Dr Matthew Bolton

Profile

Matthew joined Queen Mary in 2024 as a UKRI/MSCA Post-doctoral Research Fellow. His research fis situated at the intersection of law, conceptual history and critical theory, with a particular focus on  critical theories of antisemitism. He is interested in how the historical development of legal and state forms shapes our understanding and experience of capitalist modernity, including antiemitism in its historical and contemporary modes. His current project examines the ways in which the affinity that Jewish people may or may not have with the State of Israel is treated in anti-discrimination and equalities law. It explores how the form of anti-discrimination law, and the identity ‘characteristics’ that law constructs to protect, affects understandings of Jewish identity in contemporary society.

Prior to joining Queen Mary, he worked as a researcher on the Decoding Antisemitism project, based at the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung (Centre for Research on Antisemitism), Technische Universität Berlin. He previously taught Philosophy and Politics at the University of Chichester. He is currently writing a book provisionally entitled Precarious Justice: Conceptual History, Capitalism and the State Form, due to be published by Routledge in 2025. This is based on his PhD in Philosophy, which he was awarded by the University of Roehampton in 2020, and examines the relation between the historical development of the modern state form, the transition to capitalism, and the concept of justice. He is a co-editor of Decoding Antisemitism: A Guide to Identifying Antisemitism Online (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) and the co-author (with F. H. Pitts) of Corbynism: A Critical Approach (Emerald, 2018). He is a member of the Centre for Law, Democracy and Society at QMUL, a fellow at the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, and a consultant for the Inter-Communal Professorial Group.

Research

Funded research

UKRI/MSCA Post-doctoral research project: How should a connection between Jewish identity and affinity with Israel be treated by anti-discrimination law?

Surveys show that more than 90% of British Jews feel the State of Israel plays a significant role in their Jewish identity. This project, funded by UK Research and Innovation via the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship programme, explores how this connection is treated in UK anti-discrimination law. It responds to a number of legal judgements regarding claims of Israel-related anti-Jewish discrimination which have come to radically opposed conclusions, and which have led to confusion about the protection Jewish people can expect from equality law. Combining qualitative doctrinal legal research and political philosophy methodologies, the project will seek to bring clarity to this issue by:  

• showing how distinct, and at times incommensurable, conceptions of Jewish affinity with Israel are active in this dispute;    
• examining whether the formal structure of anti-discrimination law, based on a set of “protected characteristics”, limits its understanding of Jewish affinity with Israel to that of a voluntarist political commitment, and whether this hinders recognition of why Jewish people may feel harassed due to an attachment to Israel, in a way that goes beyond political disagreement;    
• exploring the historical origins and contemporary significance of a “politically existential” relation between modern Jewish identity and Israel. Here the existence of a sovereign state of Israel is understood to provide a vital guarantee of protections for Jewish people in the wake of the failure of universalist models during the Holocaust;     
• considering whether the structural limitation of anti-discrimination law contributes to anti-Jewish discrimination by framing political existential conceptions as deceptively disguised voluntarist political commitments.

Work in progress

Book project: Precarious Justice: Conceptual History, Capitalism and the State Form (in preparation, Routledge, 2025)

This book examines the relation between the historical development of the modern state form, the transition to capitalism, and the concept of justice. It surveys the ways in which the relation between the concept of justice and the state form has been portrayed in various philosophical and historical traditions, from mainstream liberal political philosophy to Begriffsgeschichte conceptual history, and different modes of Marxism. It argues that the concept of justice should not be treated as a transhistorical constant, nor simply dissolved into its historical and social preconditions. The capacity of the concept of justice to open up a ‘horizon of expectation’ that seeks to change the world in its own image is not inherent in the concept, nor does it emerge automatically from shifting social conditions. Rather it emerges from the active role the concept has played in historically-specific struggles over the forms of political, legal and social existence. But this historically-constituted critical capacity can only be retained by holding open a space of ‘non-identity’ between the concept and its context, against the totalising claims of both philosophy and history.

