The Routledge handbook of dehumanization 9781138588158, 1138588156

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THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK

OF DEHUMANIZATION

A striking feature of atrocities, as seen in genocides, civil wars, or violence against certain racial and ethnic groups, is the attempt to dehumanize — to deny and strip human beings of their humanity. Yet the very nature of dehumanization remains relatively poorly understood. The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization is the first comprehensive and multidisciplinary ref­ erence source on the subject and an outstanding survey of the key concepts, issues, and debates within dehumanization studies. Organized into four parts, the Handbook covers the following topics: • The history of dehumanization from Greek Antiquity to the 20th century, contextualizing the oscillating boundaries, dimensions, and hierarchies of humanity in the history of the ‘West’; • How dehumanization is contemporarily studied with respect to special contexts: as part of social psychology, as part of legal studies or literary studies, and how it connects to the idea of human rights, disability and eugenics, the question of animals, and the issue of moral standing; • How to tackle its complex facets, with respect to the perpetrator’s and the target’s perspective, metadehumanization and selfdehumanization, rehumanization, social death, status and inter­ dependence, as well as the fear we show toward robots that become too human for us; • Conceptual and epistemological questions on how to distinguish different forms of dehu­ manization and neighboring phenomena, on why dehumanization appears so paradoxical, and on its connection to hatred, essentialism, and perception. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, history, psychology, and anthro­ pology, this Handbook will also be of interest to those in related disciplines, such as politics, international relations, criminology, legal studies, literary studies, gender studies, disability studies, or race and ethnic studies, as well as readers from social work, political activism, and public policy. Maria Kronfeldner is Professor of Philosophy at Central European University (New York Vienna - Budapest). She is the author of What’s Left of Human Nature (2018), and Darwinian Creativity and Memetics (Routledge, 2011). She currently directs ‘The Epistemology of the In/ Human’ project.

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Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy

Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy are state-of-the-art surveys of emerging, newly refreshed, and important fields in philosophy, providing accessible yet thorough assessments of key problems, themes, thinkers, and recent developments in research. All chapters for each volume are specially commissioned, and written by leading scholars in the field. Carefully edited and organized, Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy provide indispens­ able reference tools for students and researchers seeking a comprehensive overview of new and exciting topics in philosophy. They are also valuable teaching resources as accompaniments to textbooks, anthologies, and research-orientated publications. Also available: The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics Edited by Ricki Bliss and JTM Miller The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise Edited by Ellen Fridland and Carlotta Pavese The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy Edited by Daniele De Santis, Burt Hopkins and Claudio Majolino The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Science of Punishment Edited by Farah Focquaert, Elizabeth Shaw, and Bruce N.Waller The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Agency Edited by Christopher Erhard and Tobias Keiling The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Philosophy of Science Edited by Sharon Crasnow and Kristen Intemann The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Reference Edited by Stephen Biggs and Heimir Geirsson The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization Edited by Maria Kronfeldner The Routledge Handbook of Anarchy and Anarchist Thought Edited by Gary Chartier and Chad Van Schoelandt For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Handbooks-in-Philosophy/book-series/RHP

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THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK

OF DEHUMANIZATION

Edited by

Maria Kronfeldner

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First published 2021

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park,Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Maria Kronfeldner; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Maria Kronfeldner to be identified as the author of the editorial material,

and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance

with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised

in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or

hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or

retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,

and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kronfeldner, Maria E., editor.

Title:The Routledge handbook of dehumanization / edited by Maria

Kronfeldner.

Description:Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Series:

Routledge handbooks in philosophy | Includes bibliographical references

and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020027965 (print) | LCCN 2020027966 (ebook) | ISBN

9781138588158 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429492464 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Humanity. | Crimes against humanity.

Classification: LCC BJ1533.H9 R68 2021 (print) | LCC BJ1533.H9 (ebook) |

DDC 179.7--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020027965

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020027966

ISBN: 978-1-138-58815-8 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-49246-4 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo

by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

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A stranger on a train, and you’re going down

They’re gonna run you out of this town

I wonder what your story is, why you in the gutter lie

And who it was who ruined you, I wonder why?

(The Tiger Lillies, Devil’s Fairground)

v

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CONTENTS

List of contributors Preface Acknowledgments

x xvi xviii

1 Introduction: Mapping dehumanization studies Maria Kronfeldner

1

PART I

Oscillating boundaries, dimensions, and hierarchies of humanity in historical contexts

37

2 Dehumanization before the Columbian exchange Siep Stuurman

39

3 “Humanity” and its limits in early modern European thought László Kontler

52

4 Enlightenment humanization and dehumanization, and the orangutan Silvia Sebastiani

64

5 Dehumanizing the exotic in living human exhibitions Guido Abbattista

83

6 Dehumanizing strategies in Nazi ideology and their anthropological context Johannes Steizinger

98

vii

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Contents

7 Theorizing the inhumanity of human nature, 1955-1985 Erika Lorraine Milam

112

PART II

Further special contexts of dehumanization

125

8 The social psychology of dehumanization Nick Haslam

127

9 Dehumanization and the loss of moral standing Edouard Machery

145

10 Dehumanization and the question of animals Alice Crary

159

11 Dehumanization, disability, and eugenics Robert A.Wilson

173

12 Dehumanization and human rights Marie-Luisa Frick

187

13 Dehumanization by law Luigi Corrias

201

14 Dehumanization in literature and the figure of the perpetrator Andrea Timár

214

PART III

The complex facets of dehumanization

229

15 Dehumanization and social death as fundamentals of racism Wulf D. Hund

231

16 How status and interdependence explain different forms of dehumanization Susan T. Fiske

245

17 Exploring metadehumanization and self-dehumanization from a target perspective Stéphanie Demoulin, Pierre Maurage, and Florence Stinglhamber

260

18 The dehumanization and rehumanization of refugees Victoria M. Esses, Stelian Medianu, and Alina Sutter

275

viii

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Contents

19 Motivational and cognitive underpinnings of fear of social robots that become “too human for us” Maria Paola Paladino, Jeroen Vaes, and Jolanda Jetten

292

PART IV

Conceptual and epistemological questions regarding dehumanization 20 Objectification, inferiorization, and projection in phenomenological research on dehumanization Sara Heinämaa and James Jardine

307 309

21 Why dehumanization is distinct from objectification Mari Mikkola

326

22 On hatred and dehumanization Thomas Brudholm and Johannes Lang

341

23 Dehumanization, the problem of humanity and the problem of monstrosity David Livingstone Smith

355

24 Psychological essentialism and dehumanization Maria Kronfeldner

362

25 Could dehumanization be perceptual? Somogy Varga

378

Index

392

ix

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CONTRIBUTORS

Guido Abbattista is Professor of Modern History at the University of Trieste (Italy). He is a specialist in 18th-century historical and political culture in France and in the Anglo-American world, with special reference to colonial and imperial themes and to the representations of human differences. In more recent times, he researched on live ethno-exhibitions in early modern Europe and in 19th- and 20th-century Italy and published the books Umanità in mostra. Esposizioni etniche e invenzioni esotiche in Italia (1880–1940) [Humans on Exhibition: Ethnic Expositions and Exotic Inventions in Italy (1880–1940)] (Trieste: EUT, 2013), and (edited), Moving Bodies, Displaying Nations: National Cultures, Race and Gender in World Exhibitions (Nineteenth-Twentieth Century) (Trieste: EUT, 2014). Thomas Brudholm is Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen and a philosopher by training. In addition to emotions and dehumanization, his research interests include hate crime, genocide, transitional justice, and theory of science and the humanities. He is author of Resentment’s Virtue (Temple UP 2008) and has coedited several volumes, including Hate, Politics, Law (Oxford UP 2018); Emotions and Mass Atrocity (Cambridge UP 2018); and The Religious in Responses to Mass Atrocity (Cambridge UP 2009). Currently, Brudholm is focusing on issues arising from responses to perceived offenses in the context of higher education. Luigi Corrias is Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Law at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam). His research falls broadly within the field of the philosophy of international law. In particular, he focuses on ethical and philosophical issues pertaining to international crim­ inal law, European integration, and constitutional theory. He is the author of The Passivity of Law: Competence and Constitution in the European Court of Justice (Springer, 2011), for which the Netherlands Association for Philosophy of Law awarded him the Prize for the Best Dissertation in Legal Philosophy in the Netherlands and Belgium, 2009–2010. He is currently engaged in an ongoing (book) project on humanity and dehumanization in international law. Alice Crary is University Distinguished Professor at the New School for Social Research (USA) and Visiting Fellow at Regent’s Park College, Oxford (UK). Her books include Beyond Moral Judgment, Inside Ethics, and edited collections and journal issues on Cavell, Diamond, Wittgenstein, and ordinary language philosophy. She publishes on topics including social phil­ osophy, moral philosophy, critical theory, aesthetics, critical animal studies, critical disability x

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Contributors

studies, and feminist theory. She is completing a book—Radical Animal—on why attention to animals is urgently necessary for liberating social thought. Stéphanie Demoulin is Professor in the Psychology Department at the Université catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium). Her two main research interests focus on intergroup relations and negotiations. Early 2000, she was part of one of the research teams that introduced the topic of infrahumanization and dehumanization in social psychology. She is the (co)author of a number of articles published in various scientific journals, such as Personality and Social Psychology Review, Cognition and Emotion, and Social Cognition. She also coedited (with J.-Ph. Leyens and J. Dovidio) a book on Intergroup Misunderstandings (Psychology Press), coauthored another (with V. Yzerbyt) on Intergroup Relations (Presses universitaires de Grenoble), and is the author of Psychologie de la Négociation (Mardaga). Victoria M. Esses is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Network for Economic and Social Trends and of the Centre for Research on Migration and Ethnic Relations at the University of Western Ontario. She is also Principal Investigator of the Pathways to Prosperity Partnership, a national alliance of university, community, and government partners dedicated to fostering welcoming communities and promoting the integration of immigrants in Canada. Victoria is a Fellow of the CIFAR program Boundaries, Membership, and Belonging. Susan T. Fiske is Eugene Higgins Professor, Psychology and Public Affairs, at Princeton University. She investigates social cognition, especially cognitive stereotypes and emotional prejudices, at cultural, interpersonal, and neuroscientific levels.Author of about 400 publications and winner of numerous scientific awards, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Sponsored by a Guggenheim, her Russell-Sage-Foundation book is Envy Up, Scorn Down: How Status Divides Us, which is relevant to varieties of dehumanizarion. With Taylor & Francis, she wrote five editions of a classic graduate text: Social Cognition, and authored, four editions of an advanced undergraduate text, Social Beings: Core Motives in Social Psychology. Marie-Luisa Frick is Associated Professor at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Her fields of research are political and legal philosophy, and ethics and phil­ osophy of religion with a special emphasis on human rights. In 2016, she was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program. She has published in major journals in the field and has written the monography Human Rights and Relative Universalism (Palgrave 2019). Nick Haslam is Professor of Psychology at the University of Melbourne, Australia. In add­ ition to dehumanization, on which he published important contributions, his research interests include stigma, essentialist thinking, psychiatric classification, and the historical development of psychological concepts. Books authored by him include Introduction to Personality, Individual Differences and Intelligence (Sage 2017), and Psychology in the Bathroom (Palgrave 2012). Sara Heinämaa is Academy Professor (2017–2021 Academy of Finland) and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä. She specializes in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and history of philosophy, and has published extensively in these fields, especially on embodi­ ment, personhood, intersubjectivity, emotions, and gender. She is coauthor of Birth, Death, and Femininity (2010) and author of Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference (2003). She has coedited several volumes, including Phenomenology and the Transcendental (2014), New Perspectives to Aristotelianism and Its Critics (2014), and Consciousness (2007). xi

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Contributors

Wulf D. Hund is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Hamburg. He has worked in social philosophy, social history, and social conflicts. His main area of research is the theory and history of racism. His books in the latter field include Negative Vergesellschaftung (2006, 2nd ed. 2014), Rassismus (2007), Wie die Deutschen weiß wurden (2017), Rassismus und Antirassismus (2018), and edited volumes on Wages of Whiteness & Racist Symbolic Capital (2010, with Jeremy Krikler and David Roediger), Racism and Sociology (2014, with Alana Lentin), Simianization. Apes, Gender, Class, and Race (2015, with Charles W. Mills and Silvia Sebastiani). James Jardine is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä. His research focuses on issues of emotion, selfhood, and intersub­ jectivity, and he adopts a phenomenological perspective that also seeks to address themes and questions from critical theory, social philosophy, and philosophy of mind. He has published on these topics in Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, Metodo, and Human Studies, as well as in two other volumes of the Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy series. He is author of Empathy, Embodiment, and the Person (Springer, 2020) and coeditor of Perception and the Inhuman Gaze (Routledge, 2020). Jolanda Jetten is Professor of Social Psychology and an ARC Laureate Fellow at the University of Queensland, Australia (PhD, University of Amsterdam, 1997). She has published widely in top-tier journals on social identity, group processes, and intergroup relations in small interacting groups and larger social structures. Her most recent books include Together Apart:The Psychology of COVID-19 (with Reicher, Haslam and Cruwys, Sage, 2020), The Social Psychology of Inequality (with Peters, Springer, 2019), The New Psychology of Health: Unlocking the Social Cure (with Haslam, Cruwys, Dingle, and Haslam, Psychology Press, 2018), and The Wealth Paradox: Economic Prosperity and the Hardening of Attitudes Towards Minorities (with Mols; Cambridge University Press, 2017). László Kontler is Professor of History at Central European University (New York - Vienna ­ Budapest). His research and publications focus on intellectual history, the history of political thought, translation and reception, and the production and circulation of scientific knowledge in early modern Europe, mainly the Enlightenment. His recent books include Translations, Histories, Enlightenments: William Robertson in Germany, 1760–1795 (Palgrave, 2014) and (with Per Pippin Aspaas) Maximilian Hell (1720–1792) and the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe (Brill, 2020). Maria Kronfeldner is Professor of Philosophy at Central European University (New York Vienna - Budapest). She works in the history and philosophy of the life sciences and social sciences, with a focus on causation, explanation, essentialism, diversity and unity, and science and values. She is editor of this Handbook, author of two books (What’s Left of Human Nature:A Postessentialist, Pluralist, and Interactive Account of a Contested Concept, 2018 with MIT Press; Darwinian Creativity and Memetics, 2011 with Routledge) and has published several peer-reviewed articles (one winning the Karl Popper Essay Prize, another the Philosophical Quarterly Essay Prize). She currently directs the Project The Epistemology of the In/Human. Johannes Lang is Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. He has criticized the concept of dehumanization in a series of articles, beginning with Questioning Dehumanization (2010) and most recently in The Limited Importance of Dehumanization in Collective Violence (2020). His latest book is a coedited volume on Emotions and Mass Atrocity (2018). Edouard Machery is Distinguished Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh and the Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science xii

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Contributors

at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of Doing Without Concepts (OUP, 2009) and of Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds (OUP, 2017), as well as the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Compositionality (OUP, 2012), La Philosophie Expérimentale (Vuibert, 2012), Arguing about Human Nature (Routledge, 2013), and Current Controversies in Experimental Philosophy (Routledge, 2014). Pierre Maurage is a Senior Research Associate at the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.—FNRS) and codirector of the Louvain Experimental Psychopathology research group at the Psychological Science Research Institute of the UCLouvain (Belgium). His research is mostly focused on the exploration, using combined experimental psychopathology and neuro­ science approaches, of the psychological and cerebral processes (cognition, emotion, and social interactions) involved in the development and maintenance of alcohol-related disorders. All information about his current research projects and all his publications are available on his lab’s website: http://www.uclep.be Stelian Medianu is a faculty member in the Psychology Department at Douglas College, New Westminster, British Columbia. He received his PhD in psychology with a specialization in migration and ethnic relations from Western University, London, Ontario. As a trained social psychologist, Stelian has used his research skills to better understand the factors that shape people’s attitudes toward immigrants and refugees. As a research and policy consultant, he has conducted policy studies, evaluation studies, and organizational reviews on behalf of federal and provincial governments as well as not-for-profit organizations. Mari Mikkola is the Chair in Metaphysics at the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands). She is the author of two books (The Wrong of Injustice: Dehumanization and Its Role in Feminist Philosophy and Pornography:A Philosophical Introduction, both with OUP) and of several articles on feminist philosophy, social ontology, and pornography. Her current work is focused on philosoph­ ical methodology, with a monograph on this topic under contract with Oxford University Press. Erika Lorraine Milam is Professor of History at Princeton University. She is author of Creatures of Cain:The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America (2019) and Looking for a Few Good Males: Female Choice in Evolutionary Biology (2010). She has coedited with Suman Seth, Descent of Darwin: Race, Sex, and Human Nature (Themes,Vol. 6, 2021) and with Robert A. Nye, Scientific Masculinities (Osiris,Vol. 30, 2015). She currently serves as Chair of the Editorial Board for Historical Studies of the Natural Sciences. Milam’s most recent project delves into the history of long-term field research in behavioral ecology. Maria Paola Paladino is Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Trento. Her research focuses on how people perceive, relate, and behave toward other people, or social rele­ vant entities, as robots, with a special interest in the key role of humanness and dehumanization in these processes. She was one of the original proponents of the infra-humanization theory, and her approach and hypothesis influenced the current theorizing in the psychology of dehuman­ ization and object anthropomorphism. She is the (co-)author of a number of articles published in various scientific journals, such as Psychological Science, Social Cognition, and British Journal of Social Psychology. Silvia Sebastiani is Associate Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. She is the author of The Scottish Enlightenment: Race, Gender, and the Limits of Progress (2013), and has co-edited, with Wulf Hund and Charles Mills, Simianization: Apes, Gender, Class, and xiii

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Contributors

Race (2015). More recently, she has edited the special issue on Les vitrines de l’humanité/Showcasing Humanity for the online journal Passés Futurs (2019). She is completing a book on the bound­ aries of humanity in the Enlightenment, especially focusing on the ways in which great apes contributed to the shaping of human sciences. David Livingstone Smith is Professor of Philosophy at the University of New England. He is author of nine books, including the award-winning Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others (St. Martin’s Press, 2011) and On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It (Oxford University Press, 2020). His work on dehumanization, racism, and related topics has been featured in the national and international media. He lectures widely on dehumanization in both academic and nonacademic settings, and spoke on dehumanization and mass violence at the 2012 G20 economic summit. Johannes Steizinger is Assistant Professor at McMaster University (Canada). He specializes in post-Kantian European philosophy. His systematic research interests include political philosophy, aesthetics, ethics, philosophy of race, and philosophy of biology. Recent publications include “The Significance of Dehumanization: Nazi Ideology and its Psychological Consequences” (Politics, Religion & Ideology 19:2 (2018), 139–157), “Relativism in the Context of National Socialism” (In: The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Relativism, Routledge 2019, 114–123), “National Socialism and the Problem of Relativism” (In: The Emergence of Relativism, Routledge, 233–251). Florence Stinglhamber is a Professor of Organizational Psychology and Human Resource Management in the Psychology Department at the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium). Her main research interests include organizational dehumanization and perceived organiza­ tional/supervisor support. She is the (co-)author of a number of peer-reviewed articles published in international journals, such as Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Journal of Vocational Behavior. She is also the coauthor (with R. Eisenberger) of a book titled Perceived Organizational Support: Fostering Enthusiastic and Productive Employees (APA Books). Siep Stuurman is Emeritus Professor of the History of Ideas in Utrecht University, The Netherlands. He studies the ideas of humanity and equality from a world history perspective and publishes in the major journals of his field. His most recent book, The Invention of Humanity: Equality and Cultural Difference in World History (Harvard, 2017), received the 2019 Carlson Award, and his book on François Poulain de la Barre and the Invention of Modern Equality (Harvard, 2004) the 2005 George Mosse Prize by the American Historical Association. He is currently working on a global intellectual history of socioeconomic equality and inequality. Alina Sutter received her Master of Science in Psychology from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and her PhD in Psychology from Western University, Canada. She is currently a Research Associate at Western University. Her research interests include topics such as public attitudes toward immigrants and refugees, as well as barriers immigrants and refugees face in their process of integration. Andrea Timár is Associate Professor at the Department of English Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, and currently (2019/20) a research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Central European University. Her research and publications focus on 18th- and 19th-century literature and philosophy, contemporary literature, and critical theory. Her first xiv

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Contributors

monograph, A Modern Coleridge: Cultivation, Addiction, Habits (Palgrave Macmillan 2015), was nominated for the First Book Prize of the British Association for Romantic Studies. She is also the author of a volume of essays, The Human Form: Literature, Politics, Ethics from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Eötvös Loránd University Press, 2020). Jeroen Vaes is Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Trento, Italy, and obtained his PhD in 2001 from the Catholic University of Louvain at Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. His research focuses on humanness as a dimension of social judgment in intergroup relations, and in the realm of sexual and medical objectification. He has published numerous research articles and chapters on these topics in the most important outlets of social psychology and social neurosci­ ence. He also edited a book: Humanness and Dehumanization (with Bain and Leyens, Psychology Press, 2014). Somogy Varga is Professor of Philosophy at Aarhus University, Denmark, and Senior Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He previously worked at the University of Memphis, the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrück, and the Institute of Social Research at Goethe University Frankfurt. He is the author of Authenticity as an Ethical Ideal (Routledge, 2011); Naturalism, Interpretation, and Mental Disorder (OUP, 2015); and Scaffolded Minds (MIT Press, 2019). Robert A. Wilson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Western Australia, having taught previously at Queen’s University; the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; the University of Alberta; and La Trobe University. His publications span the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, the philosophy of biology, and disability studies. He is the general editor (with Frank Keil) of the award-winning MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (1999) and the author of Boundaries of the Mind (Cambridge, 2004) and Genes and the Agents of Life (2005). His most recent book is The Eugenic Mind Project (MIT Press, 2018); for his other recent work, see his website robwilsonphilosophy.com. Rob is also active in philosophy in the schools and in philo­ sophical engagement in public life.

xv

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PREFACE

Take the civilians that are tortured, raped, or killed in the shameful line-up of wars and violent conflicts that we have stockpiled over historical time, with no end in sight. Take that homeless people, sick people, refugees, or those deemed ‘racially inferior’ are often treated in a far from respectful manner, likened to bacteria, vermin, or waste, and treated alike.Take the age-old view that women are only a ‘second’ sex with all the consequences this view has had for the oppression and the violence women have had to face.Take abusive work relations as part of which people are treated as exploitable machines. These are all paradigmatic examples of dehumanization occurring as part of our contemporary social world. Dehumanization happens when people are depicted, regarded, or treated as not human or less human. As a result, the dehumanized might, in fact, end up—in ‘the devil’s fairground’—with less than a human life. What ‘being human’ means as part of dehumanization varies, is often idealized, and is rarely about an easy-to-capture matter. Admittedly, the just-given characterization of dehumanization is almost trivially true. It simply points to the term ‘human,’ without specifying it further, and the prefix ‘de,’ which is used in words borrowed from Latin to indicate separation, privation, or negation. I start with such a thin notion since not much agreement exists beyond it in the scholarship on dehumanization, not even with respect to the above examples. Most scholars will count them as dehumanizing, while others will not.The skeptics will admit that the cases are describable as cases where the individ­ uals are depicted, regarded, or treated with less moral standing and less respect than other human beings.Yet, they will argue, these disparaged individuals are depicted, regarded, and treated in that way qua human beings. Most scholars will count the hatred that is part of genocides, rape, torture, and similar atrocities as dehumanizing, but some will not. Hatred, the latter will argue, involves per definition recognition of sorts. Despite these disagreements, the mentioned cases form a cluster of cases that most scholars will accept as dehumanizing in some sense. That also holds for the much studied, most often quoted, and in that sense paradigmatic if not enigmatic example of dehumanizing atrocities of the 20th century: the Holocaust. Since dehumanization often leads to inhuman treatment of people, it also holds that understanding dehumanization, the goal of this Handbook, can contribute to describing, explaining, and eventually preventing or at least exiting the resulting inhumanity, whether that consists in killing, enslaving, raping, torturing, hunting, or other forms of humiliation, oppression, subordination, coercion, exploitation, marginalization, inequality, injustice, discrimination, etc. xvi

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Preface

The related atrocities go by different names: murder, torture, rape, slavery, crimes against humanity, religious violence, genocides, politicides, ethnocides, democides, ecocides, etc. If dehumanization happens at the level of depiction or attitudes, it often leads to inhuman treatment. If dehumanization is actualized, then it consists in inhuman treatment of people, which amounts to a less than human life of people, or to the end of that life. Yet, neither implies that all inhuman treatments are due to dehumanization.There are clearly instances of inhuman treatment for which there are alternative and better descriptions and explanations rather than pointing to dehumanization. And even in cases in which dehumanization is descriptively and explanatorily adequate, it will be far from the complete story. In short, dehumanization is not in everything and never the whole story when ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ is at issue; but it is an existing phenomenon and a key aspect of inhumanity. Historically viewed, dehumanization is the dark side of humanism. Since the latter mainly belongs to the history of the intellectual traditions that descend from Greek Antiquity (conven­ tionally called the ‘West’), dehumanization does so too, even though it exists in other traditions as well. This Handbook focuses on dehumanization as part of the history of the West, without denying that it can be found in other traditions. Humanism frames and opposes dehumanization by two oscillating aspects of it: First, there is the idea of a universal humanity—that all human beings belong to the same kind and are equal in that respect. Second, there is the idea of a shared reciprocal humanness—that there are properties (capacities of humans), such as rationality, morality, civility, etc. that characterize how humans are, and how they treat and should treat each other reciprocally in specifically human ways.The different kinds of optimisms that were sometimes connected to humanism (mainly inscribed in ideas about different kinds of progress: educational, intellectual, moral, legal, social, etc.) have by now faded away considerably in many quarters of intellectual life.There is also an increasing awareness that humanness has often been defined in quite biased ways, and that this needs to change. Nonetheless, that there is a shared humanity and a shared reciprocal humanness (in some form) is still among the most fundamental ontological assumptions about human beings, at least as the ontology of the human developed in the West. It has found over time its scientific and philosophical echo in theories of human nature, moral standing, equality, and justice. It has found public codification, most importantly in the various legal initiatives and declarations concerning human rights, crimes against humanity, etc. Since dehumanization is the direct mirror of the notion that there is a shared humanity and a reciprocal humanness, it is a more elementary notion compared to humiliation or loss of dignity, which are related but richer notions. The question that drives this Handbook, which is the first of its kind, is this: How can one make sense of dehumanization across disciplinary boundaries of the humanities and the social sciences? Maria Kronfeldner

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My deepest thanks go to the contributors to this Handbook. Collaborating can be such a pleasure, especially if it works out—as it did in this Handbook—to cross the inevitable discip­ linary boundaries. I also owe a debt of gratitude to those academic ‘dark factory’ workers who so kindly agreed to the ‘heavy duty’ of reviewing individual chapters or parts of the Introduction. Typically, two expert referees reviewed a chapter in a double-masked manner; quite some people were thus directly involved, in the background, in addition to the contributors. Organizing the quality control in that manner for such a cross-disciplinary endeavor felt like the notorious ‘you know somebody, who knows somebody, who knows somebody, … who can finally do it.’ I thus also want to thank those academic ‘scouts,’ who knew somebody, who knew, and shared that knowledge. Sharing of knowledge is what we all care for; without it, academic life would be in peril. Given the nature of the procedure, all the referees and scouts have to remain nameless; yet, they will know what the contributors and I owe them. Others, who also were involved in the background, can be named. Nick Haslam and Susan Opotow deserve special mention. Whenever I was lost in the muddy waters of dehu­ manization studies, I dropped them a line and always got help. The research for and the editing of this Handbook were greatly assisted over the years by my student and postdoc­ toral assistants: Perica Jovchevski, Justin Leuba, and Michele Luchetti. They were my flying wizards for references, pictures, edits, and the like. A thousand thanks! Many thanks also go to Louise Antony, Ron Amundson, Hanoch Ben-Yami, Mara-Daria Cojocaru, Lukas Einsele, Friederike Eyssel, Lukas Franke, László Kontler, László Kőszeghy,András Kovacz, Prem Kumar Rajaram, Zoltan Miklosi, Andres Moles, Csaba Pléh, Alexander Reutlinger, Simon Rippon, Rohan Deb Roy, Andrea Timár, Rob Wilson, Gregor Wolbring, Hyaesin Yoon, and my other colleagues from CEU’s philosophy department.They all discussed with me specific issues and helped me in many ways that inspired and furthered my thoughts on dehumanization and the plans for this Handbook. The Handbook is part of my current research project on the Epistemology of the In/Human, which has received funding from CEU’s Humanities Initiative, the Academic Event Fund, and the Research Excellence Fund.The idea for the Handbook emerged from the 2016 International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Dehumanization: New Approaches to Understanding the Politics of Human Nature (Apr 6–8, 2016).Thanks to the speakers and guests of the conference, I felt con­ fident embarking on the journey toward this Handbook. xviii

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Acknowledgments

CEU’s librarians showed incredible stamina in providing me with needed material, especially during the tough time of the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown. Zsófia Jeney-Domingues acted as pro­ ject manager, skillfully juggling all activities related to the Handbook and the conference, and weaving in beyond duty her art and design expertise. Krisztina Biber, our departmental coordin­ ator, is the sturdy backbone of my daily academic life, with all the myriad nuisances resolved or mitigated by her. Many thanks to all of them!

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1

INTRODUCTION

Mapping dehumanization studies

Maria Kronfeldner

This Introduction aims to map the landscape of dehumanization studies, with its history, multiple facets, steep abysses, and muddy waters. The multidisciplinary field of dehumanization studies is rather young and vibrant but with an age-old implicit heritage. It has some stable islands of disciplinary discourses, or interpretations that follow certain traditions of thought and use a spe­ cific set of methods—for example, historical, phenomenological, and conceptual analysis, or the various empirical methods from the social sciences. Overall, the field is rather patchy. And, as any important phenomenon studied, dehumanization has its staunch skeptics. The Handbook aims to revisit, connect, consolidate, and synthesize the insights that have been reached so far, in order to arrive at a new solid plateau for making progress in understanding dehumanization. It aims to do so without reducing the complexity in the phenomena at issue and without overextending the limits of the category of dehumanization.The aim is not to see dehumanization everywhere; the aim is to understand it in its multifaceted depth. Section 1.1 will briefly portray the history of the field. The systematically minded Sections 1.2–1.5 will guide the reader through the resulting rugged landscape represented in the Handbook’s contributions. Section 1.2 distinguishes between different realizations, levels, and forms of dehumanization and will point to three ontological contrasts operative in it. Section 1.3 will add some remarks on the variety of targets of dehumanization, its valence, and emotional aspects. Section 1.4 is on causes, functions, and consequences of dehumanization, and on the prospects for reducing or undoing it. I will close the systematic overview in Section 1.5 with a discussion of some important theoretical complexities that arise in studying dehumanization. Most of the issues mentioned in Sections 1.2–1.5 are of crossdisciplinary concern—that is, they arise in most if not all subfields of dehumanization studies. This is the case even though—as Section 1.1 will show—the subfields focus on different subissues and might even use a different analytic language to address the same subissue. Section 1.6 will situate dehumanization studies in the broader intellectual landscape of debates about the ‘human’ in the humanities and social sciences. Readers who wish to first find out how dehumanization relates to posthumanism or transhumanism and like discussions are advised to first go to Section 1.6. Section 1.7 will describe the scope, limitations, and intended readership of the Handbook. Sections 1.1 and 1.7 will refer to the chapters’ individual contributions in a systematic and integrated rather than a linear manner.The reader can also find the abstracts of the individual contributions in the linear order of their appearance in Section 1.8. 1

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1.1 Remarks on the history of the field The term ‘dehumanization’ emerges in English around the turn of the 19th century. The Oxford English Dictionary quotes with respect to first usage from the 1818 diary of Thomas Moore (published 1853).While Moore (1779–1852), an Irish poet, wrote about a dehumanized face of a boxer and was thus concerned with appearance of human bodies, usage was quickly broadened to include reference to social conditions. For instance, in his Narrative of a visit to the Mauritius and South Africa (1844) the English Quaker missionary James Backhouse (1794–1869) writes about a “fallen” world that he encountered, with conditions that are “gloomy,” “dark,” and “hopeless,” inhabited by “savage tribes.” About the latter, he asked,“By what means shall these be raised up to the condition of men? How shall these almost dehumanized creatures be formed into orderly societies?” (Backhouse 1844: 109; Emph. in the original) The set of phenomena denoted by the term ‘dehumanization’, as it is used in practice and as it is studied in the Handbook, has certainly been addressed much earlier than the 19th century, and actually it has been since Greek antiquity. It has been addressed in particular by those who defended a shared humanity and humanness – that is, by the critics of those cases of dehumanization that showed up in social reality. Stuurman (this volume), Kontler (this volume), and Sebastiani (this volume) provide historical insights into that deep history of addressing dehumanization.The contexts, in which avantla-lettre reflections on dehumanization occurred, certainly varied and did so not only in time but also in topical orientation.They were part of discussions on diversity, assimilation, exclusion, purity and danger, education, religious belief, sexuality, misogyny, hatred, wars, savagery, barbarism, cannibalism, slavery, racism, ethnocentrism, egocentrism, evolutionary thinking, anatomy, perfectibility and civility, progress, the exotic, missionary or colonial activities, public events, and so on. As Stuurman (this volume) shows, there were times when dehumanization was not in need of justification. Aristotle, an example Stuurman mentions, lived at a time when a shift toward a critical discourse about dehumanization surfaced, and with it there rose the need to justify it in face of the critique. Aristotle’s defense of natural slavery, as Stuurman argues, is thus already a reaction to critical stances regarding the attitudes and treatment of slaves. Thus, the begin­ ning of the intricate dialectic of humanization, dehumanization, and rehumanization, which the Handbook addresses, is also the beginning of what historians call the ‘invention of humanity’—the historically increasing awareness and belief that there is a shared humanity and humanness (see Preface). This invention is ongoing, with oscillating boundaries of humanity and humanness ever since. Kontler (this volume), for instance, shows how contingent the standard of belonging to humanity was in the different debates about the human during the early Enlightenment: if expedient (in order to exclude certain people), the standard simply got adapted. And today? The boundaries of the human are still negotiated, and convenient adaptation of standards still occurs, even though the details in the strategies and the ontologies might have changed. Beliefs in ‘true religion,’ a worn strategy on which Stuurman and Kontler both report, are for some still the basis of an active category that allows the differentiation between ‘real’ humans and erro­ neous ones; for others, this strategy is replaced by the imagined community of a ‘nation,’ or a ‘race,’ etc. Us-versus-them thinking has never vanished fully, even though its contours changed. Nonetheless, the invention of humanity led to a universalist frame and, eventually, to a truly global era, with an ever-increasing global interdependence of people and states, an interdepend­ ence so deep that some simply took it for granted—till its current weight and vulnerability became fully exposed as part of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. Even though the history of humanism and dehumanization extends beyond the West, as Stuurman (2017, this volume) shows, the Handbook sets its focus on the history of dehuman­ ization in the West.Within the traditions of the West, it seems that the study of dehumanization 2

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Introduction

(with or without using the word) surfaces whenever humanity looks at its very own atrocities (unfortunately, most of the times by looking back). It is thus not surprising that the contemporary multidisciplinary field explicitly studying dehumanization has its starting point in reactions to the Second World War (WWII) and its atrocities, in particular the Holocaust.Arendt (1951, 1963, 1971) is most often mentioned in that respect.Arendt wrote about losing, first, the “right to have rights”, then, one’s moral personhood, and, finally, one’s individuality – three stages of dehuman­ ization in the Nazi camps. She added her account of the “banality of evil,” which, in part, rested on her philosophical anthropology of the vita activa, and on her claim that Adolf Eichmann and other perpetrators of the Holocaust were unable to think and were, thus, in that sense not (fully) human themselves.1 Levi (1947), Améry (1966), Delbo (1970), and other Holocaust survivors added their own reflections and impressions on the loss of humanity as part of the horror they had to bear—and then witness. Brudholm and Lang (this volume, Brudholm 2008) refer to their narratives. Klemperer (1947) documented the dehumanized and dehumanizing language of the ‘Third Reich’—the lingua tertii imperii (LTI). Sartre (1937), de Beauvoir (1949), and Fanon (1952) should also be mentioned as early sources for contemporary dehumanization studies, as Heinämaa and Jardine (this volume) stress, be it with respect to the colonial context or the gendered facets of dehumanization, or of their intersections. Montagu (1942, 1968, Montagu and Matson 1983), most known for his work on aggression and racism, also belongs to that history, as Milam (2019, this volume) shows. A core concern for Montagu was how modern technology increases the prevalence of dehumanization in contemporary society. In psychology, Allport’s (1954) account of prejudice and Goffman’s (1963) account of stigma can be regarded as early influences, not focused on dehumanization explicitly, but preparing the ground for studying dehumanization as part of social psychology.2 These are just a few important examples from the post–WWII context. The history of this impetus from the post-WWII intellectual climate, and its impact in the multiple fields of the humanities and social sciences with respect to dehumanization, still awaits in-depth analysis. It is a history that is beyond the scope of the Handbook since it is a metahistory of dehumanization studies, with its own challenges – not only because of the multidisciplinarity involved, but also because it is a history that probably involves some underground, military-funded ‘secret rivers.’3 From what is readily available about that history, it is clear that the explicit study of dehumanization surfaced with considerable force during the Cold War, and in particular at the time of the Vietnam War.Taking the psychodynamic perspective of a therapist, Bernard et al. (1971) discussed dehumanization as a psychic defense mechanism that accompanies indifference and apathy, which function as responses to social problems or grave threats, such as nuclear anni­ hilation or pandemic outbreaks. Kelman (1973) and Bandura et al. (1975), finally, introduced the term ‘dehumanization’ to the experimental study of violence. Over time, attention to dehuman­ ization increased steadily, albeit slowly, peaking in the 1990s. Dehumanization was then studied as a part of evil (Staub 1989), as intergroup aggression distinct from ingroup bias (Schwartz and Struch 1989), as contributing to genocides (Kuper 1982, 1989), as a form of delegitimization (Bar-Tal 1989), and as one of the symptoms of moral exclusion (Opotow 1990a, b). At that time, a broadening of the horizon toward more graded and implicit forms of dehu­ manization began, in particular as part of social psychology. Opotow (1990a, b), for instance, distinguished (albeit, implicitly) between three forms of exclusion in which dehumanization can play a part: exclusion within a society (e.g., via barriers to professions or citizen rights), exclu­ sion from a society (e.g., by deportation or detention), and exclusion from life (annihilation via working to death or other ways of killing).4 In effect, social psychology took dehumanization more and more often as a complex, subtle, and widespread phenomenon (or set of phenomena) of social life that can be studied in detail in the psychologists’ labs, using the various empir­ ical methods available to that field. The history of studying dehumanization as part of social 3

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psychology, the most thriving subfield of the emerging multidisciplinary field of dehumanization studies, is covered in detail by Haslam (this volume), who, starting with Haslam et al. (2005), has substantially contributed to the later parts of that history.5 The spurt of research in social psych­ ology began with the infrahumanization account of Leyens et al. (2000).6 Haslam et al. (2005) then added the mechanistic-animalistic humanness model (see, Haslam, this volume), Fiske et al. (2002) contributed the stereotype content model (see Fiske 2011, Fiske, this volume), and Gray et al. (2007) added the agency-experience mind perception model. Again, these are just some of the most important recent contributions, reviewed in more detail by Haslam (this volume) and Fiske (this volume). The latter approach, the mind perception model, is also discussed as part of experimental philosophy and philosophy of mind.7 In these fields, the focus is on how we access and assess other minds and mental properties, how the alleged mental properties connect to moral standing, and on why we are cognitively so prone to recognize the humanity of others, which also has its impact on how we deal with robots, as discussed by Paladino et al. (this volume). When Opotow and others discussed social exclusion as part of the social psychology tradition, sociological works on socialization and social death surfaced as well, in particular following the work of Patterson (1982), with its focus on the history of racism. Hund (this volume) reviews and discusses the thus-inspired sociological tradition of research on dehumanization. In other areas of sociology, and moving more to the present scholarship, Pugh (2004), Hagan and RymondRichmond (2008), Bleiker et al. (2013), and Weissmann (2015), to name but a few, studied how institutions organize and frame dehumanization. At issue are the organizational and collective dynamics of dehumanization, with varying subissues (e.g., security threat construction, media and propaganda) and within different contexts (e.g., genocides, the dehumanization of refugees, torture). Some approaches to contemporary political thinking also take dehumanization in one form or another as fundamental (e.g.,Agamben 2004,Vetlesen 2005, and Savage 2013). Certainly, genocide studies as well as peace and conflict studies have their own tradition of discussing dehumanization. Kuper (1989) reviews in detail the history of references to dehuman­ ization in what is now called the first-generation of scholars in comparative genocide studies. Kuper accepted dehumanization as a phenomenon that exists at a cognitive, institutional, and ideological level.Yet, he already recommended caution with respect to over-attributing dehu­ manization, for three reasons. First, dehumanization might be an implausible explanation for the occurrence of a specific case of violence at the level of an individual perpetrator’s cognition, as well as at the level of explaining the collective onset of the violence, even in cases in which there is clearly an ideology of dehumanization operating. Dehumanization, in other words, can appear at any one of the three levels, independent of its occurrence at the other levels. Second, dehumanization “may not be necessary” (ibid.: 161) for the violence occurring if alternative explanations are possible (whatever the level of occurrence at issue).Third, caution should guide us with respect to a frequent assumption backing the “dehumanization thesis”.That assumption is the claim that human beings generally have an inhibition to kill members of their own kind; for Kuper, it is a questionable postulate. Despite such early skeptical tones, dehumanization is still debated as part of genocide studies, and mostly listed as one among a set of mechanisms that are taken to be involved in conflicts and genocides.8 The function of dehumanization can thus be compared to other mechanisms. Hence,Williams and Neilsen (2016) claim that dehumaniza­ tion makes killings merely tolerable (e.g., in the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, the case they refer to), whereas toxification, treated as a distinct mechanism, makes the killings necessary. Accordingly, dehumanization (as defined by them) is not sufficient for explaining genocides. Intellectual history and the history of ideas have so far primarily focused on dehumaniza­ tion in specific contexts of emerging modernity: natural law theories, taxonomical ordering, and colonial encounters. The issues discussed include dehumanization in the context 4

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Introduction

of changing contours of concepts such as ‘race’ and ‘gender,’9 the ‘savage,’10 being ‘wild’ (e.g., Horigan 1989), the ‘exotic’ (Abbattista 2011, this volume), ‘monstrous’ people (e.g., Friedman 1981, Davies 2017), or the ‘subhuman’ (Smith 2011, 2020, this volume), or simply discussions of how ‘aliens’ or ‘enemies’ have been dehumanized, as in Koselleck (2006) or Stichweh (2010). Special focus has been on the ‘discovery of mankind,’11 the ‘invention of human science’ (Fox et al 1995), the history of the idea of human rights (Hunt 2007, Slaughter 2007), the history of human-looking automata (LaGrandeur 2013,Voskuhl 2013), the history of racism (Smith 2015; Hund, this volume), the history of simianization and the ape-human boundary,12 the history of exhibiting humans,13 and the relationship between theories of natural law, stadial history, and dehumanization (Wokler 1988, Kontler 2012, this volume). History and philosophy of science is mostly focused on how dehumanization connects to naturalization of difference and inequality.14 Dehumanization can in that context also refer to the dehumanization of the overall species, as Milam (2019, this volume) shows. In such a case, all humans are dehumanized since they are reduced to the specifically animal-like parts of being human, often called ‘human nature.’ That ‘nature’ has often been taken to be biologic­ ally inherited and in that sense determined. Even though this form of dehumanization applies to all humans, it can have significant trickle-down effect on the dehumanization of specific groups of humanity, since the existing social and cultural inequalities are naturalized thereby as well. Kronfeldner (2018, this volume) analyzes how dehumanization connects to the concept of human nature and the implied essentialism, while Steizinger (2018, this volume) compares nat­ uralist and non-naturalist background theories of the Nazi regime. Milam (2019, this volume) portrays how naturalizing humanity and inequality unfolded in Cold War contexts. Literary studies and technology studies connect to the above-mentioned historical works and add their specific perspectives. Literary studies analyze the respective literal reverberations of dehumanization. Different narrative structures are analyzed as part of it – for example, the literary grotesque (as in Cassuto 1997), narrative empathy (Keen 2011), or narrative structures with an ‘unreliable’ narrator (Zunshine 2006), to name a few (see Timár 2019, this volume).Technology studies analyze whether technology makes us less human. Bernard et al. (1971) and Montagu and Matson (1983) are early examples of such an orientation (see Milam, this volume). It finds res­ onance in contemporary critical stances regarding our consumer culture (see, for instance,Tester 1995). Building more specifically on the history of automata, there is contemporary work in robotics that discusses how the humanization of robots connects to the threat of dehumanization (e.g., in the sense of a desensitization regarding social relations). For review of the work in that field and the involved issues, see Paladino et al. (this volume). Discussions in literary studies and technology studies are closely related to discussions in critical theory and cultural sociology that state that misrecognition, or treating individual humans instrumentally (i.e., as objects rather than subjects), is a key phenomenon in the creation and stabilization of social inequalities of all kinds (e.g., in exploitation as part of capitalist societies).15 Certain forms of dehumanizing speech and media depiction are analyzed in media and visual studies and in philosophy of language, with connections to genocide studies and empirical analyzes of propaganda.16 Straus (2007), for instance, did a detailed empirical study of the hatred distributed via radio as part of the Rwandian genocide. Volpato et al. (2010) compared fascist propaganda with contemporary right-wing propaganda in Italy. With respect to dehumanization, they “found in images what was left unsaid in words” (Volpato et al. 2010: 275). In feminist philosophy and gender studies, a lot has been written on the dehumaniza­ tion of women since de Beauvoir discussed it, in part with reference to sexual objectifica­ tion involved in pornography, rape proclivity, domestic violence, and so on.17 Connected to moral theory, dehumanization is discussed in disability studies and animal studies that critically 5

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discuss various issues related to dehumanization.The continuing legacy of eugenics belongs here (see Wilson 2018, this volume).There are discussions about animal–human comparisons and the resulting ‘humanization’ of animals (Opotow 1993, Costello and Hodson 2010). Others discuss human–animal comparisons resulting in ‘animalization’ of disabled people.18 There are discussions on whether it is appropriate to compare animal slaughter and the Holocaust (Crary 2019). Some speak of ‘linked oppression’ of people and animals (e.g.,Wyckoff 2014).These discussions often relate to the claim that humanism wrongly relies on ‘speciesism’ (McMahan 2002, Singer 2009, Kagan 2016), according to which all and only Homo sapiens have moral standing (see Crary, this volume). All these debates relate to ideas about moral standing (see Machery, this volume). Legal studies, finally, discuss the history and justification of laws and legal categories in connection with dehumanization, in particular with respect to the concept of human rights (Rorty 1998, Meyers 2016, Frick, this volume), crimes against humanity (Geras 2011, Corrias 2016), and similar ideas – for instance, that war criminals or torturers should be conceptualized as enemies of humanity (see Luban 2018; Corrias, this volume; Frick, this volume). This short overview of the history and ‘state of the art’ of dehumanization studies is necessarily patchy (as is, in the end, the selection of contributions for the Handbook).The aim is not com­ pleteness, but to illustrate how burgeoning the field is, especially given its rich, multidisciplinary nature. The Handbook treats the multidisciplinarity involved as a chance rather than a burden. It allows comparisons of the concepts and evidence from multiple angles, sometimes consolidating the evidence gathered in other fields, sometimes exposing frictions and opportunities for further research.The following Sections 1.2–1.5 shall guide the reader through the existing landscape of dehumanization studies in a more systematic manner.

