ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the Dreyfus Affair has informed antiracism. The Affair has been described as a catalyst for the emergence of antiracist ideas (Taguieff 1987:20). Debates at the time also illustrate some key tensions within antiracism. While some accounts of the Affair privileged the particularistic dimension of anti-semitism, others viewed it more in terms of a general threat to republican, democratic and progressive values. The Affair divided France into opposing camps: modernisers and traditionalists, secularists and Catholics, republicans and monarchists.
