to own land. He makes it clear that he believes it is the people’s right to make use of the land and that it is intended for their use. Following this, Locke goes into detail about the importance in labor, and states clearly that if a person works the land, it belongs to them. When speaking of goods produced by nature, Locke states: “there must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other before they can be of any use or at all beneficial to any particular man” (Locke 1690: 57). In his piece, Locke repeats that land is available and exists for the purpose of being owned. He says: “God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life and convenience. The earth and all that is therein is given to men for the support and comfort of their being” (Locke 1690: 56). The stranger, however, is excluded from this “earth” as a result of barriers within society that disallow them to labor or to claim ownership over a “labored-upon” land. This exclusion causes the outsider to function in a socially liminal space, as they are not integrated into the pre-existing social order.
Locke’s concept of the human right to possessing and appropriating land remains the dominant view within the European and Western hegemony of land, one that the French Jewish person is often not included within. To elaborate, Locke’s theory of property has been highly influential to Western governments and societies understanding of land and place, as it has been incorporated into the foundational documents of most western governments. The United States Declaration of Independence draws directly from Locke declaring, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” (Jefferson 1776: 1). This statement echoes the theories of Locke, reiterating his belief that land is divinely given, and is available for human’s ownership. “The Second Treatise of Government” was widely accepted into French culture as well. The article “Locke in French: The Du Gouvernement Civil of 1691 and Its Readers”, written by Savonius, explains the importance of Locke’s writing within French society and policy. Savonius explains that Du Gouvernement Civil was David Mazel’s translated version of Locke’s writing and explains that this version “provided the Francophone readership with an anti-absolutist critique of the French Regime” (Savonius 2004: 1). Savonius describes the highly impactful role of Locke’s writing during the French Revolution, which led to the birth of a nation focused on Locke’s conception of property rights.
Simmel explains that ownership of land allows for a societal acceptance as a fixed member of the community. The wanderer, or the trader and the Jew who fills these roles is never able to claim this type of acceptance, Simmel explains: “The stranger is by his very nature no owner of land—land not only in the physical sense but also metaphorically as a vital substance which is fixed, if not in space, then at least in an ideal position within the social environment” (Simmel 1971: 144). Simmel continues, showing the acceptability that land ownership allows: “Although in the sphere of intimate personal relations the stranger may be attractive and meaningful in many ways, so long as he is regarded as a stranger he is no ‘landowner’ in the eyes of the other.” (Simmel 1971:145). Simmel, once again, explains how space and ownership reflects how they are perceived in the wider public. The stranger, who is not bound by roots in the region, and who functions in the vague mid-space, is forever viewed as a visitor.
Simmel explains that the stranger takes on the role of a “trader” within a society, resulting in another ambiguous social space. Locke is very focused on the direct personal and physical relationship a person must the labor they do upon the land, conflicting with what Simmel describes as the Stranger’s impermanent and distant relationship to the land. He continues, explaining the role that humankind plays with the role of nature: “he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.” (Locke 1690: 57). Contradictory to this, Simmel explains that the stranger acts as a middleman in this production, less tied to the labor which Locke feels allows the product of nature to be owned. Simmel explains that as a permanent outsider, “Any closed economic group where land and handicrafts have been apportioned in a way that satisfies local demands will still support a livelihood for the trader.” (Simmel 1971: 144). The trader exists beyond what Locke describes to be a set system of production and ownership.
Further, the role of the trader’s economic position directly corresponds to their social acceptance. This owning of land allows the individual physical belonging within the community. Locke states: “the labor of his body and the work of his hands we may say are properly his” (Locke 1690: 57). However, the trader does not work with the land, but instead with what is gathered from it. A someone who is always outside of the central group, Simmel explains: “A trader is required only for goods produced outside the group” (Simmel 1971: 144). The already external role of the trader perpetuates their status as someone beyond the set economic sphere. Simmel writes that this separate state results as “factors of repulsion and distance work to create a form of being together” (Simmel 1971: 144). Simmel focuses on how the stranger is always a trader and therefore operates outside of Locke’s view of labor and land: “This position of trader, caused by interactions of expulsion,” does not allow for the sense of belonging and property that Locke describes as being directly tied with labor over the land (Simmel 1971: 144). In this relationship to labor and production, the Stranger is rejected from Locke’s widely accepted theories on property.
Additionally, Simmel explains that the occupation of trader is truly needed, but is also economically apart, creating the continually indefinite status of the stranger. The trader position is an ideal position for someone who operates outside of a community where “all the economic positions are already occupied” (Simmel 1971: 144). Although the stranger’s trader position is needed, their economic role as an outsider perpetuates their already non-indigenous ties to the land. The economic position of the trader, keeps this type of person perpetually outside but also within the fixed economic and social system. Although they are an outsider, Simmel states that their role is becomes needed and natural: “Despite his being inorganically appended to it, the stranger is still an organic member of the group.” (Simmel 1971: 149). This dichotomy causes the space of this individual to be vague and undefined: “Because of these two factors of nearness and distance, however, a peculiar tension arises” (Simmel 1971: 148). The stranger, in all aspects, especially socially and politically, operates within this tension.