1.2 Realizations, levels, forms, and ontological contrasts There are, clearly, different realizations of dehumanization, even if we focus on individuals only (rather than structures and institutions as dehumanizing). Dehumanization can occur at the level of discourse or rhetoric (e.g., in media or propaganda), which can be strategic and figurative only—that is, not reflecting actual attitudes of the respective speakers.Yet, even if dehumanizing depictions are strategically used only, they are usually meant to influence the thoughts and acts of those listening or watching. Dehumanization can thus also be cognitive, inscribed in real attitudes of people. These dehumanizing attitudes often have a behavioral counterpart, be it verbal or nonverbal. Different accounts of dehumanization may thus address different levels of realization, or give priority to one of the levels. Mikkola (2016, this volume) defines dehumanization with a focus on actual behavior, whereas Smith (2011; 2020, this volume) does so with a focus on attitudes. Frick (this volume) distinguishes between latent dehumanization (cognitive), expressivist or activist dehu­ manization (linguistic), and actualized (behavioral) dehumanization. Social psychology focuses—by disciplinary perspective—on the cognitive side of the matter, yet some studies in social psychology cross the disciplinary borders of their field to other areas—for example, media analysis. Esses et al. (this volume), for instance, set a focus on dehumanizing media coverage, an area that has also been studied independently of social psychology (see references in Esses et al., this volume). Since the different levels at which dehumanization can show up interact, Heinämaa and Jardine (this volume) stress that whether a cognitive attitude or a certain rhetorical, pictorial, or linguistic depiction is actually dehumanizing or not depends on the practical and emotive context. In addition, causal influences can go both ways: dehumanizing rhetoric or attitudes can cause dehumanizing behavior, but they can also be the result of previous dehumanizing behavior. In the former case, the dehumanizing rhetoric or attitude motivates actions, and in the latter case 6

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Introduction

the exhibited dehumanizing behavior is rationalized ex post facto—that is, justified after the fact by referring to a dehumanized status of the targets.Thus, the relationship between the three levels of dehumanization (latent/cognitive, rhetoric/discoursive/expressivist, and actualized/behavioral) can be quite complex and will vary from case to case or from context to context. It is thus important to note that inferences from one level to the other have to be made with care, because they can exist—despite interacting—separately too. Hence, even if dehumanizing actions can be performative and thus transformative, as Eichler (2019) stresses—making the life of those depicted, regarded, and treated actually less human—that kind of actualized dehumanization might occur without dehumanization at the other levels, and vice versa. Dehumanization also has levels that go beyond the rhetoric, thoughts, and actions of individuals. It can be inscribed in ideologies, philosophies, and scientific theories;19 it can be inscribed in institutions, such as the law (Corrias, this volume), or in business organizations and their respective work relations (Caesens et al. 2019; see Demoulin et al., this volume). Dehumanization is also inscribed in hierarchical social structures and relations, which have to be perpetually reproduced to stabilize the respective dehumanization.The ‘subalterns’ (i.e., those rendered passive through the hierarchies) would indeed speak without that stabilization, as Hund (this volume) mentions. In addition, Fiske et al. (2002, 2011, this volume) show that dehumaniza­ tion relates to status and the competitive or cooperative interdependence of people in a society. As a result, certain kinds of dehumanization increase with the inequality in a society, and with the respective meritocratic beliefs about deserving or not deserving status, power, inclusion, respect, help, and so on. Data on this come from a large variety of countries, as Fiske (this volume) reports. Dehumanization is also inscribed in cultural practices—for example, in schemes of exhibiting humans (Abbattista 2011, 2013, 2014, this volume), or in literature (Timár 2019, this volume), to name but two such practices. There are also different forms of dehumanization. Historically, dehumanization often involved categorically denying some human beings membership in the human kind. The latter has often been identified with a genealogical category (e.g., the biological species Homo sapiens). Polygenists, for instance, regarded slaves as outside of humanity because they believed that slaves have no shared ancestry with Europeans. Today, dehumanization still occurs in such an either/ or (i.e., categorical) form. Smith (2011, 2020, this volume) sets a focus on this form.Yet, dehu­ manization exists also in a graded form. People are regarded as more or less human even though they are simultaneously clearly recognized and regarded as humans – for example, women when they are objectified, or refugees or foreigners when they are deindividualized or even demonized. These graded forms are mainly (even though not exclusively) addressed in contemporary social psychology, as reviewed in Haslam (this volume). For historical roots of such graded forms and the discourses about them, see Kontler (this volume), Kronfeldner (this volume) and Sebastiani (this volume).This means that dehumanization can happen even if no sharp boundary between humans and non-humans is assumed, and even if no sharp boundaries between groups of humans are assumed. For dehumanization to operate, shades are enough. Neither racism nor speciesism are necessary for it, even though the latter undoubtedly can further it. In addition, contexts of atrocities are not the only contexts in which dehumanization occurs. It is much more pervasive. Finally, while dehumanization is still often explicit or “blatant,” as Opotow (2011) and Kteily et al. (2015, 2017) call it, it is also encoded in implicit attitudes that influence explicit opinions and actions (see for instance, Esses et al., this volume). Dehumanization can be theorized with a focus on certain properties that are taken as specific or typical for a human life (humanness). These humanness properties, the assumed insignia of humanity, are then shown to be attributed differentially to different people, for example: sec­ ondary emotions (as in Leyens et al. 2000), traits of human nature that allow us to distinguish 7

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ourselves from machines, as Haslam et al. (2005) added (see Haslam, this volume), mental prop­ erties such as agency and experience (Gray et al. 2007; Sytsma and Machery 2012; see Machery, this volume), competence and warmth (see Fiske 2011, this volume), harmfulness (Piazza et al. 2014; see Machery, this volume), prosociality (Schwartz and Struch 1989; Esses et al. 2008; see Esses et al., this volume), cooperation versus aggression (see Milam 2019, this volume), or eugenic traits (see Wilson 2018, this volume).This is an open list, and historians will add still further foci of dehumanization. Kontler (2004), for instance, shows how values like softness, grace, polite­ ness, refinement, and the like were used to limit women’s ‘proper’ role in modern commercial societies, torn as women were (and often still are) between two alternative roles of ‘beauty or beast,’ as part of the Enlightenment ideas of humanity’s progress (see also Kontler, this volume; Sebastiani, this volume). Yet, dehumanization is not only about properties that are differentially attributed to different (kinds of) people. It is about how the differential attribution of properties leads to further judgments about the people. Hence, Machery (this volume) shows how it connects to moral standing.Wilson (this volume) claims that it is crucial (philosophically) to distinguish between taking a certain property to be negative (e.g., a certain disease or impairment) and using it to devalue people (and their life). The former is not in and of itself dehumanizing, whereas the latter is.Varga (2017, 2020, this volume) similarly shows that there is a difference between mind perception and perceiving specific mental properties in others. Heinämaa and Jardine (this volume) add that a stance that looks at the typical (rather than the irreducible sub­ jective) can already be dehumanizing, irrespective of which property is looked at specifically. Dehumanization is, according to that approach, happening already when the very subjectivity and individuality of a person is ignored (i.e., when the individual is reduced to being a mere bearer of typical properties, whichever). Stuurman (this volume) reminds us that religious mem­ bership properties (rather than substantial properties) were decisive for dehumanization as part of religious worldviews. Being a believer in the religious truth rather than any substantive prop­ erty of the individual grounded dehumanization in such a case. Kronfeldner (2018, this volume) also stresses that dehumanization can be purely relational: somebody can be regarded as less human if fewer or less intense biological or social relations exist between the dehumanizer and the dehumanized. Differential attribution of properties can be part of such a relational dehu­ manization, but it does not have to be. With this in mind, Kronfeldner (this volume) claims that psychological essentialism, which is based on the attribution of intrinsic properties, is not necessary for dehumanization, even though it is often associated with it (as claimed, for instance, by Smith, this volume). Pointing in a similar direction, Kontler (2012, this volume) mentions that, as part of the naturalization of man during the Enlightenment, differences between people were de-internalized. Rather than finding difference only in static classifications of bodies (e.g., racial ones), or body-versus-soul ontologies (with the dehumanized ones lacking soul, or mind), difference was now also located in the differences in historical development, which points to a dynamic (rather than static) difference and a relational standard for humanness – namely, dis­ tance in historical development. Nonetheless, looking at the mentioned properties (e.g., autonomy, agency, experience, sec­ ondary emotions) is informative. They can be operative on top of the relations driving dehu­ manization. Most importantly, they show that some recurring ontological contrasts are operative in dehumanization. Dehumanization often builds on a contrast between animals and humans or a contrast between machines and humans. Haslam et al. (2005, see also Haslam, this volume) regard the focus on secondary emotions (also called ‘human uniqueness traits’) in Leyens et al. as biased toward human superiority over animals. According to Haslam, a sense of being human that is oriented at sentient animacy, which is more related to contrasting humans and machines, 8

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has often been ignored. Certainly, a lot depends on how the animalistic dehumanization (not much agency or secondary emotions attributed) and the mechanistic dehumanization (not much experience or animacy attributed) are measured in the respective empirical work.20 In addition, the relationship between these two sources of dehumanization, fueled by the two ontological contrasts, is complex, as Haslam (this volume) shows. Machery (this volume) agrees and adds evi­ dence from experimental philosophy confirming that the two sources of moral standing (agency and experience) can act independently but also additively. This makes it clear (as Machery, this volume, claims) that none of the typical philosophical traditions analyzing moral standing is right: for real people, both the Kantian agency and the Utilitarian experience are important in treating each other as part of a moral community. A third ontological contrast is the one between demons, angels or gods versus humans. To regard women as witches, which relates to considerable violence against women accumulated over history, is a case in which the demon versus human contrast was important, as Frick (this volume) mentions. In current scholarly work, this third contrast seems to have received less attention, but probably this is due to an increase in a-religious ontologies in the West. In the frame of the mentioned psychological accounts of dehumanization, it might even be reducible to mechanistic dehumanization—that is, attribution of agency but not (much) experience. The form of dehumanization will vary with the idea of being human that is operative in each respective case (see also Bain et al. 2014 on that issue). This also explains (in part at least) the usage of slightly different words for different forms of dehumanization. Leyens et al. (2000) have introduced the term ‘infrahumanization’ (as different from dehumanization) to focus on graded forms of differential attribution of secondary emotions taken to be unique for humans (and thus what it means to be human rather than just another animal). Smith (2011) aims at a similar bifurcation when he uses ‘subhumanization’ (less than human) and ‘dyshumanization’ (less human), the first involving a categorical difference in essence, while the later involves only degrees of being human. ‘Superhumanization’ (more human), ‘metadehumanization,’ and ‘selfdehumanization’ are also part of the recent literature. Smith (this volume) addresses the first and Demoulin et al. (this volume) the latter two. The term ‘ontologization’ is used similarly to ‘naturalization’; the words ‘deindividualization,’ ‘depersonalization,’ and ‘desocialization’ signal what exactly is at issue: the human as an individual, person, or member of a society. Ever since Marx, ‘alienation’ has a special valence as part of social philosophy. At issue is dehumanization that stems from work relationships that lead to selfestrangement and then selfdehumanization. Demoulin et al. (this volume) show how it is studied in contemporary psychology. Terms like ‘zoomorphism,’ ‘animalization,’ ‘simianization,’ ‘barbarization,’ ‘objectification,’ ‘commodification,’ ‘instrumentalization,’ ‘derivatization,’ ‘monstrification,’ ‘deification,’ ‘demonization,’ ‘diabolization,’ ‘bestialization,’‘verminization,’ and ‘toxification’ can all be found in connection with dehuman­ ization.They focus more on what one is or becomes in the mind of the dehumanizer as a result of dehumanization – namely, an animal, an object, a commodity, a demon, a toxic entity, and so on. As mentioned, the relationships between all these forms, realizations, levels, contexts, and aspects of dehumanization can be complex.This is why Frick (this volume), Heinämaa and Jardine (this volume), and Mikkola (this volume) all discuss how not to equate objectification and dehumanization, focusing on different traditions or contexts of comparing objectification and dehumanization. An important distinction in that respect, used by Frick (this volume) and Mikkola (this volume), is between reductive and non-reductive attitudes. There is no point in shortcutting the complexities stemming from the different forms, realizations, levels, contexts, and aspects studied. Yet from the abstract and general point of view, one aspect seems to be always present: dehumanization establishes difference and distance between human beings. Dehumanization enables a stratified organization of humanity. 9

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1.3 Targets, valence, and emotions The targets of dehumanization vary greatly over time and cultural context, and can consist of individuals or groups.That it matters whether it is individuals or groups becomes evident in the history of exhibiting humans, a history that moves from individuals exhibited as oddities to indi­ viduals and groups exhibited as representing a type, as Abbattista (this volume) shows. The targets (whether as individuals or groups) often overlap with the targets of racism, sexism, classism, ableism, ageism, meritocracy, and so on. Dehumanization is, nonetheless, not equivalent to the latter since they are more specific (see also Section 1.5 and 1.6). Recently, the traditional focus on gender, races, and classes has been broadened so that further targets come into focus. There are studies on refugees,21 patients,22 disabled people,23 elderly people,24 low-status people,25 LGBTQ people,26 and even on children dehumanized by other children,27 and so on. For more on the variety of targets studied as part of contemporary social psychology, see Haslam (this volume) and Fiske (this volume). A special case of targets emerges from the study of selfdehumanization. After all, targets and perpetrators of dehumanization can dehumanize themselves in reaction to previous dehumanization. Targets do so as a reaction to being dehumanized by others and perpetrators do so in reaction to their own dehumanizing attitudes or actions toward others. Abbattista (this volume) discusses the complex bidirectional dynamics between perpetrator and target, including the metadehumanization and selfdehumanization of the latter in the historical contexts of exhibited humans. Demoulin et al. (this volume) present evidence from the psychologists’ labs and add that perpetrators sometimes dehumanize themselves in reaction to their own inhuman attitudes or actions. Following a long-standing tradition since Arendt’s account of evil, Frick (this volume) claims that those treating others in inhuman ways risk becoming inhuman themselves. If so, as Frick claims, this can have impacts on how we factor in ideas about restricted reciprocity, in particular when the content and scope of human rights is at issue.This is reminiscent of a quite old tradition in philosophy, as Meyers (2016) illustrates. Corrias (2016) shows how this echoes in legal categories and actual tribunals—for example, with respect to charges of crimes against humanity. An important issue in that respect is certainly whether we owe it to ourselves not to dehumanize the dehumanizer (see Corrias 2016 and Frick, this volume). In principle, the valence of dehumanization is neutral—it can be considered something good or bad to be less (than) human. After all, in a negative anthropology, being human is not considered something particularly good. Consistent with that, recent work in social psych­ ology tries to keep dehumanization distinct from dislike or outgroup biases (see Haslam, this volume, for review).This fits the results that differential attribution of properties deemed to be the insignia of humanity can be quite perspectival, as Paladino et al. (2009: 237) have shown. In a series of experiments, they show that ‘ours is human’—that is, what the participants attribute to the ingroup is what it means for them to be human, independent of the valence of these characteristics. Yet, the majority of the historical cases discussed in the literature seem to be cases where the valence is clearly on the negative side: to be human is taken to be good and protected (in the agent’s perspective and/or the scholar’s metaperspective) or at least the best status avail­ able on planet earth, whereas being less human, subhuman, and also superhuman means negative rhetoric or attitudes if not negative treatment by the dehumanizer. This does not exclude that there can be a valence ambiguity involved. As Heinämaa and Jardine (this volume) show, de Beauvoir (1949) already recognized that men might well idealize women as part of inferiorizing and subordinating them as less human. Fiske (Glick and Fiske 1996, this volume) shows, as part of her stereotype content model, how such a form of dehuman­ ization involves pity, an ambivalent emotion that relates to the ascription of low competence and 10

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high warmth. Smith (this volume) discusses such a valence ambiguity with a focus on intergroup prejudice and hatred (e.g., anti-Semitism). Superhumanization, he claims, often occurs if the respective other is perceived as dangerous; it can be theorized, as he claims, as perceiving the other as a monster.28 The above-mentioned contrast between demons and humans relates to this. Frick (this volume) also discusses the intricate dynamics of deification and demonization as forms of superhumanization, with respect to hierarchies in religious cults or sects,‘true’ believers versus infidels, or witchcraft beliefs. The discussion above also shows that dehumanization often has an emotional side, on both the perpetrator’s and the target’s ends.Which emotion that is depends on the form of dehumaniza­ tion, as Fiske’s stereotype content model shows. Already Strawson (1962: 190–195), for instance, claimed that a “human relationship” involves a “reactive attitude” (i.e., an attitude that reacts to the actions of the other as a member of a moral community). Reactive attitudes, according to Strawson, correlate with specific emotions, such as resentment, gratitude, forgiveness, and love. These emotions are missing if there is, instead, a dehumanizing “objective attitude,” which also has a potpourri of emotions attached, just different ones – for example, pity, fear, repulsion, dis­ gust, and certain forms of paternalistic care. The objective attitude can, however, also lead to indifference, a fact that contradicts the widespread assumption that emotions like hatred and disgust are defining elements of dehumanization. Bernard et al. (1971) already tried to correct this one-sidedness in the literature on dehumanization by stressing the importance of apathy and indifference in contemporary forms of dehumanization.This also raises the question of how dehumanization and hatred connect, if we take the latter as an emotion that is based on a reactive attitude.29 As Brudholm and Lang (this volume) show, the connection is far from straightfor­ ward. There can be both dehumanization without hatred (e.g., in cases of atrocities that are characterized by sheer indifference) and hatred without dehumanization (e.g., when violence involves a reactive attitude toward the target and should thus not be counted as dehumanizing).

1.4 Causes, functions, and consequences of dehumanization, and prospects for rehumanization The causes of dehumanization are still under study. Stereotypes are among the much-discussed causes, often with a respective emotional signature attached, if not caused themselves by emotions. Stereotypes also connect to the varieties of social structures and relations mentioned earlier— power, hierarchies, status, interdependence, and exclusion. Thus, social structures, relations, and situations are clearly relevant, either as further independent causes or as causes of the indi­ vidual stereotypes, emotions, or social attitudes, such as social dominance orientation, nationalist orientations, and so on. Individual difference variables (i.e., whether a person is disgust prone, or narcissistic, etc.) need to be factored in, as Haslam (this volume) reminds us.As with many social issues, it holds that the causal story underlying cases of dehumanization will be quite complex. That is, it will involve many causes, feedbacks, and the like. Thus, any search for a monocausal, unidirectional, and simple ‘one-cause-fits-all’ causal structure is doomed to fail. The functions of dehumanization vary too. Prominent are the explanatory and justificatory functions with respect to harm: dehumanization is one of the causes of the inhuman and/or a post hoc perceived justification and thus perceived license to the inhuman. In other words, dehuman­ ization often enables people to overcome an inhibition to harm or kill, or it is taken by people to justify the harming and killing – and be it after the fact. There are other functions that will fit less violent forms of dehumanization. Projection is one; and according to de Beauvoir (1949) and Nussbaum (2006, 2013), it is not ultimately grounded in a need to overcome inhibitions to harm or kill, but rather in a need to overcome the anxieties related to one’s very own mortality 11

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and bodily existence. Heinämaa and Jardine (this volume) provide us with a philosophical take on that facet of dehumanization. In psychology, it is known as terror management.30 Esses et al. (this volume) discuss still another function – namely, the function of defending a social status quo (e.g. with respect to excluding refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants).That function can connect to still further functions. Dehumanization is used, for instance, for upholding a specific identity. Those with a cosmopolitan identity, for instance, can dehumanize others, despite well-meaning universalist attitudes.They do so in reaction to their own passivity regarding the suffering of war victims, refugees, asylum seekers, poor people, drug addicts, and other socially ‘distant’ people. They can prevent thereby nagging guilt feelings or emotional discomfort (see Esses et al., this volume). A more general but related function is what Bernard et al. (1971) called ego defense, a mechanism that prevents otherwise painful or overwhelming emotions and contradictory selfimages. Last but not least: dehumanization serves submission and exploitation. These functions also relate to our emotions regarding those social robots that look and behave uncannily similar to humans (see Paladino et al., this volume). Being afraid of the humanization of a robot is not a case of dehumanization of a human being, but it is its mirror image. For instance, the hope of some, to replace certain forms of exploitation of humans (e.g., in sex work, care work, or other exploitative work) by using social robots instead, might be doomed to fail.Widespread humanrobot replacements might be a spurious victory over dehumanization since these replacements might well deepen the hierarchies that cause dehumanization, jeopardizing human sociality as such (i.e., as we know it, based on principles of reciprocity and equality). That technology can lead to the dehumanization of the overall species is a claim (or fear) that already concerned Montagu and Matson (1983), as Milam (this volume) mentions. Paladino et al. (this volume) dis­ cuss how to explain (at the level of perceptual and cognitive processing) the fears that relate to the humanization of robots and its potential mirror image, the increased dehumanization of humans. The negative consequences of dehumanization range from sheer indifference, lack of kindness, subtle discriminations, deliberate rudeness, hierarchical domination, exploitation, oppression within a society, to social death and outright social or moral exclusion from a society. A variety of injustices, harms, and atrocities result from these. For review of empirical studies on the variety of specific consequences, see Haslam (this volume). Haslam also reviews work that shows that the effects of dehumanization can extend backwards, blocking forgiveness and the willingness of perpetrators to take responsibility for past atrocities. Actual (rather than imagined) behavioral consequences of dehumanization have not been studied much in experimental settings, because of obvious methodological difficulties that stem in part from ethical limits of psychological research. But there are some endeavors in that direction. Esses et al. (this volume) review them. They also mention an important point about behavioral consequences: dehumanizing attitudes that are implicit are unlikely to have consequences at the level of verbal behavior. They will, rather, show their ‘ugly face’ in nonverbal behavior that is often less (norm-)controlled by the subjects. Implicit forms of dehumanization are therefore sometimes the more dangerous ones since they are harder to influence. As with the causes, it is important to note that connections between the different consequences can be complex. For instance, hierarchical domination, social death, and moral exclusion should not be understood as unconnected or alternative consequences of dehumanization.The former, the hierarchical domination within a society, theorized by Hund (2010, this volume) as societalization by dehumanization, can thrive on the latter—the social death or exclusion of still others, leading to a vicious social spiraling of societalization (inclusion) and desocietalization (exclusion) by dehumanization. Finally, the prospects of reducing dehumanization or undoing it (rehumanization) in discourses, attitudes, and acts can vary, depending on background assumptions and contexts. 12

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If there is an innate ‘like us’ detector grounding dehumanization, as Wilson (this volume) and Smith (this volume) mention, or an innate animacy detector (Varga, this volume), then the prospects might be slim. But it might as well be that assuming such an evolved, innate mech­ anism grounding dehumanizing is itself a historically and culturally contingent way of looking at dehumanization—a metaessentialist move that can be overcome, as dehumanization itself can be overcome, to a certain degree at least or maybe fully. As Fiske (this volume) notes, even a neuro­ logical signature of dehumanization is no sign of inevitability.31 Dehumanization can thus also be conceptualized as part of a cognitively, historically, culturally, and socially contingent reasoning process that is quite malleable. Thus, if the respective attitudes can be adapted, the prospects might lighten up a bit at least and the pathways of securing the human will gain some contours. Abbattista (this volume), for instance, discusses how those being exhibited as part of ethnic shows (re-)gained (some) agency, despite economic dependency. Recent histories of German violence during the Nazi era also show that some targets managed to rehumanize themselves.As Leydesdorff (2017) illustrated with her history of the revolt and mass escape of inmates from the Nazi death camp Sobibor in Poland, those escaping, led by the Russian Jew Aleksandr Pechersky, did clearly not behave like ‘sheep being led to the slaughter.’ That animalistic metaphor for pas­ sivity in face of violence is part of an anti-Semitic stereotype that gained unfortunate prevalence in parts of the Holocaust literature and public discourse, leading to a myth of Jewish passivity. By wrongly portraying targets of dehumanization as merely passive victims, scholars can contribute to a culture of memory and to ways of telling the history of inhumanity that reiterates what it meant to study in an objective manner, contributing to cycles of metadehumanization and selfdehumanization. It is thus of utmost importance to analyze the latter, as Demoulin et al. (this volume) do—in their case, from the psychologist’s point of view. Demoulin et al. (this volume) add that as long as the antecedents of metadehumanization and selfdehumanization are not totalitarian, systemic, and enduring, the individual might find a way out. Such antecedents can consist in detrimental cultures of memory in the case of atrocities, abu­ sive work relations that lead to mechanistic selfdehumanization in the case of industrialized cap­ italist societies, and the like.What the individual has to find is not only a way out of incorporating the myth of passivity or abusive structures into the subject’s self-model (selfdehumanization), but also a way out of the dehumanizing conditions themselves. In other contexts and at other levels, further options for rehumanization will be pertinent. Esses et al. (this volume), in part based on Gaucher et al. (2018), discuss empirical evidence on how governments can positively influence the rehumanization of refugees—for example, by utilizing the so-called system justification motivation. Esses et al. offer the example of how the newly elected Canadian government, in 2015, managed to positively sanction the humanization of refugees. As a result, the minds of the citizens followed, to a considerable degree at least. Esses et al. (this volume) also discuss that a more individualized portrayal of the dehumanized targets (e.g., in the media) can have positive effects. Whether and how literary works can help in rehumanization (or preventing dehumanization) is discussed in a quite crossdisciplinary manner. Hunt (2007) has claimed that works generating narrative empathy with dehumanized others historically contributed to the emergence of the idea of universal human rights (compare Slaughter 2007). Philosophers like Nussbaum (1995b) and Rorty (1998) also stressed the rehumanizing potential of literature. Experimental work also aims to provide evidence for answering the question (e.g., as reported in Kidd and Castano 2013). Prinz (2011) or Bloom (2018) argue that lack of empathy—understood as an emotion— is neither always the right diagnosis of cases of inhumanity nor is more empathy always the best cure. Far from being “the magic bullet of morality,” as Bloom (2018: 33) writes, empathy is often ineffective in beating inhumanity, and frequently even adds to it or is the source of it. 13

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Blum (2018), by contrast, understands empathy as a recognitional attitude and comes therefore to a different conclusion.Timár (2015, 2019, this volume) discusses different meanings and effects of empathy, sympathy, and the like on dehumanization, from the perspective of literary scholarship. Crary (this volume) claims that overcoming widespread beliefs about human superiority can con­ tribute to limiting dehumanization. She also claims that the neutral stance regarding the human in many contemporary accounts of moral and political philosophy will not be helpful in that respect. Finally, there are methods of legal rehumanization, as Corrias (2016, this volume) shows.

1.5 Theoretical complexities In this section, a set of theoretical complexities shall be highlighted. The first stems from the fact that one can study dehumanization from different actors’ perspectives. One can study it with respect to the dehumanizer’s perspective (used for instance in perpetrator studies), but also with respect to the target’s perspective, the perspective of the dehumanized. That the two can fall apart becomes clear if we imagine a case of dehumanization where the dehumanization goes completely unnoticed by the target. Mikkola (this volume) discusses such a case, with reference to a thought experiment from Gardner and Shute’s (2000) account of rape. So far, most works have been analyzing the first perspective, that of the dehumanizer, which is why Demoulin et al. (this volume) set a decisive focus on the targets’ metadehumanization (awareness that they are dehumanized) and selfdehumanization. It is important to keep metadehumanization and selfdehumanization distinct, since the latter can happen without the first (e.g., in the case of perpetrators). In such a case, selfdehumanization is a reaction to one’s own immoral behavior, as Demoulin et al. (this volume) show. The target and the perpetrator are the same person. If it is two persons involved, downward spirals of violence can result, with self- and otherrelated dehumanization interacting. Brudholm and Lang (this volume) thus try to involve both perspectives in order to arrive at a balanced picture, in their case with respect to the question of how hatred and dehumanization relate. Heinämaa and Jardine (this volume) stress that dehu­ manization is an interactive process between the perpetrator, target, and others, often involving a selfdehumanization on the side of the target that can be embodied, leading to what they call epidermalization. Literary work has, evidently, a special sensitivity regarding such dynamic com­ plexities, and analyzes the respective narrative structures (see Timár 2019, this volume). Another important metalevel issue relates to the appropriate specificity of a description or explanation. An example can illustrate why keeping that issue in mind is important. The atrocities of the National Socialists against Jewish people and other groups are often taken as paradigmatic cases of dehumanization.The National Socialists regarded and treated their targets as less human if not less than human. Yet, irrespective of all the historical, philosophical, and sociological debates about how to properly account for the Holocaust and other atrocities of the National Socialists, it is clear that the Nazi hatred against Jewish people was based (not only but also) on anti-Semitism. The latter can rest on quite different anthropological theories (as Steizinger, this volume, shows) and also on different concepts of race or volk (as Hund, this volume, mentions). In any case, it is clear that the hatred against Jewish people during the Holocaust was specifically against Jewish people as Jewish people. If so, then it seems that Jewish people were humiliated, tortured, and killed because they were regarded as Jews, as, for instance, Améry (1978) already stressed (see, Kravitz, 2019). Anti-Semitism would be the more specific description and explanation of the atrocities, at least compared to dehumanization. The latter would amount to describing and explaining the atrocities as having happened because Jews were not regarded as humans. Since more specific descriptions and explanations are usually taken as better descriptions and explanations, it would miss the point to quote dehumanization as the 14

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description and explanation of the atrocities that Jewish people had to face. It would be referring to a quite general cause of the wrongdoing involved even though a more specific and precise explanation is available. Yet, this only looks at one side of the matter, it seems. If a human being is recognized only as Jewish—rather than as Jewish and human—then the bond, the reciprocity, the recognitional attitudes (like solidarity, respect, and empathy) operative as part of humanism are likely to be undone more easily. And this is why it might well be that referring to dehumanization is doing some explanatory work, be it in the case of the Holocaust or other instances of inhumanity. Rorty (1998) can be interpreted as giving such a reply when he claims that—during the Bosnian War—Serbian soldiers killed and tortured Muslims because they regarded them as Muslims rather than as humans. So, dehumanization means: not recognizing the respective other as also human. Anti-Semitism and other specific forms of group-based enmity can thus involve dehumaniza­ tion, even though they can never be reduced to dehumanization since they are more specific. Overemphasizing the explanatory importance of dehumanization (i.e., the explanatory force that dehumanization has for a specific case) is thus clearly a risk that needs to be kept in mind. An important mechanism that can trump dehumanization as a cause and/or assumed justification of the inhuman lies in other kinds of assumed justifications of the inhuman. Non-psychological levels can enable dehumanization at the psychological level, but they can also replace it. If the per­ petrator is convinced that other kinds of justifications for the respective inhuman behavior exist, then dehumanization is (from the perpetrator’s perspective) not necessary anymore in order to enable the inhuman behavior. Sykes and Matza’s (1957) account of neutralization already made it quite clear that a perpetrator can use a variety of “techniques” to neutralize claims about respon­ sibility, harm, and wrongdoing. These techniques include deferral of responsibility, blaming the victim, and the like. Dehumanization is one among a set of such techniques of neutralization.This also fits Arendt’s (1963) account of ‘banal’ cases of evil, Kelman’s (1973) account of sanctioned massacres, functionalist accounts of the Holocaust (e.g., in Browning 1992), and recent experimental results that show that dehumanization is involved in instrumental violence but not in so-called moral violence – that is, violence that has, for the perpetrator, a moral or political justification (Rai et al. 2017). Brudholm and Lang (this volume, Lang 2020) discuss these strands in the literature. The perceived justifications of discrimination, harm, or violence that are non-dehumanizing can stem from non-dehumanizing stereotypes, ideology, science, law, or—last but not least—obedience. Hence, the issue arises as to when exactly dehumanization explains inhuman treatment—for example, in genocides. Consequently, the skeptics all (in one way or another) question whether dehumanization is (always) adequate for describing and explaining the inhuman.They have thus spotted an important issue, whatever the exact critical argumentation is, since it varies.32 The problem regarding dehumanization’s explanatory force directly relates to the so-called paradox of dehumanization, which rests on the assumption that very often dehumanization seems to involve simultaneously ‘being regarded as human’ and ‘not being regarded so.’ This paradox challenges, as Smith (this volume) writes, the “reality of dehumanization.” Kuper (1989) already pointed to it in order to ask for caution. One needs “to guard against too ready an acceptance of the dehumanization thesis,” Kuper (1989: 163) claims. Kronfeldner (draft) claims that the paradox can easily be dissolved since the core of it rests on an equivocation of ‘being human’: many cases of dehumanization seem to involve a recognition of the bare humanity of the targets, while (parts of) their humanness and/or their moral standing is ignored or destroyed. Taking this into account, the alleged paradox of ‘being regarded as human and not being regarded so’ can be reformulated as involving alternative interpretations of how dehumanization exactly works in the respective cases.At least three theoretical options are available.Take again the example of the National Socialists dehumanizing Jewish people. 15

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(Option a) Full recognition of humanity: Did the National Socialists see and accept that their targets were fully human, and inflict the harms and atrocities despite or maybe even because they could not help but recognize the humanity and humanness of their targets? Actualized dehu­ manization (inhuman treatment) would be the result of certain negative attitudes toward the targets and a full recognition of the targets’ humanity and humanness at the level of attitudes. Appiah (2006: 151–153; 2007: 144) is often quoted for his support for such an interpretation of the paradox. He claims that perpetrators may well take their victims as deserving of the respective atrocity. Such an attitude, as the assumption goes, is only shown toward entities recognized as humans.Yet, this assumption can be taken to be on unsecure ground, if one takes into account that animals are also treated in cruel ways and frequently punished and enslaved, if not humiliated. Harming animals and harming humans might thus be more tightly connected than assumed in this interpretation of the paradox. Crary (this volume) focuses exactly on that issue.Yet, even if this ‘speciesist’ assumption is dropped, the ‘full recognition interpretation’ of cases of dehuman­ ization from the Nazi context can still be correct and more nuanced than an account that simply states that National Socialists dehumanized their targets. The same holds for other cases. With respect to misogyny, martial rape, and torture, Manne (2016, reprinted in slightly different form in Manne 2018) and Mikkola (2016, this volume) develop an interpretation of the paradox that belongs here. Conclusions drawn from the interpretations of the respective cases along such lines differ. For instance, for Manne (2018) and Enock et al. (draft), the paradox leads to the claim that dehumanization (as defined by them, i.e., a cognitive attitude of regarding somebody as similar to an animal) is (often) a myth, and thus wrongly attributed to the perpetrators. For Mikkola, in contrast, it rather follows that dehumanization consists not in the misrecognition of the victim’s bare humanity but in having one’s legitimate human interests actually violated, which is a con­ cept of dehumanization that is premised on actions and not on cognitive attitudes. (Option b) Ambiguous recognition of humanity: An alternative interpretation of the very same cases would be, to stay with the Nazi cases, that the National Socialists recognized their targets as ambiguously human. Smith (2016, this volume) defends such a solution of the paradox, a solution that bites the bullet with respect to the involved equivocality. It attributes ambiguous attitudes to the perpetrator. According to Smith, perpetrators have basically two ways to cognize their targets: one that follows the format of psychological essentialism and one that ‘crosses the borders’ to ideas about monsters. The first consists in a non-contradictory belief in the other individual as human-looking but devoid of a human essence, whereas the second consists in a logically but not cognitively contradictory belief that the ‘other’ is a monster—that is, simultaneously fully human and fully subhuman, or neither human nor subhuman.The same perceived blurring or crossing of ontological boundaries is dealt with in Paladino et al. (this volume), since it is part of the uncanny feeling that has been studied as part of human–robot interactions. Paladino et al. also show how this connects to the phenomenon of passing, which entails a similar ambiguity and emotional valence, since a threat to distinctiveness regarding human identity seems to be involved in such cases (see also Ferrari et al. 2016).The involved identity threat is also known from research on impostors— that is, people who try to pass as a member of a group they are (or were) not part of (see Hornsey and Jetten 2003). Passers are often punished for their efforts to pass, mainly (even though not exclu­ sively) by the receiving group since the passing is perceived as blurring their identity too.This is a phenomenon that seems to connect—in, indeed, uncanny ways—reactions to robots, to LGBTQ people, and to racial or ethnic passers. Some cases of dehumanization that seem paradoxical are likely to be explained that way. Yet, there is also a third theoretical option to dissolve the paradox. (Option c) Failure to recognize humanity. There might well be cases that are wrongly classified as paradoxical. Mikkola (this volume) mentions that option: it can well be that some perpetrators simply and unambiguously fail to recognize the humanity of their targets.They make a category 16

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mistake. Mikkola dismisses this option as applying to the cases she looks at, yet it is theoretically clearly possible that the perception of humans is as error-prone as the Muller-Lyer illusion is for people growing up in the ‘West.’33 In cases of dehumanization following that format, the respective ideology is so entrenched in the cognition (e.g., via the respective knowledge production, be it via science, propaganda, totalitarian education, etc.) that the targets’ humanity is literally perceived to be absent. For most readers of this volume, it is probably hard to imagine such an illusion (or category mistake), as it is hard for probably most in the world (i.e., those who did not grow up in the West) to understand why those in the West have the Muller-Leyer illusion. Intuitions about what is hard to imagine are always to be handled with great care. Applied to the case of dehu­ manization, it means that eventually it might not have been hard (anymore) for the respective dehumanizers to literally believe that their targets are less (than) human. Steizinger (this volume) interprets some cases from the Nazi context in this manner – that is, as involving literal beliefs (based on anthropological theories) about Jews being not human. Kronfeldner (this volume) provides cases from earlier history.When ideas about non-Adamic heritage were used in cases of categorical relational dehumanization, or when dehumanizing claims about graded mental infer­ iority of women were naturalistically justified, the dehumanization involved was meant literally. For instance, when craniological measurement was taken to provide evidence for lesser humanness (of other races or women), then the respective claims about inferiority were neither meant meta­ phorically nor did they amount to an ambiguous attribution of humanity. Finally, Varga (2017, 2020, this volume) claims that dehumanization can be understood as quite perceptional (rather than post-perceptional), as is explicitly or implicitly assumed by many in the field. If so, then we are cognitively able to literally fail to see the humanity of another human being. A final metalevel restriction that emerges from the discussions represented in the Handbook and that relates to all of the above is that it would be overstretching the concept if every discrimin­ ation, instrumentalization, outgroup bias, or harm done is automatically treated as a case of dehu­ manization. Given that dehumanization is now acknowledged as an important phenomenon of social life, there is some danger of seeing it everywhere and thus of overusing it. Haslam (2016, this volume) discusses this danger as “concept creep.” The earlier-mentioned discussions on not equating all kinds of objectification with dehumanization belong here too. And indeed, one can find publications where the term ‘dehumanization’ shows up, not as object of study, but as an unspecific negative qualifier—used in order to stress a negative evaluation of whatever phenom­ enon is under study. Even positivism interpreted as physicalism, which has nothing to do with how human beings regard and treat each other, has been portrayed as dehumanizing (Cooper 1996). In addition, there are quite some works on arts, sciences, technology, or medicine as dehumanized (rather than as dehumanizing).These studies, as the claim that physicalism is dehumanizing, refer to various forms of ‘leaving out the human.’ Since they do not refer (or at least not directly) to the social phenomenon of people regarding and treating other people as not or as less human, they are not covered in the Handbook, except for the one case discussed by Milam (this volume), in which dehumanization applies to all of humanity, in which humanity itself is dehumanized. This means that dehumanization, as studied in the Handbook, does not concern any phenom­ enon that ‘leaves out the human’ or that deserves to be criticized from this or that perspective. Taking all phenomena that ‘leave out the human’ or that can be regarded as negative to be dehumanizing would clearly broaden the category too much. Dehumanization as studied in this volume ultimately concerns how people regard and treat other people. That holds despite the multiple levels involved, according to which dehumanization is also inscribed in structures, institutions, and relations, and not just in individual minds and actions. The starting point in the Handbook is thus social relations between people, and that an idea of (not) being human (humanity or humanness) needs to be involved in the discrimination, bias, or 17

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harm done in order to meaningfully and productively talk about dehumanization. All forms of dehumanization involve either humanity or humanness (in this or that sense) being attributed or used in a differential manner with respect to different people. Finally, special care needs to be in place in order to not wrongly assume or superimpose one’s own concept of the human onto the cases at issue, be it in anachronistically interpreting historical cases or in interpreting or studying contemporary cases. Kronfeldner (this volume) and Steizinger (this volume) included remarks along these lines. The aim of the Handbook can thus be reformulated as the aim to arrive at a critical understanding of dehumanization across disciplinary boundaries that is neither too stipulated (i.e., tailored to a few cases or the researcher’s ontology) and thus too narrow, nor seen everywhere and thus too broad.

1.6 Connections to related areas in the humanities and social sciences Dehumanization is clearly distinct but connected to other issues related to contemporary humanism. As mentioned, it relates to issues about human rights, forms of discrimination (racism, sexism, classism, ableism, ageism, etc.) and specific realizations of the latter (anti-Semitism, antiIslamism, anti-Ziganism, xenophobic beliefs, homophobic beliefs, misogyny, prejudices against low-status groups, etc.). These forms of group-based enmity are studied widely in all kinds of corners of the social sciences and humanities, in isolation, in their intersectionality, or even as a complex syndrome of “group-based enmity” (Heitmeyer 2005: 13–34). Finally, there are studies that directly focus on social phenomena like nationalism, expulsion, slavery, terror, torture, and so on. Dehumanization is usually under the radar of such studies—a background variable or side issue only. Hence, studying dehumanization means bringing that common background to the fore, not as an alternative but as a complement to studying the more specific forms of discrim­ ination, prejudices, or violence. Studying dehumanization is also related to discussions about contemporary humanism that address what it means to be human—in particular, posthumanism and transhumanism, discussions about the animal-human boundary or artificial intelligence, and discussions about the monstrous in different cultural contexts. First, take the set of debates that can be bundled together under the label posthumanism. Posthumanists (e.g., in the Heideggerian (1947) or Foucauldian (1994) tradition) deny that individual agency (or subjectivity)—under­ stood as the epitome of being human—is fundamental to understand ‘us.’ What is usually challenged is the category of a ‘subject,’ or ‘individual person,’ as being such an epitome of being human. Reflections on embodiment, robotics, cyborgs, and hybrids are often added, questioning the ontological boundaries between humans, animals, and machines.34 This dir­ ectly relates to the interdisciplinary field that studies the history of perceived monstrosity. As Musharbash and Presterudstuen (2020) portray it, monsters (from the cyclops of antiquity to modern vampires, and beyond) are beings that relate to but also transgress the human. They signify something about the human and its shifting boundaries. Finally, ‘we’ might (and according to transhumanists, like Bostrom 2003, should) become more than human via enhancement, newgenics, or digitalization. All these newer debates have been foreshadowed by techno-critical approaches of the Cold War era, discussing the specter of technological dehumanization of humanity as a whole (see Milam, this volume). Add that scholars in crit­ ical animal studies (e.g., Wolfe 2010) and bioethicists (e.g., Singer 1975, 2009) try to revo­ lutionize morality, by including animals as equally or almost human. The aim is to overcome the alleged ‘speciesism’ (taken to be analogous to racism) in contemporary mainstream moral thinking about who has moral standing (for an overview, see Jaworska and Tannenbaum 2013). 18

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That this attitude is not radical enough—since it still compares animals to humans in hierarchical manners, fostering thereby the age-old logic of animalization—is the accusation of still others (see Crary, this volume). As a consequence, some scholars even aim to take the ‘human’ out of ‘human rights’ (e.g., Harris 2011). Finally, there are discussions about a relativist challenge of the idea of humanness—that is, the idea that there are universally shared properties of being human.35 If there are no ethically important universal facts about being human, what is then the basis for our humanistic moral intuitions about equality, justice, or human rights? This relativist challenge boils down to the view, mentioned in the Preface, that humanism and the contents of human rights are too perspectival, or too biased and far from universal. Connections between dehumanization and these other issues certainly exist.To stay with the last issue, human rights relativism and dehumanization both concern a challenge for humanism from within humanity, but they are strikingly distinct. While human rights relativism, in some versions at least, postulates differences between humans (e.g., with respect to their basic needs), dehumanization studies analyze how the perception of and belief in such differences emerges as a psychological, social, legal, political, or literary phenomenon. In addition, there is a direct link between dehumanization and animal rights. As mentioned, disability scholars (e.g., Kittay 2009) discuss whether it is epistemically and morally adequate to compare cognitively disabled people to animals, as has been done in bioethics discussions. This is the topic taken up by Crary (this volume).There is also a link between dehumanization and posthumanism via the concept of sub­ jectivity – for example, in Agamben’s (2000) analysis of dehumanization, testimony, and sovereign power in and after Auschwitz. Kristeva’s (1980) concept of the abject is clearly relevant too. All of these frontiers of humanism connect to all kinds of debates about postcolonialism and other­ ness, given that all of them have to do with hierarchies, discrimination, and harm done to other people. Crary (this volume) connects dehumanization issues with the latter, and discusses how an anti-objectivity stance that is prevalent in postcolonial discourses negatively impacts the declared aim to counter dehumanization by liberating oppressed people and animals. Finally, dehuman­ ization connects to concepts such as decency, civility, humiliation, and dignity, which are often discussed in law, ethics, and moral philosophy (see Margalit 1996, Kaufmann et al. 2011, Düwell et al. 2014). In relation to these concepts, dehumanization is more fundamental since it more directly relates to the fundamental ideas of humanity and humanness. Discussions about postcolonialism, posthumanism, animal rights, artificial intelligence, the relativist challenge regarding human rights, humiliation, and dignity are quite en vogue, be it within the humanities, social sciences, or public discourse. Dehumanization is mentioned here or there, but it usually remains a blind spot—a background variable or side issue at best, and a catchy word at worst. This Handbook turns things upside down: it puts dehumanization in the spotlight, analyzes it from different angles, and it does so without losing sight of the other issues mentioned in this section.

1.7 Final remarks on focus, limitations, and readership of the individual contributions to the handbook If one brings together multiple perspectives on complex issues, there will be frictions and disagreements, as well as open issues and limitations. Given the abundance of issues and cases, a focus for the Handbook was necessary. In terms of history, the focus is, as mentioned, on the his­ tory of the ‘West,’ with respect to the ‘invention of humanity’ and how dehumanization shows up from the early modern period to the biological anthropologies of the 19th and 20th centuries. Systematically, the focus is on specific, selected contexts and issues that relate to the histor­ ical, ethical, legal, conceptual, and epistemological issues involved in the wrongdoings that are 19

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increasingly often called dehumanizing. Finally, despite the intentionally set foci, I am sure I missed something that I should not have missed. Since the Handbook is meant to be a new vantage point for further multidisciplinary work on dehumanization, I hope that the reader takes it as an invitation to add. One important limitation not mentioned explicitly in the above (despite the note on valence in Section 1.3) needs to be confronted directly, to prevent misunderstanding.The Handbook does not aim at a discussion as to whether or not dehumanization is morally wrong (and if so, why). The Handbook rather assumes from the start that dehumanization, in the contexts studied here, is to be regarded as morally wrong – simply because, given the historical and systematic focus of the Handbook, the contexts at issue are contexts of wrongdoing. Nonetheless, the question as to why dehumanization is morally wrong shows up occasionally in the Handbook: in Frick’s (this volume), Machery’s (this volume), and Mikkola’s (this volume) contributions.The same holds for contexts where dehumanization might be regarded as morally neutral or benign (see Heinämaa and Jardine, this volume; Mikkola, this volume), or contexts in which it can be objectively justi­ fied to dehumanize the dehumanizer, as discussed in Frick (this volume).This creates a balance and opens a broader horizon, without losing sight of the goal of this Handbook – namely, to first and foremost understand the paradigmatic examples of dehumanization that are broadly accepted as neither morally neutral nor benign or justified. The Handbook aims to reach professors and graduate students in various fields of the human­ ities and social sciences – in particular traditional, methodologically oriented fields, such as the history of ideas, history of science and technology, social philosophy, political philosophy, moral philosophy, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, epistemology, anthropology, psychology, cognitive science, pedagogy, criminology, legal studies, rhetoric studies, or visual studies. It should also concern scholars in interdisciplinary but topic-oriented and newer academic areas, such as inequality studies, gender studies, disability studies, racism studies, genocide studies, Holocaust studies, animal studies, science studies, and so on. It should also appeal to readers from social work and political activism, as well as to those in public policy that regulate our social interactions as part of their work in those social institutions that structure our life.