Publications

Books

2025 - Precarious Justice: Conceptual History, Capitalism and the State Form (in preparation, Routledge)

2024 - Decoding Antisemitism: A Guide to Identifying Antisemitism Online (Palgrave Macmillan) ed., with Matthias J. Becker, Hagen Troschke, Alexis Chapelan

2018 - Corbynism: A Critical Approach (Bingley: Emerald, 2018), with F.H. Pitts

Journal Articles

2023 - ‘Three Theories of Separation: Kelsen, Schmitt and Pashukanis and the historical development of the legal form,’ Philosophy & Social Criticism (e-print prior to publication)

2022 - ‘The Decoding Antisemitism Project – Reflections, Methods and Goals,’ Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism vol 5, 1 (March 2022), with Matthias J. Becker

2020 - ‘Conceptual Vandalism, Historical Distortion: The Labour Antisemitism crisis and the limits of class instrumentalism,’ Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism, vol 3, 2 (September 2020) 11-30

2020 - ‘Democratic Socialism’ and the Concept of (Post)-Capitalism,’ Political Quarterly, vol 91, 2 (April-June 2020) 334-342

2019 - ‘Liberalism and Critical Marxism,’ British Politics, 15 (2020), 120-133, with F.H. Pitts (online first)

2018 - ‘Corbynism and Blue Labour: post‑liberalism and national populism in the British Labour Party,’ British Antisemitism in Online Communication: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Hate Speech in the Twenty-First Century Politics, vol 15 (2020), 88–109,with F.H. Pitts (online first)

Book chapters

2024 - ‘Disenchanting Palestine: Moralism and Hyperpolitics in the Aftermath of October 7,’ in: Rosa Freedman and David Hirsh (eds.) Responses to 7 October: Antisemitic Discourse, Routledge: 44-52

2024  - ‘“More like Genocide”: The use of the concept of genocide in online discourse on Israel and Palestine,’ in: Matthias J. Becker et al (eds.), Antisemitism in Online Communication: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Hate Speech in the Twenty-First Century, Open Book Publishers: 107-135

2024 - ‘Images of Zionism in the Age of the Internet,’ in: Colin Shindler (ed.), The Routledge Handbook on Zionism, Routledge: 520-537, with Matthias J. Becker

2023 - ‘Enabling Concepts In Hate Speech: The Case of the Apartheid Analogy,’ in: Isabel Ermida (ed.), Hate Speech in Social Media Palgrave Macmillan: 253-286, with Matthias J. Becker, Laura Ascone and Karolina Placzynta

2023 - ‘Antisemitism in the British New Liberalism movement,’ in Marcel Stoetzler (ed.) Critical Theory and the Critique of Antisemitim, Bloomsbury: 51-73

2023 - ' Labour, Antisemitism and the Critique of Political Economy' in Marcel Stoetzler (ed.), Critical Theory and the Critique of Antisemitism, Bloomsbury: 253-273, with F.H.Pitts

2023 - ‘Climate Catastrophe, The ‘Zionist Entity’ and ‘The German Guy’: An Anatomy of the Malm-Jappe Dispute,’ in David Hirsh (ed.), The Rebirth of Antisemitism in the 21st Century, Routledge: 224-245

2023 - ‘What Corbyn’s favourite sociologists get wrong about antisemitism,’ in Alan Johnson (ed.), Mapping the New Left Antisemitism: The Fathom Essays, Routledge: 79-84

2020 - ‘The Rigged System: Corbynism, Truncated Critique and Conspiracy Theory,’ in A. Aletti and D. Padovan (eds), Clockwork Enemy: Xenophobia and Racism in the Era of Neo-populism, Mimesis International: 187-220, with F.H. Pitts

Book Reviews

2024 - ‘Antisemitism, Islamophobia and the Politics of Definition. Edited by David Feldman and Marc Volovici. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. 294 pp. £109.99’ Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism, vol 7, 1: 105-111

2022 - ‘Why Do People Discriminate against Jews? by Jonathon Fox and Lev Topor. Oxford University Press. 2021,’ Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism vol 5, 1: 135-140

Policy Documents

2024 - ‘Antisemitism on campus: Protecting Free Speech, Preventing Discrimination,’ Inter-Communal Professorial Group, Working Paper

2021-3 - ‘Decoding Antisemitism: An AI-driven Study on Hate Speech and Imagery Online (Discourse Report 2-5), Zentrum fur Antisemitismusforschung, Technische Universität Berlin/Kings College London/HTW Berlin/Alfred Landecker Foundation