Simmel grounds this social identity in the reality of Jews in Europe, and evidence shows that Jews in France still function within their historically different and ambiguous social space. Although French Jews are now able to own land physically and legally, Simmel’s understanding of figurative “land ownership” is crucial in understanding current social status of the French Jew. As cited earlier, the stranger is disallowed metaphorical “land” or “a vital substance which is fixed, if not in space, then at least in an ideal position within the social environment” (Simmel 1971: 148). Contemporary French anti-Semitism echoes Simmel’s explanation of the Stranger, and displays the existence of the French denial of immaterial social “property”—the ability to belong in the French social order.
Indication of this French- Jewish social space is presented in the film “The Jews”, which is the English name given to the French film: “Ils Sont Partout”, meaning: “They are Everywhere.” This movie discusses and depicts anti-Semitism in France and is an autobiographical piece which stars its writer and creator, Yann Attal. Attal is a Jewish- French filmmaker and actor who created this film to question and display anti-Semitism in France. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency summarizes Attal’s work: “Attal, 51, speaks about being a Jewish filmmaker who is obsessed with Jews and anti-Semitism, and who is married to a woman whose father is Jewish (the legendary Serge Gainsbourg).” This article explains that he uses “deeply personal monologues” to discussed his own experiences with anti-Semitism. (Liphshiz 2016). Attal, as a famous actor in France discusses the many ways which he feels an outsider in French society due to his religious and ethnic background.
The title of the movie, “They are Everywhere” directly relates to Simmel’s spatial conception of nearness and closeness. Simmel explains that “the distance within this relation indicates that one who is close by is remote, but his strangeness indicates that one who is remote is near” (Simmel 1971:143). Simmel explains that the foreignness of the stranger, gives the natives the impression that these people are taking up a lot of physical and symbolic space. However, this is due to their strangeness, and is not representative of the actual numerical population. Attal, in the film, explains that “Jews aren’t everywhere, anti-Semites are” (Attal 2016). This statement explains that it is not the number of Jews that leads to their social perception, but their differentness that causes anti-Semites to notice them. Following this, Attal says that Jews make up only 0.2% of the world’s population. (Attal 2016). Despite this extremely low number, the Jew’s otherness causes them to seem more influential and present. In my experience living with a French Catholic host family in Strasbourg, France, my ethnically Alsatian host mother would explain that there were many Jews in Strasbourg that you could see everywhere, especially when they “flooded the streets on Friday nights”. The Jews of Strasbourg were usually clad in traditional wear: the women in wigs, with clothing covering all of their skin and then men in large black hats with all black traditional suits on. They were different, causing her to be more aware of them and feeling their nearness, and simultaneously distant from them, as she was more attentive to their “strangeness”. This confusion and overwhelming feeling experienced by white, non-Jewish French people is exhibited in Attal’s film as well when one character exclaims of Jewish people: “They are everywhere! You can hear them singing in the streets” (Attal 2016). Their Jewish otherness, to this character in the film and my host mother, took up more space than other, non-Jewish civilians.
The stranger, in this case, the French Jew, takes up one allotted, but uniform social space and are grouped into a singular community based on their otherness. For my French host mother, the Jews of Strasbourg occupied a unique but unified place within her city. My host mother had brought up, numerous times, how “loud the Jews could get”, frustrated that they would yell up from the outside of apartment buildings for someone to unlock the doors, because they were not allowed to “buzz in” on Shabbat. She scoffed at this practice, saying that there were “so many rules that they completely lost any meaning”. In this instance, my host mother spoke of the Jewish habitants of Strasbourg simply by referring to “them” and making broad, generalizing statements about this group. Attal also plays off this concept in his film title “They are Everywhere.”, also using the plural “they” to refer to the Jews of France as a singular group. Simmel explains that “strangers are not really perceived as individuals, but as strangers of a certain type” (Simmel 1971: 148). He illustrates this through his example of the “tax levied on Jews in Frankfurt and elsewhere during the middle ages,” writing: “Whereas the tax paid by Christian citizens varied according to their wealth at any given time, for every single Jew, the tax was fixed once and for all. This amount was fixed because the Jew had his social position as the Jew, not as the bearer of certain objective contents.” Simmel states: “But the Jew as taxpayer was first of all a Jew, and thus his fiscal position contained an invariable element.” (Simmel 1971: 149). In relation to Simmel’s explanation of the “invariable” and uniform Jew, in my host mother’s observations of Jewish religious actions, she placed all the people who fit her conception of a “Strasbourg Jew” based on their appearance and practices and grouped them into one category: The Jews. Simmel explains that social outcasts are only given one place to operate within.