1.8 Overview of chapter content Chapter 1. Maria Kronfeldner’s Introduction maps the landscape of dehumanization studies. She starts with a brief portrayal of the history of the field. The systematically minded sections that follow guide the reader through the resulting rugged landscape represented in the Handbook’s contributions. Different realizations, levels, forms, and ontological contrasts of dehumanization are distinguished, followed by remarks on the variety of targets of dehumanization. A discussion on valence and emotional aspects is added. Causes, functions, and consequences of dehuman­ ization, and the prospects for reducing or undoing it, are introduced. The systematic overview closes with a discussion of some important theoretical complexities that arise in studying dehu­ manization. After these systematic sections, the scholarly work on dehumanization gets situated in the broader intellectual landscape of debates about the ‘human’ in the humanities and social sciences.The Introduction ends with some notes on scope, limitations, and intended readership of the Handbook. Chapter 2. Siep Stuurman discusses four dimensions of dehumanization in history: the civilized versus the savage; the adherents of “true” religions versus the unbelievers; the home community versus its enemies; and the gender dimension, ranking men as “more human” than women.The main cases discussed are the invention of the savage in Homer’s Odyssey; the Aristotelian notion of natural slavery; the extermination of the Melians by the Athenians in the Peloponnesian War; the 20

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dehumanizing treatment of enemies and captives by the Romans and their use as “circus animals” in the spectacles in the arena; the idea and practice of “holy war” by the monotheist religions resulting in their fateful practice of an exclusionary universalism; the Sinocentric worldview in the Chinese Empire giving rise to culturalist and racialist visions of the “barbarians” and resulting in different degrees of dehumanization in the Han,Tang, and Ming dynasties; and, finally, gender: women are seen as human, but compared to men theirs is a deficient humanity. To avoid an overly monolithic picture, discourses of common humanity and equality are briefly discussed as counterpoints to dehumanization. Chapter 3. László Kontler sketches an analytical scheme for investigating the development of notions of “humanity” (mankind, humanité, Menschheit) in modern European culture as a context for the study of dehumanization. He argues that the consideration of the diversity versus unity, and diversity within unity, of mankind was determined by 16th and 17th-century versions of three important interpretive frameworks: the temporalization of human difference, the historicization of nature, and steps toward the naturalization of man. Against this background, the Chapter offers an overview of the redrawing of the boundaries of the human in response to the experience of European penetration into other world regions, and internal intellectual developments from the Reformation through the revival of philosophical skepticism and the rise of the new science, to modern natural law. Throughout, thinking the human and dehumanization as its corollary were responding to particular experiences and developing within the three patterns of thought mentioned above.The quest for humanity remained a thoroughly contingent pursuit, and “man­ kind” an unstable notion, over several centuries of intense European engagement with the subject. Chapter 4. Silvia Sebastiani addresses what the ‘orangutan’ contributes to our understanding of Enlightenment ‘science of man.’ How was knowledge of apes related to the conceptual­ ization of humanity? In what sense, and to what extent, could the humanization of the ape affect the dehumanization of the human being? Her chapter deals with the multiple uses to which the orangutan was put during the 18th century, with a specific focus on Britain. Travelers, physicians, natural historians, and lawyers, while reshaping the boundaries between humans and apes, also divided human beings into different ‘races.’ What she tries to show in the chapter is an entwined process: the humanization of the orangutan went hand in hand with the dehumaniza­ tion of a part of humankind. At the same time as the human/animal divide loosened, the divide between human races sharpened and crystallized. From that time until today, human and social sciences have repeatedly challenged and reconceptualized the human/animal divide and the ‘race question.’ She contends that a longer chronology provides a more nuanced and complex understanding of this persistent problem in conceptualizing humanity. Chapter 5. Guido Abbattista presents a metanarrative of the living ethnic exhibitions from the point of view of their dehumanizing forms and effects. This phenomenon is analyzed through the constitutive aspects of its 19th- and early 20th-century variations, drawing a distinction between and exploring the features of the older form of the ‘freak shows’ and the modern version in the developing Western mass-communication society, public entertainments, business, and popular racism.The living ethnic exhibitions are illustrated in their complex relationships with science, public opinion, national identity building, and current ideas of civilization and historical time. Their contradictory and conflictual aspects are highlighted by taking into consideration the organizers’ intentions, the public’s reaction, and the protagonists’ behavior, showing how inad­ equate simplistic interpretations of a multifaceted phenomenon are. Finally, the chapter follows the history of living ethnic exhibitions until very recent times, suggesting that those forms of public spectacles, even if they have certainly changed in terms of features, contexts, and aims, have not completely disappeared to the extent that the Western treatment of human diversities still reveals exoticist, essentialist, racist, and dehumanizing attitudes. 21

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Chapter 6. Johannes Steizinger explores the ideological dimension of dehumanization in the context of National Socialism, focusing on the connection between concepts of humanity and dehumanizing images. National Socialism regarded itself as a political revolution, realizing a new concept of humanity. Nazi ideologues undergirded the self-understanding of National Socialism by developing racist anthropologies.The chapter examines two major strands of Nazi ideology, focusing on their diverging strategies of dehumanization, and arguing that they were dependent on different anthropological frameworks. Richard Walther Darré held a naturalistic concept of humanity and advanced biologistic forms of dehumanization. Alfred Rosenberg developed a dualistic anthropology that combined metaphysical and natural features. He dehumanized certain groups of people by reducing them to being human in a natural sense only. Moreover, Steizinger aims to show that the key motifs of these racist worldviews were prevalent in the scientific and philosophical debates on anthropology in early 20th-century Germany. He thus explores the general orientation of both the naturalistic and the anti-naturalistic strand in anthropological thought, unfolds the animalizing tendencies of these views, and emphasizes their conformity with the key motifs of Nazi ideology. The case of National Socialism should thus exemplify the dehumanizing potential of anthropological theories. Chapter 7. Erika Lorraine Milam argues that historians can better understand the intricate his­ tory by which accusations of “zoomorphism,” “biological determinism,” and “dehumanization” came to prominence in postwar and Cold War evolutionary theory by attending to changing definitions of what scientists meant by the phrase “human nature.” After the Second World War, biologists and anthropologists were keen to reconstruct the progressive evolutionary process by which humans had become truly human, and crafted a version of humanity’s past that led to an anti-racist present. During the 1960s and 1970s, a new generation of scientists writing for colloquial audiences imbued this new universal human nature with inhumanity, as Milam shows, speculating that in learning how to kill each other, humanity’s ancestors had sparked a series of physical and intellectual changes crucial to understanding modern humanity. Critics skeptical of this dark vision of anthropogenesis besmirched such theories as zoomorphic.When Edward O.Wilson then published Sociobiology in 1975, the outcry from his colleagues was shaped by their reactions to these earlier theories. Critics of the biological basis of human behavior mobilized a new descriptor—biological determinism—to conjoin their concerns over sexism, racism, and classism under this new conceptual umbrella. They suggested that comparisons to animal behavior could never capture the full scope of human nature, even if animals were used as foils to illuminate the fully human. In the 1980s, scientists linked earlier concerns with zoo­ morphism and biological determinism to emergent worries about dehumanization in late-Cold War evolutionary theory. Chapter 8. Nick Haslam traces the recent history of dehumanization scholarship and maps its current contours, in which psychology plays a dominant role. Over the past two decades in particular, dehumanization has emerged as a major focus of theoretical and empirical attention within that discipline.That focus has been especially keen in social psychology, the subdiscipline which addresses the embeddedness of human behavior in its interpersonal and group contexts. The social psychology literature on dehumanization is complex and expansive; and the chapter demonstrates some of the benefits, challenges, and limitations of investigating dehumanization through the lens of quantitative behavioral science. Haslam’s overview summarizes the history of the research tradition in psychology; the theoretical frameworks that have been elaborated; the wide range of definitions, conceptualizations, and measures that have been developed; the many topic domains that have been explored; and what the research purports to tell us about the causes and consequences of dehumanization.The chapter concludes with a discussion of four concerns raised by the current state of psychological research on dehumanization, and how they might be 22

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addressed within the emerging multidisciplinary field of dehumanization studies. The chapter pays special and repeated attention to the issue of breadth: the definitional, theoretical, methodo­ logical, and substantive diversity of existing work in the field of social psychology, the fact that this diversity is growing, and the difficulties this expansion may generate. Chapter 9. Edouard Machery starts with the assumption that dehumanization often involves a license to harm the dehumanized individuals. Because they are not humans, not full humans, deficient humans, or subhumans, dehumanized individuals can be harmed in a way that is not permissible with (full) human beings. That is, when people deliberate about what can be done to others, dehumanized individuals do not figure in their deliberation the way fully human individuals do; they are deprived of their moral standing. Machery’s contribution examines how people can be deprived of their moral standing. Recent work in psychology and experi­ mental philosophy suggests that moral standing is attributed to creatures that display one of two characteristics: agency and experience. Historical episodes of dehumanization illustrate how dehumanization often involves the denial of agency and experience. Chapter 10. Alice Crary works across a number of literatures—from moral philosophy, including animal ethics, to post-humanism, critical race theory, post-colonial theory, feminist theory, social philosophy, and liberal political theory—in discussing how the dehumanization of human beings and the hatred of animals are intertwined. Her guiding claim is that productive efforts to combat the subjugation of human groups need to challenge normative hierarchies that give animals lower moral standing. The chapter opens by mentioning some of the many—his­ torical and current—patterns of belief and practice in which groups of humans are subjugated by means of invidious comparisons to animals. Critics of “animalizing ideologies” frequently insist, in a manner that reinscribes the ideologies’ debasement of animals, that the targeted humans are superior to animals. This is unsurprising given the millennia-long history of conceiving human dignity as a matter of placement above the condition of animals. Nonetheless, the move ought to seem objectionable to activists and scholars who protest the animalization of human groups, not out of concern for animals, but solely because they believe in human moral equality. If left in place, images of animals as lesser beings saddle us with normative hierarchies that encourage further ideologies targeting vulnerable humans. So, Crary claims, preoccupation with the humans harmed by dehumanization through animalization ought to prompt us to inquire into the pos­ sibility of an account of animal moral standing that is consistent with—human—egalitarianism. Chapter 11. Robert A. Wilson treats dehumanization as a useful concept for understanding disability and eugenics and the relationship between them. His chapter provides a broad overview of the history of eugenics and the contemporary significance of both that history and eugenics itself with an eye to exploring the centrality of disability. After reprising the history of eugenics up until 1945 and outlining the ideas at the core of eugenics, he focuses in the remainder of the chapter on the perhaps surprisingly large part of that history that comes after 1945 and why dehumanization remains an unfortunately continuing issue for people living under regimes of ableism today across a variety of contexts. As he claims, eugenic and newgenic thinking continue to structure the challenges that people with disabilities, especially cognitive and psychiatric dis­ abilities, face in a world with enhanced capacity for technological intervention in reproductive decision-making. Chapter 12. Marie-Luisa Frick discusses the connection to human rights, defined as rights that people are entitled to simply because they are “human.” Although opening up a wide array of moral deliberation on the content and scope of certain rights—their mutual restrictions and the duties they imply as well as their concretization for certain groups of people—the principle right to have rights cannot be questioned without undermining the concept of human rights as such. Practices of and rationales for treating others as not (fully) human amount to exclusions 23

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preceding any infringements of particular human rights, stripping certain (groups of) individuals of their very human rights subjectivity. Being able to discern manifestations of such fundamental exclusions and to distinguish them from other (“lesser”) forms of rights violations is indispens­ able for purposes of human rights protections and advancement. Frick is particularly interested in the following question: When are people genuinely dehumanized and not merely discriminated against? Assuming that potential threats of dehumanization do not only come from “outside” human rights but already are invested in the idea of human rights as such, she also investigates the modes of dehumanization tied to definitions of the “human” in human rights. Chapter 13. Luigi Corrias’s contribution discusses dehumanization by legal means.While the law is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for dehumanization, Corrias’s chapter shows that dehumanization by law can be an important step in a dehumanization process.The chapter introduces the concept of legal dehumanization and discusses the closely related anthropology of modern law. A legal act is dehumanizing if and only if it is an indefensible infringement of legal values, where this infringement constitutes a violation of an individual or a group of people in their status of a full juridical person, making it possible to treat the victim(s) as subhuman. It also studies a number of cases in which legal dehumanization occurred, more specifically the Nuremberg laws, the apartheid regime of South Africa, and the torture memos. Finally, Corrias will look into the question how legal dehumanization might be reversed. Chapter 14. Andrea Timár engages with literary representations of the experience of perpetrators of dehumanization. Her chapter focuses on perpetrators of dehumanization who do not violate laws of their society (i.e., they are not criminals) but exemplify what Simona Forti, inspired by Hannah Arendt, calls “the normality of evil.” Through the parallel examples of Dezső Kosztolányi’s Anna Édes (1926) and Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing (1950), Timár first explores a possible clash between criminals and perpetrators of dehumanization, showing literature’s exceptional ability to reveal the gap between ethics and law. Second, she examines novels focalized through perpetrators and the difficult narrative empathy they pro­ voke, arguing that only the critical reading of these novels can make one engage with the potential perpetrator in oneself. As case studies, Timár examines Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), which may potentially turn its reader into an accomplice in the process of dehu­ manization, and J.M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986), which puts on critical display the dehumanizing potentials of both aesthetic representation and sympathy as imaginative violence. Third, she reads Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones [Les Bienveillantes, 2006], which can make the reader question, through the polyphony of the voice of its protagonist, the notions of narrative voice and readerly empathy, only to reveal that the difficulty involved in empathizing with perpet­ rator characters lies not so much in the characters’ being perpetrators, but rather in their being literary characters. Eventually,Timár briefly touches upon the problem of the aesthetic and the comic via Nabokov’s Lolita (1955) to ask whether one can avoid some necessarily dehuman­ izing aspects of humor. Chapter 15.Wulf D. Hund addresses the long history of racism, and how its different forms of discrimination against ‘barbaric,’ ‘impure,’ ‘pagan,’ ‘savage,’ and ‘racialized’ ‘others’ went along with various forms of dehumanization. The leveling of the social differentiation of its victims was common to all of these processes. The others were treated as an amorphous mass of inferior others. In comparison to them, the members of hierarchically structured societies could (and still can) imagine themselves as a superior community. This form of a shared identity does not delete the conditions of social domination and subordination in racist societies. As negative societalization, it establishes social affiliation by the degradation and exclusion of racially stigmatized others.The chapter discusses this correlation using the examples of four different forms of racist discrim­ ination: ancient slavery, early modern antisemitism, enlightened race theory, and racist fascism. 24

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Introduction

Chapter 16. Susan T. Fiske discusses the stereotype content model, which explores varieties of dehumanizing prejudice that all deny other people their full humanity, diminishing them by redu­ cing them to animals, robots, or objects. Each inflicts its own distinct damage.This chapter offers the stereotype content model as a framework for understanding this.As the chapter argues, cultures share knowable dimensions for differentiating societal groups. Among them are groups’ status and interdependence (cooperation and competition). Groups’ perceived place in the social struc­ ture then predicts their stereotype content; status predicts competence, and cooperation predicts warmth.The stereotype content model locates a society’s perceptions of its groups in a warmth-by­ competence space. For example, homeless people are allegedly neither competent nor warm (not trustworthy, sociable); they are dehumanized as disgusting and animalistic. Older people are seen as well-intentioned (warm) but incompetent; they are dehumanized as passive objects that evoke pity. Rich people are stereotypically competent but cold, enviable, yet evoking robots. Only the society’s ingroup is fully human, both competent and warm.This chapter also describes the nature of current evidence for the model from surveys and lab experiments. Many examples come from the extreme outgroups, the most dehumanized. Having summarized what the model says about dehumanization, the next section addresses what alternative theories have to say, and comments on points of consensus about the two primary dimensions and their nature.The closing sections discuss implications for dehumanization and interventions to rehumanize its targets. Chapter 17. Stéphanie Demoulin, Pierre Maurage, and Florence Stinglhamber take issue with the fact that dehumanization studies have largely focused on the perpetrator’s side of the inter­ action. In contrast, little is known about victims’ experiences of dehumanization instances—that is, metadehumanization—and about people’s propensity to self-dehumanize. In their chapter, they review the literature on dehumanization from a victim’s perspective and present a theoretical working model linking metadehumanization and self-dehumanization. According to this model, when interpersonal, situational, environmental, or cultural antecedents trigger the thwarting of a person’s fundamental needs, that person is likely to experience metadehumanization.The latter, in turn, leads to self-dehumanization to the extent that it is experienced as a situational and cross-interlocutors pervasive phenomenon. In addition, self-dehumanization can also result from the recognition of one’s immoral acts.The chapter ends with a discussion on the future of both self-dehumanization and metadehumanization research, and, centrally, on the need to systematize research theorizing and methods, and to explore underlying mechanisms of both processes. Chapter 18. Victoria M. Esses, Stelian Medianu, and Alina Sutter are concerned with the fact that refugees tend to be the targets of dehumanization, which may function to justify the poor treatment and exclusion that they face. In their chapter, they discuss the refugee situation world­ wide and the need for global involvement in refugee protection.They link this focus on refugees to the concept of dehumanization and discuss how common media portrayals of refugees— including their depiction as bogus claimants who cheat to gain entry to Western countries, and as terrorists who are a threat to receiving nations—may lead to the dehumanization of these individuals, which may, in turn, lead to their negative treatment and rejection.They then discuss the potential for the rehumanization of refugees, and the role of humanization in promoting fair treatment. This includes work on how system-sanctioned positive messages from political leaders can support the rehumanization of refugees and their asylum in Western nations.They conclude by discussing the implications of this work, and the need for further research in this area as a contribution to ameliorating the “refugee crisis.” Chapter 19. Maria Paola Paladino, Jeroen Vaes, and Jolanda Jetten start with the case of the social robot named Sophia, a highly sophisticated android, which was invited to join a meeting organized by the UN in 2017. Its appearance is that of a young woman; in addition, Sophia appears to be able to hold a conversation and display appropriate emotional reactions. Social 25

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robots such as Sophia generally elicit contrasting emotions: pride for the technological success that we as humans have reached goes hand in hand with fears and concerns that come with the idea that those mechanical agents—that look and behave as human—will soon be part of our everyday interactions. Relying on research in social psychology and on the uncanny “valley phenomenon” (introduced by Mori, 1970), this chapter focuses on those fears and explores the role that the resemblance of robots to humans—that is, “robot humanization”—might play. In the first part, the possibility that fears regarding the entrance of social robots into society at large are linked to the potential threat they pose to our conception of humanness and of the human identity are discussed. In the second part of their chapter, the perspective changes to focus on the limits of our cognitive system in dealing with high-humanlike robots, like androids. Focusing on recent research on the uncanny valley, they discuss the possibility that negative emotional reactions to androids are the result of more complex processing of high-humanlike mechanical agents.The chapter ends by discussing some of the societal implications of these two perspectives. Chapter 20. Sara Heinämaa and James Jardine demonstrate that both classical and existential phe­ nomenology offer analytical concepts that are of crucial pertinence and value to contemporary dehu­ manization research.They begin by outlining an account of dehumanization that distinguishes this phenomenon both from the general operation of objectification and from the violation of autonomy. What is essential to dehumanizing acts and practices they argue, is not objectification or the violation of autonomy per se, but rather a disregard for, and undermining of, the unique singularity of human persons. Moreover, it is proposed that dehumanization ought to be theorized as an intersubjective pro­ cess that also incorporates how the dehumanizing activity is experienced by the person dehumanized. Two concrete cases of dehumanizing treatment are then discussed in detail: colonial racism and gender hierarchization.The analytical concepts of inferiorization, epidermalization, and emotive projection are introduced to account for some of the specific features of these varieties of dehumanization.The chapter thus argues that dehumanization is not one unified phenomenon but a pattern of social dynamics that emerges in different guises relative to specific practical and historical contexts. Chapter 21. Mari Mikkola starts with the observation that dehumanization seemingly involves a complex of the following: an assault on human dignity, treating someone as a something or reducing someone to something, comparison of human beings to animals and inanimate objects, denial of agency and distinctly human capabilities, and a psychological attitude of con­ ceiving others as subhuman. Feminist philosophical discussions commonly treat dehumanization and objectification as being largely equivalent. Mikkola’s chapter outlines how this connected­ ness between dehumanization and objectification is usually understood, and then challenges the equation. In short, there is a difference between treating someone literally as something and treating them as if they are something, where the latter presupposes a prior recognition of another’s humanity to be reduced while the former does not. The chapter then advances two central views. First, we should not treat prominent feminist accounts of objectification as equivalent to dehumanization. Second, there is an odd ‘paradox of dehumanization,’ which ill fits these accounts of objectification: for dehumanization to involve denial of or disrespect toward important person-related capacities, one must first attribute those capacities to others in order to deny or disrespect them—one must acknowledge the humanity of another in order to dehumanize them.This further demonstrates that dehumanization is not equivalent to objectification. Chapter 22. Thomas Brudholm and Johannes Lang explore the relationship between hatred and dehumanization. They ask: what are the hateful aspects of dehumanization and the dehu­ manizing elements of hate? Is it conceivable that one can exist without the other? They consider three possible constellations: dehumanizing hatred, dehumanization devoid of hatred, and hatred without dehumanization.The analysis draws on a diverse and interdisciplinary range of sources, from the psychology of mass violence and the philosophy of emotion to victim testimony and 26

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Introduction

interviews with perpetrators of genocide. But, while the philosophical reflections stay close to concrete examples, the main purpose is conceptual: to engage with different ways of thinking about hatred, dehumanization, and how they might relate. The authors argue against recent scholarship that in problematic ways seems to reduce the complexity of hatred and dehumaniza­ tion. They object to claims that hatred is inherently dehumanizing, as well as to arguments which imply that dehumanization and hatred are mutually exclusive. Such claims, the authors conclude, lead to truncated views of hatred and dehumanization that either exaggerate or obscure the importance of these phenomena in the history of violence. Ultimately, their critical engagement with the literature leads Brudholm and Lang beyond a strictly phenomenological and conceptual discussion, and the chapter ends with normative reflections on the moral character of hate with or without dehumanization. For, can hatred, despite its dangerous and dehumanizing potentials, ever be part of a morally permissible or even virtuous response to dehumanization? Chapter 23. David Livingstone Smith addresses two important problems with the claim that we dehumanize others by conceiving of them as subhuman animals.“The problem of humanity,” is that dehumanizers implicitly or explicitly acknowledge the humanity of those whom they ostensibly regard as subhumans.“The problem of monstrosity,” is that dehumanizers often char­ acterize those whom they dehumanize not merely as subhuman animals, but as monstrous entities. Drawing on work in psychology, anthropology, and philosophy, Smith argues that the recognition of dehumanized people’s humanity and their transformation into monsters are both consequences of dehumanizers’ representations of them as human and subhuman simultaneously, and that this is caused by our automatic psychological disposition to recognize humanness conjoined with our tendency to epistemically defer to authority figures who tell us that some others are, despite appearances, subhuman animals. Chapter 24. Maria Kronfeldner discusses whether psychological essentialism is a necessary part of dehumanization. This involves different elements of essentialism, and a narrow and a broad way of conceptualizing psychological essentialism, the first akin to natural kind thinking, the second based on entitativity. She first presents authors that have connected essentialism with dehumanization. She then introduces the error theory of psychological essentialism regarding the category of the human, and distinguishes different elements of psychological essentialism. On that basis, Kronfeldner connects historical, socio-psychological, and philosophical insights in order to show that although essentialism can act as a catalyst for dehumanization, it is not neces­ sary for it. Examples relate to dehumanization in the context of colonialism and evolutionary thinking, to the history of dehumanizing women from Aristotle to 19th-century craniology, and to contemporary self-dehumanization and ‘lesser mind’ attribution. Chapter 25. Somogy Varga introduces three ideas to which a large part of the contemporary literature on dehumanization is committed to: first, dehumanization involves some degree of denial of humanness; second, such denial is to be comprehended in mental terms; and, third, whatever exact mechanisms underlie the denial of humanness, they belong in the realm of postperceptual processing. He then examines the third idea and argues that the awareness of minds might belong to perceptual processing. This paves the way for the possibility that dehumaniza­ tion might, at least in part, be a perceptual phenomenon, such that dehumanizers visually per­ ceive the dehumanized as exhibiting lesser-than-human minds.

Notes 1 For details about her respective philosophical theories, see Lang (2017), Corrias (2016, Corrias, this volume), Frick (2019, this volume). 2 See Kronfeldner (this volume) on how Allport is relevant with respect to essentialism and dehumaniza­ tion; see Brudholm and Lang (this volume) on how Goffman’s concept of stigma enters.

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Maria Kronfeldner 3 Military funding for psychology (including social psychology) has not been low during the Cold War era, at least not in the United States, where most of the authors working on dehumanization were based at that time. See Morawski and Bayer (2013), for evidence regarding social psychology. 4 See Opotow (2011: 213) for review and explicit use of this tripartite distinction.

5 See Haslam (2006), Haslam et al. (2007), Haslam and Loughnan (2014), Haslam and Stratemeyer (2016),

and Haslam (this volume). 6 With Paladino,Vaes, and Demoulin among the coauthors; see their contributions in this volume. 7 See Knobe and Prinz (2008), Sytsma and Machery (2012), Figdor (2018), Machery (this volume), and Varga (this volume). 8 See, for instance, Straus (2006) on the Rwandian genocide and Theriault (2007) on the Armenian geno­ cide. Many more could be added here; some mention dehumanization only in passing; e.g., Hinton (2013) on the Cambodian genocide. 9 See Schiebinger (1993), Sebastiani (2013, 2016, this volume). 10 See Pagden (1982), Jahoda (1998), Buchan and Andersson (2019), and Kontler (this volume). 11 See Abulafia (2008) and Stuurman (2017, this volume). 12 See Corbey (2005), Hund et al. (2016), and Sebastiani (2016, this volume). 13 See Abbattista (2011, 2013, 2014, this volume) and Blanchard et al. (2011). 14 See Gould (1987), Schiebinger (1993),Tuana (1993), Kontler (this volume), Kronfeldner (this volume), and Sebastiani (2016, this volume). 15 For philosophy, see Taylor (1994), Honneth (1992), or Fraser (2000); see Demoulin et al. (this volume) on how it is studied as part of social psychology. 16 See Bleiker et al. (2013) and Musolff (2015) for media studies, and Tirrell (2012, 2018), Stanley (2017), and Jeshion (2018) for philosophy of language. 17 See LeMoncheck (1985), Nussbaum (1995a), Langton (2009),Vaes et al. (2011), Mikkola (2011, 2016), Manne (2016, 2018), and Tipler and Ruscher (2019). Mikkola (this volume) summarizes the debates. 18 See Kittay (2009), O’Brien (2013), Keith and Keith (2013), and Crary (2016, 2018, this volume). 19 See Sebastiani (2013, this volume), Steizinger (2018, this volume), and Kronfeldner (2018, this volume). 20 See Haslam (this volume), Demoulin et al. (this volume), Fiske (this volume), Machery (this volume), and Varga (this volume). 21 See Esses et al. (2001, 2013); see Esses et al. (this volume). 22 See, for instance, Fontesse et al. (2019), Luna et al. (2019). 23 See Capozza et al. (2016), Crary (2016, 2018, this volume), and Wilson (2018, this volume). 24 See, for instance,Wiener et al. (2014). 25 See, Harris and Fiske (2006); Fiske (this volume). 26 See, for instance, Fasoli et al. (2016). 27 See, for instance, Costello and Hodson (2014) or McLoughlin and Over (2017). 28 See also Brudholm (2015) on monstrification as a key form of dehumanization in genocides, building on Žižek (2005) and others. 29 See Brudholm (2010) for an in-depth discussion of the concept of hatred. 30 See Costello and Hodson (2010) or Vaes et al. (2010) for how it connects to dehumanization. 31 See also Harris (2017) on neurology, dehumanization, and flexibility. 32 See Lang (2010, 2017, 2020), Theriault (2007), Weissmann (2015), Manne (2016, 2018), Steizinger (2018), and Enock et al. (draft). See also Brudholm and Lang (this volume), Mikkola (this volume), and Steizinger (this volume). 33 See Henrich et al. (2010) on such cultural relativity. 34 See Haraway (1991), Hayles (1999), Esposito (2014), and Peterson (2018). 35 See Antony (1998, 2000) for a classic take on that; see Donnelly (2013) or Frick (2019) for overview.

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Maria Kronfeldner Timár, A. 2015. A Modern Coleridge: Cultivation, Addiction, Habits. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. ———. 2019. “Dehumanizáció: Az Elkövető Alakja.” Helikon 65 (1), 1–10. ———. 2020. “Dehumanization in Literature and the Figure of the Perpetrator.” In The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, edited by M. Kronfeldner, 214–28. London and New York: Routledge. (this volume). Tipler, C. N. and Ruscher, J. B. 2019. “Dehumanizing Representations of Women: The Shaping of Hostile Sexist Attitudes through Animalistic Metaphors.” Journal of Gender Studies 28 (1), 109–18. Tirrell, L. 2012. “Genocidal Language Games.” In Speech and Harm: Controversies Over Free Speech, edited by I. Maitra and M. K. McGowan, 174–221. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2018. “Toxic Speech: Inoculations and Antidotes.” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 56 (Supplement), 116–44. Tuana, N. 1993. The Less Noble Sex: Scientific, Religious, and Philosophical Conceptions of Woman’s Nature. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Vaes, J., Heflick, N. A. and Goldenberg, J. L. 2010. “‘We Are People’: Ingroup Humanization as an Existential Defense.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 98 (5), 750–60. Vaes, J., Paladino, P. and Puvia, E. 2011. “Are Sexualized Women Complete Human Beings? Why Men and Women Dehumanize Sexually Objectified Women.” European Journal of Social Psychology 41 (6), 774–85. Varga, S. 2017. “The Case for Mind Perception.” Synthese 194 (3), 787–807. ———. 2020. “Could Dehumanization Be Perceptual?” In The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, edited by M. Kronfeldner, 378–92. London and New York: Routledge. (this volume) ———. 2020. “Toward a Perceptual Account of Mindreading.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (2), 380–401. Vetlesen, A. J. 2005. Evil and Human Agency: Understanding Collective Evildoing. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press. Volpato, C., Durante, F., Gabbiadini, A., Andrighetto, L. and Silvia, M. 2010. “Picturing the Other: Targets of Delegitimization across Time.” International Journal of Conflict and Violence 4 (2), 269–87. Voskuhl, A. 2013. Androids in the Enlightenment: Mechanics, Artisans, and Cultures of the Self. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Weissmann, M. 2015. “Organisierte Entmenschlichung: Zur Produktion, Funktion und Ersetzbarkeit sozialer und psychischer Dehumanisierung in Genoziden.” In Soziologische Analysen des Holocaust, 79–128. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Wiener, R. L., Gervais, S. J., Brnjic, E. and Nuss, G. D. 2014. “Dehumanization of Older People: The Evaluation of Hostile Work Environments.” Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 20 (4), 384–97. Williams, T., and Neilsen, R. 2016. “‘They Will Rot the Society, Rot the Party, and Rot the Army’*: Toxification as an Ideology and Motivation for Perpetrating Violence in the Khmer Rouge Genocide?” Terrorism and Political Violence 31 (3), 494–515. Wilson, R. A. 2018. The Eugenic Mind Project. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ———. 2020. “Dehumanization, Disability, and Eugenics.” In The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, edited by M. Kronfeldner, 173–86. London and New York: Routledge. (this volume). Wokler, R. 1988. “Apes and Races in the Scottish Enlightenment: Monboddo and Kames on the Nature of Man.” In Philosophy and Science in the Scottish Enlightenment, edited by Peter Jones, 145–68. Edinburgh: J. Donald Publishers. Wolfe, C. 2010. What Is Posthumanism? Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Wyckoff, J. 2014. “Linking Sexism and Speciesism.” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 29 (4), 721–37. Žižek, S. 2005. “Neighbors and Other Monsters: A Plea for Ethical Violence.” In Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology, with a New Preface, edited by Žižek S., L S. Eric, and R. Kenneth, 134–90. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Zunshine, L. 2006. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.

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PART I

Oscillating boundaries, dimensions,

and hierarchies of humanity

in historical contexts

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2

DEHUMANIZATION BEFORE

THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE

Siep Stuurman

2.1 Introduction Dehumanization is a modern term, which can be traced back to the early 19th century. The Merriam-Webster dictionary lists 1818 as the first occurrence in English of the verb “dehumanize.” The absence of the term, however, does not imply that ideas and discourses we nowadays subsume under the generic term of dehumanization are not found in earlier historical periods.To be able to identify such ideas and discourses, I propose to define dehumanization as the antonym of common humanity. Common humanity I define as culturally significant similarity. Rather than simply given in “nature,” it is an invention, a proposal to value commonalities as more deeply anchored in human nature than differences (Stuurman 2017: 1–6). Dehumanization inverts this move: it refers to cer­ tain, real or imagined, attributes of people to exclude them from common humanity. The invention of common humanity was by no means self-evident. At the dawn of human history, before the invention of agriculture and writing, the inferiority and the enslavement of captured strangers were self-evident. So was the subjection of women (Flannery and Marcus 2012). It is only against the background of generalizing notions of common humanity that dehu­ manization becomes a historically significant intellectual move.

2.2 Four varieties of dehumanization Dehumanization always operates with dichotomies. The first is the civilized versus the savage, defining the “savages” by what they lack; that is, by the varying attributes that the civilized regard as essential to being fully human. The Greeks believed that agriculture, cities, seafaring, assemblies, laws, and justice were the main features of human civilization. Homer’s Cyclopes, as we will shortly see, are defined by the absence of those properties. The Chinese theorized a civilization not only in terms of agriculture, cities, and houses, but also by writing, and finally by the correct observation of sincere respectfulness and justice.The savages are often portrayed as close to animals or even with an animal ancestry. The Romans and the Chinese, like the other great empires of antiquity, regarded themselves as the bearers of a civilizing mission. But the more bestial the savages were believed to be, the less likely the prospect of civilizing them became. Nonetheless, we should not assume that all barbarians were depicted as beastly savages. Greek, Roman, and Chinese historians respected some, but not all, barbarians and were capable of imagining how the barbarians looked back at the empires. 39

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The second dichotomy focuses on religion. Greco-Roman polytheism was based on the trans­ latability of the gods and could assimilate the gods of others into their pantheon. The Chinese “tian” (“heaven”) is an immanent cosmological principle rather than a personalized “god.”The ancestral spirits worshipped by the Chinese are “dead people” rather than ghosts. In both the Greco-Roman and the Chinese cases religion is conceived as an attribute of civilization rather than a transcendent “higher reality.” Monotheism, however, represents a radical rupture. Its kernel is a linkage between two dichoto­ mies.The first one pits monotheists against idolaters, while the second pits the adherents of the true faith against all others, who are living in sin and darkness. Because monotheists believe that all human beings are created by their God, they seldom liken people to animals, let alone give them an animal ancestry. Christianity and Islam are exclusionary universalisms.The idolaters face a choice between three alternatives: conversion, emigration, or death. Islam leaves some room for other “peoples of the book” but they remain second-rate denizens of Islamic lands. Christian attitudes to non-Christians are even harsher: they range from forced emigration and extermin­ ation (as in the Spanish Reconquista) to temporary favors combined with intermittent terror and other dehumanizing policies (as against the Jews). The third dichotomy pits “us” against “enemies.” “Us” can be a city, an ethnos, a state or an empire.Wars were frequent and vanquished enemies were seen as less than fully human.This type of dehumanization differs from the foregoing in that it happens in actu and does not depend on any systematic discourse about the “otherness” of enemies. Secondly, it is ubiquitous. In all the cases discussed earlier, enemies could be killed or enslaved. For the Romans, the friend versus enemy dichotomy was probably the most important one. They not only killed enemies in battles but also frequently exterminated entire tribes and cities. But the conviction that the victors wielded an arbitrary power over the lives, lands, and goods of the vanquished was found in all continents and climes. Slavery was then theorized as the reward of the victors for not killing the vanquished. The fourth dichotomy pits men, who are conceived as fully human, against women, whose humanity is seen as flawed, dangerous, and questionable. Hesiod’s didactic poem Works and Days— roughly contemporary with Homer’s Odyssey—combines a rather inclusive and anti-aristocratic vision of humanity, highlighting the toil and trouble of the peasantry, with a vicious misogyny. The gods sent Pandora, a being “with a dog’s mind and a thievish character” to bring baneful evils to mortal men (Hesiod, Works and Days, lines 67–68). In the Theogony, Pandora is defined as a “kalon kakon,” a “beautiful evil” which forever disturbs the social order and unbalances the male mind (Canevaro 2013). Pandora calls to mind the role of Eve in the Hebrew Bible. In Genesis, woman is created after Adam and then commits the first (“original”) sin.We should not, however, conceive of Christian literature as a monolithic mass of misogyny. In medieval Europe several pro-women counter-readings of Genesis circulated, and in the anagogical reading Eve announces the future appearance of Mary (Blamires 1997: ch. 4). In sum, women are depicted as a necessary evil, needed for procreation and as the servants of men, but they do not partake in the full humanity enjoyed by the men. To be sure, this was the dominant view in most civilizations before the Columbian exchange, but there were always exceptions, such as female monarchs and Plato’s ideal city where women could belong to the ruling elite of philosophically trained guardians.

2.3 The first “savages”: The Homeric Cyclopes Homer’s story of the encounter between Odysseus and the Cyclopes is a good starting point to inquire into the dialectic of common humanity and dehumanization.Approaching the island of the Cyclopes, Odysseus declares that he wants to find out if they are benevolent and God-fearing, or 40

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“arrogant, wild, and unjust” (Odyssey: IX, 175–6).Admittedly, Homer acknowledges Polyphemos’ stature as a son of the sea-god Poseidon, but his portrayal of the Cyclopes’ way of life is predicated on a series of negations: they have no agriculture, no cities, no ships, no assemblies, no laws, and no justice; they do not communicate with other peoples.Worse is to come: they do not care for one another; they are not part of a community but a collection of solitary individual beings. Finally, their cannibalism—at each mealtime Polyphemos devours two Greeks—and their arrogant con­ tempt for the justice of Zeus identify them as cruel aliens dwelling beyond the abode of humanity. All human beings, Homer tells his audience, “need the gods,” but the Cyclopes loudly proclaim their godless pride. To escape being swallowed by Polyphemos the Greeks finally put out the drunken Cyclopes’ single eye with a burning stick.To maim or kill a sleeping enemy was dishon­ orable, but in the case of a “wild” and “monstrous” being it was justified. Polyphemos is treated as the Greeks would treat any ferocious animal. Here, Homer’s tale resonates with a recurrent theme in Greek mythology, the struggle with wild nature, in which humans emerge victorious by means of their community spirit and superior intelligence (Plato, Protagoras, 322A-323A), Homer’s standard of civilization is the emerging world of the polis and the seafaring peoples of the eastern Mediterranean (Raaflaub 1993). It includes the Trojans who are “familiar” enemies sharing the Greek code of warfare. As the moving final scenes of the Iliad demonstrate, Trojans and Greeks understand one another’s feelings of grief over fallen sons and comrades. By contrast, the amoral and undisciplined violence of the Cyclopes depicts them as dwelling in an altogether different universe, far beyond, or below, the Greek and Trojan understandings of what it means to be human.The Cyclopes are depicted as “remote enemies” living on the rim of the known world. In that sense they are akin to Aristotle’s “natural slaves.”

2.4 “Natural slavery” and the extermination of defeated enemies in Greek antiquity Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery is perhaps the most influential variety of dehumanization in Greco-Roman antiquity (and as we know, it was used in the Spanish conquest of America to justify the enslavement of the Native Americans). It is notoriously vague, but its relatively coherent core is basically a discourse about foreigners who are lacking the faculty of deliberative reason.The majority of Athenian slaves were imported from barbarian lands, most of them from Thrace,Asia Minor, and the Black Sea region.Aristotle argued that such people were human but not fully rational, and hence unfit to rule themselves, so that it was in their own interest to be subjected to rational—that is, Greek—masters. However, the equation of the barbarian with unreason was contested in Greek historiog­ raphy, ethnography, and philosophy.“Barbarian” could simply stand for “non-Greek,” but it could also mean “non-civilized” and “wild.” In the opening sentences of his Histories, Herodotus put Greeks and barbarians on an equal footing, as having performed “great and marvelous deeds” which deserve to be remembered by posterity. Some of the Sophists—philosophers living in the same age as Herodotus—criticized the essentialist view of barbarians that Aristotle would embrace in the next century. One of them, Antiphon, declared,“The laws of nearby communi­ ties we know and respect, but those of communities far away we neither know nor respect.We thereby have become barbarous toward each other, when by nature (phusis) we are all at birth in all respects equally capable of being both barbarians and Greeks.” (Gagarin and Woodruff 1997: 244). Another sophist, Alkidamas, went so far as to condemn slavery as unnatural. How widespread such condemnations of slavery were we cannot know, but Aristotle’s theory of nat­ ural slavery, intended to refute unnamed critics (Aristotle, Politics, 1254b-1255a), suggests that the critique of slavery was important enough to merit an answer (Garnsey 1996: 75–77). 41

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While dehumanization thus played a major role in the legitimation of the enslavement of non-Greeks, it could not be used to justify the enslavement of Greeks by other Greeks.A famous example was the genocidal policy of the Athenians against the inhabitants of the island of Melos in the Peloponnesian War.The Melians sought to remain neutral in the war between Athens and Sparta, but they were confronted with an Athenian ultimatum that left them the choice between taking the Athenian side or total annihilation.The Melians fought back, but were defeated.The Athenians then killed all the adult men, and sold the women, children, and oldsters into slavery. Melos thus being emptied of its population, the Athenians dispatched a force of five hundred colonists to the island. It was a classic case of extermination followed by colonization.The Melians belonged to the same Greek ethnos, the same political culture, and the same polytheistic religion as the Athenians, so that it made no sense to dehumanize them in a literal sense.The Athenians justified their cruel policy by the right of the strongest in wartime (Thucydides:V, lxxxix).This can be seen as another variety of dehumanization.Vanquished enemies were despised as “losers” who had lost their manly honor and whose very lives were at the mercy of the victors.

2.5 The dehumanization of the vanquished in the Roman Empire Roman imperialism operated on a grander scale and accordingly made far more victims. Even so, its treatment of the vanquished closely resembled the Athenian attitude to the Melians.As Rome’s first emperor, Octavianus Augustus, stated in his notorious political testament, “Wars, both civil and foreign I undertook throughout the world … and when victorious I spared all citizens who sued for pardon. The foreign nations which could with safety be pardoned I preferred to save rather than destroy [“excidere”]” (Augustus 1924: ch. 3). Going by how the Romans treated defeated enemies they considered dangerous, the word “excidere” is best translated as “exter­ minate.”According to Paul Veyne, the Roman emperors and their generals considered extermin­ ating enemies a normal practice needing no special justification, while sparing them testified to Roman humanitas and magnanimity (Veyne 1993: 354–55). Nonetheless, the ruthless annihila­ tion of Carthage and Corinth in 146 BCE shocked many contemporaries. Scipio Aemilianus not only obliterated the city of Carthage but also killed most of its inhabitants and sold the rest into slavery.To the Carthaginians who accused the Romans of breaking their promise that Carthage would be permitted to live under its own laws if it accepted Roman supremacy, the consul Censorinus gave the cynical answer that “we considered you to be Carthage, not the ground where you live” (Miles 2011: 341). Most Roman historians, however, did not downgrade conquered nations and tribes as sub­ human or beastly. On the contrary, they admired their courage and love of liberty, but invariably observed that theirs was a primitive liberty, which was incapable of constructing well-ordered states (Adler 2011). Neither did it stop them from endorsing the killing of entire tribes. Recounting the conquest of the greater part of Britain by Agricola,Tacitus mentions in passing the extermin­ ation of an entire tribe, but refrains from any moral judgment. Likewise, the moderate and ben­ evolent governance of conquered provinces is lauded as a fitting way to subject them to Roman rule. On the other hand,Tacitus was capable of imagining what Roman imperialism looked like when you found yourself at its receiving end. He gave Calgacus, the leader of the Caledonian’s attempt to stop the Roman northward advance, an eloquent eve-of-battle speech in which he decries the Romans as “robbers of the world”: “To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they mis­ name Empire: they make a desolation and they call it peace” (Agricola: ch. 30). Tacitus himself has harsh words for the rape of native women by Roman troops, condemning the sexual misconduct of officers, calling to mind his praise of Germanic marital fidelity, which he contrasted with the loose morals of the Roman upper classes. But on the manifest destiny of the 42

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Roman Empire he stands firm.The Roman answer to Calgacus’ critique is provided by Tacitus in his discussion of the Batavian insurrection under Julius Civilis.There, he has the Roman general Cerialis, who subdued the revolt, deliver a speech in defense of Roman conquest.The battle cry of “freedom,” Cerialis declares, is merely a specious word used by petty chieftains who seek to grab power for themselves.The Roman Empire stands for order, and if the Romans were to be driven out, the outcome would be an epoch of “wars among all peoples” (Tacitus, Histories: IV, 73–74).Tacitus gives voice to the barbarian view, but Rome has the last word. The critical views of empire voiced by Tacitus and other Roman historians did not extend to the militaristic ethos that pervaded the Roman state and the mentality of the Roman people and upper classes. To merit an official “triumph” in Rome, a commander had to prove that at least five thousand enemy soldiers were killed in battle. Military exploits were essential for a successful political career (North 1981: 1–6). For inhabitants of the provinces, the army was the principal avenue of upward social mobility (Miles 1990: 643).The Roman warrior ethos is attested in the way the vanquished were put on display in public triumphs, friezes, and images of captives on columns, often showing them in manacles and chains: captives being beheaded, trodden upon, lying prostrate at the feet of a grim Roman, or pulled along on a chain around the neck.These pictures display torture, death, enslavement, and, occasionally, pardon.Whatever fate is in store for them, the captives are always shown in humiliating postures (Bradley 2004). The arena provides us with another window on the mindset of the Roman people.Watching barbarians fighting one another to the death, or in mortal combat with tigers and lions—that was the Roman idea of fun. In an important essay, Erik Gunderson underlines the banality of the arena. Its enactments of deadly violence are not excesses or sublimations, but they represent the deep codes of Roman normality. Seating in the arena followed the hierarchies of rank, status, ethnicity, and gender. For most spectators the games were the only occasion they would actually get to see the emperor.The objects on display in the arena were mostly foreign tribes, captives, and slaves. Fighting with animals or fighting one another, Roman entertainment placed them in the position of circus animals. Nero used the arena for mass executions of Christians, who were dressed in the hides of beasts. And if a gladiator showed real brilliance he could be depicted as a sort of noble savage. At the other extreme were scenes of deviant sexuality, with human females being buggered by animals (Gunderson 1996). To sum up, dehumanizing non-Romans, and occasionally Romans themselves, was a routine element of the Roman society and state that manifested itself at every level: in mass killings of people defined as “enemies,” in the destruction and extermination of entire tribes and cities, in the humiliating treatment meted out to captives, and in the scenes of violence and death enacted in the arena.

2.6 Monotheism and Holy War: A new kind of dehumanization The three great monotheisms introduced a new variety of dehumanization, relegating all people who did not accept their messages to the status of unbelievers, heretics, idolaters, and more gen­ erally, as “enemies of God.”The Scriptures of the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslim’s recon­ figure the Greco-Roman Fatum as the providence of an omnipotent God who will sooner or later pass judgment on those who defy his commands. And the first command is not to serve other gods. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have all practiced violence against people, which could be depicted as “religious others.” Deuteronomy orders the Israelites to exterminate the inhabitants of the lands God has bequeathed on them: “Thou shalt save alive nothing that breathed. But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the 43

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Perizzites, the Hevites, and the Jebusites” (Deuteronomy 20: 16–18).This is a language of Holy War. Israel and Judea, however, were small states that suffered defeats and revenge at the hands of the Babylonian,Assyrian, and Roman Empires. Even so, there is evidence for massacres as well as forced conversion of Christians in the late 5th and early 6th centuries when the Jewish kingdom of Himyar ruled in the Yemen (Bowersock 2013: 85). These events called forth military inter­ vention from Christian Ethiopia that eventually led to the establishment of a Christian state in southern Arabia. The early Christians, the “Jesus people,” began as a Jewish sect but in the end gave rise to a new religion.The majority of the Jews, however, did not acknowledge Jesus and the Christian gospels accused them of complicity in the crucifixion.A fervent anti-Judaism became a core element of Christian identity. Like the Jews, the Christians were often victimized by the Romans, but after the conversion of Constantine (312 CE) Christianity became the majority religion of the empire. The transition from a persecuted to a persecuting religion was not a smooth one, but by the early 5th century the Christians had the upper hand. Henceforth, pagans, Jews, and Manicheans had to confront state persecution and Christian mob violence. Terms like “mad,” “laughable,” “loathsome,” “disgusting,” “wicked,” “ignorant,” and the like were routinely used by Christians speaking or writing about non-Christians. On top of that, Christian leaders admonished emperors as well as angry mobs to tear down the ancient temples (MacMullen 1997: 13). The New Testament is not a warlike text, but Christian exegetes always found passages that could be read as supporting forcible conversion.The most notorious one is the parable of the great supper in Luke’s gospel. Jesus tells the story of a man who had prepared a supper and invited all people in the neighborhood, the poor as well as the rich, to come in, but many excused them­ selves by other pressing business.Then the man said to his servants,“Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled” (Luke 14: 23). In the exegesis of the Latin Vulgate, this was the “compelle intrare” passage, and the supper an allegory of the Christian community.Thus, a moral parable could be turned into a brief for forcible conversion. Islam was even more closely tied to empire than was Christianity. From its inception, Islam spread out of Arabia as an integral element of the great Arabic conquests that would make Islam into the central civilization of the Old World, the only one that established contacts with all others. However, the vast empires created by the Arabs soon faced new problems of ruling and community-making. How and by what means could the new Islamic rectitude be guaranteed in such a fragmented and heterogeneous commonwealth? To begin with, the peoples of the book were to be tolerated: “The believers, the Jews, the Christians, and the Sabians—all those who believe in God and the Last Day and do good—will have their rewards with their Lord” (Quran 2: 62).This may sound tolerant, but the Quran is replete with polemics against the Trinity which Muslims tended to regard as a sort of soft polytheism. The relationship with the Jews was also deeply ambivalent. Muslims found common ground in the strong monotheism of the Torah, but they reproached the Jews that they had not accepted Muhammad’s message when he preached in their midst.This probably refers to the armed clashes in Medina where Muhammad expulsed two Jewish clans and executed the men of a third while the women and children were enslaved (Schama 2013: 239; Donner 2006: 26–27). In the early phase of Arab conquest, the Zoroastrians in Iran were also considered a “people of the book,” but not on an equal footing with Jews and Christians. From the 8th century onward, as Arabic became the language of law and administration, and only Muslims were eligible for high political office, conversion to Islam accelerated and in the 9th century Iran had become a Muslim country (Khanbaghi 2006: 20–27).A far harsher treatment was meted out to people who definitely were not peoples of the book, like the Buddhists in Central Asia and the tribes and nations of Western Africa.While the peoples of the book could live in Muslim lands organized as 44

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communities with their own laws and customs, the idolaters—as all other religions were called— faced a choice between conversion, death, or emigration. Even so, the native religions of India had to be tolerated out of necessity, for the Mughals who ruled India in the 16th century faced an overwhelming majority of Hindus.That accounts for the pragmatic policy of toleration of the Mughal king Akbar (r. 1556–1605 CE). While Jews were more often persecuted than persecutors, Christianity and Islam have practiced persecution as well as coercive conversion on a huge scale. Both were marked by a combination of exclusion and universalism.The two great world religions were militant universalisms, ardent to bring their message to the ends of the world, but in their ardor to extirpate heretics and to punish defectors they were also exclusionary universalisms. Can we conceptualize these practices as instances of dehumanization, and, if so, what kind of dehumanization? Generally, non-Muslims in Muslim lands felt a basic insecurity about their status and belonging. The Dhimmi, all those who had permission to live in Muslim lands, were subject to a number of limitations: they had to pay a poll tax, they were not allowed to manifest their creed in an osten­ tatious manner, they had to respect specific dress codes identifying their creed, Dhimmi men could not marry Muslim women (while Muslim men were permitted to take a Dhimmi spouse), they were not permitted to possess Muslim slaves, and they could not ride horses.This amounted to series of daily humiliations. The severity with which these rules were implemented varied according to place and time, increasing the sense of legal and economic vulnerability among the Dhimmi (Entry “Dhimma, Dhimmi,” Dictionaire du Coran, 215–217). Christian strictures on the sojourn and activities of non-Christians were even more oppressive. While the Dhimmi status guaranteed the right to sojourn, own landed and mobile property, and enter most trades and professions, in Christian lands non-Christians did not enjoy any permanent rights. What rights they had were “favors” that could always be revoked by princes and urban magistrates.The most notable religious minority in Christendom were the Jews. In Carolingian times they were tolerated and sometimes even welcomed. But with the onset of the Crusades a new fanatical and murderous anti-Judaism manifested itself.The first Crusade (1095) inaugurated a recurrent pattern of organized mob violence, often under the leadership of ruthless captains whose hatred of the Jews was only matched by their insatiable greed. From the turn of the 11th century, mass murders and pillage of Jewish goods and houses became commonplace, espe­ cially in times of material hardship and a mood of religious fervor; for instance, during the anni­ hilation of the Albigensian heresy (Poliakov 1981: 239–259; Schama 2013: 295–310). Henceforth, many states and cities denied the Jews entry in their territory.Where they were per­ mitted to settle, they were subjected to daily humiliations, such as dress codes and restrictions on where they could live. Most guilds excluded Jews. Many cities confined them to ghettoes. In times of economic hardship, natural catastrophes, and war, the Jews were often used as scapegoats, which frequently resulted in large-scale pogroms. Courts and great port cities intermittently attracted immigration by Jewish bankers and financial brokers, because they had access to international networks, which were needed for the financing of wars. But even the privileges of those “useful” Jews could always be revoked and their properties, however grand, were not protected by the law. In short, the Jews in Christian lands suffered daily humiliations that could always flow over into terror. Because it was anchored in Sacred History, their exclusion had greater ontological depth than the exclusion of defeated enemies by the Romans. It had more affinities with the exclusion of savages, which were denied full humanity because they stood “outside civilization.” The Jews in Christendom were caught in a harsher type of dehumanization than the peoples of the book in Muslim lands.The latter enjoyed the right to be what they were and to live where they lived.The Jews in Christian lands had no rights to stand upon.Their whole existence rested on always revocable favors and dispensations. 45

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2.7 Sinocentric dehumanization The Chinese name for “China” was “the central state(s)” (the plural or singular of Chinese nouns is determined by the context; before the Qin unification, central “China” was divided into several states). China claimed to be the center of “All Under Heaven” from which “civ­ ilization” radiated outward. The Han dynasty, which consolidated the Chinese empire in the 2nd century BCE, regarded itself as the cultural center of the world surrounded by concentric circles of barbarians (Wang 1999). Several Chinese terms for “foreign peoples” carried deroga­ tory overtones suggesting that they were like animals or even descended from animals (Poo 2005: 45–46). The barbarians were often divided into two categories. To the first category, the more remote peoples, an essentialist alterity was ascribed while the second was open to a civilizing mission and might eventually be included in an expanding Chinese cultural space (Brindley 2003: 29). One of the Chinese classics, the Book of Rites (Liji), discusses the remote barbarians in harsh words: “[They] all had their several natures, which they could not be made to alter … some of them ate their food without its being cooked … Some of them did not eat grain-food … they dwelt in caves” (Poo 2005: 113). For Mencius, who around 320 BCE put together a systematic social and political philosophy on the basis of Confucius’ thought, the relationship between China and the tribes and nations around it was fundamentally asymmetrical: “I have heard of the Chinese converting barbarians to their ways, but not of their being converted to barbarian ways” (Mencius III,A, 4).We should keep in mind that this was a normative and not a factual statement.The wheel, wheeled vehicles, and the craft of horse-riding came to China from the Eurasian Steppe, demonstrating that the routine association of the northern barbarians with backwardness was not borne out by history. Even so, Mencius’ conceit was no simple phantasm. It centered more on morality and the art of governance than on technology.“At court,” he declared,“rank is supreme; in the village, age; but for assisting the world and ruling over the people it is virtue” (Mencius: II, B, 2). We should not model the Chinese state as “absolutism” or “oriental despotism.” Admittedly, punishments were often draconic, but the Chinese imperial regime after the downfall of the Qin Dynasty (221–207 BCE), which governed by terror, is better characterized as “governing by means of civilization.”Tung Chung Shu, the chief architect of the canonization of Confucianism in the early Han dynasty, formulated the pithy maxim: “Heaven generates humanity not on behalf of the king, but on the contrary, Heaven establishes the king on behalf of humanity” (Queen 1996: 239). My examples are from the Han (207 BCE-220 CE), the Tang (618–907 CE), and the Ming (1368–1644 CE). In an important article on nature and nurture in Chinese history, Peter Purdue has distinguished two approaches to otherness: culturalism and racialism. While the former explains differences environmentally and historically, the latter foregrounds descent and bodily features, often by comparing barbarians to animals or giving them an animal ancestry. The second approach was obviously dehumanizing while the first recognized the humaneness of foreign peoples but regarded them, nonetheless, as objects of a Chinese civilizing mission. Chinese culturalism assumed that all peoples could become civilized in Chinese terms by adopting “correct” social and ritual practices. Purdue concludes that the Han displayed a mix of racialist and culturalist attitudes, the Tang was more culturalist, while the Ming was dominated by racialism (Purdue 2009: 253–254). For Mencius, the move from Chinese to barbarian customs was tantamount to unreason. However, Sima Qian, the first Chinese grand historian who around 100 BCE compiled a his­ tory of China from its mythical beginnings to his own time, relates that several high-ranking Chinese went over to the side of the Xiongnu, the federation of steppe peoples confronting China along the Great Wall. The Xiongnu were China’s most redoubtable enemies. Over long 46

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periods, the empire paid them tribute to stop their incursions into China. Sima Qian’s Xiongnu chapter begins with the observation that throughout Chinese history the northern nomads have been “a source of constant worry and harm.”Then the reader is presented with a series of nega­ tive statements: “They move about … and have no walled cities or fixed dwellings, nor do they engage in any kind of agriculture … They have no writing.” The Xiongnu engage in raiding and marauding expeditions: “This seems to be their inborn nature” (Shiji 110 = Sima Qian 1993: 129).This recalls Homer on the Cyclopes. It seems to dehumanize the steppe peoples by representing them as long-standing enemies and their way of life as an inversion of Chinese “civ­ ilization.”This may indicate a racialist approach, but the main body of the historical ethnography of the Xiongnu takes us in a quite different direction. Sima Qian relates that Hann Xin, the appointee of the first Han emperor to govern one of the border provinces, went over to the Xiongnu side when they invaded his province. Soon thereafter, a number of Han generals took the side of the nomads.The move Mencius deemed unthinkable was thus in fact made by a number of high-ranking Chinese. Later still, a eunuch on an imperial mission who went over to the Xiongnu defended the nomadic customs, military organization, and statecraft, and then criticized the Chinese political regime from a Xiongnu standpoint.The eunuch even praised the procreative Xiongnu gender regime (Shiji 110 = Sima Qian 1993: 143–144). We may conclude that Sima Qian’s discussion of the steppe peoples contains dehu­ manizing elements but these are balanced by more culturalist elements, in particular by a vin­ dication of Xiognu culture and military tactics as a reasonable strategy to survive in the steppe ecology and to keep the mighty Chinese state at bay (Stuurman 2008). More culturalist responses to cultural difference are found in the Tang dynasty. According to Mark Edward Lewis, the Tang dynasty was “the most open, cosmopolitan period of Chinese history” (Lewis 2009: 145).The Tang were delighted by exotica from Central Asia, such as girls dancing on top of balls rolling on stone floors (Schafer 1985: 56). Benevolent views on foreigners are apparent from an essay on Chinese culture written by Chen An in the late Tang. It begins with an exemplary case: an Arab man was recommended to the court around 850 CE, passed the examinations smoothly, and was awarded a prestigious degree.This occasioned a protest from disgruntled native Chinese who believed themselves better qualified. Chen An berated them as follows: “Someone who was born in the central lands but whose behavior does violence to the li (politeness) and yi (justice), is Chinese in appearance but barbarian in his mind; someone who was born in barbarian regions, but whose behavior conforms to the li and yi, is barbarian in appearance but Chinese in his mind” (Holcombe 2001: 51). Being Chinese is here uncoupled from ethnicity and redefined in moral and philosophical terms. Even so, the ultimate standard remained the authority of the Chinese classics. But not all cultural imports were appreciated. Buddhism entered China on a large scale and won a great popular following, but some Chinese literati detested it as a barbarian creed. In the early 7th century, a memorial by the Daoist priest Fu Yi called for the suppression of Buddhism, declaring that its introduction in China was the work of “evil barbarians.” He complained that “the dissolute language of the evil barbarians was even used in the study of Confucius. It is warped like the singing of frogs, and in listening to it the root of Confucianism was lost … in the Western Regions barbarians are born from mud.Therefore they naturally worship pagodas and statues made from mud and tiles …The Buddha is a household ghost of one clan … How can a living Han be urged to give offerings to a dead barbarian?” (Lewis 2009: 173–174). The Ming came to power in 1368, after the fall of the Mongol (Yuan) dynasty. Ming politicians and intellectuals were inclined to see themselves as the guardians of a true Chinese cultural canon whose duty it was to get rid of the barbarian accretions introduced by the Yuan. The reaction against foreign rule naturally affected the Ming views of barbarians.The anti-barbarian reaction 47

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was not confined to the literati but also reached a broader popular audience.The expansion of commercial printing, which had established a new information regime in the 12th century, made this possible (de Weerdt 2014). Discussions and images of foreigners from frontier regions now became part of the entertainment of the urban middle ranks. The most widely disseminated example of the popular fascination with the looks and habits of foreign peoples was the Luo Chong Lu (“The Record of Naked Creatures”). It probably dates from the early 15th century and according to Yuming He it was for much of the Ming “the most popular, comprehensive and widely circulating source of documentation about exotic lands and peoples.”The book assembled images and descriptions of more than a hundred types of “naked creatures,” otherwise known as “yi” (barbarians). Its entries cover examples from all over the known world (He 2011: 44). The naked creatures were beings, which had no feathers, no fur, no shells, and no scales. The humans were considered the leaders of the naked creatures. The Japanese were portrayed as dwarfs whose principal occupations were banditry and piracy. In older pictures, the Japanese were represented as amiable and properly robed, but now the pictures showed half-naked men with only a loincloth to cover their private parts and brandishing an unsheathed sword.The Xiongnu do not get the detailed ethnographic approach we have encountered in Sima Qian. Instead, the Luo Chong Lu describes them as comprising five types: “One, with yellow hair, was born from a mountain goat and a cow. One, short-necked, stout, and fat, was born from the juejia ape and a wild hog.”A third, with black hair and a white body, is the offspring of the remaining troops of Li Ling of the Han (this was a Han general who had surrendered to Xiongnu forces around 100 BCE). The fourth descended from “a female divinity and a “golden-horned white deer.”The fifth line was the off­ spring of a grey wolf and a pale deer.” Genghis Khan was believed to be a descendant of this breed (He 2011: 53). This is followed by a brief, and far more realistic, discussion of the way of life of the steppe nomads. Compared to Sima Qian, however, the full entry clearly seeks to question the common humanity of the Xiongnu by giving them an animal ancestry (He 2011: 70–71). To avoid an overly racialist reading of Ming documents it should be noted that later Ming commentators criticized the Luo Chong Lu as too superficial and relying too much on mythology and exaggeration. But it remains true that it was a highly popular book, perhaps because of its lurid tales about animals of different species copulating and engendering entire peoples.Another more nuanced approach is found in the journals of Ma Huan, the scribe of admiral Cheng He, the commander of the mighty Chinese fleets the Ming court sent into the Indian Ocean, trav­ eling all the way to East Africa and Mecca (Cheng He was a Muslim).The official justification for the voyages was that the emperor “wanted to display his soldiers to strange lands in order to make manifest the wealth and power of the Middle Kingdom … proclaiming the edicts of the Son of Heaven … Those who did not submit were pacified by force” (Dreyer 2006: 33). The ships were the largest the world had ever seen.These were not voyages of discovery, for Chinese merchantmen had sailed the Indian Ocean for centuries. Ma Huan accompanied the admiral in 1413, 1421, and 1430. In the opening pages of his report he expresses his astonishment at the great variety of peoples he has encountered. About the native peasantry of Java he says, “They have very ugly and strange faces, tousled heads and bare feet; they are devoted to devil-worship … the food … is very dirty and bad—things like snakes, ants, and all kinds of insects and worms … the dogs which they keep in their houses eat from the same utensils as the people, and sleep with them at night.” But he adds that the Muslims and the Chinese immigrants are civilized peoples (Ma 1970: 93). About Sumatra and Malacca, the tone is quite different: “The customs … are pure and honest” (Ma 1970: 119). But on the Andaman Islands Ma Huan switches back to the “savage” register: “The people of those places dwell in caves; men and women have naked bodies, all without a stitch of clothing, like the bodies 48

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of brute beasts” (Ma 1970: 125). Reading Ma Huan’s journal one gets the impression that his observations about ugly, naked people living close to animals are either about the destitute classes or about small islands where hunter-gatherers predominated.

2.8 The dehumanization of women Christine de Pizan, arguably the first feminist author in European history, writing around 1400, presents herself as downcast and crushed by the massive weight of centuries of misogyny.“What are women,” she exclaims. “What are they? Are they serpents, wolves, lions, dragons, snakes, or devouring beasts and enemies of the human race? … But by God! If they are your mothers, your sisters, your daughters, your wives, and your companions: they are yourselves and you yourselves are them” (Badel 1980: 446). Her protest was a part of the quarrel about the second part of the Roman de la Rose and her language should be read allegorically rather than literally, as the Rose also belonged to an allegorical genre. Women were not literally regarded as animals but their supposedly feeble minds, deceptive characters, sinful penchants, and seductive intrigues were metonymically represented by animals. Moreover, women were thought to be more “material” and “sensual” than men. Aristotelian “biology,” which became a part of Scholasticism in the later Middle Ages, taught that the female womb was the passive recipient of the male semen. In Scholastic terminology, the mother represented the “material cause” while the father acted as the “formal cause,” which transformed the female amorphous matter into a living human body animated by the soul. According to Thomas Aquinas, Adam was created in the image of God, but Eve was only derivatively created in God’s image.Aquinas thus endorsed the humanity of woman but denied her the full and div­ inely inspired humanity of the male sex. Consequently, women were downgraded to the status of the “imperfect sex” (Allen 1997: 385–394). In China, the Confucian consensus was that in women talent and virtue were mutually exclu­ sive. “Talent” included practical skills but its most prestigious asset was the mastery of the great classic texts, on which male candidates for positions in the state bureaucracy were examined. Those examinations, however, were closed to literate women, because their engagement in the world of letters would defile their womanhood and consequently corrupt their womanly virtues. Moreover, the practice of foot binding and their seclusion in the “inner chambers” of the elite housing compounds severely limited their participation in public culture. It was only in the late Ming (late 16th to early 17th centuries) that hundreds of Chinese elite women began to publish poetry in print and to organize themselves in poetry clubs, mostly in the Jiangnan region, the most urbanized and commercialized zone of China (Ko 1994). By what they wrote and did, these women inverted the dictum that in women talent and virtue were mutually exclusive, arguing instead that the cultivation of the mind would enhance virtue. We may conclude that women, though not reduced to animal status, were partly dehumanized in most civilizations.Violence, and frequently deadly force, against women was (and still is today) routinely used in the entire world. The examples of Europe and China demonstrate, however, that some elite women questioned their partial dehumanization and demanded a “room of their own,” above all in the world of letters.

2.9 Concluding observations In pre-Columbian and pre-modern times, dehumanization was seldom total and literal, but nonetheless real. Strangers, with a different physiognomy, food, customs, manners, and gods were often placed beyond the pale of humanity. Nomadic or savage peoples were placed outside 49

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civilization and, in the most extreme cases, given an animal ancestry. They were not described by what they actually accomplished but by their lack of the attributes of civilization.Vanquished enemies were seen to have lost their manly honor.They could be routinely killed, put on display, or sold into slavery.The great monotheisms regarded “religious others” as enemies of God against whom “holy wars” had to be waged, and who could, in extremis, be exterminated. Women were generally considered human, but their humanity was judged deficient, incom­ plete, and inferior to the full humanity of men. Infanticide of girls and verbal and physical vio­ lence against women were found in all continents and climes. To avoid an overly monolithic picture of pre-Columbian and pre-modern history, it should be recalled that in most civilizations, after their axial breakthroughs, universalistic discourses of common humanity and human dignity competed with the discourses and practices of dehuman­ ization highlighted in the present essay (Stuurman 2017).

References References to the Bible are to the Authorized King James Version; to the Quran to the translation by M.A.S. Abdel Haleem (Oxford World Classics 2004). References to Homer, Hesiod, Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Tacitus and Mencius follow the book, chapter, paragraph or line given in all academic editions. Adler, E. (2011) Valorizing the Barbarians: Enemy Speeches in Roman Historiography, Austin: University of Texas Press. Allen, S. P. (1997) The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution: 750 BC-AD 1250, Grand Rapids, Mich. & Cambridge: Eerdmans Publishing Cy. Amir-Moezzi, M. A. (ed.) (2007) Dictionnaire du Coran, Paris: Robert Laffont. Augustus (1924) Res Gestae Divi Augusti, translation Frederick W. Shipley, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Badel, P-Y. (1980) Le Roman de la Rose au XIVe siècle, Geneva: Librairie Droz. Blamires, A. (1997) The Case for Women in Medieval Culture, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bowersock, G. W. (2013) The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Bradley, K. (2004) “On Captives under the Principate.” Phoenix, 58: 298–318. Brindley, E. (2003) “Barbarians or Not? Ethnicity and Changing Conceptions of the Ancient Yue (Viet) Peoples, ca. 400–50 BC.” Asia Major, 16: 1–32. Canevaro, L. G. (2013) “The Clash of the Sexes in Hesiod’s Works and Days.” Greece and Rome, 60: 185–202. Donner, F. M. (2006) “The Historical Context,” in J. D. McAuliffe (ed.), The Cambridghe Companion to the Qur’an, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 23–39. Dreyer, E. L. (2006) Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, New York, NY: Pearson Longman. Flannery, K. and Marcus, J. (2012) The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery and Empire, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gagarin, M. and Woodruff, P. (eds.) (1997) Early Greek Political Thought from Homer to the Sophists, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Garnsey, P. (1996) The Idea of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Gunderson, E. (1996) “The Ideology of the Arena.” Classical Antiquity, 15: 113–151. He, Y. (2011) “The Book and the Barbarians in Ming China and Beyond: The Luo Chong Lu, or ‘Record of Naked Creatures’.” Asia Major, 24: 43–85. Holcombe, C. (2001) The Genesis of East Asia, 221 BC-Ad 907, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Khanbaghi, A. (2006) The Fire, the Star and the Cross: Minority Religions in Medieval and Early Modern Iran, London and New York: I. B. Tauris. Ko, D. (1994) Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Lewis, M. E. (2009) China’s Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty, Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.

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Dehumanization before the Columbian exchange Ma, H. (1970) The Overall Survey of the Ocean’s Shores, translation J. V. G. Mills, Cambridge, MA: Published for the Hakluyt Society at the University Press. MacMullen, R. (1997) Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eight Centuries, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Miles, G. B. (1990) “Roman and Modern Imperialism: A Reassessment.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 32: 629–659. Miles, R. (2011) Carthage Must be Destroyed, London: Penguin Books. North, J. A. (1981) “The Development of Roman Imperialism.” Journal of Roman Studies, 71: 1–9. Poliakov, L. (1981) Histoire de l’antisémitisme, vol I., Paris: Calmann-Lévy. Poo, M-Ch. (2005) Enemies of Civilization: Attitudes toward Foreigners in Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China, New York: State University of New York Press. Purdue, P. C. (2009) “Nature and Nurture on Imperial China’s Frontiers.” Modern Asian Studies, 43: 245–267. Queen, S. (1996) From Chronicle to Canon: The Hermeneutics of the Spring and Autumn according to Tung Shung­ chu, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Raaflaub, K. A. (1993) “Homer to Solon: The Rise of the Polis,” in Mogens Herman Hansen (ed.), The Ancient Greek City State, Copenhagen: Royal Danish Academy of Science, pp. 31–105. Schafer, E. H. (1985) The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of Tang Exotics, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Schama, S. (2013) The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words, 1000BCE-1492CE, London: The Bodley Head. Sima Qian (1993) Records of the Grand Historian: Han Dynasty II, translation Burton Watson, New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Stuurman, S. (2017) The Invention of Humanity: Equality and Cultural Difference in World History, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Stuurman, S. (2008) “Herodotus and Sima Qian: History and the Anthropological Turn in Ancient Greece and Han China.” Journal of World History, 19: 1–40. Veyne, P. (1993) “Humanitas: Romans and Non-Romans,” in A. Giardina (ed.), The Romans, Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, pp. 342–369. de Weerdt, H. (2014) Reinventing Chinese Political History, Inaugural Lecture: Leiden University. Wang, Q. E. (1999) “History, Space, and Ethnicity: The Chinese Worldview.” Journal of World History, 10: 285–305.

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3

“HUMANITY” AND ITS LIMITS

IN EARLY MODERN EUROPEAN

THOUGHT1

László Kontler

3.1 Introduction This chapter aims to establish a context for the study of dehumanization against the background of a crucial episode in the development of notions of “humanity” (mankind, humanité, Menschheit) in modern European culture. It is not an empirical study based on any substantial amount of primary research, but rather an attempt to sketch an analytical framework for approaching and understanding a broad array of specific historical topics and phenomena within the parameters of an encompassing theme.The methodological assumption at its heart is trivial: the concept of humanity is not an intrinsic one, but a contextually defined cultural product shaped by processes of philosophical, historical, social-anthropological, and political self-reflection, and of encounter with “others” in modern times, which all raised important and disturbing questions about the differentiae specifica of the human kind. The ensuing discussion of some of these questions and of significant answers to them during the 16th and 17th centuries will follow a chronological order. However, it should be borne in mind throughout that the consideration of the diversity versus unity, and the diversity within unity, of mankind was determined by early modern versions of three important intellectual frameworks.These are, first, the temporalization of human difference: the notion that such diffe­ rence is largely a matter of patterns in the development of human faculties and relations both among humans and between them and their environment across (virtual) time. Second, the his­ toricization of nature: an emerging trend in the study of nature on the basis of the collection and ordering of data about phenomena as they actually exist in space as well as in time. And third, related steps toward the naturalization of man2: the study of humans without the ascription of a special status to them; with the approach of the naturalists, as coequal, from the methodological point of view, with any other product of the creation. Regarding the subject of human diversity—the real or alleged difference of some human individuals or groups in physical appearance, physiological mechanisms and functioning, psycho­ logical properties, sociocultural and moral standards, etc. from others—it is important to observe that such diversity is not only a matter of humanity’s geographic dispersal all over the planet, as it is most often understood.The question underlying inquiries into it can also be meaningfully framed in temporal terms: how different are we from our forebears? Contemporary historians taking a multi-disciplinary approach to evolution, also deriving their cues from “deep history,” 52

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“Humanity” in early modern European thought

have called attention to the importance of this manner of setting the problem, with important consequences to our understanding of the history of humanity itself.They propose that while we tacitly take it for granted that evolution “stopped” with the rise of anatomically modern humanity around 30–50,000 years ago, and that slow and long biological evolution was “replaced” with rapid cultural development from the Neolithic era onward, this is erroneous. Dietary change of several millennia, public health interventions of several centuries, toxic environment exposures of several decades are only a few among so many factors serving as reminders that people them­ selves have been constantly changing the conditions in which all organisms, including their own, exist. Evolution itself and the identity of humanity across time are thus placed in a different light for the historian of our days: does, then,“mankind” have “a” common history at all? (Brooke and Larsen 2014; Russell 2014)

3.2 The “Columbian moment” and the boundaries of the human In early modern Europe, quasi-colonial situations were hotbeds of discussions regarding the humanity or the lack of it in the colonized subjects, with reference either to the civilizational gap that separated them from their metropolitan betters or to their bestiality, even without colonial conquests in geographically distant territories. Gaels in Scotland and Catholic Celts in Ireland were thought of as savages and barbarians in need of cultural, religious, and eco­ nomic governance—the former were accused of cannibalism, while the latter occasionally even depicted as monkeys—and the vilification of the northern Sámi (“Lapps” in the discourse of the period) was common stock (Ohlmeyer 2001;Williamson 1996).These widespread practices served both as templates for the representation of native peoples in overseas colonial areas, and as a terrain where those representations could be recycled and adapted. However, arguably, the temporal dimension in discussing human diversity as highlighted in the introduction first became salient at the level of reflexivity familiar to us in the context of the massive encounter with human groups formerly unknown to Europeans in the early-modern period.The problem arose as a cognitive one: how were these groups to be inserted in the existing European system of knowledge—in the fields of ethics and theology as well as law and administration, and how were they to be related to on the basis of this system? That this question is by no means a trivial one is vividly illustrated by an example presented in an analysis of the intellectual and moral dilemmas occasioned by the “Columbian moment.” (Abulafia 2008: 5) Let us suppose that a group of Neanderthalers, which survived the extinction of their fellows elsewhere tens of thousands of years ago, were suddenly discovered today among the secluded mountains of Mongolia. It would be problematic to deny their human status, especially since we now know with a fair degree of certainty that Neanderthalers mingled with homo sapiens before their disappearance, and possibly for other reasons. But would they not be subjected to scientific examinations which, if applied to “modern” humans, would be rejected as dehumanizing? Could they be integrated into our modern system of labor, social welfare, education, human rights—would they be eligible for suffrage? The questions perplexing Europeans upon the “discovery” of (native) Americans were not different in kind and gravity from these ones, even though for the Europeans the questions arose immediately and explicitly in terms of the grounds for dominion over indigenous peoples.The answers, which have been explored in now classic studies (Pagden 1982; see also several chapters in Rubiés 2007), can be summarized as follows. None of the templates familiar from Western Christian legal traditions3 regarding how to relate to “pagans” were applicable to the case of Amerindians. Therefore, Christian claims to sovereignty over them had to be established not on supposed juridical rights of the conquerors, but on the “nature” of the people conquered. 53

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Sixteenth-century Thomist philosophers like the Scottish Dominican John Mair (1467–1550) reached back to Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery as defining a category of man (as distinct from civil slavery, which was an institution of punishment or inflicted on captives of just war). Natural slavery allegedly originated in the psychology of the slave, in which, of the two poles of the duality in the human mind, reason has failed to achieve proper mastery over the passions. This failure apparently undermined the slave’s capacity for making deliberate choices—that is, for moral action—and thus for being a virtue-seeking, political animal. Slaves were located outside the civil community, at the bestial end of humanity, with a function of being slaves: their freedom would thus be a violation of the natural order, even harmful for themselves. The relationship between Spaniards and Indians was proposed to be determined not by human but by natural and universal law. To be precise, as the humanist-trained rhetorician Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1494–1573) argued, as natural law was identical with the law of nations, which could only be applied to civilized people, acknowledging the equality of the Indians (of whom Sepúlveda never encountered a single one) would be “a very absurd thing … For the barbarians or those who possess scant reasoning and humanity, the best rule is that of the master [for] either they are natural slaves, like the ones born in certain regions and climates of the world, or because of the depravity of their acts or due to other causes [they] cannot be made to conform to acceptable modes of behavior” (Sepúlveda 1941: 171, 173, cited in Castro 2007: 27, emphasis mine). One difficulty with this explanation was posed by the lack of any recognizable and substantial difference between Europeans and Amerindians in physical shape, and that the allegation that one of them was “inferior” as a species would have even violated the belief in the perfection of the creation as well as the Aristotelian theory of ethismos, the human capacity for the acquisition of moral qualities by “habituation.”The solution lay in the conflation or identification of “slaves” and barbaroi whose culture and society is insufficient and inferior.This condition, however, was not considered irremediable.As it was formulated by Bernardo de Mesa (1470–1524), later bishop of Cuba, at the junta—debate of theologians, civil and canon lawyers—of 1512 in Burgos, “a great labor is necessary before they [the Indians] can be brought to the faith and to the practice of good customs” (cited in Pagden 1982: 50).This was a crucial moment. In this approach, human diversity is historicized, with reference to the natives’ primitive modes of subsistence, systems of property, knowledge, customs and beliefs, standards of intercourse, etc., which made them live in the sociocultural past. It is worth mentioning that occasionally even the Spanish legislation recognized and paid lip service to the notion that the distance between colonial masters and serfs was not intrinsic but historical. Articles promulgated in 1513 in Valladolid (the seat of the Council of the Indies), complementing the Laws of Burgos of the previous year, stipulated that “whereas it may so happen that in the course of time … the Indians will become so apt and ready to become Christians, and so civilized and educated, that they will be capable of governing themselves and leading the kind of life that the Christians lead here … [they] shall be allowed to live by themselves” (Laws of Burgos,Valladolid Amendment IV; cf. Stuurman 2017: 207). This manner of discussing the topic was quite prominent already in its emblematic 16th-century treatments.The initial affirmations of the fully human status of the Native Americans were largely based on Christian charity and moral consternation over the brutality of the colonists, without much inquiry into the causes of the palpable differences between the two groups, and without much effort to reconcile such differences with the claim of equal human dignity. Accordingly, one of the early critics of colonial practices, the Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos (1475–1540) asked in a sermon of 1511,“Are these not men? Have they not rational souls? Are you not bound to love them as you love yourselves?” He further told the colonists that because of their rapacious behavior they could “be saved no more than Moors and Turks,” even threatening to withhold the sacraments from them (Cited, following Las Casas, in Hanke 1949: 17; see also Seed 1993). 54

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Montesinos’s famous fellow Dominican, the Salamanca theology professor Francisco de Vitoria (1486–1546), while also stressing in a 1539 lecture the humanity of the “barbarians” with ref­ erence to the fact that they “have judgment like other men,” explained the still vastly different kind of order in their “marriages, magistrates, and overlords, laws, industries and commerce” by pointing to “their evil and barbarous education,” but did not formulate this in developmentalhistorical terms (Vitoria 1991: 250). It must be added that while Vitoria severely condemned the conduct of the colonists, he at the same time endorsed colonialism based on the natural right to travel and trade all over the world. Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484–1566), Dominican bishop of Chiapas in southern Mexico, on the contrary, in his Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1542, pub. 1552) elaborated on the indigence, imbecility, incapacity for hard labor, and lack of ambition in the Amerindians, while he also emphasized (in tune with the assertions of the bull Sublimis Deus issued by Pope Paul III [1534–49] in 1537) that they were capable of morality and of receiving the Gospel, and that they were not at all averse to civility—that is, of progress and the enhancement of their own humanity (Las Casas 2007: 3, 12). Unlike in the case of several other 16th-century eyewitnesses who attempted to describe the novelty represented by the Americans in terms of unfamiliarity, Las Casas’s “project” was to establish them as familiar to the European gaze; for him, the New World “indicated a precise cultural relationship in which distances in space could be expressed as distances in time” (Pagden 1991: 157). Las Casas may also have been the first to object to the disparaging of the “primitive” customs and manners of indigenous peoples by pointing to the existence of similar practices among the ancestors of “civilized” Europeans (Las Casas 2007: 21). The publication of Las Casas’s Brief Account (already presented to the court and the Council of the Indies right after its composition, causing great consternation), followed shortly after the famous dispute about the justness of the Spanish regime in America, which took place between Las Casas and Sepúlveda in the presence of Emperor Charles V and other notabilities at the Colegio de San Gregorio in Valladolid in 1550–51 (see Losada 1971). At this encounter, Sepúlveda—relying on Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas—justified war against the natives of the New World and the right of domination over them with reference to their barbarous habits, including idolatry, cannibalism, and human sacrifice, which put their very humanity into question: “these barbarians,” Sepúlveda claimed,“are as inferior to the Spaniards as are children to adults and women to men.The diffe­ rence between them is as great as … I am tempted to say, between men and monkeys” (cited in Brading 1991: 86).The strategy of redescription and conflation is noteworthy here: from children (temporarily subjected to adults) through women (inferior, but still human), there is a seamless transition to association with subhuman monkeys, not unlike in 18th-century discussions of the status of the orangutan compared to black slaves (cf. Sebastiani 2019:_90–92 and Sebastiani, in this volume). Las Casas opposed this by claiming that superior civilization carries no entitlement to the subjugation of the barbarian without prior injury at the hand of the latter, and he insisted that despite the cultural chasm, the moral imperatives governing rational creatures are binding in their relations. Importantly, he also argued that in many cases the Amerindians actually answer the Aristotelian requirements of the good life: “they cultivated friendship, … lived in populous cities … truly governed by laws that at very many points surpass ours, and could have won the admir­ ation of the sages of Athens” (Las Casas 1974: 43; cf. Stuurman 2017: 227).Though the Valladolid debate has been described as little more than a confrontation of two faces of the same empire (Castro 2007: 133) and two currents of essentially Christian and humanistic thought (Brading 1991: 80–88) with both seeking the conversion of the Native Americans, from the point of view of the present volume the two positions are methodologically disparate. A few decades later, already in the period of the consolidation of Spain’s empire in Latin America, the Jesuit missionary to Peru José de Acosta (1540–1600), in his Natural and Moral 55

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History of the Indies (1590), painted a much vaster canvas than Las Casas of barbarians and savages. Access to and integration in the global information network created and maintained by the Society of Jesus with a view to the efficient evangelization and governance of remote populations enabled Acosta to develop a comparative methodology in the service of his ambition of providing a universal view of both nature and human society (Romano 2019: 13–17). Some of the peoples he presented were described as virtuous while others as less so; with some notable exceptions, even the most advanced among them were living in societies marked by relatively low levels of specialization (distinction of functions), primitive laws and customs, rudimentary political organization, and inferior cultural attainments when compared to contemporary Europe. In the latter sphere, there is a special emphasis on the lack of alphabetical writing as a versatile means of fluent communication, record keeping, and cultivation of collective memory, though Acosta acknowledges the value of alternative mnemonic techniques adopted among some of the Native Americans (Acosta 1880: II. 96, 404–6, 409–13, 421–2). However, in general Acosta, too, had no doubt that the gulf separating “them” from “us” arose from differences in sociocultural development across historical time, but certainly not differences of kind.Though, unlike Las Casas, he was willing to condone the Spanish atrocities for the sake of achieving the goal he shared with the Dominican—the conversion of the Amerindians; the two men were in agreement regarding the full humanity of Native Americans. Acosta’s achievement consists in drawing the conclusions by comprehensively inserting the New World into the sacred and secular history of mankind.This duality is important to emphasize. For many early modern natural historians, the Americas were a terrain where knowledge once possessed by Adam but lost as a result of the Fall could be recovered, and a better understanding of God’s creation could be gained by man, conceived as separate from the natural world.This essentially theological pur­ suit was only gradually transformed into a vision in which humanity was itself stripped of its privileged ontological status and became located within nature, and the tension between divine and natural knowledge was resolved with reference to an account of progress from savagery to civilization (Irving-Stonebraker 2019). In Acosta and in literature inspired by his work over the subsequent decades, some of these features are discernible: soon translated into Latin and all the main European languages, the encyclopedic handbook-like presentation of his overseas experiences gained over a decade and a half was a major influence on the way in which contem­ poraries in Europe understood these histories (Ford 1998).

3.3 The impact of the new science, skepticism, and the Reformation Acosta went beyond Las Casas in his attempt to establish his authority not merely on the credentials of the single eyewitness, but on the methodical integration of several voices into the causative explanation—a “philosophical history”—of “the customs and deeds” of distant peoples (Pagden 1991: 158–59). At this point, it is also important to remember that well into the early modern period historia was understood not merely as the narrative record and evaluation of human events and deeds that have occurred, but also more broadly as an approach: knowledge based on the collecting and rendering of first-hand observational data or “facts” about objects, including human ones—about natural as much as civil history. Francis Bacon’s (1561–1626) “inductive method”—the injunction that laws and regularities in the operation of the universe and its creatures ought to be inferred, instead of preassigned assumptions about “essences,” on the basis of data ascertained by experience and observation—was a methodical reformulation of this approach. In turn, as it became established as the manner of procedure characteristic of naturalists, the human phenomenon was also found eminently susceptible to being studied through this lens. There are, thus, two intersecting developments that need to be taken in account as underlying 56

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the rise of the modern notion of mankind: the historicization of nature, and the naturalization of man.The one regarded nature as an assemblage of “things,” including events as they happen or have happened, to be studied as they are, with properties peculiar to them, and to be ordered or classified according to the degrees of affinity and compatibility (or, contrariwise, distance and difference) among them.The other tended to locate the human animal firmly within the order of such “things.” It is true that until the 19th century, when history became institutionalized as a university discipline and those ushering in this development decided that nature had no part in it, a long tradition anchored in classical antiquity had regarded civil and natural history to be mutually incomprehensible without constant reference to one another (Chaplin 2015: 26). In this sense, there was nothing truly new in the early modern manifestations of the historicization of nature and the naturalization of man.And yet, there was an equally old tradition, potentially at odds with the developments just described, which ascribed to man a privileged status in the order of creation by virtue of being endowed with the soul.This representation received strong stimuli from the ancient paradigm of the Great Chain of Being, especially as it reverberated in Christian thought. Thanks to the soul, in especially eloquent statements of the “dignity of man,” such as the one put forward in the humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s (1463–1494) famous eponymous trea­ tise of 1486 (pub. 1496), this dignity was proposed to consist in the capacity of ascension: lifting oneself above the temptations of the flesh and the achievement of a quasi-angelic elevation. Pico’s Christianity was certainly far from being orthodox.Yet, his interpretation, while it took account of the animal side of human nature, still posed a barrier to engaging the relevant phenomena with the methodology of the naturalists because it was preoccupied with precisely those features of man that enabled him to participate in a transcendental—superhuman—communion with the higher spheres (Pico della Mirandola 1998: 3–34, esp. 9–10). It was also compatible with old Stoic notions about the ultimately shared moral outlook of all mankind as based on “innate ideas” and a propensity to acknowledge and respect universal laws of nature: binding rules of conduct that (should) govern the lives and relations of humans irrespective of their location in time and space. Several aspects of the 16th and 17th century European experience tended to undermine these assumptions. Even among themselves, Christians, now fragmented in countless and ever more proliferating sects, were seen to disagree about the most suitable manner of attaining what sup­ posedly all of them regarded as the supreme good—salvation—to an extent that led them break out in mass physical violence. This spoke strongly against the allegation of the existence of a shared set of principles of conduct, and against a propensity for common subordination to gen­ eral laws of nature, among them.The simultaneous inundation of information about the enor­ mous disparities of religious belief, ideas, and practices of morality, social and civil institutions, and so on, among men in other geographic regions—which voyages of exploration and mili­ tary, commercial, and missionary penetration opened to the gaze of Europeans—only amplified the effects of the domestic experience. An important intellectual effect was the rejuvenation of philosophical ideas of skepticism, especially regarding the earlier-mentioned Stoic notions concerning the universality of certain fundamental moral precepts.The thrust of skepticism was to suggest that if there was anything “universal” in human behavior as it is, according to observed evidence in real time and space, it is obedience, not to abstract laws demanding ethical conduct, but to the natural urge of preserving oneself—by extension, to obtain and retain, and to perform all that is necessary for self-preservation. An indirect but central influence on the development of these ideas were the Essays (1580) of Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), some of them explicitly exploiting the possibilities offered by the abhorrence at the savage cruelty of “cannibals” when “honestly” contrasted to the conduct of the “civilized” French of the religious wars, which Montaigne witnessed from close range. In 57

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“On Cannibals” (Montaigne 1958: 150–158), he discussed real, existing cannibals, the Tupinamba of Brazil—some of whom he personally encountered on the occasion of the festivities staged to celebrate the legal majority of the young King Charles IX (1560–1574) in 1563 in Rouen—a society where the only source of distinction was military valor, and eating human flesh was the supreme form of revenge over vanquished enemies. The wanton pursuit of martial honor and the constancy with which the victims of cannibalism were supposed to confront the suffering inflicted on them were both analyzed by Montaigne as Stoic virtue carried into (self-)destruc­ tive extremes. The Stoic frame of reference is in no way anachronistic, as very similar forms of ritualized violence could be diagnosed in all epochs of European culture, particularly in the con­ flict between the contemporary French Catholic and Protestant nobility, for whom Stoicism was the primary language of virtue (Quint 1995: 174–186). Montaigne’s skepticism was not morally relativistic: he unequivocally deplored inhuman practices, whether among the Tupinamba or any other people (including his European contemporaries, whose cruelties perpetrated under the pretext of defending true religion he abhorred). However, he pointed to the universal uncer­ tainty and futility of systems of custom, philosophy, and religion as a moral compass and bul­ wark against such practices (see especially the essay “Of custom, and not easily changing an accepted law” and the “Apology of Raymond Sebond” [section “Man can have no knowledge”], Montaigne 1958: 77–89, 420–442).

3.4 Modern natural law: State(s) of nature and arguments against dehumanization No serious discussion of the laws of nature after Montaigne could afford to avoid engagement with these propositions.As a further consequence, the very understanding of natural law under­ went an important transformation: the response to skepticism included the incorporation of some of its central tenets into the study of natural law (see Tuck 1993).The contemplation of the overwhelming inconsistency of cultural behavior across the widening space known to Europeans led to the questioning of the idea of primary and universally binding laws of nature. The 17th-century classics, from Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) through Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) to Samuel von Pufendorf (1632–1694) and John Locke (1632–1704), continued to believe in such laws, but for them they were not metaphysically given.The evident, empirically ascertained centrality of self-interest to human nature led them to assert that self-preservation—the minimal expression of self-interest, justifiable in all circumstances—must be acknowledged as a universal natural right, and universal laws of nature guiding human conduct exist in so far as they proceed from the obligation to mutually recognize this right in one another.4 The point of contact with what has been advanced about the historicization of nature and the naturalization of man, above, is that on these grounds it was meaningful to distinguish more clearly than in earlier contributions to the tradition an initial natural state of mankind from a subsequent civil state. Even in the state of nature, individuals were obliged to seek peace as long as there was a chance to obtain it. However, once this did not seem viable, so that they felt their security under threat, it was legitimate for them to resort to violence to defend themselves. Especially in the case of Hobbes, the exploration of this theme was firmly anchored in a thor­ ough analysis, in the style of the new science and in conversation with its practitioners, of the fac­ ulties that ought to have enabled humans to attain full certainty of judgment regarding situations of insecurity of life and limb (Hobbes 1981: 85–99; cf. Pufendorf 1991: 17–26). Given the com­ bination of the facts that these faculties were not wholly reliable and that in the state of nature individuals were indeed the sole judges of such situations as they affected them, that state was one of ubiquitous conflict over resources and of general instability (Hobbes 1981: 183–188; cf. 58

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Locke 1988: 269–278; cf. Pufendorf 1991: 46–55). In the state of civil society—into which indi­ viduals, recognizing the inconvenience of the state of nature transfer themselves by voluntary agreement about the abandonment of their freedom to execute the laws of nature—order and mutual security is provided by the translation of the laws of nature into positive laws specific to the particular community, and by submission to a mutually accepted public authority wielding the monopoly of defining and sanctioning types of behavior that constitute a threat to mutual safety, thus invested with the power of making and executing the laws (Hobbes 1981: 223–239; Locke 1988: 330–351). Seventeenth-century natural law thus fully embraced temporality and integrated as one of its organizing concepts the notion of progress over a historical continuum from one state or stage to the other, and remained a strong inspiration for much further reflection along the same lines in other fields. Perhaps nowhere do these threads intersect so succinctly yet poignantly as in a well-known clause in the second of John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1689): “in the beginning the whole world was America” (Locke 1988: 301). However, Hobbes also accounted for the “brutish manner” in which the “savage people in many places of America” lived with reference to the rudimentary form of government among them (Hobbes 1981: 187), and illustrated his analysis of the “natural condition of mankind” with examples from the opening chapters of the Genesis, and from the life of Amerindians and the savage ancestors of civilized nations (Evrigenis 2014: ch. 7). In a related passage, Locke highlighted the retardation of American development by pointing to the lack of cultivation of its potentially rich lands, anticipating Adam Smith’s explanation of the advantages of the division of labor: “a King of a large and fruitful Territory there feeds, lodges, and is clad worse than a day Labourer in England” (Locke 1988: 296–7; cf. Smith 1981: 24). Locke’s classic defense of constitutional government and civil liberty in the later sections of the Second Treatise was firmly established on, among many other things, a philosophical history of the rise of private property through appropriation from common enjoyment via “mixing one’s labor” with the things of nature (Locke 1988: 288, 296). Taken together, these assertions have often been interpreted and effectively used as a justifi­ cation of English colonial ventures by implying that in consequence of their “idleness” Native Americans and Indigenous peoples of Australia forfeited their right to the lands they inhabited, to the advantage of industrious settlers. In fact, as a member of administrative bodies overseeing colonial affairs, Locke rather turned the argument to the critique of idle colonists (cf.Arneil 1996; Farr 2008). However, in the Two Treatises the thrust of his argument was that improvement—as emergence from the “[Native] American” condition—began and status distinctions among men arose already in the pre-civil state, and the voluntary transfer into civil (political) society was explained by him precisely with reference to the widely shared desire of preserving men’s “lives, liberties, and estates” (the latter term denoting both status and property) and the consequent willingness to suppress the passion of pursuing self-interest in the hope of a greater good. It was primarily thanks to the, however rudimentary, analysis of the civilizing process of conquering the violent passions and submitting them to rational control necessary for arriving at the deci­ sion of entering political society that 17th-century students of natural law went beyond their predecessors in infusing it with a historical dynamics. Especially Locke and Pufendorf among them did not cease to appreciate man’s inherent sociable drive. But for a full account of soci­ ability, and more widely of the human capacity of “elevation” above mere animal instinct, they were willing and able to rely on an ingenious analysis of the operation, including the full spec­ trum of cognitive-psychological consequences, of the natural and self-regarding urge of seeking the satisfaction of bodily and other needs. These initiatives supplied a great deal of social and moral philosophical depth to the explan­ ation of human difference as a matter of “virtual time” emerging in the literature launched and 59

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hallmarked by figures like Las Casas and Acosta, on which 17th century natural jurisprudence relied heavily for its empirical underpinnings. Among the authors of this tradition, Locke was also distinguished by the fact that an emphasis on the lack of a consistent pattern in moral views across mankind also permeated his epistemology (Carey 2006: 34–68). In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), Locke put forward a comprehensive criticism of the notion of innate ideas as identical principles implanted in and “born” with every human individual, and famously asserted that the mind is a “blank sheet of paper” on which ideas arise in response to experience and sense perception. The cornerstone of Locke’s argument in support of these claims was a kind of common sense empiricism. For a principle to claim innate status, he insisted that it must be shown to enjoy universal agreement among all sensible men, without a single exception. Besides offering a critique of the various accounts of how innate ideas arise (whether spontaneously with the acquisition of reason, or through consent upon their first presentation [Locke 1975: 48–49]), Locke referred to the unfathomable dimensions of actually existing moral diversity among human communities. Different societies, he pointed out, reconcile very disparate actions with words like justice, reverence, and so on (Locke 1975: 84–85). What is more, the sources in which this is documented relate to “primitive” peoples as well as to “polite” ones: just like the former, some of those classified among the latter are also marked by disturbing practices, ranging from the murder of children and aging parents through cannibalism to revenge—so that these are not to be written off as customs of mere barbarians and savages.The ultimate tests were the idea of God and the idea that the Deity should be worshipped (Locke 1975: 87), which were regarded as innate by representatives of the rival tradition (in Locke’s time, e.g., the Cambridge Platonists). Locke challenged the innateness of these ideas with reference not only to accounts of “savage” societies (such as the Tupinamba of Brazil, or other “whole nations” at the Cape of Good Hope), but also lettered societies (like Siam and China), which demonstrated that not only immoralists and lawbreakers but entire peoples engaged in such “transgression” (Locke 1975: 87). He argued that if God had intended to endow man with innate ideas, he would have begun with the notion of himself, and the “generally allowed breach” of this supposedly fundamental prin­ ciple was a proof against innateness. The relevance of these propositions to the problem of “mankind” as a distinct and uni­ tary category, and to dehumanization, is put into sharp relief by the controversies which they elicited. One of Locke’s critics, Edward Stillingfleet (1635–1699), bishop of Worcester, objected that Locke’s account of indigenous peoples (in this case, the inhabitants of “Soldania”; i.e., Saldanha Bay in South Africa, mentioned in the first edition of the Two Treatises, cf. Locke 1988: 277n) “makes them not fit to be a standard for the Sense of Mankind, being a People so strangely bereft of common Sense, that they can hardly be reckoned among Mankind” (Stillingfleet 1697: 89–90; cf. Carey 2006: 59–60). Locke’s response was unhesitating: “all the use I made of them was to show, that there were men in the world that had no innate idea of God … you go near denying those Cafers to be men: what else do these words signify?” (Locke 1722: 575). Locke was willing to acknowledge the existence of significant cultural differences, and on these grounds even hierarchies among various human groups, but his explorations of human nature both as a post-skeptical student of natural law and as an epistemologist led him to firmly reject a position which called the humanity of such groups, albeit in the lower echelons of this hierarchy, into question. This was a somewhat ambiguous but highly important legacy. Besides the substantive aspects of inclusion versus exclusion in this exchange, the methodological implications are noteworthy: the debate between Stillingfleet and Locke highlights the central importance of the approach to choosing the criteria of the “human.” Stillingfleet, believing in the possibility of a stringent definition—the possession or lack of an (innate) idea of God—was led to a firm denial of human 60

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status to many whom Locke’s position, recognizing the arbitrary, culturally determined nature of the standard, included in that category. In the latter perspective, skepticism as a philosophical position was intertwined with the method of natural history adopted by the Baconian adherents of the new science in the Royal Society. In the case of Locke, continuing in the tradition of Las Casas, Acosta, and others, flexibility in regard of the criteria allowed for a broad diversity within the overall category of “the human” and for an explanation of variation with reference to cultural (and other kind of) environment.