The French Jew fills the stranger role because they are non-indigenous inhabitants of the region, however, due to their historical ties to the land, they often do feel a sense of belonging. As wanderers who stay, Jews in France have made a home for themselves in the place where they settled millennias ago. In Attal’s film, he explains how unwelcome and unwanted he feels in France due to the rampant anti-Semitism. But at the end of the movie, after explaining all his griefs, his therapist asks: “So have you made your decision? Are you leaving France?” To this, Attal responds, thoughtfully: “No. Because I love France. I think.” (Attal 2016) Attal shows that he feels an attachment to France despite pain it has inflicted on him. This sentiment reminded me of French Jewish people with whom I spent a few holiday dinners in Strasbourg. My Catholic host mother had treated the Jews of Strasbourg as foreigners, so I had the impression that they were a newer diasporic community. However, when I asked the Jewish family how long they had lived there, they simply stated that, “Alsace has one of the oldest Jewish communities in Europe”. Later, as they were serving dinner, they were pleased to show off the traditional Alsatian dishes that they had prepared for Shabbat dinner. As a guest and an American, I was surprised by their interest and identification with Alsatian culture. Despite this, they were still seen as passing wanderers to the ethnically Alsatian people around them.
Simmel focuses on the qualities of nearness and farness that determine the status of the stranger, but does not fully account for the stranger’s integration of their native and surrounding cultures. When discussing these two opposing social groups, Simmel states that for the French person and the Jew, “one has only certain more general qualities in common, whereas the relation with organically connected persons is based on the similarity of just those specific traits which differentiate them from the merely universal” (Simmel 1971: 146). The explanations of the conflicting views of belonging, as presented in my host mother and the Jews family shows the way that these perceive similarities are often not thought of reciprocally. Simmel continues, explaining: “The stranger is close to us insofar as we feel between him and ourselves similarities of nationality or social position, of occupation or of general human nature. He is far from us insofar as these similarities extend beyond him and us, and connect us only because they connect a great many people” (Simmel 1971: 147). Simmel shows that the stranger can in some ways be incorporated into the community, but the similarities they have with native community members will never equal those with indigenous ties.
As explained by Simmel, property does not relate only to physical land ownership, but also metaphorically to the metaphorical space that a person or a community occupies. In the example of French Jews, their role within French society can be examined through Simmel’s lens of “The Stranger”, an explanation for non-indigenous people who often get targeted as the “inner-enemy” due to their differences. Jews in France are placed differently socially due to their alternative relationship to property, which disturbs the Lockeian hegemonic view of private property. The peculiar space that Jews take up in France can also be explained by what Simmel refers to as the tension created by the sense of nearness and farness that “the stranger” causes. This contradiction causes French people to be acutely aware but also removed from French Jews based on their apparent differences. For the white French majority, the sense that Jews are very dissimilar from themselves causes them to see Jews not as individuals, but as one, “other” group. Jews in France have experienced this distancing throughout the history of the French- Jewish diasporic community, and despite the harm it has caused they still often identity as French. For them, the non-indigeneity is not an issue, as they have created cultural roots within French culture. Overall, Jews in France and the stranger in any place will continue to live, work and operate in an ambiguous social place, causing tension with those around them who are able to occupy the majority space.
Bibliography:
Declaration of Independence 1776 (Web Page)
Glaser, Elise 2016 Journal Entries from Strasbourg, France.
I have provided quotes from things that I had wrote in my journal about my time in France. Living with a family who would say subtly anti-Semitic statements, I am able to give some insight as to how Jews in France continue to be conceived of as strangers within the community.
Liphshiz, Cnaan 2016 French Jews react to first screening of buzzy, irreverent comedy on anti-Semitism. Jta.org. http://www.jta.org/2016/05/23/arts-entertainment/french-jews-react-to-first-screening-of-buzzy-irreverent-comedy-on-anti-semitism
This article provided background knowledge for the movie “The Jews” and helped explain how much of it was autobiographical, as well as the way it was perceived by the French public.
Locke, John 2005 (1690) The Second Treatise of Civil Government. Selections. In Inventing America. Portland, Oregon: Lewis and Clark College. (Web Page)
Savonius, S.J. “Locke in French: The Du Gouvernement Civil of 1691 and Its Readers.” The Historical Journal, Vol. 47. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
This paper helped provide me with the history of Locke’s influence in France. I wanted to explain that his concepts of property were very important in France and this paper helped me ground that claim.
Simmel, Georg 1971 “On Individuality and Social Forms.” University of Chicago Press:
Chicago
The Jews. Directed by Yann Attal. Paris, France: La Petite Reine Production, 2016.
This movie was helpful to my paper as it provided visual contemporary examples of anti-Semitism in France. As this was made only a year ago, the examples were extremely relevant to everything that is happening in present-day France. The director, writer and main character played himself, giving an honest and open perspective on his experience as a famous Jewish and French actor.
Glaser Media + Writing 