3.5 Conclusion and outlook At the outset of this chapter, I emphasized that, as in other historical periods and circumstances in early modern Europe, understanding the human and dehumanization as its corollary were contingent, responding to particular experiences, and developing within the patterns of thought offered by the historicization of nature, the naturalization of man and the temporalization of human difference. Contingency is a central consideration not only in regard to substance, but also in regard to approach.As other studies in this volume may show in more detail, subsequent developments in the European inquiry into the human demonstrate that the exact reverse of the Stillingfleet-Locke casting, presented at the end of the previous section in regard to strin­ gency versus flexibility of criteria and their consequences, is an equally feasible scenario.This serves as a powerful reminder that whether the crossing of the animal/human boundary via classification criteria results in a vision of humanity that is inclusive of all humans or whether it excludes and dehumanizes some is highly context-dependent.The great 18th-century systems of taxonomy—both of which sought to discover and establish “order” in nature, including in the family of man—are a case in point. (For a concise presentation, see Kidd 2006: 81–87.) Carl von Linné (Linnaeus) proposed a hierarchy among different peoples while obliterating the boundary between them (Linné 1997: 12–13), a solution which lent itself quite easily to discourses that entailed both the humanization of (some) animals and the animalization of (some) humans.5 Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon’s insistence on the unequivocal separation of the whole of humanity as a unitary species from the rest of the animal world by a focus on procreation (Buffon 1997: 27)—while still subdividing the species into hierarchically ranked groups—inspired striking expressions of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism concerning the equal dignity of all men. Another century later, Darwinism introduced, once again, a change in this casting: in that context, it was the assertion of the shared ancestry of all humans and animals that was an emancipatory force in establishing the equality of all humans as part of “one family.” Undeniably, Darwin’s texts also had their ambiguities and lent themselves easily to eugenicist and other problematic inferences and uses. As he wrote, “[t]here should be open competition for all men; and the most able should not be prevented by laws and customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring” (Darwin 1871: II. 403). In every aspect, then—substantively and methodologically—the quest for humanity remained a thor­ oughly contingent pursuit, and “mankind” an unstable notion, over several centuries of intense European engagement with the subject: a sobering conclusion to draw at the beginning of the 21st century, when the concept is, once again, deeply contested.

Notes 1 This chapter relies extensively on Kontler (2020).

2 Throughout this chapter, in conformity with early modern usage,“man” refers to all human beings.

3 For these as well as Aristotle’s views on natural slavery, cf. Stiep Stuurman, this volume.

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László Kontler 4 For a discussion of dehumanization and human rights in this volume, see Frick, this volume. 5 For more detail, see Silvia Sebastiani, this volume. For the problems involved in taking human super­ iority over animals for granted, see also Alice Crary, this volume; and David Livingstone Smith, this volume.

References Abulafia, D. (2008) The Discovery of Mankind: Atlantic Encounters in the Age of Columbus, New Haven & London: Yale University Press. Acosta, J. de (1880) The Natural and Moral History of the Indies, London: The Hakluyt Society. Arneil, B. (1996) John Locke and America: The Defence of English Colonialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brading, D. A. (1991) The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots and the Liberal State, 1492– 1867, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brooke, J. L. and Larsen, C. S. (2014) “The Nurture of Nature: Genetics, Epigenetics, and Environment in Human Biohistory,” American Historical Review 119:6, 1500–1513. Buffon, G.-L. L. C. de (1997) “From A Natural History, General and Particular,” in E. Chukwudi Eze (ed.), Race and the Enlightenment. A Reader, Oxford: Blackwell. Crary, A. (2020) “Dehumanization and the Question of Animals,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 159–172. (this volume). Carey, D. (2006) Locke, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. Contesting Diversity in the Enlightenment and Beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Castro, D. (2007) Another Face of Empire. Bartolomé de Las Casas, Indigenous Rights, and Ecclesiastical Imperialism, Durham & London: Duke University Press. Chaplin, J. E. (2015) “Ogres and Omnivores: Early American Historians and Climate History,” The William and Mary Quarterly 72:1, 25–32. Darwin, C. (1871) The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, London: Murray. Evrigenis, I. D. (2014) Images of Anarchy. The Rhetoric and Science in Hobbes’s State of Nature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Farr, J. (2008) “Locke, ‘Some Americans’, and the Discourse on ‘Carolina’,” Locke Studies 9, 19–94. Ford, T. R. (1998) “Stranger in a Foreign Land: José de Acosta’s Scientific Realizations in SixteenthCentury Peru,” The Sixteenth-Century Journal 29:1, 19–33. Frick, M.-L. (2020) “Dehumanization and Human Rights,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 187–200. (this volume). Hanke, L. (1949) The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hobbes, T. (1981) Leviathan, ed. by C. B. Macpherson, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Irving-Stonebraker, S. (2019) “From Eden to Savagery and Civilization: British Colonialism and Humanity in the Development of Natural History, ca. 1600–1840,” History of the Human Sciences 32:4, 63–79. Kidd, C. (2006) The Forging of Races. Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600–2000, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kontler, L. (2020) “Inventing ‘Humanity’. Early-modern Perspectives,” in H. Haara, M. Immanen and K. Stapelbroek (eds.), Helsinki Yearbook of Intellectual History I: Passions, Politics and the Limits of Society. Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, pp. 25–46. Las Casas, B. de (1974) In Defense of the Indians, ed. and trans. by Stafford Poole DeKalb, Northern Illinois University Press. Las Casas, B. de (2007) A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies, Project Gutenberg EBook edition, http:// www-personal.umich.edu/∼twod/latam-s2010/read/las_casasb2032120321-8.pdf Linné, C. von (1997) “Homo in the System of Nature,” in Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (ed.), Race and the Enlightenment. A Reader, Oxford: Blackwell. Locke, J. (1722) “Mr. Locke’s Reply to the Right Reverend the Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to His Second Letter[1697],” The Works of John Locke, Esq. Vol. I. London: A. Churchill and J. Manship. Locke, J. (1975) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. by H. Nidditch Peter, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Locke, J. (1988) Two Treatises of Government, ed. by Laslett Peter, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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“Humanity” in early modern European thought Losada, A. (1971) “The Controversy Between Sepúlveda and Las Casas in the Junta of Valladolid,” in Juan Friede and Benjamin Keen (eds.), Bartolomé de Las Casas in History. Toward an Understanding of the Man and His Work, DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Montaigne, M. de (1958) The Complete Essays, trans. by Donald Frame, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ohlmeyer, J. H. (2001) “‘Civilizinge of those Rude Partes’: Colonization within Britain and Ireland, 1580s–1640s,” in Nicholas Canny (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume I: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pagden, A. (1982) The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pagden, A. (1991) “Ius et Factum: Text and Experience in Bartolomé de Las Casas,” Representations 33, Special Issue: The New World, 147–162. Pico della Mirandola, G. (1998) On the Dignity of Man; On Being and the One; Heptaplus, Indianapolis. IN: Hackett. Pufendorf, S. (1991) On the Duty of Man and Citizen According to Natural Law, ed. by James Tully, trans. by Michael Silverthorne, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Quint, D. (1995) “A Reconsideration of Montaigne’s Des cannibales,” in Karen Ordahl Kupperman (ed.), America in European Consciousness, 1493–1750, Chapel Hill & London: The University of North Carolina Press, pp. 166–191. Romano, A. (2019) “Iberian Missionaries in God’s Vineyard: Enlarging Humankind and Encompassing the Globe in the Renaissance,” History of the Human Sciences 32:4, 8–27. Rubiés, J.-P. (2007) “Travellers and Cosmographers,” Studies in the History of Early Modern Travel and Ethnology, London: Routledge. Russell, E. (2014) “Coevolutionary History,” American Historical Review 119:6, 1514–1528. Sebastiani, S. (2019) “A ‘Monster with Human Visage’: The Orangutan, Savagery, and the Borders of Humanity in the Global Enlightenment,” History of the Human Sciences 32:4, 80–99. Sebastiani, S. (2020) “Enlightenment Humanization and Dehumanization, and the Orangutan,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 64–82. (this volume). Seed, P. (1993) “‘Are These Not Also Men?’ The Indians’ Humanity and Capacity for Spanish Civilization,” Journal of Latin American Studies 25:3, 629–652. Sepúlveda, J. G. de (1941) Tratado sobre las justas causas de la guerra contra los indios (2nd ed.), ed. by Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Smith, A. (1981) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. by R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner and W. B. Todd, Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund. Smith, D. L. (2020) “Dehumanization, the Problem of Humanity, and the Problem of Monstrosity,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 355–361. (this volume). Stillingfleet, E. (1697) The Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to Mr. Locke’s Letter, London: Henry Mortlock. Stuurman, S. (2017) The Invention of Humanity. Equality and Cultural Difference in World History, Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Stuurman, S. (2020) “Dehumanization Before the Columbian Exchange,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 37–51. (this volume). The Laws of Burgos, http://faculty.smu.edu/bakewell/BAKEWELL/texts/burgoslaws.html Tuck, R. (1993) Philosophy and Government 1572–1651, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vitoria, F. de (1991) “On the American Indians,” in A. Pagden and J. Lawrence (eds.), Political Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 231–292. Williamson, A. H. (1996) “Scots, Indians and Empire: The Scottish Politics of Civilization 1519–1609,” Past & Present 150, 46–83.

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4

ENLIGHTENMENT

HUMANIZATION

AND DEHUMANIZATION,

AND THE ORANGUTAN

Silvia Sebastiani

4.1 Questioning humanity In the aftermath of the Second World War, the Déclaration sur la race, published in 1950 under UNESCO patronage, played a crucial role in the attempt to define and deconstruct the con­ cept of ‘race,’ both in biology and in the social sciences. By declaring, from the first line, that ‘all men belong to the same species, homo sapiens’ and by concluding on human ‘universal brother­ hood,’ the Declaration offered a clear-cut negative answer to the ‘race question’: race, it stated, is not a ‘biological phenomenon’ but a social construct and a ‘social myth’ (Hiernaux and Banton 1969: 30, 33).1 It is, according to the anthropologist Ashley Montagu who authored the text, an ‘unscientific’ category and ‘man’s most dangerous myth’ (Montagu 1942). Coinciding with the Déclaration, UNESCO also patronized a series of interventions ranging from biology to history, including L.C. Dunn’s Race and Biology (1951) and Claude Lévi-Strauss’ Race et histoire (1952). After the horrors of the war and the crimes committed in the name of race, the necessity of pro­ viding an entirely new definition of humanity had become all the more urgent. It is within this context that ‘Vercors’—the literary pseudonym adopted during the Resistance by the French illustrator and writer Jean Bruller—published a small and polemical fiction: Les Animaux dénaturés (1952).2 His aim was to denounce the lack of a stable definition of humankind, which could avoid new forms of dehumanization in the future.Vercors listed (and ridiculed) the multiple and conflicting meanings attributed to it by philosophy, science, or religion throughout history, none of which found a general consensus. In Vercors’ fiction, the protagonist Douglas Templemore, a journalist, joined a team of scientists in a trip to New Guinea to search for the ‘missing link’ of evolution from ape to man. Rather than finding a fossil, the anthropologists came across a living colony of ‘quadrumanes,’ vulgarly called ‘Tropis,’ who closely resembled human beings in appearance as well as behavior.Their visages were strikingly similar to those of humans, and they walked upright, made fire, carved stones, buried their dead, and communicated with each other using articulated cries. Even more alarming and confusing, the Tropis could procreate both with humans and with apes. So the question was, were they humans or beasts? While anthropologists, biologists, and jurists questioned their nature, a businessman saw them as a potential cheap labor force to be exploited: if the Tropis were not human, they had, in fact, no rights and could be enslaved.The story is gruesome and turns grotesque.To force the authorities to take a clear stance on the definition of humanity, the protagonist of the plot kills the newborn 64

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of a female Tropi artificially inseminated with his own human sperm, and denounces himself as the murderer of his own son.To what degree does assuming a distinct or essential ‘human-ness’ lead to such troubling moral implications? What Vercors asked for was to establish once and for all the (legal) meaning of being human and to determine the boundaries with other animals. The problem faced by Vercors was largely a legacy of the Enlightenment reflection on human nature and its borders. Indeed, Vercors transposed to the Tropis all the topoi, as well as the ambivalences, of the 18th-century debate about the nature and character of the ‘orangutan.’ My claim is that the humanization of the orangutan went hand in hand with the dehumanization of a part of humanity. This will be the specific and delimited angle through which I’ll investigate humanization and dehumanization in this chapter, thus concentrating on only one of its multiple forms occurring in the 18th century (for other expressions, see Hund and Kontler in this volume). I will argue that the orangutan is a central concern of the ‘science of man,’ which historiog­ raphy has located at the heart of the Enlightenment intellectual revolution. So my questions will be what do orangutans mean to our understanding of human sciences? And, how do they contribute to the conceptualization of humanity? In what sense, and to what extent, could the humanization of apes affect the dehumanization of human beings? A term of Malayan origin literally meaning ‘man of the wood,’ the word ‘orangutan’ (spelled in many different ways) entered Europe in the 1630s as a generic noun for labeling all the great apes then known: it designated both the Asian ‘orangutan’ from Borneo and the African ‘chimpanzee’ from Angola, which are today classified as two different kinds of anthropoids. Other words were used synonymously, such as pigmy, Indian satyr, barris, pongo, Quoias Morrou, salvage, jocko, and, from the late 1730s, chimpanzee (see Buffon 1766: 1–42, where the French naturalist lists the different terminologies used for describing the great ape in his own time). All through the 18th century, the orangutan was described as a quadrumane—Vercors employed Buffon’s vocabulary3—with a human visage and human organs, walking upright, and living in society. Not only did orangutans use tools, build shelters, and bury their dead, but they were also capable of sentiments.Anatomists, such as the Dutch Nicolaes Tulp (1593–1674) or the English Edward Tyson (1650–1708), had been instrumental in placing the sensitive orangutan at the center of Enlightenment controversies about humankind. Furthermore, a vast literature—confirmed by the two most influential naturalists of the age, Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–1788)— attested that the sexual intercourses between male orangutans and (African and Asian) women were frequent and could produce offspring.Also in this sense,Vercors’ plot reemployed the terms and topics of the Enlightenment debate: the fantasy of ‘the Orang-Outang carrying off a Negro Girl’ was a commonplace of literature and science in the 18th century (Figure 4.1)—despite the existence of parallel counter discourses. Not even the connection with slavery was new. On the one hand, travel literature had recorded since the early 17th century that several peoples—the Javanese, the ‘Hottentots,’ the Angolans, or even the Spaniards—had advanced the idea that orangutans and baboons could speak but delib­ erately decided to remain silent in order not to be compelled to labor (Jobson 1623: 185–186; Bontius 1658: 84–85; Kolb 1731[1719], vol. 2: 120; see Barsanti 1990).Their mutism, here, was not the mark of an inferior species (language being the attribute of humankind only), but a sign of an intelligent strategy of resistance, in an era which experienced a dramatic increasing of the slave trade. As stressed by the important works of Winthrop Jordan and David Brion Davis, the ‘discovery’ of the orangutan/chimpanzee corresponded to the first significant encounter of the Europeans with sub-Saharan West Africans, who came from roughly the same region as these apes. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources often betrayed a shift from geographical proximity to typological and essential similitude in the association of Africans and apes (Jordan 1968: 216–265, 491–511; Davis 2006: 73–4). 65

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Figure 4.1 ‘The Orang-Outang carrying off a Negro Girl,’ in Carl Linnaeus, A Genuine and Universal System of Natural History… Improved, corrected and enlarged by Johann Friedrich Gmelin, London, 1795, vol. 2, frontispiece. Colored engraving by John Chapman Sculp, 1795, after Johann-Eberhard Ihle (Wellcome Collection, London; Creative Commons License 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Another crucial element has emerged from my own research in the last years: chimpanzees and slaves were conveyed via the same commercial networks and were involved in the same global market of slavery. Chimpanzees took part in the triangular ‘infamous commerce,’ being sold and bought by slave traders and traveling in slave ships from Africa through America up to England, as I’ll try to show (see also Sebastiani 2019). 66

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The arrival of the great ape in Europe transformed the reflection on humanity.The anatom­ ical similarities with the ape and human bodies, as laid out by 17th-century medical treatises, informed 18th-century natural histories. So, the Enlightenment science of man, which developed in the conquering phase of European colonialism and at the peak of the Atlantic slave trade (Curran 2011), could not bypass the orangutan easily. The Enlightenment anthropological turn consisted of two main operations: first, humanity was inserted within the broad classifications of nature; second, peoples were connected to different stages of human progress.As a result, man was at the same time naturalized and historicized.This engendered a tension between the emerging of a ‘natural history of mankind’—understood as the history of human societies and based on the comparison between their different stages of development—and of a ‘natural history of man,’ which studied the human being as part of the natural world, like other animals (Thomson 1986; Sebastiani 2013: Ch. 2. See also Stuurman 2019: Ch. 6 and Kontler in this volume.). Buffon’s Histoire naturelle, published in 36 volumes between 1749 and 1788, and Linnaeus’ Systema naturæ, first printed in 1735 and continually amplified through to the 12th edition in 1766–1768, converged in one crucial point, despite their antagonistic methods and approaches: both placed ‘man’ within the animal kingdom, and outside the biblical framework.This gesture represented a major break, as it located humankind under the same system of knowledge as the rest of nature, and classified accordingly. In so doing, the human being was reduced to a par­ ticular species of animal, one capable of using speech and tools, and divided into different var­ ieties or races, as all the fauna.With the entry of man into the animal kingdom, the question that immediately arose was that of the boundaries: between humans and great apes, between humans and humans, between the sexes. As Justin Smith well summarized it, by ‘the naturalization of the human being, […] the unity of the human species was lost,’ and ‘humanity became […] as “diverse” as nature itself ’ (J.E.H. Smith 2015: 18). Alongside the naturalization of man, Enlightenment historiography—from Voltaire to Adam Smith—outlined a universal path from ‘savagery’ and rudeness toward refinement and ‘civil society,’ in which societies became more and more complex and diversified, and peoples passed from an almost animal condition to full humanity. Humanity thus became a historical product, developing over time. This development was captured by two neologisms of the 1750s, ‘civil­ ization’ and ‘perfectibility’; far from being synonymous, both concepts emphasize the process of becoming (Binoche 2018). In one of the most radical formulations, the Scottish judge James Burnett, Lord Monboddo (1714–1799), employed the verb ‘to humanize,’ along with ‘to tame,’ to encapsulate the process of becoming ‘human’: ‘Man himself was originally a wild savage animal, till he was tamed, and, as I may say, humanized, by civility and arts’ (Monboddo 1774: 144, emphasis in the original). Monboddo endorsed the arguments advanced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) in his Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes (1755) for supporting the existence of a pre-social state of humankind and the humanity of the orangutan (Rousseau 2008 [1755]: 177–181, note X; see Sebastiani 2015). In the human progression he described, the emancipated man became the controlling master of nature. So, Enlightenment anthropology outlined a double process placing humanity, at the same time, inside and above nature. This is why the question of humanity in the Enlightenment debates hinged on animality. ‘The abiding urge to distinguish the human from the animal’—the historian Keith Thomas argued in his classic study on Man and the Natural World—‘also had important consequences for relations between men. For, if the essence of humanity was defined as consisting in some specific quality, then it followed that any man who did not display that quality was subhuman, semianimal’ (Thomas 1983: 41; on the relationship between human essence and dehumanization, 67

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see Kronfeldner in this volume).This means that the contrast between human and non-human ‘provides an analogy for the contrast between the members of the human society and the outsider’—as the anthropologist Mary Douglas has put it in her Implicit Meanings, which provided an important framework for Thomas’ work (Douglas 1975: 289). Recent historiog­ raphy has further insisted on the fact that animals were crucial to 18th-century people, to ‘think about the world and their place in it’ (Tague 2008: 292), while arguing that animal bodies became sites for political struggles in colonial discourses (Elder, Wolch, Emel 1998. See also Milam and Crary in this volume). By moving away from animals in general in order to focus on the orangutan in particular, it is possible to go a step further. In what follows, I’ll argue that the debate about the nature of the great ape and its proximity to the human being paved the way to another debate: that of different degrees of humanity.What I suggest, by focusing on the British case, is that comparative anatomy and natural history underwent a process of politicization, which increased in the aftermath of the Somerset case (1772) and the beginning of a public abolitionist campaign in Britain—on which I’ll dwell at the end of this chapter. By intersecting with the debate about slavery, the contro­ versy on the orangutan changed its target and scope: it was within this new political context that anti-abolitionists used the ape as the most convincing proof of the animality of the African, so to reframe the human/animal divide.The humanization of the orangutan went hand in hand with the animalization of the African slave. I would push this argument even further, and claim that the animalization of the African was construed through the humanization of the primate.When the boundaries between humans and animals were loosened, the divide between human races tightened and crystallized, establishing a hierarchy within humanity.

4.2 ‘The Orang-Outang imitates a Man’ Nicolaes Tulp’s very popular Observationum Medicarum (1641) provides a possible starting point for my inquiry. After the examination of 163 remarkable clinical cases, including epi­ lepsy, breast cancer, the fear of water, ileocecal valve, and gangrene, the Dutch physician treated a liminal but interesting case: the orangutan.4 Tulp probably conceived of his final chapter as a means of re-establishing the boundaries between humans and animals, but the entry of the great ape in a treatise on medicine rather caused the opposite effect: it reinforced the idea of its proximity to humankind. His account was all the more authoritative, since Tulp could ‘observe’ the first living anthropoid known to have reached Europe: a female chimpanzee brought to the Netherlands in 1630, and held in the menagerie of the Prince of Orange Frederick Hendrick in The Hague. While providing a short survey of the phys­ ical features, muscles, and skin of the ‘orangutan/homo sylvestris’ (or ‘Indian satyr,’ as Tulp also called it), the anatomist paid attention to its behavior and manners, stressing its habit of using cups for drinking and pillows and blankets for sleeping,‘like the most educated persons’ (Tulp 1641: 274–279). Tulp accompanied his few empirical observations with long extracts from ancient sources on apes and satyrs. A portrayal complemented the presentation, depicting the female ape in a modest attitude, and covering her sex—in contrast to the males’ sexual excess described in the text. Engraved both on the frontispiece of the book and as a full-page figure (Figure 4.2), this image became an icon of the orangutan—constantly copied, reprinted, and readapted in travel literature as well as in scientific treatises throughout the 18th century (Sutton 2012: 107–111). Half a century later anatomy contributed, once again, to the process of humanization of the orangutan, while also reasserting the crucial role of images in the shaping of scientific cred­ ibility. In 1698, the anatomical dissection of an ‘orang-outang’ or a ‘pygmie’ (actually an infant 68

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Figure 4.2 Nicolaes Tulp, Observationum Medicarum. Libri tre,Amsterdam: Ludovicum Elzevier 1641, p. 275. Public Domain 18/12/20 12:41 PM

Silvia Sebastiani

chimpanzee), put the relation between humans and great apes at center stage.The dissection was performed in London by Edward Tyson, member of the Royal Society and of the Royal College of Physicians, who published his findings a year later, under the title of Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris: or, the Anatomy of a Pygmie Compared with that of a Monkey, an Ape, and a Man—the three terms ‘Orang-Outang,’ ‘Homo Sylvestris,’ and ‘Pygmie’ were here considered synonymous.5 In his comparative survey,Tyson concluded that the orangutan/pigmy was much closer to humans than to monkeys, not only in its body but also in its brain and behavior. Described as in an erect position, supported either by a stick or by a rope, the orangutan epitomized the ‘intermediate Link between an Ape and a Man’ in the great chain of being (Tyson 1699: 5).The plates accom­ panying the text highlighted these similitudes, and helped to fix the anthropomorphic dimension of the orangutan.6 Furthermore, Tyson attributed human characteristics to the pigmy and endowed it with feelings: the orangutan appeared to be a ‘mild,’‘modest,’‘gentle, and loving’ creature, which, like a child, cried and made noise with its feet in order to express its ‘passions of joy and grief ’ (Tyson 1699: 7, 25, 52, 57). He also reported, on the basis of ‘infinite Stories,’ orangutans’ attraction to women, and their prolific acts of intercourse (Tyson 1699: 47). In his ‘Epistle Dedicatory’ to the President of the Royal Society Lord Evesham,Tyson presented his pigmy as ‘the Nexus of the Animal and Rational’ connecting together ‘the lowest Rank of Men, and the highest kind of Animals’ (Tyson 1699: 5, 94). It is worth stressing this apparently innocent sentence; what is stated here is that the human species has lost its unity, becoming divided into men of different ‘ranks,’ lower and higher. Eight years before Tyson’s dissection, John Locke (1632–1704), in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), had put into question the very possibility of delimiting the human species by emphasizing the many dissimilar forms it took. In Locke’s words, ‘There are creatures in the world that have shapes like ours, but are hairy, and want language and reason,’ while others with ‘language and reason’ but ‘hairy tails’; and ‘others where the males have no beards, and others where the females have…’ (Locke 1690: book III, Ch. 6). Locke inferred, from the multiplication of oddities, that there were different forms and degrees of humanity, and that ‘man’ was a broad category with uncertain boundaries (see Carey 2006: ch.1 and J.E.H. Smith 2015: 129–139). At the same time, however, he proposed a ‘perfect distinction betwixt Man and Brutes,’ on the basis that only the former had the capacity for abstract thought (Locke 1690: book II, chs. 10 and 11). Tyson did not follow Locke’s more radical suggestion, but he reasserted the dualism between the soul and the body. His pigmy remained an animal,‘a sort of ape and a mere brute,’ as it could neither think nor speak, in spite of being equipped with the same organs as human beings.The anatomist assured that the organs were ‘passive’ and that ‘the Nobler Faculties in the Mind of Man must certainly have a higher Principle’: ‘the Orang-Outang imitates a Man,’ without being one (Tyson 1699: 82, 55, and preface). In order to maintain the distinctiveness of the human species, Tyson thus appealed to con­ siderations altogether outside of empirical experience. At the same time, he criticized the ‘most unphilosophical’ inclination of modern philosophers ‘to make Men meer Brutes and Matter,’ in contrast with ‘the Ancients’ who ‘were fond of making Brutes to be Men’ (Tyson 1699: 55). If there is no evidence that Tyson had Locke in mind in his assertion, what is certain is that Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) referred to ‘the case of the Orang-Outang’ to discredit Locke’s nominalism. Not only did Leibniz refuse to reduce ‘man’ to a mere name, he further claimed that humanity had nothing to do with physiological features but depended on the rational soul. As well known, he was equally critical of Hobbes’ characterization of ‘uncivilized’ peoples living by mere violence in the state of nature. Leibniz thus opposed the very possibility

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of different gradations of humanity.According to him, there was no third term between ape and man (J.E.H. Smith 2011: 262–268 and 2015: 135). Tyson’s Orang-Outang also contributed to shaping the 18th-century debate about humankind in the field of natural history, becoming the written and iconographic source of the already mentioned Buffon’s Histoire naturelle and Linnaeus’ Systema naturae. In the volume on the Nomenclature des singes, which came out in 1766, Buffon meticulously translated Tyson’s list of the differences/similitudes between ‘men,’ ‘orang-outangs,’ and ‘apes/monkeys,’ while acknow­ ledging that ‘if we were forced to judge by the external form [forme] alone, the ape might be taken for a variety in the human species’ (Buffon 1766: 62–66. See Wokler 1976). Like Tyson, Buffon concluded that the divide between men and apes was immense and unbridgeable, as it did not depend on the body, but on the mind and the soul, prerogatives of the human being only. By contrast, in all his writings, Linnaeus stressed how difficult it was to distinguish a man from an ape. With the tenth edition of his Systema naturae in 1758, Linnaeus invented the category ‘Homo sapiens,’ and placed it alongside the ‘Troglodytes’ or ‘Homo sylvestris Orang Outang’ under the same genus ‘homo,’ in the class of ‘Mammalia’ and in the order of ‘Primates,’ according to his new taxonomic vocabulary.7 Buffon sharply criticized Linnaeus for engendering confusion between the human and the animal, and maintained that man was distinguished by physical and moral characteristics, as well by a need for society, outside of which he would never be able to survive: this was the fundamental distinction from animals, which simply lived ‘en troupe.’ However, not even Buffon maintained a rigorous divide when dealing with ‘savage’ peoples, whose way of living brought them close to beasts (Duchet 1995 [1971]: 229–80; Sebastiani 2013: chs. 2 and 3). Linnaeus opted for the other way around: rather than animalizing the ‘savage,’ he humanized the ‘orangutan,’ which, according to him, could not be distinguished from a man on the basis of ‘the principles of natural history.’ Linnaeus notoriously asked one of his correspondents, the German explorer in Russia, Johann Georg Gmelin, whether a naturalist should ‘call man ape and vice versa’ (see Koerner 1999: ch. 4).

4.3 When gender matters At the beginning of the 18th century, the orangutan had become an integral part of the reflections about human nature. The two main vectors of its ‘acclimatization’ were anatomical treatises, which, as we have seen, proved that the orangutan was comparable to man, and public shows (on which see Stuurman and Abbattista in this volume). Orangutans were displayed in fairs, menageries, coffeehouses, or anatomical collections, sometimes alive, more often dead, embalmed, or as a skeleton. Knowledge about great apes as such was very limited, as they never had been studied in their natural environment.The very few exemplars reaching Europe alive were infants, captured by killing their mothers.The celebrated ‘Madame Chimpanzee’ was no exception. The sensational arrival of ‘Madame Chimpanzee’ in London in 1738, drinking tea and dressing in French style, represents the most accomplished illustration of the spectacle of the orangutan’s humanity and femininity. Its case illustrates, in an exemplary way, the complex relation between learned culture and the commodification of the great ape in the new society of spectacle, where the public dimension of entertainment and curiosity was a decisive driver for the development of science itself (Schaffer 1983). It also shows that its humanization could be twisted against enslaved men and women across the world, depicting them as more bestial than apes. Information about Madame Chimpanzee’s exhibition at Randall’s coffeehouse, at which exotic animals were shown for a small fee, was spread through advertising, news, and comments from physicians, naturalists, and other visitors, published daily. For one shilling only, all Londoners

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could enjoy this new show. Among many other notices, equally emphatic and pompous, the London Post announced: There is lately arriv’d in the Ship Speaker, and to be seen at Randall’s Coffee-house against the General Post-Office in Lombard-street, the Creature by the Angolans call’s Chimpanzee or Mock-Man […], being perhaps the greatest Curiosity in the known world. (London Post and General Advertiser, September, 1738) Newspapers immediately adopted and diffused the new term ‘chimpanzee,’ which was added to the long list of existing appellations, without being used for distinguishing African from Asian apes. Captain Henry Flower, who transported ‘the creature’ to London and was its owner, claimed that ‘chimpanzee’ was the name used by Angolans; the alternative term ‘Mock-Man’ highlighted the mimetic relationship between the ape and the human.The reference to Angola as the birth­ place of such a ‘curiosity’ could evoke a taste for the distant and the exotic. However, it referred to another reality, which was always present but never explicit: Angola was one of the main centers for supplying enslaved people to American plantations. Before entertaining the London urban audience with the allure of a lady, the chimpanzee belonged to this colonial environment. The London Magazine indicated the journey through which it traveled to Europe: A most surprising Creature is brought over in the Speaker, just arrived from Carolina, that was taken in a Wood at Guinea. (London Magazine, 21 September 1738) These few lines are meaningful. They attest that the chimpanzee was brought on board a slave vessel, belonged to a slave merchant, and traveled through the triangular circuit of slavery.Taken in Angola, it landed in England via North Carolina. The simple style by which this informa­ tion was provided, with no emphasis (to the point that it has passed unnoticed by historians), shows that there was nothing extraordinary about it. This was the standard way for bringing chimpanzees, as well as other exotic animals, to Europe. As a matter of fact, 40 years before, Tyson’s pigmy had arrived by the same routes (Sebastiani 2019)—a circumstance that confirms the profound entanglements between science and the slave trade in the circulation of natural specimens, as some studies of the last 15 years have begun to demonstrate (Schiebinger 2004; Murphy 2013; Delbourgo 2017. In relation to animals, see Robbins 2002 and Tague 2015: ch. 2). The notice of the London Magazine also recorded that the chimpanzee walked ‘upright nat­ urally,’ was ‘clothed with a thin Silk Vestment,’ and showed ‘a great Discontent at the opening her Gown to discover her Sex.’ Portrayed in the social practice of tea drinking, like a lady in polite society,‘she’—the newspapers employed more and more frequently the personal pronoun ‘she’ for speaking about the ape—was celebrated for an innate modesty, taste, and polite table manners. ‘She’ was described as sensitive, delicate, elegant, and capable of social feelings, while daily growing ‘in human Capacity and Understanding’ (London Daily Post and General Advertiser, on Tuesday 30th January 1739). So, Londa Schiebinger is right in stressing that the ape was ‘gen­ dered’ in every instance (Schiebinger 1994. See also Rousseau 1991; Brown 2010: ch. 2). Images were, once again, central to the process of humanization, as well as of feminization, of the ape. A copperplate engraving of the chimpanzee holding a cup of tea was produced by Jean Baptiste Gérard Scotin II, after a drawing by Hubert-François Bourguignon Gravelot¸ and was sold to ‘the Curious’ at the price of one shilling (London Evening Post, December 26–28, 1738). These two major French representatives of the rococo style—the artistic movement, which placed the question of the transformation of nature and its boundaries at the heart of its own aesthetics (Scott 1995)—portrayed the chimpanzee as an educated and polite madame, who had gradually moved away from her natural and savage environment (Figure 4.3). 72

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Figure 4.3 Madame Chimpanzee holding a teacup, by Gérard Scotin II, after Hubert-François Bourguignon Gravelot, 1738. (Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library,Yale University)

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The background of the engraving can be read as an allegory of the stages of humaniza­ tion of the chimpanzee: at the beginning, climbing on a palm tree; then in the family, with a stick as support; up to the character in the first plane, perfectly bipedal. Instead of the cane, which she has abandoned on the ground, Madame Chimpanzee holds in her hand a cup of tea, which, in the 1730s, was still a symbol of the luxury products imported from China and destined for elite consumption (Berg and Eger 2002). Her attained civility contrasts with the savagery of the African, depicted with his bow in the act of chasing the chimpanzee, and thus enchained to wildness. The choice of portraying the ape as naked, rather than as elegantly dressed as she was described, responded to the anatomical exigence of showing her body in detail.The engraving was dedicated to Sir Hans Sloane, President of the Royal Society, who took a great deal of interest in the examination of this new curiosity, fully endorsing the idea of a strong relational continuity between the ape and the human. The manuscript inscription gave precise information about her provenance, age, and anatomy, while stating, ‘It is of the Female kind…, walks erect, drinks tea… & sleeps in a human way… She hath a Capacity of understanding & great Affability… The Males when at full growth do force Women.’ The shift from ‘it’ to ‘she’ in the same paragraph is indicative of the blurred borders. The site of the exhibition of the chimpanzee, the coffeehouse, as well as the drink with which she was associated, the tea, were other key elements of her civility and sociability.This reflected a new urban consumer society, characterized by politeness and good manners. It was in this society that the chimpanzee experienced an impressive social ascent, gaining the name of ‘madam’ or ‘mademoiselle.’ The fabulous career of Madame Chimpanzee—meticulously recorded, and thus fabricated, by British newspapers—came to an end with her sudden death in February 1739, five months after her arrival in London. Far from being merely anecdotal, her case has meaningful consequences, which have to be highlighted in order to grasp Enlightenment debates about the boundaries of humanity. Whereas her celebrity familiarized, among a wide European public, the image of sensitive and educated apes, the chimpanzee’s addiction to tea and silk vestments were a warning against the emasculating of the new consumer society, symbolized by the coffeehouses and characterized by femininity, thus reactivating the old link between women, luxury, and corruption (Rousseau 1991). Furthermore, the incessant emphasis on her natural sense of shame, sensibility, and decency contributed to naturalize, and universalize, modesty and chastity as female characteristics, thus these becoming a prescriptive model for 18th-century (European) women (Schiebinger 1994). Through her exhibition, Madame Chimpanzee offered a parodic version of genteel woman­ hood, which, in turn, led to a hierarchy between women across the globe. It was precisely the ‘natural delicacy’ and sensibility of the European woman that supposedly distinguished her from African and Amerindian women, who were construed as immodest and insensitive, and whose hardiness made them more suitable for physical labor and colonial exploitation (Morgan 2004: Ch. 1). All these elements of the humanization as well as feminization of the ape, such as understanding, modesty, sensitivity, or good manners, were reiterated in the 1770s debates on slavery across the British Empire. Here a specific aim was pursued: that of fixing different degrees of humanity in order to defend the slave system. By these means, apes and human populations were selectively humanized or dehumanized, included within humanity or consigned to mere nature. The English planter in Jamaica, Edward Long (1734–1813), one of the most vociferous proslavery advocates of the time, did not miss the opportunity to contrast orangutans’ fine table

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manners to Africans’ coarse ones in order to prove the bestiality of the latter and the civility of the former: They [Africans] use neither table-cloths, knives, forks, plates, nor trenchers, and gener­ ally squat down upon the bare earth to the repast. (Long 1774: vol. II, 382–383) In contrast with peaceful and refined apes, ‘Negroes’ were cruel, bloodthirsty, ravenous, and anthropophagous, as attested to by many travelers and shown by their preference to eating apes— ‘that mock-man,’ specified Long—who they ‘esteem […] as scarcely their inferiors in humanity; and suppose are very able to talk, but so cunning withal, that, to avoid working, they dissemble their talent, and pretend to be dumb…’ In the mouth of a slave owner, the reference to apes’ strategic mutism in order to escape being enslaved sounds particularly odd (on the relationship between speech and slavery, see Ogborn 2019).The next step was to link voracity and greediness to sexual lust, which, in Long’s narrative, characterized Africans of both sexes, in stark contrast with Madame Chimpanzee’s modesty.

4.4 ‘Ludicrous as the opinion may seem’ Long’s History of Jamaica, published in three volumes in 1774, is a complex work which would need a deeper examination than I can offer in this chapter. Here, I will deal only partially with its argument, focusing on the image it conveyed about the ‘nature’ of ‘Negroes’ in Africa.8 What matters is that the association Long made between Africans and apes illustrates how the debate on humanity was inflected by the debate on slavery. Long’s History of Jamaica should be firmly placed within the context of the abolitionist campaign of the beginning of 1770s. In 1769, one of the most strenuous activists, Granville Sharp (1735–1813), challenged the supporters of slavery ‘to prove, that a Negro Slave is nei­ ther man, woman nor child.’ Sharp made it clear that ‘if they are not able to do this, how can they presume to consider such a person as a mere “chose in action”?’ (Sharp 1769, 15). In 1772, the Somerset case established legal limits to slavery itself, by extending the habeas corpus to enslaved residents in England. Long’s answer was immediate: his Candid Reflections categorically rejected the ruling, attacking the judge Lord Mansfield for ‘washing the black­ amoor white’ (Long 1772: iii). His history went a step further: in its response to abolitionists’ arguments, it based ‘African slavery on biology’ (Drescher, 2002: 75. See also Ogborn 2019: 6–16). For shoring up slavery, Long attributed human characteristics to apes, while osten­ tatiously denying humanity to Africans. This is why Catherine Hall affirms that ‘disavowal, knowing and not knowing, was central to his thinking’ (Hall 2016: 130; Hall and Pick 2017; see also D.L. Smith in this volume). Long’s procedure was binary. On the one hand, he tediously presented Africans as ‘the vilest of the human kind,’ by combining physical and mental traits: dark skin, flat nose, thick lips, large female nipples, a bestial smell, ‘no moral sensations,’ ‘no taste,’ and a lack of ingenuity. On the other hand, he described the orangutan as a creature sui generis, similar to the human ‘in coun­ tenance, figure, stature, organs, erect posture…, and manner of living,’ with a ‘great degree of social feeling,’ a ‘sense of shame, and a share of sensibility’ (Long 1774: vol. II, 353, 358). In such a description, the African ended up overlapping with the ape, as evinced by Long’s rhetorical question: ‘Has the Hottentot from this portrait a more manly figure than the orang-outang?’ With a shift from the ‘Hottentot’ to the African in general, Long’s answer was that ‘he,’the orang­ utan, ‘has in form a much nearer resemblance to the Negroe race, than the latter bear to White

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men’ (Long 1774: vol. II, 365, 371). The major divide for him was not between animal and human but between black and white. Long combined two hierarchical and static credos: the polygenic idea, which established that humankind did not share a common ancestor, and the great chain of being, which asserted the regular order and gradation of the entirety of nature. In line with the natural world, men belonged to one ‘genus’ divided into ‘species,’ clearly separated from each other. Peoples’ phys­ ique, character and mental capacity were rooted in nature, so that the Africans were condemned to remain brutish and miserable, as far as they remained in Africa. Long’s hint at a possible pro­ gress for them was fictive, as it required a providential miracle, as well as being degrading in its continuous parallel with apes: We cannot pronounce them insusceptible of civilization, since even apes have been taught to eat, drink, repose, and dress like men; but of all the human species hitherto discovered, their natural baseness of mind seems to afford least hope of their being (except by miraculous interposition of Divine Providence) so far refined as to think as well as act like men. (Long 1774: vol. II, 376) Here Long’s rhetorical strategy is laid bare. If apes could learn good manners, Africans were ‘less than human’ (D.L. Smith 2011, and in this volume). Slavery thus emerged as social necessity: men ‘so savage’ to ‘scarcely differ from the wild beasts of the wood in the ferocity of their manners,’ ‘must be managed at first as if they were beasts; they must be tamed, before they can be treated like men’ (Long 1774: vol. II, 401). An important part of Long’s demonstration of innate and original differences in humankind was based on sexuality. If he spoke of male Africans as ‘libidinous and shameless as monkies, or baboons,’ he insinuated that ‘the equally hot temperament of their women’ explained their frequent and consensual intercourse with apes. Long reached the climax of his argument by asserting, ‘Ludicrous as the opinion may seem, I do not think that an Oran-Outang husband would be any disgrace to an Hottentot female’ (Long 1774: vol. II, 370, 364). Once again, the inversion of roles actuated by Long is disturbing, as he socialized the orangutan, making of ‘him’ a husband, while reducing the African woman to her sexual role of ‘female.’This aspect did not escape the antislavery campaigner William Dickson (1751–1823), who commented that ‘ludi­ crous’ stood for ‘indecent or shocking’ in Long’s ‘misanthropic, antimosaic, or antichristian’ account (Dickson 1789: 83–84). Long also recurred to another topos: the myth that African women had no pain in giving childbirth, which confirmed them as being perfectly fit for both productive and reproductive labor, as Jennifer Morgan has convincingly demonstrated (Morgan 2004: 36–40). In Long’s proslavery plea, this constituted an additional empirical proof of Africans’ animality: Their women are delivered with little or no labor; they have therefore no more occasion for midwives, than the female oran-outang, or any other wild animal. A woman brings forth her child in a quarter of an hour, goes the same day to the sea, and washes herself. Some have even been known to bring forth twins without a shriek, or a scream; and it is seldom they are confined above two, or, at mod, three days. […] Thus they seem exempted from the curse inflicted upon Eve and her daughters,‘I will greatly multiply thy sorrow; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children.’ (Long 1774: vol. 2, 380)

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By their exemption from the universal curse, African women were thus excluded from Christianity tout court. It was in Genesis (King James Version, 1611, 3:16) where Long pretended to find an incontestable evidence of their inhumanity.

4.5 Conclusion Long was not the only one who associated Africans and apes through their sexuality, but he was the one who took it to the extreme. Others reflected on the different forms that humanity took at different stages of progress. As is well known, Rousseau considered the orangutan liter­ ally as being a ‘man of the wood.’ He maintained that all the prerogatives classically attributed to human nature, including sociability, language, the bipedal posture, and rationality were not innate but the outcome of human perfectibilité. In his Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes, Rousseau even suggested that only a test in cross-breeding, which he acknowledged as too dangerous to be put into practice, could resolve once and for all the question of orangutans’ humanity or animality (Rousseau 2008 [1755]: 177, note X). In the attempt to discredit Rousseau’s pre-social man, Buffon stressed the affinities in temperament and body (especially in their reproductive organs) between orangutans and Hottentots, while also mentioning ‘the vehement appetite of the males for the females […] and the forced or voluntary intermixture [mélanges] of the Negress with the apes’ (Buffon 1766, 31–32). But, at the end of this passage, he re-introduced the clear-cut dichotomy between man and animal on the basis of thought and speech, as Tyson had done. Along with the humanity of the orangutan, Monboddo pushed the argument of the distinction in different degrees of humanity further than anyone else in the 18th century, and on this basis he defended slavery as a judge of the Court of Session in Scotland (see Sebastiani 2015). Others, like the German naturalist Eberhard August Wilhelm von Zimmermann (1743–1815), considered it ‘not entirely improbable that an Orang Outang could produce an intermediate being with a human,’ and went on to mention an (unsuccessful) experiment in interbreeding between a prostitute and a male ape, which would have been attempted in London in 1770 (Zimmermann 1778, vol. I: 118n; see Wells 2018). Still others suggested that such experiments had to be tested in the most favorable climate of the colonies rather than in European metrop­ oles—an argument advanced by Long himself (Long 1774: vol. II, 383). On the other side of the Atlantic, Thomas Jefferson notoriously claimed that Black people recognized the superior beauty of white women, by preferring them ‘as uniformly as is the preference of the Oranootan for the Black women over those of his own species,’ thus confirming that aesthetic criteria and sexuality connected ‘Negroes’ to apes, with the male—either the orangutan or the African—in the active role of the one who chose (Jefferson 1955 [1787]: 252–3).The list of white men sub­ scribing to this abusive trope is long.The point is that during the 18th century, and increasingly in its second half, the orangutan was ubiquitous in European and Anglo-American science of man, also feeding the debates about slavery. In order to defend the humanity of enslaved Africans, British abolitionists such as William Dickson thought it necessary to ‘completely overthrow the orang outang system’ (Dickson 1789: 1). For doing so, Dickson recurred to the authority of the Dutch physician Peter Camper (1722–1789), whose anatomical findings dismissed the structural identity between man and ape (Dickson 1789: 68). On the basis of the dissection of several Asiatic specimens, Camper ‘proved’ that the organs of speech of the orangutans were different from the humans, and so were their organs of reproduction.Thus, the infinite stories of their prolific sexual intercourses with women were nothing but a myth (Camper 1779). Ironically, by inventing the facial angle, Camper linked

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the skulls of Africans to those of the orangutans, at least from a visual and aesthetic perspective.9 However, in each of his writings, he insisted upon the unity of the human species, as well as upon the pre-eminence of humankind as a whole (Meijer 1999). It was Campers’ plan of re-animalizing the orangutan that British antislavery activists considered decisive for re-humanizing the African in the 1770s and 1780s. The point was—in the words of the parliamentary champion of abolitionist cause,William Wilberforce (1759–1833)—that ‘the slaves were systematically depressed below the level of human beings.’ In a speech of 13 May 1789 Wilberforce urged the House of Commons to consider the real meaning of the fable of Africans’ assimilation to orangutans, by recognizing white man’s responsibilities: ‘It is we ourselves that have degraded them to that wretched brutishness and barbarity which we now plead as the justification of our guilt.’ It is not nature but the slave trade which ‘has enslaved their minds, blackened their character and sunk them so low in the scale of animal beings, that some think the very apes are of a higher class, and fancy the Ourang Outang has given them the go-by’ (Wilberforce 1789, 47–48, emphasis in the original).Through his voice and pen, the orangutan also made its entry into the British Parliament. Moved by the same purpose as Dickson and Wilberforce, Granville Sharp was ironic: if Africans were ‘apes and orang outangs,’ as English planters pretended, then ‘almost all the White inhabitants of our islands’ would have been ‘guilty of gross and abominable bestiality!’ (Sharp 1820: IX, Appendix). It was the white man, not the black, who showed inhumanity and depraved sexuality, according to Sharp, who thus inverted the proslavery argument. Enlightenment debates on the orangutan left the modern human sciences an epistemological doubt about the definition of humankind and its boundaries.This had significant consequences for the ways in which the human/animal divide and the race question shaped the debate on humanization and dehumanization in the West. Returning to the 1950s,Vercors’ imagery was just one of the many reconfigurations of that pulse in the aftermath of the Second World War.This chapter contends that a longer chronology provides a more nuanced and complex understanding of the persistent problem in conceptualizing humanity.

Notes 1 The Déclaration sur la race followed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, issued in 1948. On the complex history of the UNESCO declarations and the changes occurring in the successive texts, see Pogliano 2001; Brattain 2007; Müller-Wille 2007. 2 Vercors’s Animaux dénaturés was translated into English under three different titles: You Shall Know Them, The Murder of the Missing Link, and Borderline. In 1962, the book was turned into a ‘judicial, zoological and moral comedy’ for the theater (Zoo ou l’Assassin philanthrope) and in 1970 into a movie (Skullduggery, with Burt Reynolds).Together with Pierre de Lescure,Vercors was the founder in 1941 of the clandes­ tine publishing house ‘Editions de Minuit,’ where he published his well-known novel Le Silence de la mer in 1942. On the Editions de Minuit, see Simonin 1994. 3 In the 1770s Johann Friedrich Blumenbach introduced the term ‘quadrumane’ as part of his taxonomy, while Georges Cuvier popularized it in 1817. See Corsi 2001: 180. 4 The original edition of the Observationum Medicarum, published in 1641, consisted of three books, closed by the chapter on the orangutan. In following editions, Tulp added a fourth book, composed of 59 chapters, and concluding with tea. On medical case narrative as an epistemic genre, see Pomata 2010 and 2013. For a contextualization of Tulp’s activity in Amsterdam, see Cook 2007: ch. 4. 5 It is meaningful to stress that the first, and until now the only, monograph on Tyson was written by the future UNESCO leader, Ashley Montagu, who regarded the English physician as the father of com­ parative anatomy (Montagu 1943). For an interesting discussion of Montagu and his conception of The Dehumanization of Man (1983, with Matson), see Milam in this volume. For a more recent reading of Tyson’s anatomy, see Gould 1985; Nash 2003: ch. 1; Cunningham 2010: ch. 5.

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Enlightenment humanization and dehumanization 6 The plates were produced by the Flemish engraver Michael van der Gucht, after the drawing of William Cowper, also an anatomist and member of the Royal Society. For a discussion of anthropomorphism and zoomorphism as two intertwined logics, see Milam in this volume. 7 Linnaeus 1766: vol. 1, 24, on which see Broberg 1983. Linnaeus distinguished the ‘Troglodytes’ or ‘Homo Nocturnus,’ from the species of ‘Homo Sapiens’ ‘diurnus,’ but even more from the apes, which belonged to the second genus of the order of the Primates. 8 Long’s evaluation of ‘Creoles,’ i.e., black people born in Jamaica, was more nuanced as well as contra­ dictory. See Seth 2018, ch. 6. Catherine Hall is now writing a much-needed monograph on Edward Long’s life and thinking. 9 As well known, Camper’s images of the facial angle—that he had drawn himself—would have been used by 19th-century polygenists in order to illustrate the morphological proximity between ‘Negroes’ and apes. On the role of images in making race, see Lafont 2019.

References Abbattista, G. (2020) “Dehumanizing the Exotic in Living Human Exhibitions,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, 83–97. (this volume). Barsanti, G. (1990) “Storia naturale delle scimmie, 1600–1800.” Nuncius, vol. 5/2: 99–165. Berg, M. and Eger E. (eds.) (2002) Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods, Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. Binoche, B. (2018) Nommer l’histoire. Parcours philosophiques, Paris: Editions de l’EHESS. Bontius, J. (1658) “Historiae naturalis et medicae Indiae Orientalis,” in William Piso, De Indiae utriusque re naturali et medica libri quatuordecim, Amsterdam: Lodovicum et Danielem Elzevirios. Brattain, M. (2007) “Race, Racism, and Antiracism: UNESCO and the Politics of Presenting Science to the Post-war Public.” American Historical Review, vol. 112: 1386–1413. Broberg, G. (1983) “Homo sapiens. Linnaeus’s Classification of Man,” in T. Frängsmyr, S. Lindroth, G. Eriksson, and G. Broberg (eds.), Linnaeus: The Man and His Work, Berkeley: University of California Press, 156–194. Brown, L. (2010) Homeless Dogs & Melancholy Apes: Humans and Other Animals in the Modern Literary Imagination, Ithaca-London: Cornell University Press. Buffon, G.-L. L. (1766) “Nomenclature des singes,” in Histoire naturelle générale et particulière, Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 36 vols. (1749–89), vol. XIV: 1–42. Camper, P. (1779) “Account of the Organs of Speech of the Orang Outang.” Philosophical Transactions, vol. 69: 139–159. Carey, D. (2006) Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson: Contesting Diversity in the Enlightenment and Beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cook, H. J. (2007) Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age, New Haven: Yale University Press. Corsi, P. (2001) Lamarck. Genèse et enjeux du transformisme, 1770–1830, Paris: CNRS Editions. Crary, A. (2020) “Dehumanization and the Question of Animals,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, 159–172. (this volume). Cunningham, A. (2010) The Anatomist Anatomis’d: An Experimental Discipline in Enlightenment Europe, Farnham: Ashgate. Curran, A. S. (2011) The Anatomy of Blackness. Science and Slavery in an Age of Enlightenment, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Davis, B. D. (2006) Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World, New York: Oxford University Press. Delbourgo, J. (2017) Collecting the World. The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane, London: Allen Lane. Dickson, W. (1789) Letters on Negro Slavery, London: J. Phillips. Douglas, M. (1975) Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology, London: Routledge & Paul. Drescher, S. (2002) The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Duchet, M. (1995 [1971]) Anthropologie et histoire au siècle des Lumières, Paris: Albin Michel. Elder, G., Wolch, J. and Emel, J. (1998) “Race, Place, and the Bounds of Humanity.” Society and Animals, vol. 6: 183–202.

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Silvia Sebastiani Gould, S. J. (1985) “To Show an Ape,” in The Flamingo’s Smile: Reflections in Natural History, New York: Norton, 263–280. Hall, C. (2016) “Whose Memories? Edward Long and the Work of Re-Remembering,” in K. Donington, R. Hanley, and J. Moody (eds.), Britain’s History and Memory of Transatlantic Slavery, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 129–149. Hall, C. and Pick, D. (2017) “Thinking About Denial.” History Workshop Journal, vol. 84: 1–23. Hiernaux, J. and Banton, M. (1969) Four Statements on the Race Question, Paris: UNESCO (https://unesdoc. unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000122962). Hund, W. D. (2020) “Dehumanization and Social Death as Fundamentals of Racism,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, 229–244. (this volume). Jefferson, T. (1955 [1787]) Notes on the State of Virginia…, ed. William Peden, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Jobson, R. (1623) The Golden Trade, or a Discovery of the River Gambra and the Golden Trade of the Æthiopians, London: N. Okes. Jordan, W. (1968) White Over Black. American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Koerner, L. (1999) Linnaeus. Nature and Nation, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kolb, P. (1731[1719]) The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, Or, A Particular Account of the Several Nations of the Hottentots, 2 vols. London: W. Innys. Kontler, L. (2020) “‘Humanity’ and Its Limits in Early Modern European Thought,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, 52–63. (this volume). Kronfeldner, M. (2020) “Psychological Essentialism and Dehumanization,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, 362–377. (this volume). Lafont, A. (2019) L’Art et la race. L’Africain (tout) contre l’œil des Lumières, Dijon: Les Presses du réel. Linnaeus, C. (1766) Systema Naturae per Regna Tria Naturae, Secundum Classes, Ordines, Genera, Species, Stockholm: L. Salvii. Locke, J. (1690) An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, London: Thomas Basset. London Daily Post and General Advertiser (1738–39). London Magazine (1738). Long, E. (1772) Candid Reflections upon the Judgment Lately Awarded by the Court of King’s Bench in Westminster Hall on What is Commonly Called The Negroe Cause, by a Planter, London: T. Lowndes. Long, E. (1774) The History of Jamaica, or, General Survey of the Ancient and Modern State of That Island. With Reflections on Its Situation, Settlements, Inhabitants, Climate, Products, Commerce, Laws, and Government, 3 vols. London: T. Lowndes. Meijer, M. C. (1999) Race and Aesthetics in the Anthropology of Petrus Camper (1722–1789), Amsterdam: Rodopi. Milam, E. L. (2020) “Theorizing the Inhumanity of Human Nature, 1955–1985,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, 112–124. (this volume). Monboddo (Lord, Burnett, J.) (1774 [1773]) Of the Origin and Progress of Language, Edinburgh-London: Balfour and Cadell, 6 vols. (1773–92), vol. I. Montagu, A. F. (1942) Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race, New York: Columbia University Press. Montagu, A. F. (1943) Edward Tyson, M.D., F.R.S. 1650–1708 and the Rise of Human and Comparative Anatomy in England, Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. Montagu, A. F. and Matson, F. (1983) The Dehumanization of Man, New York: McGraw Hill. Morgan, J. L. (2004) Laboring Women: Gender and Reproduction in the New World Slavery, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Müller-Wille, S. (2007) “Race et appartenance ethnique: la diversité humaine et l’UNESCO Déclarations sur la race (1950 et 1951),” 60 ans d’histoire de l’UNESCO, Paris, UNESCO, 211–220. Murphy, K. S. (2013) “Collecting Slave Traders: James Petiver, Natural History, and the British Slave Trade.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 70/4: 637–670. Nash, R. (2003) Wild Enlightenment. The Borders of Human Identity in the Eighteenth Century, Charlottesville: Virginia University Press.

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Enlightenment humanization and dehumanization Ogborn, M. (2019) The Freedom of Speech. Talk and Slavery in the Anglo-Caribbean World, Chicago-London: University of Chicago Press. Pogliano, C. (2001) “Statements on Race dell’UNESCO: Cronaca di un lungo travaglio (1949–1953).” Nuncius. Annali di Storia della Scienza, vol. 16/1: 347–399. Pomata, G. (2010) “Sharing Cases: The Observationes in Early Modern Medicine.” Early Science and Medicine, vol. 15/3: 193–236. Pomata G. (2013) “The Recipe and the Case: Epistemic Genres and the Dynamics of Cognitive Practices,” in K. von Greyerz, S. Flubacher, Ph. Senn (eds.), Wissenschaftsgeschichte und Geschichte des Wissens im Dialog/Connecting Science and Knowledge, Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 131–154. Robbins L. E. (2002) Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots. Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century Paris, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Rousseau, G. S. (1991) “Madame Chimpanzee,” in Enlightenment Crossings: Pre- and Post-Modern Discourses Anthropological, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 191–209. Rousseau J.-J. (2008 [1755]) Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes, ed. B. Bachofen et B. Bernardi, Paris: Flammarion. Schaffer S. (1983), “Natural Philosophy and Public Spectacle in the Eighteenth Century.” History of Science, vol. 21: 1–43. Schiebinger, L. (1994) “The Gendered Ape,” in Nature’s Body. Gender in the Making of Modern Science, Boston: Beacon Press, 75–114. Schiebinger, L. (2004) Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Scott, K. (1995) The Rococo Interior: Decoration and Social Spaces in Early Eighteenth-Century, Paris-New Haven-London: Yale University Press. Sebastiani, S. (2013) The Scottish Enlightenment. Race, Gender and the Limits of Progress, New York: Palgrave-Macmillan. Sebastiani, S. (2015) “Challenging Boundaries. Apes and Savages in Enlightenment,” in W. D. Hund, C. W. Mills, and S. Sebastiani (eds.), Simianization. Apes, Gender, Class, and Race, Berlin: Lit Verlag, 105–137. Sebastiani, S. (2019) “A ‘Monster with Human Visage’: The Orangutan, Savagery and the Borders of Humanity in the Global Enlightenment.” History of the Human Sciences, vol. 32/4: 80–99. Seth, S. (2018) Difference and Disease. Medicine, Race, and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sharp, G. (1769) A Representation of the Injustice and Dangerous Tendency of Tolerating Slavery, or of Admitting the Least Claim of Private Property in the Persons of Men, in England, London: Printed for Benjamin White and Robert Horsfield. Sharp, G. (1820) Memoirs of Granville Sharp, Esq. Composed from His Own Manuscripts, and Other Authentic Documents in the Possession of his Family and of the African Institution, ed. P. Hoare, London: Printed for Henry Colburn and Co. Simonin, A. (1994) Les Éditions de Minuit, 1942–1955. Le devoir d’insoumission, Paris: IMEC éditions. Smith, D. L. (2011) Less than Human. Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, New York: St. Martins Press. Smith, D. L. (2020) “Dehumanization, the Problem of Humanity, and the Problem of Monstrosity,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, 355–361. (this volume). Smith, J. E. H. (2011) Divine Machines: Leibniz and the Science of Life, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Smith, J. E. H. (2015) Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference. Race in Early Modern Philosophy, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Stuurman, S. (2019) The Invention of Humanity: Equality and Cultural Difference in World History, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Stuurman, S. (2020) “Dehumanization before the Columbian Exchange,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, 37–51. (this volume). Sutton, E. A. (2012) Early Modern Dutch Prints of Africa: Transculturalisms, 1400–1700, Farnham: Ashgate. Tague, I. H. (2008) “Dead Pets: Satire and Sentiment in British Elegies and Epitaphs for Animals.” Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 41/3: 289–306. Tague, I. H. (2015) Animal Companions: Pets and Social Change in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Press.

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Silvia Sebastiani Thomas, K. (1983) Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500–1800, London: Allen Lane. Thomson, A. (1986) “From l’Histoire Naturelle de l’Homme to the Natural History of Mankind.” British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 9: 73–80. Tulp, N. (1641) Observationum Medicarum. Libri tre, Amsterdam: Ludovicum Elzevier. Tyson, E. (1699) Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris: Or, the Anatomy of a Pygmie Compared with that of a Monkey, an Ape, and a Man. A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies, the Cynocephali, the Satyrs, and Sphinges of the Ancients, London: T. Bennett and D. Brown. Vercors (Bruller, J.) (1952) Les Animaux dénaturés, Paris: Albin Michel. Wells, A. (2018) “Blurred Lines: Bestiality and the Human Ape in Enlightenment Scotland,” in S. Cockram and A. Wells (eds.), Interspecies Interactions: Animals and Humans between the Middle Ages and Modernity, New York: Routledge, 123–148. Wilberforce, W. (1789) The Speech of William Wilberforce, Esq., Representative for the County of York, on Wednesday the 13th of May, 1789, on the Question of the Abolition of the Slave Trade, London: printed at the Logographic Press and sold by J. Walter, C. Stalker, and W. Richardson. Wokler, R. (1976) “Tyson and Buffon on the Orang-utan.” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, vol. 155: 2301–2319. Zimmermann, E. A. W. (1778) Geographische Geschichte des Menschen, 3 vols. Leipzig: Weygandschen Buchhandlung.

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5

DEHUMANIZING THE EXOTIC

IN LIVING HUMAN EXHIBITIONS

Guido Abbattista

The white world, the only honourable one, barred me from all participation. A man was expected to behave like a man. I was expected to behave like a black man or at least like a nigger. I shouted a greeting to the world and the world slashed away my joy. I was told to stay within bounds, to go back where I belonged. Franz Fanon, Black Skin,White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1967), pp. 114–115.

5.1 Introduction: Under the mask of progress and modernity From the early 19th century and for a long time after, with increasing frequency from the 1850s onward, and at a time when the struggle against slavery and the slave trade was approaching its end, the white, modern, progressive Western world held public performances dehumanizing exotic human beings—variations of which are still detectable within the logic of contemporary communication and spectacle.Those dehumanizing practices consisted in the regular, systematic, unscrupulous, insensitive, and even brutal public exhibitions of human beings belonging to nonEuropean ethnic groups—what were commonly termed ‘races.’That said, one of the arguments which this chapter would like to underline and that the ‘conclusion’ will return to later, is the inadequacy of any one-dimensional interpretation of the living ethnic exhibitions focusing exclusively on their inhuman character, postulating a unidirectional relationship between the dominant exhibitors and the passively exhibited victims, and neglecting the agency by which the latter were able to express themselves. Historical and cultural studies know them nowadays as ethnic or living human exhibitions, or ‘human zoos,’ a disputed and problematic—in the present author’s view (Abbattista 2015)—but successful definition.They took place in different exhibitionary contexts, accessible to the wider public: from the newly created 19th century public zoological gardens (parcs animaliers, tierparks, heirs of the pre-existing princely or aristocratic seraglios) to theatres and circuses, and most of all the world’s fairs and great exhibitions, those grandiose public events that Flaubert defined ‘le sujet de délire du 19ème siècle’—colossal, public, collective rites of national, international, and global gatherings of men, objects, knowledge, and techniques put on display in the name of modernity and progress.

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5.2 The freak shows and ethnic exhibitions trade Talking of living ethno-exhibitions from the viewpoint of their dehumanizing implications makes it necessary to draw a preliminary distinction with regard to the ancient phenom­ enon of ‘freak shows.’ Since ancient and medieval times, freak shows exhibited the ‘extraor­ dinary body’ (Garland-Thomson 1996 and 1997). In the notorious world of ‘freaks’—the same that must have inspired the satirical fantasies of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels—single, exceptional examples of human physical anomalies, oddities, prodigies, deformities, and mon­ strosities were exhibited: individual persons affected by abnormal or pathological physical conditions, the most common being gigantism, dwarfism, hypertrichosis, bearded women, hermaphroditism, Siamese twins, hydrocephalus, anomalous skin pigmentation, and other der­ matological pathologies, displayed in what have been defined as ‘skin shows’ (Halberstam 1995). Joseph Merrick, the so-called ‘Elephant man,’ is certainly the most famous case in Victorian England, the object of numerous anthropological and biographical studies (Montagu 1971, Ford and Howell 1980). The peculiarities exhibited by the freaks were dramatized and exploited for profit, but their being freaks, or bearers of a physical exceptionality, was independent from the exhibitionary act in itself, or ‘the spectacle of deformity’ (Durbach 2010). This does not mean that the freak shows had no dehumanizing effects. On the contrary, they presupposed that an exceptional or pathological physical difference, often a greatly abnormal physical com­ plexion, implied a diminished form of humanity.The wicked business of the exposition of freaks transformed the abnormal human being, because of their physical appearance, into an object of exploitation, unquestionably reducing their human dignity and nullifying their moral char­ acter, even if sometimes paradoxically providing those human beings with their only source of income. Living ethnic exhibitions usually involved more than a single person or a couple of people, even if several examples of this latter kind, sometimes comparable to freak shows, are recorded. Of course, the most famous and the best known of them all are Saartjie Baartman, the khoikhoi young woman called the ‘Hottentot Venus,’ in London and Paris, from 1810 to 1814 (Holmes 2016); Azil, the Eskimo girl exhibited in some European countries between 1827 and 1843 (Bertino 2013); the ‘[Giovanni] Miani’s Akkas,’ two pygmy boys exhibited and studied in Italy in 1872 to 1883 (Puccini 1999: 75–116); Zaira, the pygmy girl brought to Italy by Romolo Gessi and exhibited in Trieste in 1884 (Abbattista 2003); Gootoo and Inyokwana, two African chil­ dren on show at the Stanley and Africa Exhibition, London, in 1889; Ota Benga, the Congolese pygmy, a Mbuti young man caged at the St. Louis 1904 Exhibition and in the New York Zoo in 1906 (Newkirk 2015); Ishi, the last of the Yahi Indians, California, in 1911 to 1916 (Kroeber and Kroeber 2002); and several others. Different degrees and forms of dehumanization were detect­ able in most of these cases, too, especially when people were displayed behind bars, like Sartjie Baartman and Ota Benga. However, as a rule, and if only for spectacular purposes and grandeur, living ethnic exhibitions, properly speaking, displayed large groups of people, from five or six to more than one hundred individuals: the objective was to put on display ethnic communities,not just single,curious but less representative specimens. On exhibition for the Western, white public were ordinary members of ethnic groups representing alien, or exotic, ethnic types and anthropological varieties. In fact, at a time when anthropology, generally, took for granted the existence of separate and hierarchized human races (see the chapters in this volume by Kontler and Sebastiani), their main objective was that of showing not simply the diverse and unusual, but specifically the inferior, lesser typ­ ologies, and varieties of humans (‘savages’) within the framework of a presumed racial or cul­ tural hierarchy dominated by the white, Aryan race. Beyond publicly displaying racially inferior, 84

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‘savage’ human types, the human exhibitions deployed or gave rise to a whole set of dehuman­ izing performative acts resulting from the material sojourn, or detention, of the ‘savages’ in the exhibitions’ fenced paddocks for several weeks, sometime months’, duration, and from the ‘con­ tractual’ obligations assumed by the ‘agents’ or ‘guides’—the term ‘human traffickers’ would not be unsuitable—who brought them to Europe or North America. First and foremost among these traders in exotic humans was the German Carl Hagenbeck (1844–1913), the true pioneer of the business (Ames 2008), followed by less famous ones such as other Germans,Viktor Bamberger, Carl Gabriel, and Heinrich and Willy Möller; the Swiss Albert Urbach; and the French Ferdinand Gravier, Jean-Alfred Vigé, and the partners Fleury Tournier and Aimé Bouvier (Bergougniou, Clignet, and David 2001), and by equally famous circus impresarios, such as Phineas Taylor Barnum;William Leonard Hunt, better known as ‘the Great Farini’;William Frederick Cody, or ‘Buffalo Bill’; and Imre Kiralfy.

5.3 Understanding the magnitude of a historical phenomenon After nearly two decades of research, thanks to a renewed interest in these phenomena in the early 2000s, our knowledge of the widespread, spectacularly successful practices of exhibiting ‘exotic’ humans between the 19th and the 20th century, and in many respects still in the 21st century and present times, has been greatly enriched. The successive, successful editions of the French collection Zoos humains starting in 2002 (Bancel et al. 2002, 2004, 2011) and the great 2011–2012 Quai Branly Museum exhibition entitled ‘Exhibitions. L’invention du sauvage’ in Paris have enhanced our awareness of the scale and meaning of this phenomenon to a very significant extent. A vast research literature prompted by these initiatives has established that, even though their ori­ ginal and main locations were in England, France, and Germany, the living ethnic exhibitions had a geographical diffusion across nearly all of Europe—central, western to eastern, northern to southern –(Hale 2008,Abbattista 2013, Poignant 2014,Andreassen 2015), the Americas—North and South—and Australia. More recently, new research has further documented the significant proportions of this phenomenon also in countries, for example in central and eastern Europe, without a colonial past or an experience of overseas possessions.1 We now know that some tens of thousands of people were involved as exhibited objects in hundreds of shows. Even if, generally, each ethnic crew was on show successively in several places, country after country, in real tours under one or more specialized impresario, their exact total has not yet been and cannot be ascertained as the research continues to develop and new exhibitions are discovered and analyzed.While the quantitative proportions are still uncertain, due to the fragmentary and imprecise nature of the sources, much more evidence exists about the nature and content of these ethno-exhibitions. The list of the capitals, cities, and provincial towns throughout the Western world where the living exhibitions took place is too long to be detailed here. The same is true of the people involved, but in this latter case they are worth remembering as evidence of the rate of Western colonial control over the non-European world, from where the ‘savages’ were picked up over the course of a century, 1851–1958—the starting year being that of London’s Great Exhibition, where George Catlin’s Ojibwe and Iowa Indians were put on display, and the final date corresponding to the last known actual ethno-exhibition at the Brussels Universal Expo.The ethnic geography of the exhibited people was basically coextensive with 19th to early 20th century white colonial power. First and foremost, and the most requested, were the black sub-Saharan Africans: Somalis, Abyssinians, Eritreans, Nubians, Sudanese, Dahomeians, Gabonese, Congolese, Pygmies, Zulus, Hottentots, and Bushmen, and the Ashanti, Malagasy, Abomey, Cameroon, Voltaic, and Mali 85

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peoples. Peoples from North Africa also appeared on show: Tunisians, Egyptians, Berbers, Bedouins, Moroccans, Algerians, Arabs, and the Kabyle people. Several ethnic groups were exhibited from Southern and Eastern Asia (India, Ceylon, Siam, Burma, Java, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines), from Central Asia (Kyrghyzes, Kalmucks, Tatars, and Samoyeds from the Russian Empire), from the northern latitudes (Eskimos and the peoples of Labrador and Lapland), from Central and Southern America (the Caribbean,Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia, and Brazil), from Northern America, particularly in Phineas T. Barnum’s and Buffalo Bill’s ‘Wild West Show,’ and from Australia.

5.4 Power, spectacle, and business in the exhibition of human diversity Ethno-exhibitions, set up for mass entertainment and self-declared popular educational purposes, in fact essentialized ethno-anthropological diversities, turning human beings into many objects of attraction and wonder.The possession of particular abilities, dexterities, and skills—for example, in dancing, horsemanship, or acrobatics—justified the exclusion from the realm of rationality of people characterized by faculties ‘other’ than intellectual ones, almost exclusively a prerogative of the white man. In any case, when not animalized, they were reduced to objects of commercial spectacle, to be stared at with enough curiosity, wonder, admiration, and entertainment to justify the admission fees: theirs were ‘captive lives’ for the ‘Western spectacle’ (Poignant 2014). There is a general consensus that the 19th to early 20th century living human exhibitions were the perverse fruit of the conscious and unscrupulous, even if generally unacknowledged, inten­ tion to diminish, debase, and finally cast out specific ethnic groups from the common stock of mankind. Such practices, in other words, had the effect of showing or suggesting the existence of a gradation among humans, the lowest steps of which approached the condition of savage animals, thus blurring the distinction between humans and animals and bringing humans to more or less specific stages of evolution in bio-anthropological development. Exhibiting not just physical ‘defects’ or ‘anomalies’ in individual human beings, but also conditions belonging to whole groups labeled as ‘lacking’ or ‘devoid of,’ they aimed in fact at depriving entire ‘racial’ groups of their fully human condition by way of a multisemiotic creation of distance.The gaze (of the spectators), the word (the written descriptions in official programs or by journalists and other commentators), the figurative discourse (posters, billboards, illustrations, sketches, pictures), the gestures (of visitors as well as of the actors in the exhibitions), the space (the mock ethnic villages and the surrounding areas reserved for the onlookers), all forged a temporal distance. They showed simultaneously and with impressive evidence the existence of different levels of historical time and evolution visually embodied by radically different ethnic groups—the whites and the non-whites—gathered in the same place but in separate spaces and with distinct roles. Animalization, essentialization, and commercialization are pertinent descriptions of what these exhibitionary performances represented. By staging exotic human specimens, the exhibitors aimed in fact at showing how the human physical and mental features and conditions of these living exhibitions revealed their belonging to a lesser kind of human being. Even if ethnological show business has a history going back centuries, it was in the age of evolutionist theories of human biological development, from the early 19th century, that it reached its peak of popularity. It boomed not only due to the search for profit, but more specifically due to the enormous appeal of sub-human peoples exhibited as living evidence of the ‘missing link’ in the evolu­ tionary chain (Lindfors 1999:VIII). The idea to put on display not just individuals—as in the freak shows, focused on the wondrous and monstrosity—but specimens, representatives of ethnic groups and their collective social and cultural conditions, had clearly racist implications. The 86

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dehumanizing discourse was overtly suggested by the explicit association—repeatedly censored both by critics and by the exhibited subjects’ reported comments—of ‘savage’ humans with wild animals. Suffice it to consider that the person who first transformed living ethno-exhibitions into a profitable, large-scale business was the already mentioned Carl Hagenbeck, the German importer of exotic animals, founder of the Stellingen Tierpark in Hamburg, and progenitor of a still active lineage of zoo managers.‘Savage’ human beings and wild animals, as the two sculptures still visible today on top of the main entrance gate of Stellingen Tierpark can testify, were the two pillars of Hagenbeck’s successful venture (Hagenbeck 1908), aimed at creating an ‘animal paradise […] a nature sanctuary in the most truthful sense, a world in miniature’ (Rothfels 2002: 42; on Hagenbeck; see also Ames 2008 and Thode-Arora 1989).That Ludwig Zukowsky, Hagenbeck’s assistant and official biographer, would certainly have refused to designate the ethnic exhibitions in terms of ‘dehumanization’ does not mean that we can take for granted the idealized portrait of his mentor’s business. Stellingen was Hagenbeck’s ‘kingdom’ and an ‘animal paradise’ (Zukowsky 1929), a sort of materialization of his love for animals, and at the same time the German entre­ preneur was the principal importer of non-European ethnic groups for exhibition purposes in several European countries.And it is undeniable that the exhibitions were staged in order to, and had the effect of, animalizing the human beings on display, as is clear from the reactions of the white public testified by the written and the visual sources, and, most of all, from the reactions of the exhibited subjects themselves, however extremely difficult it was, as a rule, to capture the latter’s voices.The gaze and the words of the onlookers gave a clear indication that they felt they were facing wild animals to gawk at with a mix of emotions, from wonder, surprise, and curi­ osity to disgust, fear, and even lust.The existence of physical barriers, enclosures, and sometimes bars or even cages between the white public and the black ‘hosts,’ even when accommodated in ‘black’ or ‘colonial villages,’ underlined distance and difference, and evoked the structure of the zoo. Hans Massaquoi reports in his autobiography about his experience as a black boy in Nazi Germany, talking of Hagenbeck’s Tierpark: After walking past spectacular exhibits of monkeys, giraffes, lions, elephants and other African wildlife, we arrived at the ‘African Village’, replete with half a dozen or so thatch-roofed clay huts and peopled, we were told, by ‘authentic Africans’. Like the animal exhibits, the ‘village’ was bordered by a chest-high wooden fence to keep the viewers out and the viewed in. The only thing that distinguished the human exhibit from the animal exhibits was the absence of the deep, water-filled moat that separated men from beasts. (Massaquoi 2001: 24) Black people were put on display not as individuals, but as uprooted, dominated representatives of defeated colonial people. They symbolized a dramatic power asymmetry: the deprivation of their personal identity in the eyes of the visitors was not balanced by the fact that sometimes their names were mentioned in the press or in the advertisements; their culture, habits, and way of living were essentialized, commodified, and submitted to the logic of the exhibition, where the hosts were mere actors in a preprepared script, incessantly performing dances, rites, and mock battles. The ‘black’ villages—even when accurately recreated based on real models—were in fact ‘colonial’ recreations, with only a superficially African look and devoid of any acceptable ethnographic con­ tent. Fairly often, intent on special effects and with intentional duplicity, the organizers presented the alien peoples as ‘cannibals,’ or the lowest possible form of a debased humanity. The exhibitions resulted not just in perverse effects, but more properly in a real debasing transfiguration, or animalization of the human beings, and the people put on display perceived it themselves with lucidity and distress.There is evidence that relates how they openly complained 87

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about being treated as beasts (pointed at, fed by launched food, targeted with booing and jeering), crying out to both the public and organizers with phrases such as ‘we are not wild animals’ (Abbattista 2004: 393), defending their dignity as human beings. They often protested vigor­ ously against being taken to Europe, with misleading promises about the motives for the voyage. Violent reactions, self-injuries, and escape attempts from a captive condition are also reported.

5.5 Exhibitionary strategies What were the main discursive and symbolic strategies, practical devices, and performative expedients through which the living human exhibitions revealed their openly dehumanizing character? Let us try to delineate some of their most common features in this regard, with the proviso that, in fact, every living human exhibition that took place during the one hundred years from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, had its own dynamics according to the particular kind of exposition and the peoples involved, their country of provenance, and the duration of their stay. Animalization was implicit first of all in the selection of the exhibition’s location: the Berlin and the Hamburg-Stellingen zoos, the Parisian Jardin d’Acclimatation, and other parcs animaliers were in reality énclaves for showing savage beasts. When the displays did not occur in zoos, but in circuses or in great expositions, the exhibited peoples were likewise presented in special fenced-off areas, where the ways of living and natural conditions considered typical of a savage, uncivilized world were recreated with the idea of offering the onlookers a full immersion in a primitive environment. A second aspect of the dehumanizing and animalizing practices was that the ethnic groups destined for ethno-exhibitions were treated as greater or smaller flocks to be led by a white guide, a watchman, a supervisor, a trainer, and an instructor (who may sometimes also have been a missionary priest). Many contemporary illustrations show the groups in the company and under the control of these kinds of figures, as if they were domesticating or overseeing wild beasts, rem­ iniscent of the pose of the hunter with his spoils (Mason and Báez Allende 2005: 102). A third clear aspect of dehumanization derived from the material conditions in which the exhibited groups were kept. People brought from, generally, tropical latitudes to (for them unex­ pected) cold, humid, and rainy northern European climates, hosted in lodgings that reproduced their native habitat, often in highly inadequate hygienic conditions, nourished with inappro­ priate food, and forced to wear traditional light cotton clothes that only partially covered their bodies were obviously exposed to diseases of various kinds, mostly pulmonary or infectious. It must be stressed that in the long European history of ethnic encounters, we know sev­ eral examples of forced transportation of individuals to Europe for exhibitionary purposes: real abductions as prisoners or people cheated by trickery, especially at the beginning of the European encounters with human diversities (as in the case of Magellan’s ‘Patagons,’ who died and were then dropped overboard during the voyage).There were also later cases of small groups—mostly families of particularly weak and defenseless peoples—being taken prisoner in order to be sent to Europe, as in the case of the Fuegians (Selk’nams) brought to Paris and London in 1889 ‘in heavy chains like Bengal tigers’ (Mason and Báez Allende 2005: 102–103). In general terms, how­ ever, when ethnic exhibitions became a consolidated, on-going practice in the Western world involving large numbers of people, never was an ethnic group literally reduced to captivity for that purpose or forced to accept traveling to Europe or Northern America; strictly speaking it was not so much a matter of enslavement or coercion, but of deception, if anything, and more frequently of a sort of poorly informed consent.Their recruitment passed generally through local intermediaries, actual merchants of human beings, who on their behalf negotiated conditions and signed contracts the ethnic people could hardly understand, which determined places, living 88

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conditions, and duration of stay, as well as possible, usually meager, remuneration. As a matter of fact, in most cases, what could be expected from the overseas transport was unpredictable for the native groups, who were often victims of deception regarding the actual duration and conditions of their European stay: this happened, for example, to the Kanaks brought to Paris for the 1931 Exposition Coloniale (Daeninckx 1998, Dauphiné 1998, Rosada 2000). Fraud was quite common on the part of the white agents and was considered normal when dealing with people toward whom sense of duty, honor, or responsibility were scant at best, in accordance with an implicit idea of double, geographical morality. In any case, and as a matter of fact, the high mortality rates during the long overseas transfers or the protracted stays and long European tours of the individuals destined for the exhibitions, especially the younger and older members of the ethnic troupes, were the most dramatic aspect of the fatally dehumanizing consequences of these exhibitionary practices. A fourth, not material but moral, aspect of the dehumanization was due to practices and attitudes producing often unpredicted but still humiliating consequences suffered by the victims of the exhibitions and sometimes perceived by some particularly sensitive observers and commentators. The actual comportment and gestures of the visitors reinforced the dehumanized condition of the exhibited peoples. Male visitors stared at the lightly dressed, sometimes bare-breasted black women and indulged in voyeurism. Female visitors—as we know from evidence—did the same with the black males, sometimes letting their repressed, unconfessed sexual desires focus on the beautiful and well-muscled bare-chested young Africans. Both male and female visitors threw food, cigarettes, sweets, and coins to the ‘savages’ as compensation for their performances, and especially to the children who—as numerous images reveal—flocked to the fences soliciting presents and what to all intents and purposes were alms. These practices and attitudes revolved around the powerful effects of the spectators’ gazes. In other words, as Franz Fanon evidenced (Fanon 1967: 114),2 the whole complex of reactions and emotions of the onlookers—curiosity, attraction, fascination, lust, laughter, irony, mockery, repul­ sion, hatred, dread, pity—emphasized the racialization of the exhibited people and reinforced their inferiority: there was no need for words, staring at them was enough to tell them to stay where they belonged. The human beings on exhibition were incorporated into a Foucauldian system of body con­ trol and exploitation, part of the semiotics of the exhibitionary complex (Bennett 1988). Physical and symbolic separation between the public and the exhibited subjects was marked by fenced perimeters and palisades, rigid police surveillance, strict discipline, and rigorously regulated times and rhythms of daily life, articulated by the compulsory performances or demonstrations carried out by the natives. Fences, wood or iron meshes, enclosed paddocks, and sometimes iron cages visually marked the anthropological and cultural gap between the visitors and the exhibited people, stressing the latter’s confinement within an inferior, primitive category of humanity, to be insulated, removed, and kept at a distance in both a physical and a temporal sense, as poor, ignorant prisoners of a primitive age, unable to rescue themselves except through the interposition of white colonial dominance. Everything was planned and staged in order to stress the difference between the civilized world of the white spectators and the brutal, primitive world of the exhibited ‘savages.’

5.6 A representation of temporal distance The distance between the different levels of human conditions was created not just in material, physical terms. The ethnic expositions also aimed at representing the temporal coordinates of human ‘otherness.’They produced a juxtaposition of civilized life, with its modern achievements and the conquests of a mature age of progress, and the backward forms of a less than human sort of 89

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life, a life unable to depart from primitive bestiality, or eternal infancy, within which the primitive savages were permanently imprisoned and from which the Western peoples had long ago been able to evolve.The show of brutal savages in their pretended typical and meticulously replicated life environments, then, was intended to emphasize through contrast the accomplishments of modern civilization. When the ethnic expositions involved showing exotic peoples as partici­ pating members of a colonial state machinery and as obedient subjects of colonial authority, they provided a pedagogical comparison to the really primitive savages. Through the black colonial subjects—often semiliterate, Christian neophytes practicing ‘modern’ trades and jobs or enlisted in colonial armies, as in the case of the indigenous troops from Abyssinia and Ethiopia in sev­ eral Italian early-19th century expositions, it was possible to show the edifying, educating, and progressive function of colonialism in history: lucky them, who had been submitted to a patron­ izing colonial power capable of educating and leading them out of infancy and toward a more developed human condition. Two examples show how an ethnic exhibition could produce a symbolic representation of human otherness in terms of historical time and temporal distance. In the Turin 1884 national exposition, visitors were induced into a temporal displacement when looking at the sequence of scenes along the alleys of Valentino Park and the river Po.There, they could admire the ‘Assab village’ (hosting natives from Assab Bay, in Eastern Africa), while the medieval castle stood out in the background, with its towers and battlements, and, just a few steps away, they could visit the modern pavilions showing the wonders of Western science, technology, and social progress (Abbattista 2004: 408–409). At the 1958 Brussels universal exposition, the sculpture of the Bantou couple by the Belgian artist Arthur Dupagne, placed at the entrance of the Palace of Congo, was put into perspec­ tive by the Expo flagship construction, the Atomium, creating a vivid effect of contrast between the primitive human condition represented by the black statues and the ultra-modernity of the futur­ istic monument evoking the promises of nuclear energy (Stanard 2005: 274). Specimens of radical human ‘otherness’ and examples of a degraded humanity were contrived by showing the onlookers particular physical and material attributes, such as rough, weird, and poor clothing or even nakedness, eating habits based on crudity and cruelty, gesturing, dan­ cing, and performing ceremonies which suggested animal postures and primitive instincts, and explicit allusions to savage brutality and cannibalism. All these carefully arranged scenarios were intended to create estrangement and objectify a feeling of anthropological and cultural separateness.Whether the exhibitions were set up inside the great international expositions or within zoological gardens, in some cases the ‘savages’ were kept in cages, beyond bars, in order to stress their dangerousness and the need to protect the spectators. Ota Benga, the young Congo pygmy, was put on show at the Brooklyn Zoo in 1906 in a cage with monkeys and an orangutan, and his teeth were artificially sharpened to suggest wild ferocity; a Fuegian family was displayed in a cage in Paris in 1889 with a sign labeling them as cannibals (Mason-Báez Allende 2005: 102, Báez-Mason 2006); the Kanaks in Paris in 1931 were also presented as cannibals. Such practices were likewise repeated in non-Western ethnic exhibitions, such as in Japan, at the Osaka 1903 exposition, where Koreans were presented as cannibals.The physical and cultural distancing was thus maximized and—especially inside the zoos—the animalization of the exhibited people was completed by an overt association with wild beasts.

5.7 Spectacle and science: Ambiguity and self-legitimization It is true that the ethnic exhibitions, which were primarily a show business based on the exploit­ ation of human beings, also purported to have a pedagogical and scientific purpose.They were even sometimes part of edifying initiatives, such as the missionary exhibitions, where the greater 90

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attention paid to the conditions of the natives on display did not diminish their manipula­ tion (Sánchez Gómez 2013, Abbattista 2013: 205 ff.). Their promotional discourses, as we can grasp from posters, announcements, flyers and newspaper advertisements, proclaimed to offer the public a unique opportunity to see for themselves something and someone that ordinary people would never normally have the chance to see in their lifetimes. Moreover, they could also boast about contributing to the advancement of science. Ethno-anthropologists could avail themselves of the extraordinary opportunity—especially at a time when field research was not yet an established professional practice—to observe directly, in the flesh, members of ethnic groups and submit them to every kind of observation, measurement, description, and report. In this way, the exhibited people, as apparently perfect racial examples, were let into—through words and images—the pages of specialized journals and became part of the canon of anthropological literature. They became reluctant evidence, captives of racial the­ ories based on anthropometric and craniometric observations providing the physical proofs of racial inequality and hierarchies. It is to be noted, however, that the scientists, initially ready to justify the ethnic exhibitions and their ‘poor exiles’ exposed to obvious ‘sufferings’ only in the name of science and due to their educational potential—as opposed to pure entertainment purposes and commer­ cial exploitation by unscrupulous businessmen (Conolly 1855)—soon expressed doubts and sound objections to their scientific value. If the exhibited groups were often of uncertain geographical provenance and ethnic origins, of which specimen could they be considered representative? And how could reliable observations be made on the moral and psychological characters of the people on exhibition, if their behavior and general state of mind were so evidently influenced by their captive conditions, the visitors’ expectations, and their realiza­ tion that they were actors on a stage?3 Consequently, several scientists, especially in France and Germany during the 1880s, started to express their frank uneasiness towards spectacles with an air of falsity unsuitable to science. Some of them, the German physician and anthropolo­ gist Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) was a case in point, even began to get to know the ‘savages’ under their observation at the ethnic exhibitions, recognizing their individual personalities and psychological and emotional features, and eventually sympathizing deeply with their fate of humiliation and suffering. The scientists’ reservations and the open critiques occasionally formulated by some commentators moved by humanitarian feelings, however, never went as far as stopping the ethnic exhibitionary practices and their dehumanizing essence, an essence which is also clearly visible through other aspects of the whole business, as we will see in the following paragraph.

5.8 Post-production and rehumanization of ethnic otherness The ethnic spectacles in zoos, circuses, and expositions were not the only profitable forms of business arising from the living ethnic exhibitions.The exploitation of the ‘savages’ occurred not only by selling their physical presence and live performances; their images, likewise, were com­ modified and became prey to painters, designers, and photographers who produced illustrations for newspapers, journals, and magazines, and successful sets of loose popular commercial images— such as postcards, photographs, flyers, and billboards. This widespread, low-cost iconography contributed powerfully to the dehumanizing process in two ways: first, by the visual commodifi­ cation of the alien people and the reification of human otherness; and second, by offering in many cases an immediate visual association between humans, mainly black Africans, and primates, thus suggesting the proximity between the two species in the chain of evolution. Several pictures from the ‘Collection anthropologique’ belonging to Prince Roland Bonaparte—however meritorious 91

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his ambition to create a photographic ‘anthropological collection of human diversity’—and many other surviving photographic shots clearly show expressions of shame, bewilderment, and resignation on the faces of several of the males and females on display, as in the case of the young naked Hottentot females, victims of Western photographic voyeurism at the Paris 1889 Universal Exposition (Blanchard et al. 2011). A careful reading of the sources can reveal that sometimes, for the exhibited people, the successive visits to several European countries and their residence inside the expositions could actually be experienced as interesting and instructive experiences. Their condition of being exposed to visitors’ viewing could even offer comic, amusing asides. And the sources show that sometimes the ‘savages’ were so intelligent as to be able to negotiate their conditions of stay, and witty and smart enough to mock the white spectators’ amazement in front of such human diversity. We also know that some ‘savage’ troupes deliberately accepted going on tour around white countries under the direction of white managers, just as professional actors did (Poignant 2014). Still more surprising are those cases of former members of troupes of ethnic exhibitions, who, for a multifaceted series of motives, from self-promotion to search for profit or desire for redemption, became themselves entrepreneurs of ethnic shows, such as the native of Togo, J. Nayo Bruce, also known as John Tevi (1859–1919) (Brändle 2007)4 and the Sioux chief ‘Black Elk’ (Neihardt 1932). However, apart from these remarkable aspects and exceptional examples, sources show that the predominant feelings and emotional reactions of the people displayed in ethnic exhibitions clearly consisted of forms of physical and moral suffering, typically denoting a state of material, psychological, or emotional deprivation: nostalgia, apathy, shyness, shame, introversion, and humiliation, often accompanied by lively reactions of protest or outbursts of violence, both selfinflicted and directed against other members of the ethnic troupes and, more rarely, the white spectators. Open complaints were frequently heard from the exhibited people, mostly recorded by onlookers, commentators, and press reports, against their being treated as ‘wild animals,’‘savage beasts,’ ‘objects of curiosity’ or as ‘entertainment,’ and sometimes against their being molested, touched, groped. Petitions and pleas for a more humane treatment—wherever they came from— were unambiguous evidence of the subjective, painful perception on the part of the exhibited people or even of exponents of an enlightened part of public opinion of the ethno-exhibitions as a dehumanizing practice, and can be described as efforts to rehumanize practices of an obnox­ iously dehumanizing nature. The work carried out by missionaries as part of these efforts must be remembered. Missionary exhibitions and permanent missionary ethnographic museums have been an integral part of Catholic evangelization strategies for a long time (and they still are today) (Gasparotto 2017 and 2018), and a certain number of missionary exhibitions took place, especially in Italy, Spain, and the Vatican during the 19th and the early 20th century. They resorted frequently to expositions of living members of the missionary communities overseas in order to show the progress they were capable of under the pious and wise guidance of religion (Sánchez Gómez 2013). Even if there is no proof of a constant commitment by the church and religious orders against living ethnic exhibitions, missionary expositions showed a greater attention to and care for the people they brought from overseas. As evidence of their edifying activities, these people were not only displayed for their ‘savage’ conditions, but, more often, as testimonies of the civilizing effects of religion. We also know of an interesting case of a single missionary, the Salesian don Giuseppe Maria Beauvoir (1850–1932), who acted vigorously in defense of the Fuegians exhibited in Paris in 1889, narrating the deceptions and cruelties they had suffered during their European tour and using his written word and collected photographs for restoring dignity to their identities and biographical vicissitudes (Abbattista 2013: 236–242). 92

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5.9 The many faces of living ethnic exhibitions I would suggest, by way of conclusion and restatement of a point already made at the beginning of this chapter, that an interpretation of living ethno-exhibitions in general on the basis of a simplistic generalization about their inhuman character is, after all, not completely satisfactory. An obvious, dominant component of inhumanity was of course present in all kinds of living ethnic exhibitions, something that is clearly more unacceptable to us in the present day than to the majority of the public at that time. That element, however, should not engulf every connotation and meaning, which in fact were very different from one case to the next.5 For example,American painter and entrepreneur George Catlin’s exhibitions of living North American Indians as native performers (before, white performers in Indian costumes and afterward real Indians) in Europe during the 1840s and the 1850s have been associated with the ‘human zoos,’ but his tableaux vivants had, among other noble and less noble aims, also the purpose of documenting the disappearing Indian culture and way of life.The same was true for a quantity of later living ethnic exhibitions.That professed mission, on the other hand, was not enough to spare Catlin contemporary accusations of exploiting his Indians and ‘showing them as wild beasts’ (Pratt 2013: 280). Inhumanity, fur­ thermore, was not always or necessarily the dominant note and in any case it might be present to different degrees and with different peculiarities and nuances, often resulting from a complex process of interaction and negotiation between the actors on every side involved in the event. First of all, the bidirectional transformative effect of the exhibitionary act should be stressed. Dehumanization affected not only the ‘victims’ of the living exhibitions, but also the ‘perpetrators’: signs of dehumanization could be recognized in the behavior and words of the masters in what was a sort of master-servant type of relationship (Césaire 1950, Mannoni 1950). Secondly, the exhibited subjects, out of passivity, self-defense, complacency, or simply for practical reasons, might undergo a psychological and behavioral process of self-dehumanization, a sort of resigned adapta­ tion to or overinterpretation of their temporary condition (see Demoulin-Mauger-Stinglhamber in this volume).Thirdly, when negotiations between exhibited subjects and organizers occurred, they could transform a naturally dehumanizing discourse into something very different.We know that this multilateral process of correction and restoration of a certain degree of humanity— what we have suggested as indicating a ‘rehumanizing feedback’—could be the consequence of critiques, debates, representations, protests, initiatives, and actions undertaken by contemporary members of civil society, public opinion, fair-goers, private commentators, and public authorities, as well as by the individuals on exhibition themselves. On several occasions, the human living exhibitions were even the subject of legal actions taken by philanthropic, antislavery, or religious societies, as well as by trade unions in defense of the exhibited subjects, as in the cases of Sarah Baartmann in 1810, the Fuegians in Paris in 1889, the Swazi boys Gootoo and Inyokwana in 1890 in London, or, more recently, the Ivorians at Port-Saint-Père (near Nantes, France) in 1994 (Abbattista 2014: 254–255). This kind of restitution of the human condition, comprehensibly, can be observed more frequently in the later history of ethnic exhibitions, when the people on display themselves had developed a higher self-awareness.We can see this from a typical example: the experience of the Congo exhibition within the Brussels universal exposition in 1958, the last major occurrence of a living ethno-exhibition in the old style. The black people brought from Africa to Belgium to occupy the village nègre—quite apart from their organizers’ intentions, and despite some commentators’ criticisms—were so annoyed by the inhumane treatment they received from the visitors, who fed them with biscuits, sweets, and bananas from beyond the fence surrounding the straw huts, and felt themselves to be so insulted by being considered by the onlookers as objects of curiosity or strange animals, that they demanded immediate repatriation. After a three-month stay at Tervuren they obtained it (Stanard 2005). 93

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Dehumanization, in other words, was often accompanied by different sorts of rehumanizing contemporary reactions, compensation, or ex post indemnification. Could not the present publishing success regarding the ‘human zoos’ topic, especially with reference to the contem­ porary general public of readers and exhibition visitors, be seen as an indicator in this regard, after all? If this is true, of course, it just provides an incontrovertible e contrario confirmation of the dehumanizing character of the living ethnic exhibitions.We can consider in the same way several recent legislative acts in favor of the so-called ‘responsive repatriations’ of the human remains of individuals who died during the ethno-expositions in Europe and of those who, after their death, were subjected to the musealization or scientification of their bodies (e.g., Saartjie Baartmann, the Hottentot Venus, and the Eskimo Abraham Ulrikab).6 Similarly, engaged and even more effective compensation, or ‘rehumanizing,’ efforts have occurred through narrative and scientific literature. Re-narration, public disclosure, and critical analysis of the human exhibitions are retrospective acts of repentance and intentional acts of reparation through the word and memory (Gallagher 2010). However, at the same time the commercial, ideological, and paradoxical use of the rehumanization rhetoric and, indeed, the latter’s inner ambiguity should not be swept under the carpet. In order to legitimize their business, human exhibition organizers, such as the Hamburg entrepreneur Carl Hagenbeck, the most famous of them all in 19th- to early 20th-century Europe, went so far as to say that the living ethnic exhibitions had a social, cultural, and humanitarian importance: they were efforts to show some human groups in their full, natural, and authentic way of life, and thus to preserve a vivid image of those at risk of vanishing ‘in a rapidly changing and dehumanizing modern world’ (Rothfels 2002: 176). Some very recent cases of 21st-century versions of living ethnic exhibitions show not only the persistence of these practices in the contemporary world of show business but also that Hagenbeck’s kind of justificatory logic still has some appeal.7 The first case that comes to mind occurred in July 2002. Eight Baaka pygmies from the Cameroon were exhibited at Yvoire, in Belgium, in a park usually used for animal shows.Their presentation as an ethnic group under threat of extinction was ostensibly motivated by a humani­ tarian concern for safeguarding human rights. But this was not at all an isolated episode. A year earlier, again in Belgium, an NGO, with the backing of the Direction Générale pour la Coopération internationale, put on a live exposition featuring a group of Maasai people. Once again the declared intention was noble and untainted by any suggestion of economic exploitation. The aim was to foster reciprocal knowledge, tolerance, and the meeting of different cultures, as well as respect for diversity. There was certainly none of the ‘animalizing’ tendency detectable in Hagenbeck’s business model. Indeed, there was an attempt to contrast negative stereotypes— savage Africa and the Maasai as proud warriors, hunters of the savannah, and drinkers of blood— and replace them with the true image ‘of real Maasai who have come especially from Kenya’ and an ‘authentic Maasai village’ (Mullens 2001),8 to the point of producing positive counterstereotypes. However, the best intentions could not cancel out the profoundly ambiguous nature of a radically Euro-centric initiative in its claim to represent the ‘authentic Maasai culture’ and make it the object of conservation and musealization. Finally, a still more recent case took place at the Zoological Gardens in Eberswalde, Berlin, in June 2010. Organized by a humanitarian asso­ ciation, this event was planned as an initiative in favor of the San ethnic group,‘the last surviving original people,’ with the aim of facilitating their smooth integration into modern life.9 Once again, the organizers had undoubtedly the best possible intentions, but the modalities of ethnic exhibition recalled the mainstream tradition of the expositions to a certain extent, featuring craft objects and rudimental art works, dancing and music with drums and traditional musical instruments, fires, religious ceremonies, and the preparation of typically African foods. All this relied on the self-congratulatory philosophy that it was the interests of the African protagonists which were paramount, they being the first to benefit from it. 94

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Nothing is entirely new, when bearing in mind Hagenbeck’s statements. At least the episodes we have recalled here, and several others of the same kind recorded by press reports and com­ mentaries in relatively recent times, have aroused lively discussions, protests, and movements of opinion against what have been considered echoing forms of spectacularization of human and cultural diversities, even if for ostensibly humanitarian purposes.

Notes 1 See the special issue of Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 64, 1 (2019).Another thematic issue of the journal East Central Europe is expected in 2020. On Eastern Europe see also the conference “Staged Otherness, C. 1850–1939. East-Central European Responses and Contexts”, Central European University/Institute of Ethnology, RCH, Hungarian Academy of Sciences/Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Budapest, 17–18 January 2019. On 19th-century Russia, see Knight 2001. 2 See also Nielsen (2011: 363–385). 3 Guido Abbattista, Living ethnic exhibitions between popular culture and the professionalization of anthropology (ca. 1770–1900), unpublished paper presented at the ISCH Conference “Performance, Politics, and Play”, New York, 13–16 September 2018. 4 See also Rydell (2002: 213–220) and Abbattista (2013: 300). 5 A plea for a critical approach to living ethnic exhibitions and the inadequacy of the term ‘human zoo’ in Luis A. Sánchez Gómez (2013). 6 Numerous modern narratives have been produced on Saartjie Baartman, Ota Benga, Ishi, the last of the Yahi (studied by American anthropologist Alfred Kroeber and his wife Theodora Kroeber), the Kanaks, Abraham Ulrikab, and many others. 7 What follows comes from my work Abbattista (2014: 254–262). 8 Available on ITECO—Centre de formation pour le développement et la solidarité internationale, last accessed 1 November 2019 . 9 Bernd Hensch, Frauke von Versen,“African Zoo-Night ‘Awake the Lions!’”, original in German, last accessed 1 November 2019

References Abbattista, G. (2003) “Gli interessi antropologici di Carlo Marchesetti”, in Carlo Marchesetti e i Castellieri, 1903–2003, eds. G. Bandelli and M. Montagnari (Gorizia: Editreg, 2003), 67–85. Abbattista, G. (2004) “Torino 1884: Africani in mostra”, Contemporanea, VII, 3 (agosto 2004): 369–409. Abbattista, G. (2013) Umanità in mostra: esposizioni etniche e invenzioni esotiche in Italia, 1880–1940 (Trieste: EUT). Abbattista, G. (2014) “Humans on Display: Reflecting on National Identity and the Enduring Practice of Living Human Exhibitions”, in Moving Bodies, Displaying Nations: National Cultures, Race and Gender in World Expositions: Nineteenth to Twenty-first Century, ed. G. Abbattista (Trieste: EUT). Abbattista, G. (2015) “Beyond the ‘Human Zoos’. Exoticism, Ethnic Exhibitions and the Power of the Gaze”, Ricerche Storiche, 45, 1–2 (January-August 2015): 207–218. Ames, E. (2008) Carl Hagenbeck’s Empire of Entertainments (Seattle: University of Washington Press). Andreassen, R. (2015) “Human Exhibitions: Race”, Gender and Sexuality in Ethnic Displays (Farnham: Ashgate). Báez, C. and Mason, P. (2006) Zoológicos humanos: Fotografías de fueguinos y mapuche en el Jardín d’acclimatation de París, siglo XIX (Providencia, Santiago: Pehuén Editores Limitada). Bancel, N. et al. (2002) Zoos humains. De la Vénus hottentote aux reality shows. Sous la direction de Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard, Gilles Boetsch, Éric Deroo, Sandrine Lemaire (Paris: La Découverte). Bancel, N. et al. (2004) Zoos humains. De la Vénus hottentote aux reality shows. Sous la direction de Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard, Gilles Boetsch, Éric Deroo, Sandrine Lemaire (Paris: La Découverte). Bancel, N. et al. (2011) Zoos humains et exhibitions coloniales: 150 ans d’inventions de l’Autre (Paris: La Découverte). Bennett, T. (1988) “The exhibitionary complex”, New Formation, 4 (Spring 1988): 73–102.

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Guido Abbattista Bergougniou, J. M., Clignet, R., David, P. (2001) Villages noirs’ et autres visiteurs africains et malgaches en France et en Europe: 1870–1940 (Paris: Karthala Editions). Bertino, F. (2013) “The Exhibition of Otherness. The Travels of an Eskimo and Her Impresario in France, Italy and the Habsburg Empire in the First Half of the 19th Century”, Cromohs, 18 (January 2013): 1–22. Blanchard, P. et al. (2011) Exhibitions: l’invention du sauvage, Sous la direction de Pascal Blanchard, Nanette Jacomijn Snoep, Gilles Boetsch, Musée du quai Branly (Arles: Actes sud). Brändle, R. (2007) Nayo Bruce. Die Geschichte einer afrikanischen Familie in Europa (Zürich: Chronos Verlag). Césaire, A. (1950) Discours sur le colonialisme (Paris: Réclamé). Conolly, J. (1855) The Ethnological Exhibitions of London (London: Churchill). Daeninckx, D., (1998) Cannibale (Paris: Èditions Verdier). Dauphiné, J. (1998) Canaques de la Nouvelle-Calédonie à Paris en 1931: De la case au zoo (Paris: Éditions L’Harmattan). Demoulin S., Maurage, P. and Stinglhamber, F. (2020) “Exploring Metadehumanization and SelfDehumanization from a Target Perspective”, in The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, ed. M. Kronfeldner (London and New York: Routledge), 260–274. (this volume). Durbach, N. (2010) The Spectacle of Deformity: Freak Shows and Modern British Culture (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press). Fanon, F. (1967) Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press). Ford, P. and Howell, M. (1980) The True History of the Elephant Man (London: Allison and Busby). Gallagher, S. (2010) “Museums and the Return of Human Remains: An Equitable Solution?”, International Journal of Cultural Property, 17 (2010): 65–86. Garland-Thomson, R. (1996) Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, ed. Rosemarie GarlandThomson (New York: New York UP). Garland-Thomson, R. (1997) Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature (New York: Columbia UP). Gasparotto, I. (2017) “Etnografia missionaria Una ‘esposizione universale’ nella Torino del 1858”, Contemporanea, 20, 3 (July-September 2017): 379–411. Gasparotto, I. (2018) “Costruire l’alterità. Le collezioni etnografiche dei missionari cattolici italiani (1850–1925): genealogie ed allestimenti museali”, PhD thesis, University of Padua, 2018. Hagenbeck, C. (1908) Von Tieren und Menschen (Berlin: Vita Dt. Verl.-Haus). Halberstam, J. (1995) Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters (Durham and London: Duke University Press). Hale, Dana S. (2008) Races on Display: French Representations of Colonized Peoples, 1886–1940 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Holmes, R. (2016) The Hottentot Venus: The Life and Death of Saartjie Baartman. Born 1789 buried 2002 (London: Bloomsbury). Knight, N. (2001) “The Empire on Display: Ethnographic Exhibition and the Conceptualization of Human Diversity in Postemancipation Russia”, in The National Council for Eurasian and East European Research. Kontler, L. (2020) ““Humanity” and Its Limits in Early Modern European Thought”, in The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, ed. M. Kronfeldner (London and New York: Routledge), 52–63. (this volume). Kroeber, T. and Kroeber, K. (2002) Ishi in Two Worlds: a Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America (Berkeley: University of California Press). Lindfors, B. (1999) ed., Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Business, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Mannoni, O. (1950) Psychologie de la colonisation (Paris. Éditions du Seuil). Mason, P. and Báez Allende, C. (2005) “In Heavy Chains Like Bengal Tigers. Natives Peoples of Tierra de Fuego on Show in London in 1889”, Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas, 42, 1 (January 2005): 99–114. Massaquoi, H. J. (2001) Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany (London: Fusion Press [1st ed. 1999]). Montagu, A. (1971) The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity (New York: Outerbridge & Dienstfrey). Mullens, J. C. (2001) “Des Massaïs à Han-sur-Lesse. Du bon usage des stéréotypes en éducation interculturelle”, Antipodes, 155 (décembre 2001). Neihardt, J. G. (1932) Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux (Albany: State of New York University Press, 2008, 1st edition 1932). Newkirk, P. (2015) Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga (New York: Amistad).

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Dehumanizing the exotic in human exhibitions Nielsen, C. R. (2011) “Resistance through Re-Narration: Fanon on de-Constructing Racialized Subjectivities”, African Identities, 9, 4 (2011): 363–385. Poignant, R. (2014) “Professional Savages”, Captive Lives and Western Spectacle (New Haven: Yale University Press). Pratt S. (2013) “Objects, Performance and Ethnographic Spectacle. George Catlin in Europe”, Interventions, 15, 2 (2013): 272–285. Puccini, S. (1999) Andare lontano: viaggi ed etnografia nel secondo Ottocento (Rome: Carocci). Rosada, Alexandre (2000) “Le regard colonial”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DJRcSEkftI, accessed 09 June 2020 Rothfels, N. (2002) Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo (Baltimore: JHU Press). Rydell, R. W. (2002) “Africains en Amérique: les villages africains dans les expositions internationales américaines (1893–1901)”, Zoos Humains, pp. 213–220. Rydell, R. W. (2010) “World Fairs and Museums”, in A Companion to Museum Studies, ed. S. Macdonald (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) p. 146. Sánchez Gómez, L. Á. (2013) Dominación, fe y espectáculo: Las exposiciones misionales y coloniales en la era del imperialismo moderno (1851–1958) (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas). Sánchez Gómez, L. Á. (2013) “Human Zoos or Ethnic Shows? Essence and contingency in Living Ethnological Exhibitons”, Culture & History Digital Journal, 2 (2): e022. doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.3989. Sebastiani S. (2020) “Enlightenment Humanization and Dehumanization, and the Orangutan”, in The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, ed. M. Kronfeldner (London and New York: Routledge), 64–82. (this volume). Stanard, M. (2005) “‘Bilan du Monde pour un Monde plus Déshumanisé’: The 1958 Brussels World’s Fair and Belgian Perceptions of the Congo”, European History Quarterly, 35, (2005): 267–298. Thode-Arora, Hilke (1989) Für fünfzig Pfennig um die Welt: Die Hagenbeckschen Volkerschauen (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag). Zukowsky, L. (1929) Carl Hagenbecks Reich: Ein deutsches Tierparadies (Berlin: Wegweiser-Verlag).

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6

DEHUMANIZING STRATEGIES

IN NAZI IDEOLOGY AND THEIR

ANTHROPOLOGICAL CONTEXT1

Johannes Steizinger

6.1 Introduction Dehumanization is often discussed as a psychological phenomenon that occurs in contexts of mass violence. Many scholars use National Socialism (NS) as their prime example of the signifi­ cance of psychological dehumanization for campaigns of mass murder. This debate focuses on the causal question of whether dehumanization is a necessary prerequisite for the participation of ordinary people in atrocities like the Shoah. Some authors argue that the moral inhibition against murdering fellow humans is so strong that all social and emotional bonds with the victims have to be erased in order to execute mass killings (see e.g., Kelman 1973;Volpato and Contarello 1999; Smith 2011, 2016). Others question whether psychological dehumanization is a necessary condition for mass violence (see e.g., Kuper 1981; Brudholm 2010; Lang 2010, 2017;Weissmann 2015). Lang (2010, 2017) emphasizes the psychological meaning of violence and cruelty for the social identity of perpetrators. His detailed account of the excessive violence in concentration camps focuses on the social interactions between perpetrators and victims that presuppose the acknowledgment of the victim’s subjectivity and, hence, humanness. I will return to Lang’s cri­ tique of dehumanization in the conclusion. This debate has long suffered from the one-sided emphasis on psychological accounts of dehumanization.The ideological and political embedded­ ness of social situations, which involve psychological dehumanization, has only recently received more attention (see e.g., Confino 2014; Fiske and Rai 2014; Steizinger 2018). I follow this turn to the role of ideology for understanding dehumanization in contexts of mass violence. My ana­ lysis focuses on the dehumanizing strategies that characterize Nazi ideology. NS regarded itself as a political revolution, realizing a new concept of humanity. Nazi ideologues undergirded the self-understanding of NS by developing racist anthropologies, advan­ cing dehumanizing images of certain groups of people.2 The devaluation of these groups often was expressed by identifying them with animal life forms. Images like the “Jewish parasite” and the murderous policy that this “enemy” of the German people demands were an essential part of the perpetual flow of propaganda in daily life. I argue that Nazi ideologues developed different justifications of the racist core of NS, and that their strategies of dehumanization depended on their varying concepts of humanity. Moreover, I aim to show that the key motifs of these racist worldviews were prevalent in the scientific and philosophical debates on anthropology in early 20th-century Germany. My analysis thus focuses on the connection between concepts 98

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of humanity and dehumanizing images, demonstrating the dehumanizing potential of different anthropological theories. My argument involves four steps: Section 6.2 starts with an analysis of the general char­ acter and the basic assumptions of Nazi ideology. Then, I turn to two major strands of Nazi ideology, concentrating on the views of two ideologues that belonged to the inner circle of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party), or NSDAP. Section 6.3 examines Richard Walther Darré’s naturalistic concept of humanity and his biologistic strategies of animalistic dehumanization. Darré developed his racist worldview, which centered on the slogan of “blood and soil,” in the völkisch circles of the 1920s, joining the NSDAP and the SS in 1930. He was head of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office from 1932 to 1938 and was appointed Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture in June 1933 (for a detailed account of Darré’s life and thought see Gies 2019). Section 6.4 analyzes Alfred Rosenberg’s dualistic anthropology and focuses on how his metaphysical understanding of the essence of humanity shaped his image of the “Jewish parasite,” invoking one of the most vicious forms of animalistic dehumanization. A member of the NSDAP since 1919, Rosenberg shaped its ideology by his writings and by his administrative work as editor-in-chief (Hauptschriftleiter) of the party’s newspaper Völkischer Beobachter (Völkisch Observer). He also belonged to the polit­ ical leadership of the NSDAP after the Nazi seizure of power, being responsible for the spiritual and philosophical education of members of the party and all related organizations as head of the so-called Amt Rosenberg (Rosenberg office). Section 6.5 turns to the scientific and philosophical debates on anthropology in early 20th-century Germany, exploring the general orientation of both the naturalistic and the anti-naturalistic strand in anthropological thought, unfolding the animalizing tendencies of these views, and highlighting their conformity with the key motifs of Nazi ideology. In focusing on ideology, I circumvent one of the main issues that has been, justifiably, raised against psychological approaches that use dehumanization as a causal explanation for the emer­ gence of mass violence.3 Psychological accounts are often criticized for their anthropological anachronism. Lang (2010: 230, 2017: 193 f., 198) has criticized psychologists who characterize the treatment of concentration camp inmates as dehumanizing for applying their own concept of humanity to this context, arguing that such interpretations tell us more about the mindset of the commentator than about the psychology of the perpetrators. Any understanding of dehu­ manization should, rather, proceed from a clear sense of what is being denied to the other; that is, humanness. The focus on ideology makes it possible to critically analyze the concepts of humanity that were developed by Nazi ideologues themselves and that grounded their dehu­ manizing images of other people. Considering the ideological dimension of dehumanization thus avoids the anthropological anachronism of many psychological approaches which apply current or idealized concepts of humanity to the historical context.

6.2 The significance and character of Nazi ideology Recent historical research shows the significance of ideology for the broad success of the Nazi movement, including the establishment of its political power and the continuing execution of its policies. Detailed accounts of the basic convictions of party leaders like Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, or Rosenberg reveal rather comprehensive, more or less consistent, yet divergent doctrines, which guided the political decision-making and were part of the well-known power struggles within the inner circle of the NSDAP (e.g., Kroll 1998; Bärsch 2002). Such nuanced examinations of the ideological dimension of NS suggest a new understanding of its structure. Nazi ideology has to be seen as set of basic beliefs and convictions, which offered much scope 99

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for interpretation. Although key concepts like race had to be accepted as guidelines of thinking and acting, different interpretations of such ideological core elements coexisted and competed even in the inner circle of Nazi leadership.While demanding a general appeal and specific dir­ ection, the Nazi worldview remained open to individual and contextualized interpretations (see Raphael 2014). Take the example of the concept of race: once you had accepted its key role for understanding whatever phenomenon interests you, you could engage in the heated debate on its meaning and significance (see Koonz 2003: 190−220; Hutton 2005). The range which was developed in the ideological writings of political leaders varied from bluntly biological conceptions (e.g., Darré) to metaphysical interpretations of race (e.g., Rosenberg). Such obvious tensions were never removed and created the impression that NS was always in need of further explication. The realization of a new human was a key message of Nazi politics.This political vision was rooted in some basic assumptions about humanity that were shared by most Nazi ideologues. They carved up humanity into different racial types, believing that race was an essential prop­ erty of humans that structured the world. Nazi ideologues regarded the struggle of races as the ultimate cause behind the course of history. The racial types had to be realized in history by “fighting” (“Kampf”) and “breeding” (“Zucht”), whereby Völker were their historical manifest­ ation (though the distinction between race and Volk was highly controversial and remained notoriously unclear; see Hutton 2005).The “racial purity” of a Volk was defined as both a com­ prehensive ideal and an existential necessity: “racial mixture” was tantamount to decline of com­ munity and led to the vanishing of a specific type. Hence, a Volk had to assert itself against all forms of otherness to become and remain the type it was: it had to be itself biologically as well as culturally, physically as well as intellectually, inwardly as well as outwardly. The distinction between Völker came in degrees: communities from the same racial type were akin to each other and may understand each other on a basic level.Yet some races were totally alien to each other and hence lacked any mutual understanding, making them natural enemies. Nazi ideologues presented their racial particularism as the anthropological alternative to uni­ versalistic concepts of humanity, attacking quite different views, such as Judaism, Catholicism, Liberalism, Marxism, or humanism, for their universalistic outlook.They argued that universalist doctrines provided only abstract accounts of human life which did not capture its actual reality. They concluded that such approaches were false and, moreover, often suggested that all universal concepts of humanity were deceitful fictions. From a Nazi perspective, universalists suggested that a certain way of life was the only way of life, thus threatening the identity of all other people. Here, identity meant collective identity and the latter was constituted by belonging to a particular community. Many Nazi ideologues held that in the wake of modernity, many people, in adapting to Western culture, lost their particular identity, and that universalist doctrines hid this fact. The Nazis believed that racial differences revealed a deep inequality between humans, making racism a core element of their ideology. They ranked races according to their alleged cultural achievements, advancing a supposedly objective hierarchy of races and rejecting all kinds of egali­ tarianism.The “Nordic race” was usually defined as the “master race” (Herrenrasse), representing the essence of humanity. Many Nazi ideologues claimed that the Nordic race was the only race that possessed the creative strength to develop culture. On this view, all cultural forms, including morality, states, science, or metaphysics, were defined as Nordic achievements. Hence, only Nordic communities fulfilled the full potential of humanity. Yet there were different explanations for why the Nordic race was inclined toward developing culture, some assuming biological dispositions (e.g., Darré), others social (e.g., Hitler), or even metaphysical dispositions (e.g., Rosenberg). Other groups of people, especially Jews, were often characterized as com­ pletely without the capacity for culture and thus for full humanness. Nazi ideology was meant 100

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to justify the degradation of certain groups of people to something less than fully human. In the following, I analyze these ideological strategies of dehumanization, arguing that they rested on the Nazi concepts of humanity. I consider two main strands of Nazi ideology, first considering Darré’s biologistic understanding of race, then turning to Rosenberg’s metaphysics of race.After having presented the commonalties between these versions of Nazi ideology so far, I will focus on their differences in the following section.

6.3 Biological racism: Darré’s animalization of humanity Some Nazi ideologues regarded race as a strictly biological concept and advocated a complete naturalization of the human sphere. Darré held such a biologistic view, claiming that humans are, like animals, part of the natural world and thus completely subjected to the laws of nature. He defined races as natural groups who provide the genetic make-up of its members and whose characteristics had to be studied by scientific methods. Darré believed in the priority of physio­ logical traits, holding that bodily features also determine the intellectual capacities of an indi­ vidual (Darré 1937: 136–140, 1942: 437–440). Here, Nazi anthropology was tantamount to a simple form of naturalism that regarded humans, first and foremost, as animals. Darré drew many analogies between humans and animals, often explaining human characteristics by a comparison with similar phenomena in the animal world (Darré 1942: 248 f., 1937: 52, 435 ff.). These comparisons were often meant in a literal sense. Darré explicitly claimed that early humans and closely related primates developed similar forms of social life: they shared nutritional habits, organized their reproductive life in monogamous relationships and large families, and developed an aggressive attitude to other groups as consequence of their form of life (Darré 1942: 222, 225, 232 ff.). He even extended the parallels between humans and animals to the realm of culture, identifying the cultivation of human life with the domestication of animals, claiming that both resulted from the same processes of breeding. From such a perspective, the social world, cultural achievements, and political claims were explained and justified by biological concepts. Darré explicitly called for the recognition and acceptance of the biological laws that shaped humanity, and for pursuing all human affairs in accordance with them. He advanced a social Darwinist position, emphasizing the significance of the general laws of reproduction and heredity for human development, and demanding that the natural mechanisms of selection undergirded social institutions. For Darré, the preservation of racial types was the key purpose in human history.This task could only be fulfilled when a Volk bred a nobility (Adel) that represented the “outstanding elements” of its race, and eradicated the “inferior elements” ruthlessly (Darré 1937: 52, 159). Darré understood the selective breeding of humans in terms of animal breeding, claiming time and again that the law of “pure blood” was first discovered by animal breeders whose experience should guide the application of biological principles to the social world (Darré 1942: 275 f., 358 ff., 365 ff., 435 ff.). He also claimed that there had been Völker, such as the Germanics or the Spartans, who had followed the “iron law” of the “proven blood” (“bewährtes Blut”) intuitively (Darré 1942: 364 f., 440 ff.). Darré believed in a biological foundation of racial differences, arguing that the inequality of races was caused by varying natural capacities. He saw humanity as characterized by the nat­ ural antagonism between the “Nordic settler-race” (Nordische Siedlerrasse) and the “nomadic wander-race” (nomadische Wanderrasse). Of course, Darré defined the Nordic race as the most gifted race, attributing a special way of life to its members; namely, farming. He assumed that the life of farmers was rooted in a certain attitude to the world: they were bound to their land, understood the organic laws of life, and developed a consciousness of the world that enabled them to form their environment. Only Nordic communities were, thus, gifted with the creative 101

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strength to develop culture, and could live in a truly human way. Darré emphasized the reli­ ability, altruism, and heroism of Nordic people, characterizing their life as the source of mor­ ality and personality (Darré 1937: 62 f., 1942, 32 f., 295 ff., 336 f.). The “wander-race,” on the other hand, was defined as the opposite of Nordic humanity, lacking its natural capacities. For Darré, the “wander-race” included different people, such as the Jews, Arabs, Huns, Tatars, or Native Americans. He claimed that nomadic people could only “exploit and graze” what nature gave or what others achieved, making them literally “parasites,” destroying their envir­ onment and robbing other people, leaving behind dead deserts (Darré 1942: 50; also 40 ff., 295 ff.). He depicted nomads as uprooted, cowardly, and immoral egoists without personality and inclined to “bestial cruelty” (Darré 1942: 40–42), explicitly defining them as “subhumanity” (Untermenschentum) that threatens the cultural achievements of the Nordic race (Darré 1937: 51 f., 132, 1940a: 71 ff., 1940b: 118–134, 126 f.). Hence, Darré believed in a separation within humanity itself, putting the Nordic farmers with their distinctively human way of life on the one side, and the bestial nomads of the “wander-race” on the other side. He regarded human history as the existential clash between these two kinds of life, Nordic humanity on the hand, and nomadic subhumanity on the other hand. Darré’s biologistic anthropology was characterized by two kinds of dehumanization. First, Darré naturalized humanity in general, thus including humans in the animal world and regarding them, first and foremost, as human animals. He believed that all characteristics of human life were rooted in natural dispositions and could be explained by the same laws that governed animal life, animalizing humans and their social forms in a literal sense. Darré thus dehumanized humanity in general. Second, he claimed that certain groups of people were gifted with exceptional nat­ ural capacities, enabling them to develop distinctively human features, such as culture, morality, or personality, making their way of life truly human. Other groups of people were dehumanized insofar as their life lacked the specifically human characteristics, degrading them to bestial subhumans only. This dehumanizing mechanism rested on a separation within humanity itself that was understood as an evolutionary gap—a widespread conviction among Nazi thinkers (e.g., Gauch 1933). Darré characterized the bestial subhumans as the exact opposite of true human­ ness, determining the latter as a certain way of life based on biological dispositions. Both kinds of dehumanization were thus undergirded by the naturalistic framework of his racist anthropology.

6.4 Metaphysical racism: Rosenberg’s image of the “Jewish Parasite” Although the naturalization of the humanity was an important feature of Nazi anthropology, several Nazi ideologues still rejected biologism. Rosenberg was a striking example of this ten­ dency in Nazi ideology. He explicitly claimed that the concept of race was not merely bio­ logical, developing a dualistic anthropology which combined natural and metaphysical features. According to Rosenberg, the property of race was tantamount to the essence of humans that distinguished them fundamentally from the animal world. He used the term “race-soul” to sig­ nify the deep, spiritual unity of human groups that could not be found in nature. Rosenberg held that “each race has its soul, each soul its race,” (Rosenberg 1971: 83 [1938: 116]) placing the essence of humanity in the spiritual realm.4 For Rosenberg, only humans, but not all humans, possessed a race-soul, enabling them to develop a collective identity, which is expressed in the distinctive culture of a community. The naturalization of humanity was nevertheless an important motif in Rosenberg’s racist anthropology: human groups without a race-soul were portrayed as mere human animals whose life lacked any metaphysical and cultural dimension.The image of the “Jewish parasite” was the ultimate expression of this dehumanizing animalization of certain groups of people. Here, the 102

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combination of natural and metaphysical features in the concept of humanity grounded the dehu­ manizing mechanism. The naturalistic dimension of metaphysical anthropology, on the one hand, explains why humans could be animalized in a literal sense. For instance, Rosenberg claimed that his characterization of the Jews as parasites has to been seen as a description of a biological fact (Rosenberg 1938: 461). Such a conviction is only possible if humanity is seen as part of the nat­ ural world and if biological concepts can be used to explain social relationships.The metaphysical dimension, on the other hand, explains why animalization could be used as a form of dehuman­ ization. In the metaphysical version of Nazi anthropology, natural features were not enough to be considered as fully human. Rosenberg regarded a specific disposition as the essence of humanity: the capacity to develop a collective identity, which was restricted to certain groups of people. In the following, I analyze this complex strategy of dehumanization, focusing on Rosenberg’s main work, Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (Myth of the 20th Century). First, I examine the meta­ physical aspect of his anthropology that shapes his characterization of full humanness (a), then turning to the animalization of the Jews (b).5 a. “Nordic” Humanity: Rosenberg developed a metaphysical understanding of race, claiming that the unique inner and outer character of a race was shaped by a “spiritual center.” This “essential unity” of a race was expressed in its myth, and thus remembering that myth enabled a community to develop self-consciousness; that is, to become the Volk it is (Rosenberg 1971: 97 f. [1938, 698]). This self-realization of a community was guided by a specific “highest value” (Höchstwert; see Rosenberg 1938: 116 f. [my translation]). Each race developed a different core value that was passed on by its myth and had to be recognized. The evaluative center of a race was expressed in the moral, political, and religious systems of its communities, making the establishment of a type-appropriate (artgerechte) culture an essential part of the self-realization of a community. Rosenberg was convinced that only one race, the Nordic race, of course, was capable of developing “Volkish personalities” (völkische Persönlichkeiten; Rosenberg 1971: 116 [1938: 249]). These Nordic communities shared the same highest value; namely, the concepts of honor and duty.These “spiritual essences” of the Nordic race enabled its members to create particular communities. Rosenberg depicted the Vikings as an example of a community that was solely shaped by its own intrinsic values and thus constituted a complete unity (Rosenberg 1971: 102 f. [1938: 152]). Here, selfhood became the most important criterion to assess the value of a community: the more a com­ munity knows, realizes, and expresses itself, the better, and the degree of this indicates how human the community is. Rosenberg regarded this particularist disposition as a prerequisite of cultural development and, hence, of full humanness. He believed that only the Nordic race possessed the creative strength to develop culture.Again, culture was the distinctive feature of the superior race and its humanness. Rosenberg held that, today, only the Germans were capable of the deliberate particularism that was essential for being fully human.While the Germans had to fight for their place at the top of the racial hierarchy, other groups of people were characterized as completely without the capacity for identity, culture, and thus full humanness. b. The Image of the “Jewish parasite”: The racist characterization of other groups of people rested on the naturalistic dimension of Nazi anthropology. Rosenberg’s anti-Semitism was an example of the conviction that there were humans who did not possess the essence of humanity and thus were mere human animals. He emphasized time and again the “uncreative character” of Jews, contrasting their properties to what he regarded as uniquely human. Jews were, according to Rosenberg,“copycats” (Nachäffer), “plagiarizers,” and “nihilists” who possessed “no talent for indigenous growth, no organic shape of the soul and therefore no 103

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racial shape” (Rosenberg 1938: 461 [my translation]).Thus, he defined the Jews as an “anti­ race” (Gegenrasse) whose members lacked what it means to be fully human: collective iden­ tity. Moreover, he claimed that Jewish life is without any metaphysical or cultural dimension and is hence animal-like.This dehumanizing naturalization of the Jew was a major motif of the Mythus. Rosenberg claimed that the “Jewish relationship to the world” was only guided by “instinct” and that Jews were always driven by selfish, material, superficial, and libidinous interests (Rosenberg 1938: 263 f., 272, 363 f., 460). He suggested that this disposition caused a completely inhuman behavior, giving one absurd example after the other of alleged Jewish cruelties in history (Rosenberg 1938: 123 f., 455 f., 459−466). For Rosenberg, Jews essen­ tially were nothing but human animals that advanced a “parasitical devaluation” and “bestial materialization” of the human world (Rosenberg 1938: 265 f., 460 [my translation]). He left no doubt that his dehumanization of Jews was literally meant as an animalization, insisting on the literal meaning of his characterization of Jews as parasites: “In this context the concept [of parasitism] will not be grasped as a moral evaluation but as the characterization of a biological fact, in exactly the same way as we speak of parasitical phenomena in the plant and animal world. The sack crab bores through the posterior of the pocket crab, gradually growing into the latter, sucking out its last life strength.This is an identical process to that in which the Jew penetrates into society through the open wounds in the body of the people, feeding off their racial and creative strength until their decline” (Rosenberg 1938: 461 [my translation]). The image of the Jewish parasite was a prime example of the animalistic dehumanization that also shaped the Nazi concept of the enemy.According to Rosenberg, Nordic communities sought to develop and sustain their particular identity.Thus, these “Volkish personalities” concentrated, first and foremost, on themselves. All subhuman groups of people and especially the Jews lacked this ability and hence had to spread for survival: they were “eternal wanderers” without a homeland and dependent on their host societies whom they “suck dry.”6 Because of this “expansive” and “destructive” form of life, the Jews were defined as a permanent threat to the particular com­ munities of the Nordic race and thus to all cultural forms of human life (Rosenberg 1938: 671 [my translation]). Rosenberg explicitly claimed that the Jews were a threat to humanity in itself and emphasized that “we are face to face with a final decision today” (Rosenberg 1938: 82 [my translation]). Rosenberg’s metaphysics of race is an extreme example of the non-biologistic version of Nazi racism that advanced a specific separation within humanity itself. Rosenberg regarded culture as the manifestation of the essential property that separated humans from animals and mere human animals. Similar views can also be found in less metaphysical approaches. In the chapter Volk und Rasse (“Volk and Race”) of Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”), Hitler contrasted the social atti­ tude of humans to the natural egoism of animals, claiming that humans were characterized by a sense of community that transcended the instinct of self-preservation. Hitler held that all culture depended on this social disposition (Gesinnung) that demanded the sacrifice of the individual for the sake of the community.7 According to him, only this “true idealism” created the “concept of human” (Hitler 1925: 316 [my translation]). The heroism of a community thus showed the humanness of the race it belonged to.The Aryans and its people were, of course, at the top of this ranking.They founded and preserved, according to Hitler, human culture (Hitler 1925: 311−312). However, there were also races which were not capable of being human in the full sense. Hitler claimed that the Jews possessed no “idealistic disposition” (idealistische Gesinnung): since they were only driven by the instinct of self-preservation, they basically remained animals (Hitler 1925: 317−320 [my translation]).At this point it should be obvious that Hitler put forward a strategy of 104

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dehumanization similar to Rosenberg’s.We can, therefore, justifiably say that Nazi racism could be based on a dualistic anthropology that combined biological and metaphysical perspectives. The examination of two strands of Nazi anthropology demonstrates that different concepts of humanity gave rise to diverging yet interconnected strategies of dehumanization.The natur­ alistic anthropology of Darré denied any fundamental distinction between humans and animals, thus animalizing humanity in general. He argued that all human affairs could be explained by the natural mechanisms that governed animal life as well. In addition, Darré believed in an evo­ lutionary gap within humanity itself, claiming that only certain groups of people possessed the natural capacities to become truly human. Other groups were dehumanized insofar as their life lacked the specifically human characteristics such as culture, morality, or personality, degrading them to bestial subhumans only. Although Darré’s understanding of true humanness referred to cultural features, he insisted on their biological foundation, thus developing an extreme natural hierarchy of human groups. Both kinds of dehumanization were supported by the naturalistic framework of Darré’s anthropology. The idea of a separation within humanity proved to be the key motif of the metaphysical strand in Nazi anthropology that was developed by Rosenberg in particular. His dualistic anthro­ pology emphasized a dividing line between being human in a naturalistic sense, on the one hand, and being human in the metaphysical sense, on the other hand, creating a fundamental distinc­ tion: only some groups of people met the metaphysical criterion of being human. Members of these groups were considered as essentially and, hence, fully human, while other groups of people were reduced to the biological sense of being human. They simply lacked the metaphysical essence of humanity and thus were characterized as mere human animals.These creatures were human only from the naturalistic point of view, but not human from a metaphysical point of view, making them subhumans who were not fully human but also not completely non-human. For Rosenberg, humans constituted a specific species within the animal sphere. Hence, human animals were also different from non-human animals.

6.5 The intellectual context: Anthropology in early 20th-century Germany Recent research has demonstrated that Nazi ideology was well embedded in the intellectual contexts of the early 20th century, revealing the complex relationship between academic and ideological discourses before and after 1933.The multilayered contributions of biological anthro­ pology and racial science to the racist core of the Nazi worldview and the policies of the Nazi regime are well researched (see e.g.,Weingart, Bayertz and Kroll 1992;Weikart 2004;Weiss 2010). Some authors have emphasized the ambivalences of Nazi ideology and have focused on the influ­ ence of the anti-scientific discourses that flourished in the philosophical context of the early 20th century (see e.g., Sluga 1993; Harrington 1996;Varshizky 2017a, 2017b).8 In the following, I will neither revisit the complex role of academic discourses on race for the ideological and political formation of NS, nor examine the involvement of certain scientists and scholars in Nazi ideology and politics. I rather aim to show that the motifs that ground the dehumanizing strategies of Nazi ideology were key issues in the anthropological debates in early 20th-century Germany. Nazi ideologues could thus draw on widely accepted motifs from the competing strands of contem­ porary anthropology to justify their racist views. In tracing these conceptual contexts, I seek to support my thesis that the dehumanizing images were rooted in specific concepts of humanity. My analysis considers two main strands of anthropological thought in early 20th-century Germany. First, I sketch the establishment of biological anthropology after Darwin, concentrating on the Darwinian reformulation of racial anthropology in the volume Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre (trans. as Human Hereditary Teaching and Racial Hygiene) that was coauthored by the racial scientists 105

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Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer, and Frith Lenz (a).9 Second, I turn to the philosophical approaches that rejected naturalism, focusing on the dualistic framework of Scheler’s metaphysical anthro­ pology (b). Note that I do not intend to examine to what extent these scientific and philo­ sophical anthropologies were actual predecessors of Nazi ideology. I thus do not evaluate the concrete contributions of these scientists and philosophers to Nazi ideology and politics. My analysis focuses completely on the structural similarities between the ideological and the schol­ arly concepts of humanity as well as on their dehumanizing potential. a. Biological Anthropology: Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection provided a new concep­ tual framework within which to understand the place of human beings within nature, and the forces that act upon them. In his Descent of Man (1871), Darwin did envisage humans as a part of the natural order of things and in defining the human species as a “modified descendant of some pre-existing form,” Darwin (1875: 5) showed the common descent of humans and animals, concluding from the continuity between the human and the animal sphere that their distinction is only a difference in degree and not in kind, thus including humanity into the animal sphere. As Darwin (1875: 147) puts it himself: “A difference in degree, however great, does not justify us in placing man in a distinct kingdom.” One effect of this Darwinian shift in the understanding of the relationship between human beings and animals was the breakthrough of a strictly naturalistic view of human nature. Since humanity was regarded as part of nature, not above it, and therefore subject to its laws, the methods of the natural sciences seemed to be applicable in anthropology. Hutton (2005: 48–51) has emphasized that modern eugenics was a direct application of this vision. He also shows that, from a Darwinian perspective, the cultural development of humanity was regarded as pecu­ liar case of domestication, analogous to the human breeding of animals and plants. These animalizing tendencies were especially obvious in the Darwinian reformulation of racial anthropology. In the methodological chapter of the Baur-Fischer-Lenz volume, Lenz emphasized the scientific status of racial anthropology and singled out two objective sources of knowledge about the natural development of humanity: statistical methods and analogies from the experience of breeding animals and plants (Lenz 1927a: 411–416).10 Moreover, races were considered as the key agents of human life, and analogies with the animal world loomed large in the explanation of their genetic make-up. Baur (1927) explained the selective mechanism that regulated the mixture of different racial groups by a comparison with the interbreeding of a population of white rabbits with a population of black rabbits. He also pointed to the similarities between the domestication of animals and the cultivation of humans, emphasizing and criticizing, however, the missing selection in human culture (Baur 1927: 74–81; see also Fischer 1927: 136 f.). From this biologistic perspective, cultural development was nothing but the expression of a community’s nat­ ural development regarding its intellectual capacities. For Baur, Fischer, and Lenz, natural dispositions determined the cultural capacity of races, and caused their alleged develop­ mental differences. Lenz (1927b) outlined a typical cultural hierarchy of races, starting with the supposed lowest stage of “primitive prehistoric races” which lacked the intellectual cap­ acity for developing culture and, therefore, lived like primates. He believed that members of these ape-like humans still existed (i.e., in Australia) and claimed that the gap between them and the intellectually most gifted humans was as large as the gap between humans and primates in general. Moreover, the “negro race” was depicted as “inferior” within the spectrum of historic humanity, lacking the intellectual capacity for creativity, living only for the moment and in unorganized tribes, and prone to child-like self-indulgence and cruelty (Lenz 1927b: 523–25, 529; for Fischer’s similar views see Hutton 2005). The Nordic race 106

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represented, of course, the peak of the intellectual development of humanity, bearing its cultural advancement. Gifted with creative intelligence and the capacity to develop strong personalities, members of the Nordic race were determined to become leaders, conquerors, inventors, artists, scientists, and thinkers. Lenz claimed, however, that these characteristics grounded the Nordic inclination to individualism. At this point the significance of animalizing motifs for biological anthropology after Darwin should be obvious: since humanity was regarded as part of nature, its characteristics were explained by the same laws that governed the animal world. These naturalistic explanations were often based on analogies between animal and human life, emphasizing the similarities between them.The racial anthropology of Baur, Fischer, and Lenz assumed that there were large evolutionary gaps within humanity and advanced a hierarchy of races that moved certain groups of people closer to animals than others (for the modern prehistory of these motifs see Sebastiani, this volume).They thus promoted a separation within humanity itself and even contributed to the myth of the Nordic race with their scientific claims, making them scientific allies of Nazi ideology. b. Philosophical Anthropology: The establishment of a Darwinian anthropology, which was advocated successfully by authors like Ernst Haeckel, faced strong opposition in Germany, especially in philosophy. Most philosophers regarded a naturalistic view in anthropology as theoretically insufficient and ethically dangerous.They raised the ethical concern of dehu­ manization, accusing naturalistic approaches of animalizing humanity and of disregarding the normative aspect of human life. Biological anthropology was identified with a kind of human zoology that stripped off meaning and dignity of humanity, thus contributing to the crisis of modern life by undermining traditional forms of human self-understanding.11 Philosophers developed their anthropological approaches against the perceived threat of its decline into animality and sought to reconstruct the special status of humanity by revealing what is uniquely human.This essence of being human was thought to transcend the realm of nature. In his summary of contemporary philosophical anthropology in 1938, Werner Sombart characterized this anti-naturalistic stance as the common orientation of the different approaches (Sombart 1938: 126; for a confirmation of this tendency see Hutton 2005: 253 ff.). Max Scheler was a key protagonist of the general tendency in anthropological thought in German philosophy. He began his treatise Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos (1928; The Human Place in the Cosmos) with diagnosing an anthropological identity crisis, claiming that despite the increase of empirical knowledge about humanity “in no historical era has the human being become so much of a problem to himself as in ours” (Scheler 2009: 5). His critical diagnosis was explicitly directed against the empirical sciences and pointed to the ethical deficiency of their naturalistic understanding of humanity: although humanity knew more about its place in the natural world than ever before, it had become more uncertain about its distinctive nature and destiny. Scheler regarded the anthropological identity crisis as an opportunity to reveal the true nature of humanity and thus addressed a “tricky ambiguity” of the concept of human being (Scheler 2009: 5). He distinguished two senses of the concept human being and defined them as fundamentally different. On the one hand, Scheler held that the term “human being” was used in the natural sciences, characterizing humans as a subclass of vertebrates and mammals, and thus including them in the animal sphere. On the other hand, Scheler claimed that there was an “essential concept” (Wesenskonzept) of the human, which com­ pletely opposed the naturalistic understanding and, moreover, the concepts of animals in general (Scheler 2009: 5). He was convinced that humans were not only natural beings 107

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but characterized by the capacity to transcend nature. In an earlier article on Zur Idee des Menschen (1915; On the Idea of Man) Scheler defined humans as “God-seekers,” arguing that this orientation to transcendence made them truly human (Scheler 1978: 194). In the later treatise, he understood this fundamental condition of being human as spirit.According to the late Scheler, humans embodied spirit, and their life was thus shaped by a metaphysical principle that was in opposition to natural life.The spiritual principle of human life made humans independent from nature and enabled them to develop self-consciousness. Scheler argued that this fundamental distinction from the animal sphere constituted the special status and, hence, the true nature of humanity. Note that Scheler believed that his differentiation between a natural and an essential sense of being human revealed a distinction that could be found in reality. In his article from 1915, Scheler claimed that “there is within ‘humanity’ a separation, which is immensely larger than the naturalistic one between man and animal” (Scheler 1978: 194). He suggested that there were beings who were only human from a naturalistic perspective and that these natural humans were not fully human because they did not fulfill the essential concept of being human. Scheler emphasized that they were fundamentally different from human beings in the essential sense and only gradually different from other animals, thus characterizing them as human animals. I believe it is fair to say that Scheler developed an anthropological framework that could be used to dehumanize certain groups of people, although he did not develop such a racist line of thought and was not affiliated with Nazi ideology. Philosophers who connected their views with NS relied nevertheless on Scheler’s anthropological thought, advancing a pol­ itical understanding of his key motifs that was compatible with Nazi ideology.12 To sum up, my outline of the two competing main strands of anthropology in early 20th-century Germany demonstrates that the key motifs of Nazi anthropology were well embedded in the broader historical context. Both examples show that the concepts of humanity that grounded the dehumanizing strategies of Nazi ideology were prevalent in the scholarly debates of the time. The case of NS thus exemplifies the dehumanizing potential of anthropological theories.

6.6 Conclusion The analysis discussed earlier explores the significance of dehumanizing images for Nazi ideology, focusing on the connection between concepts of humanity and strategies of dehumanization.Yet dehumanization was not only an ideological phenomenon in the context of NS. Dehumanizing practices shaped the social reality of NS (for examples, see Brudholm and Lang, this volume).13 Several authors have claimed that the notion of a complete dehumanization, which is often advanced by psychological approaches (e.g., Kelman 1973; Smith 2011, 2016, this volume), is not sufficiently supported by the actual reality of mass violence. Lang’s (2010) detailed account of the excessive violence in concentration camps demonstrates that the perpetrators did not trans­ form their victims in completely non-human beings (see also Brudholm 2010; Lang 2017). He shows that the extreme forms of violence that characterized the daily life in concentration camps had a social psychological meaning that implied the acknowledgment of the victim’s humanity. Lang argues that this intersubjective dimension of the violent behavior of perpetrators cannot be captured by the concept of dehumanization, since the completely dehumanized other is, per definition, deprived of any social meaning for the dehumanizer. My examination of different versions of Nazi ideology has, however, unearthed complex strategies of dehumanization that allowed the attribution of basic human traits to the victims of dehumanization.The image of the human animal was characterized by an irreducible ambivalence and does not lead to a complete 108

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dehumanization of the other. My understanding of dehumanization is thus consistent with the fact that perpetrators recognized some kind of humanity in their victims. I also do not have to make an additional theoretical assumption, such as an incoherent state of mind, that should be specific to the psychology of dehumanization (Smith, this volume). I believe that considering the social context of dehumanization suggests a broader shift in exam­ ining this troubling phenomenon. In the existing literature, processes of dehumanization are, first and foremost, discussed as psychological prerequisites of mass violence.This debate focuses on the psychology of perpetrators and attempts to determine the causal role of dehumanization for partici­ pating in acts of mass violence.Yet the social perspective highlights the practical aspect of dehuman­ ization. In guiding the interaction with other people, dehumanization proves to be a forceful tool of social oppression that has a strong psychological impact on its victims. Future research on dehu­ manization in contexts of mass violence should, thus, consider the perspective of the victims more thoroughly and examine the constitutive role of dehumanization in their treatment (see Demoulin et al., this volume).This focus could connect the research on dehumanization in contexts of mass violence with other research strands, since the role of dehumanization as the normative wrong of social harm is discussed in fields such as feminist philosophy (e.g., Mikkola 2016) or philosophy of law (e.g., Frick, this volume; Corrias, this volume).

Notes 1 For critical comments and helpful suggestions on an earlier draft of this chapter, I want to thank Maria Kronfeldner and two anonymous referees. 2 Nazi ideologues regarded their racist views as contributions to the (self-)understanding of humanity. Since their approaches were well embedded in the scholarly debates of the time (as I will argue in this chapter), they belong to the anthropological discourse of the early 20th century. In identifying the views of Nazi ideologues as anthropologies, my wording should reflect this historical context. 3 I abstain from discussing the relationship between dehumanization and the emergence of mass violence. For a careful analysis of the role of ideological dehumanization for the motivation of Nazi perpetrators see Steizinger 2018. 4 I will quote Rosenberg’s main work Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (The Myth of the 20th Century) from the translated selections printed in Race and Race History and Other Essays by Alfred Rosenberg. If I quote Rosenberg in English, I will always provide a reference to the German original in brackets. It is always noted when I translate a passage from the German edition myself. 5 For a more detailed examination of Rosenberg’s doctrine that considers the recent literature, see my previously published account in Steizinger 2018. 6 This motif is most developed in Rosenberg’s early work, Die Spur des Juden im Wandel der Zeit (1920). Passages from this anti-Semitic treatise are published in Rosenberg 1971, 175−190. 7 Kroll emphasizes that the social explanation of Aryan superiority is one of Hitler’s few original contributions to the racist discourse. See Kroll 1998, 47 f. 8 Hutton (2005) gives a detailed account of the struggles between the different racial paradigms within the Nazi context. 9 The Baur-Fischer-Lenz volume was first published in 1921 and became the standard work on racial anthropology in the 1920s and 1930s. 10 I concentrate on Lenz’s claims in the Baur-Fischer-Lenz volume. Here, Lenz advanced a strictly natural­ istic position without the metaphysical overtones that Varshizky (2017b) finds in other works.A discus­ sion of the development of Lenz’s views and of his understanding of the relationship between science and ideology would extend the scope of this chapter. 11 Milam (this volume) shows that structurally similar oppositions characterized anthropological debates in postwar America. 12 See, e.g. Rothacker 1934; Lersch 1936. For a detailed analysis of racist underpinnings of Rothacker’s philosophical anthropology, see Steizinger 2020. 13 The close relationship between Nazi ideology and Nazi reality from the perspective of dehumanization is set out by Steizinger 2018.

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Dehumanizing strategies in Nazi ideology Raphael, L. (2014) “Pluralities of National Socialist Ideology: New Perspectives on the Production and Diffusion of National Socialist Weltanschauung,” in M. Steber and B. Gotto (eds.) Visions of Community in Nazi Germany: Social Engineering and Private Lives, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rosenberg, A. (1938 [1930]) Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts. Eine Wertung der seelisch-geistigen Gestaltenkämpfe unserer Zeit, München: Hoheneichen-Verlag. —–. (1971) Race and Race History and Other Essays trans. by A. Rosenb erg, R. Pois, London: Jonathan Cape. Rothacker, E. (1934) Geschichtsphilosophie, Bonn: München and Berlin: Oldenburg. Sebastiani, S. (2020). “Enlightenment Humanization and Dehumanization, and the Orangutan,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, 64–82. (this volume). Scheler, M. (1978 [1915]) “On the Idea of Man,” trans. by C. Nabe, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 9:184–198. —–. (2009 [1928]) The Human Place in the Cosmos, trans. by M.S. Frings, Evanston, IL: North Western University Press. Sluga, H. (1993) Heidegger’s Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Smith, D.L. (2011) Less Than Human: Why We Demean Enslave, and Exterminate Others, New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. —–. (2020). “Dehumanization, the Problem of Humanity, and the Problem of Monstrosity,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, 355–361. (this volume). —–. (2016) “Paradoxes of Dehumanization,” Social Theory and Practice 42:416−443. Sombart, W. (1938) “Beiträge zur Geschichte der wissenschaftlichen Anthropologie,” In Sitzungsberichte der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Berlin: Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften, 96–130. Steizinger, J. (2018) “The Significance of Dehumanization: Nazi Ideology and its Psychological Consequences,” Politics, Religion & Ideology 19:139‒157. —–. (2020) “From Völkerpsychologie to Cultural Anthropology: Erich Rothacker’s Philosophy of Culture,” Hopos 10 (Spring), in press. Varshizky, A. (2017a) “In Search of the ‘Whole Man’: Soul-Man-World in the National Socialist Weltanschauung,” Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust 31:200–226. —–. (2017b) “Between Science and Metaphysics: Fritz Lenz and Racial Anthropology in Interwar Germany,” Intellectual History Review 27:247–272. Volpato, C., Contarello A. (1999) “Towards a Social Psychology of Extreme Situations: Primo Levi’s If This is a Man and Social Identity Theory,” European Journal of Social Psychology 29:55–87. Weikart, R. (2004) From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Weingart, P., Bayertz, K. Kroll J. (1992) Rasse, Blut und Gene. Geschichte der Eugenik und Rassenhygiene in Deutschland, Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp. Weiss, S. (2010) The Nazi Symbiosis: Human Genetics and Politics in the Third Reich, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Weissmann, M. (2015) “Organisierte Entmenschlichung. Zur Produktion, Funktion und Ersetzbarkeit sozialer und psychischer Dehumanisierung in Genoziden,” in A. Gruber and S. Kühl (eds.) Soziologische Analysen des Holocaust. Jenseits der Debatte über “ganz normale Männer” und “ganz normale Deutsche”, Wiesbaden: Springer VS.

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7

THEORIZING THE INHUMANITY

OF HUMAN NATURE, 1955–1985

Erika Lorraine Milam

7.1 Introduction In 1983, anthropologist Ashley Montagu copublished a book with Floyd Matson, The Dehumanization of Man (Montagu and Matson 1983). Although the book contained several sections on violence and its anesthetizing effects on society, the authors’ overarching concern was the automation of humanity—the evacuation of free will by sexual hedonism, rampant drug use, violence in movies, and the orchestrated chaos of professional sports.They warned that by turning humans into “cheerful robots,” such conveniences of modern society threatened the very essence of human nature: individuals’ ability to connect and learn from each other. “This book is concerned with an invisible disease, an affliction of the spirit,” they wrote, “which has been ravaging humanity in recent times without surcease and virtually without resistance, and which has now reached epidemic proportions in the Western world.” Montagu and Matson then added, “this sickness of the soul might well be called the ‘Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.’ Its more conventional name, of course, is dehumanization” (Montagu and Matson 1983: xi).When humans viewed each other, and themselves, as insentient, unemotional, or unintelligent beings, how easy it then became to kill.They argued that dehumanization in these forms amplified the conditions of possibility for genocide. By the early 1980s, Montagu was well-known as a critic of biological determinism, and Floyd as an equally polemical (if less prolific) critic of the new biology and physics as promoting visions of the human as self-alienating (Montagu 1942; Matson 1964; Matson and Montagu 1967; Montagu 1968; Montagu and Matson 1979). The Dehumanization of Man combined their perspectives to lament the changes wrought by civilization—changes that acted to distance humans from the social and evolutionary processes that had led to the fullest expression of human nature in the first place. Montagu and Matson never mentioned evolutionary theory, but their logic built on practiced diatribes against earlier depictions of humanity as zoomorphic or biologically determined.The processes of dehumanization, for Montagu, were linked intimately to the conceptual unraveling of human nature itself (Sperling 2000;Weidman 2012). Today, articulations of dehumanization as a concept—as a process by which animalistic language or metaphors are used to debase a group of people relative to others—rely on a shared convic­ tion that the boundaries of any such dehumanized group are largely arbitrary. Detention centers corral “illegal” immigrants in camps that keep them isolated from those deemed “legitimate,” and 112

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racialized domestic politics judge some citizens as more valuable (metaphorically and literally) than others.The “groups” in question could be defined by race, sex, gender, class, religion, political allegiance, or countless other potential attributes. Dehumanization as a concept provides those who seek to undermine its power intellectual traction by uniting examples scattered through time, geography, and conviction into a singular process by which animalization was mobilized as an intellectual justification for differential treatment (see Hund, this volume). I argue, however, that definitions of dehumanization as a process (as expressed by Montagu and others) emerged within a very specific historical context. This essay charts the intellectual lineage of terms mobilized to critique the new biology of the Cold War; 1960s antipathy toward “zoomorphic” analyses of human behavior morphed into critiques of “biological determinism” in the 1970s, which in turn were re-expressed in revulsion to dehumanization in the 1980s. It was the emergence of the second of these terms, biological determinism that encouraged scientists to conceptualize racism and sexism as similar processes. As articulated by Montagu and Matson, dehumanization merged such concerns with those about the effects of mass cul­ ture more generally. It would be easy to read these shifting intellectual grounds as a story where scientists’ research and politics drove changes in public opinion, but it is important to keep in mind that the questions they asked and answers they identified were also responses to the social and cultural moment in which they worked. Montagu had been intellectually active throughout these decades and feared that ‘biologizing’ negative human qualities like aggression and self­ ishness would inevitably slide into racism and sexism, opening the portal to other forms of dehumanizing behaviors (Montagu and Matson 1983;Weidman 2011). His articulation of dehu­ manization centered on the idea that protecting the most vulnerable members of modern society required defending all of humanity from the scourge of reductionist thinking in its many guises.

7.2 The stakes of human nature If we imagine a firm boundary between mere animals and fully human moral agency, much research in modern biology has sought to break down the animal-human binary, from at least Darwin (1871) to de Waal (2019). Debates over definitions of “human nature” have been central to this research, including the extent to which traits we associate with humanity, from intel­ ligence to emotions, can be found in the animal kingdom (see Hannon and Lewens 2018; Kronfeldner 2018; Crary this volume; Sebastiani, this volume). Scholars have conceptualized the work necessary to blur this boundary by charting two intertwined logics, one zoomorphic, one anthropomorphic. First, scholars of human rights have called attention to the depiction of distinct groups of people as subhuman—zoomorphism. For anti-colonialist writers, the collapse of the distinction between animal and human, especially the zoomorphic treatment of colonized peoples, was cen­ tral to the power dynamics of colonial discourse. Hannah Arendt (1951), Frantz Fanon (1965), and Saidiya Hartman (2007) have argued that slippages between animal and human enabled the depiction of colonized peoples as less than fully human, as unequal moral agents, and therefore as not due the full moral consideration of European colonizers. The use of animalized lan­ guage also facilitated the normalization of violence within chattel slavery (see also Smith 2011, 2014).Work in the animal studies community has long asserted that the metaphors connecting animal and human are interactionist; when invoked they change perceptions of both “animal” and “human” (Black 1962; Hesse 1963). These foundational analyses contributed to a growing and lively scholarly conversation regarding the mechanisms of zoomorphism as tools for creating and naturalizing inequality between groups of humans (Césaire 1972; Elder, Wolch, and Emel 1998; Weil 2012). 113

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Second, historians and philosophers of biology have paid particular attention to the scientific attribution of human characteristics to animals. Anthropomorphism in this context also served as a tool of demarcation, but typically as a tool differentiating legitimate from amateur scientific approaches. Just think, for example, of the criticisms leveraged against Jane Goodall for giving her chimpanzee subjects’ names rather than numbers, or current debates about the attribution of con­ sciousness to non-human animals (Crist 1999; Wynne 2004; Milam 2010). Anthropomorphism can take many forms, depending on the human characteristic in question, just as zoomorphic comparisons can apply either to specific groups of humans or to humanity as a whole. Within these broad conversations, evolutionary narratives have, therefore, occupied a particular place of emphasis—especially in cases where theories of the animal origins of humanity were mobilized in the service of a sliding scale of development and civilization or when applied to national policy. Scholarship in animal studies has explored the cultural work of both zoomorphic and anthropomorphic metaphors in conjoining the animal and the human (Creager and Jordan 2002; Daston and Mitman 2005). Animals are, indeed, good tools for thinking with, politically (Haraway 1989), culturally (Russell 2001; Clark 2008), epistemologically (Crist 1999; Radick 2007; Sommer 2016), and ontologically (Daston and Mitman 2005). Recent publications in the history and philosophy of dehumanization have brought these two conversations together— returning moral urgency to the history and philosophy of biology (Haslam et al. 2007; Kronfeldner 2018; Smith 2011). This essay contributes to these ongoing discussions by analyzing a series of episodes of Cold War investigations into human nature. Beginning after the Second World War, paleoanthropologists crafted a vision of all humanity as originating in Africa, united by common history and a shared struggle against the environment. Drawn out over millions of years, they reasoned, the pro­ cess of anthropogenesis required synergistic interactions between nature and culture—a positive feedback system that magnified those traits that came to define Homo sapiens and distinguished humans from their hominid kin. At least since the Enlightenment, ideals of a universal human nature circulated, yet throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this “universal man” was in practice and in theory far from an un-gendered, de-racinated universal human (e.g., Proctor 1988; Schiebinger 1993; Zimmerman 2001; Qureshi 2011; Conklin 2013). After the Second World War and a full appreciation of the horrors of the Holocaust, the political import­ ance of defining a truly universal human took prime place in biological and anthropological theory. The unity of humanity, in this context, represented an optimistic vision that human ancestors had succeeded in their fraught struggle against the environment though coordinating their efforts and establishing modern society (Dobzhansky 1956; Eiseley 1957; Matson and Montagu 1967; Stocking 1968). In the postwar era, human exceptionalism resided in a capacity for reasoned cooperation. Then, by the mid-1960s, a new idea grabbed a hold of the reading public—that human intel­ ligence might, instead, have been linked to humanity’s apparently unique capacity to murder members of their own species. This darker version of human history sat awkwardly with the hopeful message of the immediate postwar era.A grumpy reviewer noted in The New York Times that “his only serious objection” to the view of man-as-animal was “it left out almost every­ thing—language, abstract reasoning, art, institutions, etc.—that distinguished man from other primates, rats, ants, worms, asparagus” (Leonard 1969). Critics of this perspective (what Matson would later refer to as the “new biology”) accused its main advocates of zoomorphism, of dehu­ manizing the entirety of humanity. With the growing popularity of Sociobiology (Wilson 1975) a decade later, critics who had sharpened their rhetorical knives on these earlier theories now mobilized accusations of bio­ logical determinism against E.O. Wilson and his supporters (Gould 1974; Kaye 1986). Critics 114

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of the human animal as a Cold War idea once again disparaged it as a form of essentialist thinking. They sought to unite sexism and racism as conjoined intellectual enterprises that worked according to similar logic, both rendering differences between groups of humans in biological terms (Tobach and Rosoff 1978; Hubbard and Lowe 1979). Biological determinism thus emerged in the 1970s as an umbrella concept, intended to include both sexism and racism as its most significant manifestations. The emergence of concern about biological determinism resonated with an emphasis on universal human rights on the international political stage (Hunt 2008; Moyn 2010), where concepts of human rights in the “first world” served as an alternative to the emphasis on socioeconomic rights so central to Marxist ideology in many “second world” countries (Nathans 2014). By tracing criticisms of perspectives that reduced humanity to mere animals, we can thus identify a terminological shift from zoomorphism to biological determinism in the 1970s, that consolidated in the 1980s with dehumanization. Each phrase cast a broader historical net, itera­ tively conjoining male violence with the sexualization of women, the processes of racialization, and finally the numbing effects of modern technology. Dehumanization as concept captured all of these meanings, formally linking the reduction of humanity to animality as parallel to the deg­ radation of humans as machines (Montagu and Matson 1983) and providing a coherent platform for concerted feminist resistance (Haraway 1985).

7.3 Zoomorphism and the critique of Cold War aggression In the decades after the Second World War, scientific authors were public figures in the United States, trusted as experts on a range of topics from child-rearing to death. At the same time, violence emerged as a site of particular concern at every level of American society. In literature, politics, film, and science, writers rethought and re-presented the role of violence in modern life. In the 1950s and into the early 1960s, American scientists largely concurred that humans were instinctually cooperative, which resonated with optimistic images of the human in postwar America. Edward Steichen’s iconic Family of Man exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1955, for example, depicted the so-called nuclear family as the heart of all human cultures (Steichen 1955;Turner 2012). Authors who wrote about human nature from a scientific perspective struggled to explain how human groups were capable of the incredible prejudice and slaughter evidenced in the Second World War internationally and the violent clashes that characterized the struggle for civil rights at home (Dobzhansky 1956; Eiseley 1957). Through epic tales of human evolution, they sought to depict episodes of violence (like war) as periodic aberrations that punctuated the long human history of synergistic cooperation, leading human ancestors from an animal­ istic past to a fully human present.1 Anthropologist S. Anthony Barnett (1964) worried about the limits of zoomorphism in defining human nature (1964), even when intended to highlight how far humanity had come over the millennia. He posited that all inquiries along these lines raised the same fundamental question: “what use is it to compare other species with ourselves?” (806).Whether explicitly or implicitly, Barnett argued that scientists assuming a zoomorphic stance presumed that answers to questions about how to control human aggression would be found in comparison to the behavior and physiology of other species. He disagreed: “when we look for wisdom in our dealings with each other, the Delphic exhortation still holds: know thyself ” (806). Understanding human nature, for Barnett as for most zoologists, paleontologists, and anthropologists at the time, was an enterprise that required contributions from all of these fields—on their own, comparisons to non-human animals could never provide a sufficient account of what it meant to be human. 115

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By the later 1960s, the progressive postwar consensus was unraveling, with the publication of three widely read colloquial science books: Robert Ardrey’s Territorial Imperative (1966), the English translation of Konrad Lorenz’s On Aggression (1966), and Desmond Morris’s The Naked Ape (1967). Published in quick succession, readers associated these books with a new view of human evolution that presented male aggression as not only natural but also as making possible the continued social evolution of humanity. Each book approached the question of the human animal from a different analytical angle, incorporating insights from recent work in ethology, psychobiology, and human sexology. As a playwright, Ardrey considered himself a practiced student of human nature as well as a scientific amateur—he believed this made him the per­ fect raconteur of humanity’s lurid past. He argued (Ardrey 1966) that aggression provided the crucial spark that drove the divergence between humans and their simian kin (Weidman 2011). Lorenz, on the other hand, was hailed as one of the founders of the scientific study of animal behavior, who also wrote books for general audiences. He distinguished (Lorenz 1966) care­ fully between the violence associated with hunting and the aggression of inter-specific murder. Lorenz feared that when humans had developed weapons that could kill at great distances, they lost the ability to surrender before dying; what had started out as an advantage had turned into a species-level threat of extinction. Morris—who had earned his Ph.D. in zoology a few years earlier and was known to television viewers as the charming host of Zootime—remained the most optimistic of the three. Morris (1967) saw the origins of humanity’s cooperative spirit in the sexual instincts that united men and women into families. The confluence of their books’ publication, however, led many readers to identify a shared assertion that studies of animal behavior provided crucial information for understanding human nature—good and ill. Scientific audiences greeted the books with far more skepticism than non-scientific readers (Milam 2019). Eiseley (1966), for example, insisted that studying humanity through comparisons with animals failed to account for the transcendence of human culture. Even as they disagreed with the conclusions of Ardrey, Lorenz, and Morris, other scientists appreciated the popular attention these authors brought to the field of animal behavior (Eisenberg and Dillon 1971). By emphasizing comparative animal behavior as the key intellectual terrain on which evi­ dence of humanity’s essential nature should be debated, these books began transmuting postwar models of cooperative human evolution (that emerged in deep time from an animalistic past) into synchronic comparisons between humanity and other non-human animals, especially other primates. In other words, animals still served as foils against which to define humanity but increasingly without standing in for humanity’s past.When Karl von Frisch, Konrad Lorenz, and Nikolaas Tinbergen shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, this mark of recog­ nition from the Karolinska Institutet seemed to cement the importance of comparative behavior and physiology for understanding the current state of humanity (Burkhardt 2005; Munz 2016). The official press release read,“Their first discoveries were made on insects, fishes and birds, but the basal principles have proved to be applicable also on mammals, including man” (Karolinksa Institutet 1973). Doyen of anthropology Sherwood Washburn raised objections in quick order, expressing his concerns that hewing to solely animal comparisons in an attempt to understand human nature would undermine or delay efforts to identify the social and historical causes of violence and war—if not deliberately, then in the hands of those who would misuse their theories (Washburn 1968). Ashley Montagu collected into one volume, called Man and Aggression (1968), thirteen of the most trenchant criticisms of the recent books by Ardrey, Lorenz, and Morris. Several of the authors mobilized historical comparisons to frame these biological interpretations of human nature as both old-fashioned and disreputable. Montagu denounced their books as “original 116

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sin revisited” (3); J. P. Scott asserted that Lorenz’s ideas had been popular around the turn of the century and that his solution, sublimation, was expressed with “equal eloquence and greater practicality by William James in his essay on ‘The Moral Equivalent of War,’ in 1910” (52);T. C. Schneirla argued that Lorenz’s fascination with instinct and aggression differed little from the ideas of Herbert Spencer and Sigmund Freud (59); and Edmund Leach characterized Lorenz’s theories (minus the ethology) as essentially Hobbesian (73).Together, the essays repeated the con­ viction that Ardrey, Lorenz, and Morris represented a return to the many guises of nineteenthcentury Social Darwinism (Kaye 1986). When von Frisch, Lorenz, and Tinbergen were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1973, the etho­ logical community valued the prize as evidence of the respectability of their discipline, but the popular scientific press also found intriguing rumors of Lorenz’s service during the Second World War to the German state and the possibility of untranslated publications on degeneration in domesticated animals (Föger and Taschwer 2001;Taschwer and Föger 2003; Munz 2011). For Americans, the exact dimensions of Lorenz’s “Nazi past” were uncertain but the media neverthe­ less depicted Lorenz as differing politically and scientifically from Tinbergen (Burkhardt 2005, see also Steizinger this volume).Whereas Lorenz had advocated biological explanations of animal behavior that could be extrapolated to humans—especially in On Aggression (1966)—the press suggested that Tinbergen, who had served during the war defending his native Netherlands against invading German military forces, instead emphasized the importance of environmental factors in animals and humans alike (Burkhardt 2005). In rejecting animal comparisons as a truthful means of naturalizing human nature, critics of Ardrey, Lorenz, and Morris crafted an intellectual history in which the theories proffered by these men were themselves the product of the cultural and intellectual moment in which they had been crafted. In accusing these authors of zoomorphism, Montagu and the critics he assembled asserted that Cold War politics were historically contingent, not natural.

7.4 Critiques of sociobiology as biological determinism In the early 1970s, a loose collection of biologists mobilized a new set of tools from mathem­ atical and economic game theory (Segerstråle 2013; Erickson 2015; Grodwohl 2017).Thinking of evolution in game theoretic terms, they reframed evolution as the differential selection of competing strategies for maximizing individual genetic contributions to the next generation. In less technical terms, in thinking of evolution as a hard-scrabble competition for offspring, they confronted a new dilemma: how to understand why any behavior that required personal sacrifice for a non-relative could persist in a population (Borrello 2010).The evolution of such altruistic behaviors became a major focus of research, which, in turn, promoted a vision of nature—even human nature—as inherently selfish (Ghiselin 1974; Dawkins 1976; Barash 1977; Alexander 1979). Postwar attempts to naturalize cooperation in humanity’s evolutionary past had been replaced with the naturalization of factional competition.2 After the publication of Edward O. Wilson’s Sociobiology (1975), his book became a rallying cry and supporters adopted the mantle of “sociobiologist” as a defense against critics who, like Montagu (1975, 1976), continued to decry the possibility of a biological study of human social behavior. It struck sociobiologists as deeply puzzling that individuals sometimes sacrificed their own well-being and genetic future to protect others. By asking how such altruism had evolved, sociobiologists naturalized violence as essential, but not unique, to human nature. Debates over the biological basis of human behavior erupted quickly and virulently, resonating with critics’ preexisting concerns over the social implications of colloquial scientific publications of the pre­ vious decade. The scientific outcry over The Territorial Imperative (Ardrey 1966), On Aggression 117

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(Lorenz 1966), and The Naked Ape (Morris 1967) merged seamlessly into critiques of the politics of sociobiology. More than a year before Sociobiology (Wilson 1975) appeared on American bookshelves, the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould (1974) had penned an essay for his popular column in the American Museum of Natural History’s magazine Natural History (Sheldon 2016). He summarized the objections to the killer ape theory, noting that “we have been deluged during the past decade by a resurgent biological determinism, ranging from ‘pop ethology’ to out­ right racism.” He continued, “With Konrad Lorenz as godfather, Robert Ardrey as dramatist, and Desmond Morris as raconteur, we are presented with the behavior of man, ‘the naked ape,’ descended from an African carnivore, innately aggressive and inherently territorial.” He did not stop there, adding Carleton Coon (1962), Lionel Tiger (1969), and Robin Fox (Tiger and Fox 1971) to his list of offenders who together had crafted “a crude biological determinism” in their writings about human nature (Gould 1974: 21). Gould’s invocation of this umbrella term—biological determinism—facilitated the process of equating present biological theories that threatened the self-determination of humanity with those of the past. To be sure, “biological determinism” as a phrase already existed. In the first half of the twentieth century, it was used to distinguish between different kinds of deter­ minist thinking; biological determinism (especially the theories of Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud) was contrasted with social determinism (used to critique sociology as a science), political determinism, economic determinism, and others. In the later 1950s, the term more typically distinguished between biological and cultural factors in anthropological analyses; for example, when authors lauded Franz Boas’ rejection of the biological determinism of culture (Boas 1940, c.f.Teslow 2014). It became more common as a term of disapprobation in the 1960s, especially in sociological analyses that sought to downplay the influence of biological factors and/or reject Freudianism. By the early 1970s, authors were additionally using the term to resist the natural­ ization of sex and race, and to link contemporary theories with those disproven in past eras (e.g., Levy 1970; Ortner 1972; Alland 1973; Lewis 1973; Nelson 1974). Anthropologist Alexander Alland, Jr., for example, opened his book The Human Imperative (1972) by arguing,“This book is a defense of man against strict biological determinism.A defense against those who, like Konrad Lorenz, Robert Ardrey, and Desmond Morris, would oversimplify man’s place in nature and reduce human behavior to the level of instincts” (1).This new valence of biological determinism as a transhistorical concept resonated strongly with critiques suggesting that ideas of the “human animal” reduced humanity to comparisons with animal exemplars. Gould’s objection to the depiction of humans as mere animals captured the essence of later critiques of sociobiological reasoning. “How satisfying it is to fob off responsibility for war and violence upon our presumably carnivorous ancestors,” he railed.“How convenient to blame the poor and the hungry for their own condition” (Gould 1974: 22). In 1975, Gould helped pen “Against Sociobiology”—the infamous letter signed by the members of a group of seventeen scientists and educators in Boston (including Ruth Hubbard and Richard Lewontin)—where the authors mobilized “biological determinism” to link the theories of E.O. Wilson to earlier instantiations of similar logic; that these included Robert Ardrey and Konrad Lorenz comes as little surprise, but the authors also hearkened back to the late-nineteenth-century evolutionist Herbert Spencer (Allen et al. 1975). “The reason for the survival of these recurrent determinist theories,” they wrote, “is that they consistently tend to provide a genetic justification of the status quo and of existing privileges for certain groups according to class, race or sex.” Citing precedent in Montagu’s Man and Aggression (1968) as well as Alexander Alland, Jr.’s The Human Imperative (1972), they linked sociobiological reasoning to these earlier theories but noted it needed be taken seriously in its own right “because it appears to signal a new wave of biologically 118

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determinist theories.” Debates over sociobiology within academic circles thus polarized into arguments over nature versus nurture, biology versus culture, as the primary determinants of human behavior (Segerstråle 2000). Sociobiology’s critics mobilized out of concern that sociobiologists were using their authority as scientists to advance ideas and concepts that at best lacked rigorous proof and at worst reframed social policy in the language of natural order (Montagu 1975; Montagu 1976; Sahlins 1976).That sociobiologists did not intend for their theories to be used as the basis for social policy was irrelevant to their critics: physicists had created the atomic bomb; mathematicians were crucial to operations research; chemists not only perfected incendiary bombs and napalm, they kept the pesticide and herbicide industries running, too (Bridger 2015). If the not-so-Cold War had taught scientists anything, sociobiologists’ detractors argued, it should have been that they had a moral obligation to choose their research topics carefully. This precept extended to conflicts at home, where courts and politicians used biological and anthropological research to prop up discriminatory social policies, they suggested, as well as abroad where the efforts of scientists in creating bombs and other weapons of war were deployed to devastating effect (Segerstråle 2000). Wilson responded to these accusations by calling them politically motivated “academic vigilantism” and then by dismantling, point by point, what he saw as his critics’ fundamental (even willful) misreading of his book (Wilson 1976). “Evidence that human nature is to some extent genetically influenced is in my opinion decisive,” he wrote—to argue otherwise was less a question of science than one of “political censorship” (189–90). Colloquial discussions over the legitimacy of an evolutionary approach to human nature took place across the political spectrum. Aligning themselves with the New Left, scientists associated with the Ann Arbor Science for the People Editorial Collective published a pamphlet that contained essays from a 1975 symposium—Biology as a Social Weapon (1977)—in which they sought to illustrate the ideological difficulties with biological theories of human behavior. In an advertisement for the pamphlet, they pictured biological determinism as gun, with the words race, IQ, sex roles, aggression, and sociobiology emerging like recently fired bullets (Science for the People 1978: 14). At stake, they feared, were the political rights of socially disadvantaged communities around the world. Similarly, in the two volume Genes and Gender, comparative psychologist Ethel Tobach, endocrinologist Betty Rosoff, biolo­ gist Ruth Hubbard, and feminist scholar Marion Lowe argued there was nothing new about sociobiology’s conclusions (Tobach and Rossoff 1978; Hubbard and Lowe 1979). Contributors to these volumes worried that defenses of sexism and racism in the name of evolutionary theory were being used to support attacks on antiabortion legislation, to defeat the ratifi­ cation of the Equal Rights Amendment, and to counter affirmative action programs. They argued that these efforts attempted to “pit women against Blacks, Hispanics, and other minor­ ities in a period of increasing unemployment” at the precise moment when solidarity was needed most. By exposing the “myth of genetic destiny,” attendees at the New York “Genes and Gender” conferences planned to combat sociobiology’s apparent disregard for contem­ porary social injustice (Tobach and Rosoff 1978: 7). Within the New Right—like the New Left, an emerging coalition of previously disparate political perspectives—conservative evan­ gelical and Catholic activists objected to evolutionary depictions of the origins of humanity as secular humanism and antithetical to religious and moral understandings of what it meant to be human (McGraw 1976). Secular humanism, for both education activist Onalee McGraw and others, connoted an atheistic understanding of humanity grounded in comparisons to animals (see LaHaye 1980).This gathering storm, however, barely registered with professional evolutionists until the 1980s, when textbook watchers challenged the inclusion of evolution in public school classrooms on the grounds that it advanced a set of religious beliefs in the 119

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guise of science (e.g.,Whitehead and Conlan 1979;Toumey 1993), seeking to replace it with curricula based on scientific creationism or intelligent design. Critiques of biological reasoning have proved incredibly resilient in public discourse, pitting evolutionary explanations of why humans behave the way we do, grounded in comparisons with other animals, against attempts to identify more proximate causes of persistent social injustice. Caught in the political middle, the progressive (even transcendent) vision of human nature so popular in the immediate postwar era unraveled. From the perspective of sociobiologists, scien­ tific creationists were just as much a result of identity politics as the leftist Marxists and feminists. Each community drew its own line between truth and ideology, although these demarcations differed dramatically in the way they carved the intellectual landscape (Segerstråle 2000). As an insult wielded across a broad political spectrum, biological determinism had become a transhis­ torical concept, easily encompassing in its breadth justifications of slavery in the eighteenth cen­ tury, poor-laws in the nineteenth, and eugenic convictions in the twentieth.

7.5 Dehumanization, revisited In The Humanization of Man (1962), Ashley Montagu had hoped epic tales of the evolutionary past would demonstrate that all races and all individuals were united by a shared evolutionary and developmental process.“The brotherhood of man,” he had written,“is no longer a pious wish—it is a necessity for civilized survival” (12). He also feared that in naturalizing accounts of humanity’s “innate depravity” it would become easier to bear evil in the world with a good conscience and do nothing (10–11). For Montagu, the myths that humanity told about its own nature were particularly powerful in this regard. He linked the processes that brought about humanization— altruism, social cooperation, and kind regard of others—with fears of the dehumanizing effects of modern civilization. Such processes did not represent a reversion to an imagined animalistic past (or childhood) out of which humanity had emerged, but a new set of conundrums possible only in the present. The creation of false origin stories topped his list of causes, but so too did the effects of urbanization and technologies (like television) that contributed to the “annihila­ tion of privacy” and served to isolate individuals even more profoundly from their neighbors. Twenty years later, in The Dehumanization of Man, Montagu and Matson (1983) offered a longer list, including pornography and violence in the movies.They saw a solution, however, in a cul­ tural reclaiming of those factors that had cemented human nature from the beginning. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these solutions hearkened back to Huxley’s earlier work on humanization, with the equality of humans at its core. By the 1980s, Montagu’s and Matson’s understanding of dehumanization had also been shaped by debates over human nature in the intervening decades. After the Second World War and the horrors of the Holocaust, evolutionary accounts of human origins—elaborating the process of humanization spread over millennia—had provided a new biological basis for advancing a truly universal human nature, one that encompassed all peoples. But if biologists and anthropologists in the 1950s had assumed that human culture emerged slowly from a naturally cooperative nature, then by the 1970s the public discourse around the evolutionary basis of human nature largely asserted the opposite. Rather than seeing humanity’s altruistic tendencies as biologically constituted, sociobiological theorists had come to frame human nature as inherently individual­ istic. As scientists and philosophers increasingly hailed the evolutionary process as algorithmic (e.g., Ridley 1993; Dennett 1995), fears over biological determinism easily merged with technocratic ones, both captured by the broad concept of dehumanization. Seeing animals, humans, and machines as all part of the same analytical triad held redemption, too. For feminist science studies scholar Donna Haraway (1985), by the late twentieth century, all humans were 120

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chimeras already, hybrid creatures—part-animal, part-machine. In humanity’s cyborg nature, Haraway found promise. Montagu and Matson found terror. If in the postwar era Montagu had framed dehumanizing thought as an aberration, he now proclaimed it a “spreading con­ tagion” and a “major social problem” (Montagu and Matson 1983: 216). “The coming of the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse,” Montagu and Matson wrote,“coincides with the triumph of the computer and the disinheritance of the senses” (219).They believed the only way for­ ward for humanity as a whole lay in reclaiming “the lost world of fellow feeling, the source of all human connection” (220). Examining debates over humanization thus elucidates how anthropologists and zoologists after the Second World War wrestled with definitions of beastly or subhuman (Fedigan 1986).Their mobilization of “dehumanization” in critiques of evolutionary theories of human nature gained synergy from the increased traction of human rights discourse in international politics, both rhetorically in the eyes of the public and substantially in the form of new laws and policy (Moyn 2014: 2, Frick this volume).The history of concepts of zoomorphism and biological determinism provide fruitful grounds for adjudicating the terms of these debates. By attending to changing definitions of what scientists meant by human nature, and the long evolutionary process that created humans as a species, historians can better understand the intricate history by which accusations of zoomorphism, biological determinism, and dehumanization came to prominence in the postwar and Cold War scientific worlds.

Notes 1 Material in this section adapted from Milam (2019), where the production and reception of Ardrey (1966), Lorenz (1966), and Morris is elaborated in greater detail; see especially Part II: Naturalizing Violence (pp. 79–124). 2 Material in this section adapted from Milam (2019), see Part V: Death of the Killer Ape (pp. 225–276) for a more in-depth discussion.

References Alexander, R. D. (1979) Darwinism and Human Affairs, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. Alland, Jr. (1973) “Review of Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox, The Imperial Animal,” American Anthropologist New Series 75: 1147–48. Allen, E. et al. (1975) “Against Sociobiology,” New York Review of Books (13 November). Ann Arbor Science for the People Editorial Collective (1977) Biology as a Social Weapon, Minneapolis, MN: Burgess Publishing Company. Ardrey, R. (1966) The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations, New York, NY: Atheneum. Arendt, H. (1951) The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace. Barash, D. (1977) Sociobiology and Behaviour, New York, NY: Elsevier. Barnett, S.A. (1964) “The Biology of Aggression,” Lancet (10 October): 806. Black, M. (1962) Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Boas, F. (1940) Race, Language and Culture, New York, NY: Macmillan Company. Borrello, M. (2010) Evolutionary Restraints: The Contentious History of Group Selection, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Bridger, S. (2015) Scientists at War: The Ethics of Cold War Weapons Research, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Burkhardt, R.W., Jr. (2005) Patterns of Behavior: Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and the Founding of Ethology, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Césaire, A. (1972) Discourse on Colonialism, trans. J. Pinkham, New York, NY: Monthly Review. Clark, C. (2008) God – or Gorilla: Images of Evolution in the Jazz Age, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

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Erika Lorraine Milam Conklin, A. (2013) In the Museum of Man: Race, Anthropology, and Empire in France, 1850–1950, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Coon, C. (1962) The Origin of Races, New York, NY: Knopf. Crary, A. (2020) “Dehumanization and the Question of Animals,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, 159–172. (this volume). Creager, A. and Jordan, W.C. eds. (2002) The Animal/Human Boundary: Historical Perspectives, Rochester: Rochester University Press. Crist, E. (1999) Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Darwin, C. (1871) Descent of Man: Selection in Relation to Sex, 2 vol., London: John Murray. Daston, L. and Mitman, G. eds. (2005) Thinking with Animals, New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Dawkins, R. (1976) The Selfish Gene, Oxford: Oxford University Press. de Waal, F. (2019) Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves, New York, NY: Norton. Dennett, D.C. (1995) Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Dobzhansky, T. (1956) The Biological Basis of Human Freedom, New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Eiseley, L. (1957) Immense Journey, New York, NY: Random House. ———. (1966) “A Script Written in the Bones,” New York Times (11 September): 409. Eisenberg, J. F. and Dillon, W. S. eds. (1971) Man and Beast: Comparative Social Behavior, Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Elder, G., Wolch, J., and Emel, J. (1998) “Race, Place, and the Bounds of Humanity,” Society and Animals 6: 183–202. Erickson, P. (2015) The World Game Theorists Made, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Fanon, F. (1965) The Wretched of the Earth, trans. C. Farrington, New York, NY: Grove Press. Fedigan, L. M. (1986) “The Changing Role of Women in Models of Human Evolution,” Annual Review of Anthropology 15: 25–66. Föger, B. and Taschwer, K. (2001) Die andere Seite des Spiegels. Konrad Lorenz und der Nationalsozialismus. Wein: Czermin. Frick, M.-L. (2020) “Dehumanization and Human Rights,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, 187–200. (this volume). Ghiselin, M. T. (1974) The Economy of Nature and the Evolution of Sex, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Gould, S. J. (1974) “The Nonscience of Human Nature,” Natural History, April, 21–4. Grodwohl, J. B. (2017) “Modeling Social Evolution, 1964–1973: Inclusive Fitness Meets Population Structure,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 47: 1–41. Hannon, E. and Lewens, T. eds. (2018) Why We Disagree About Human Nature, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Haraway, D. (1985) “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s,” Socialist Review 80: 65–108. ———. (1989) Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science, New York, NY: Routledge. Hartman, S. (2007) Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Haslam, N., Loughnan, S., Reynolds, C., and Wilson, S. (2007) “Dehumanization: A New Perspective,” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 1: 409–422. Hesse, M. (1963) Models and Analogies in Science, London: Sheed and Ward. Hubbard, R. and Lowe, M. eds. (1979) Genes and Gender II: Pitfalls on Research in Sex and Gender, New York, NY: Gordian Press. Hund, W. D. (2020) “Dehumanization and Social Death as Fundamentals of Racism.” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, 229–244. (this volume). Hunt, L. (2008) Inventing Human Rights: A History, New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co. Karolinksa Institutet (1973) Press Release: “The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1973,” nobleprize.org last accessed 14 March 2020, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1973/ press-release/. Kaye, H. L. (1986) The Social Meaning of Modern Biology: From Social Darwinism to Sociobiology, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, rev. ed. (1997) New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

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Theorizing the inhumanity of human nature Kronfeldner, M. (2018) What’s Left of Human Nature? A Post-Essentialist, Pluralist, and Interactive Account of a Contested Concept, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. LaHaye, T. (1980) The Battle for the Mind, Old Tappan, NJ: Revell. Leonard, J. (1969) “The Baboons Do It Better,” New York Times (28 October): 45. Levy, M.J. (1970) “Our Ever and Future Jungle,” World Politics 22: 301–27. Lewis, D. (1973) “Anthropology and Colonialism,” Current Anthropology 14: 581–602. Lorenz, K. (1966) On Aggression, trans. M. Kerr, New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace & World. Matson, F.W. (1964) The Broken Image: Man, Science and Society, New York, NY: G. Braziller. Matson, F.W. and Montagu, A. eds. (1967) The Human Dialogue: Perspectives on Communication, New York, NY: Free Press. McGraw, O. (1976) Secular Humanism and the Schools, Washington DC: Heritage Foundation. Milam, E.L. (2019) Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Montagu, A. (1942) Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race, New York, NY: Columbia University Press. ———. ed. (1968) Man and Aggression, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ———. ed. (1975) Race and IQ, Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. (1976) The Nature of Human Aggression, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Montagu, A. and Matson, F.W. (1979) The Human Connection, New York, NY: McGraw Hill. ———. (1983) The Dehumanization of Man, New York, NY: McGraw Hill. Morris, D. (1967) The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal, New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Moyn, S. (2010) The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ———. (2014) “The Return of the Prodigal: The 1970s as a Turning Point in Human Rights History,” in J. Eckel and S. Moyn (eds.), The Breakthrough: Human Rights in the 1970s, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1–14. Munz, T. (2011) “‘My Goose Child Martina’: The Multiple Uses of Geese in the Writings of Konrad Lorenz,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 41: 405–46. ———. (2016) The Dancing Bees: Karl von Frisch and the Discovery of the Honeybee Language, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Nathans, B. (2014) “The Disenchantment of Socialism: Soviet Dissidents, Human Rights, and the New Global Majority,” in J. Eckel and S. Moyn (eds.), The Breakthrough: Human Rights in the 1970s, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 33–48. Nelson, S.D. (1974) “Nature/Nurture Revisited. I: A Review of The Biological Bases of Conflict,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 18: 285–335. Ortner, S. (1972) “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” Feminist Studies 1/2: 5–31. Proctor, R. (1988) Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Qureshi, S. (2011) Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire, and Anthropology in the Nineteenth Century Britain, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Radick, G. (2007) The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal Language, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ridley, M. (1993) The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, New York, NY: Macmillan. Russell, E. (2001) War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Russett, C.E. (1989) Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sahlins, M. (1976) The Use and Abuse of Biology: An Anthropological Critique of Sociobiology, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Schiebinger, L. (1993) Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science, Boston: Beacon Press. Science for the People (1978) “Biology as a Social Weapon,” Science for the People 10, no. 4: 14. Sebastiani, S. (2020) “Enlightenment Humanization and Dehumanization, and the Orangutan,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, 64–82. (this volume). Segerstråle, U. (2000) Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond, Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. (2013) Nature’s Oracle: The Life and Work of W. D. Hamilton, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Erika Lorraine Milam Sheldon, M.P. (2016) “Stephen Jay Gould and the Value-Neutrality of Science during the late Cold War,” Endeavour 40: 248–55. Smith, D.L. (2011) Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave and Exterminate Others, London: St. Martin’s Press. ———. (2014) “Dehumanization, Essentialism, and Moral Psychology,” Philosophy Compass 9: 814–24. Sommer, M. (2016) History Within: The Science, Culture, and Politics of Bones, Organisms, and Molecules, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Sperling, S. (2000) “Ashley Montagu (1905–1999),” American Anthropologist 102: 583–88. Steichen, E. (1955) Family of Man, New York, NY: Published for the Museum of Modern Art by the Maco Magazine Corp. Steizinger, J. (2020) “Dehumanizing Strategies in Nazi Ideology and their Anthropological Context.” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, 98–111. (this volume). Stocking, G., Jr. (1968) Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1968. Taschwer, K. and Föger, B. (2003) Konrad Lorenz: Biographie, Wien: Zsolnay. Teslow, T. (2014) Constructing Race: The Science of Bodies and Cultures in American Anthropology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tiger, L. (1969) Men in Groups, New York, NY: Random House. Tiger, L. and Fox, R. (1971) The Imperial Animal, New York, NY: Holt, Reinhart, and Winston. Tobach, E. and Rosoff, B. eds. (1978) Genes and Gender, New York, NY: Gordian Press. Toumey, C. P. (1993) “Evolution and Secular Humanism,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 61: 275–301. Turner, F. (2012) “The Family of Man and the Politics of Attention in Cold War America,” Public Culture 24: 55–84. Washburn, S. L. (1968) “How Human is Inhumanity?” New York Times (6 October): BR8. Weidman, N. (2011) “Popularizing the Ancestry of Man: Robert Ardrey and the Killer Instinct,” Isis 102: 269–99. ———. (2012) “An Anthropologist on TV: Ashley Montagu and the Biological Basis of Human Nature, 1945–1960,” in Mark Solovey and Hamilton Cravens (eds.), Cold War Science, New York, NY: Palgrave, 215–32. Weil, K. (2012) Thinking Animals: Why Animal Studies Now? New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Whitehead, J.W. and Conlan, J. (1979) “The Establishment of the Religion of Secular Humanism and Its First Amendment Implications,” Texas Tech Law Review 10: 1–66. Wilson, E.O. (1975) Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ———. (1976) “Dialogue, the Response: Academic Vigilantism and the Political Significance of Sociobiology,” BioScience 26: 183–90. Wynne, C.D.L. (2004) “The Perils of Anthropomorphism – Consciousness Should Be Ascribed to Animals Only with Extreme Caution,” Nature 428: 606. Zimmerman, A. (2001) Anthropology and Anti-humanism in Imperial Germany, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

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PART II

Further special contexts

of dehumanization

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8

THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

OF DEHUMANIZATION

Nick Haslam

8.1 Introduction Any attempt to trace the recent history of dehumanization scholarship or map its contem­ porary contours must recognize that psychology plays a substantial role. Over the past two decades in particular, dehumanization has emerged as a major focus of theoretical and empir­ ical attention within the discipline.That focus has been especially keen in social psychology, the subdiscipline which addresses the embeddedness of human behavior in its interpersonal and group contexts. The social psychology literature on dehumanization is complex and expansive, and it demonstrates some of the benefits, challenges, and limitations of investigating dehuman­ ization through the lens of quantitative behavioral science. In this chapter, I offer an overview and evaluation of dehumanization research within psych­ ology.The overview summarizes the history of that research tradition; the theoretical frameworks that have been elaborated; the wide range of definitions, conceptualizations, and measures that have been developed; the many topic domains that have been explored; and what the research purports to tell us about the causes and consequences of dehumanization. It concludes with a discussion of four concerns raised by the current state of psychological research on dehuman­ ization, and how they might be addressed within the emerging multidisciplinary field of dehu­ manization studies. The chapter pays special and repeated attention to the issue of breadth: the definitional, theoretical, methodological, and substantive diversity of existing work in the field of social psychology, the fact that this diversity is growing, and the difficulties this expansion may generate.

8.2 A historical overview The concept of dehumanization is no more endemic to psychology than to several other dis­ ciplines, but numerically at least, the field has dominated dehumanization scholarship in recent decades. To illustrate, Figure 8.1 displays the number of publications indexed in the Web of Knowledge database that referenced dehumanization in their title, abstract, or keywords between 1960 and 2019. Although not all publications referring to dehumanization in this manner address the topic in depth, and a few publications that address it thoroughly might not refer to it

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Figure 8.1 Number of dehumanization-related publications by field, 1960–2019

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The social psychology of dehumanization

prominently in an abstract, the figure reveals the steep upward trajectory of dehumanization in recent Anglophone scholarship. Dehumanization-related work was a mere trickle in the first three decades of this period, averaging one or two publications annually. It became a steady stream in the 1990s and then a torrent from the mid-2000s. In 2019, a dehumanization-related publication appeared on average almost every day of the year (306 publications in total). The disciplinary mix of this literature changed as it burgeoned. Figure 8.1 presents psychology publications in dark gray and black, the latter representing social psychology. Psychology did not feature significantly in the first decade of growth in dehumanization scholarship in the 1990s, but thereafter its proportional contribution has risen steadily. Roughly one in seven dehumanization publications came from psychology in the 1990s, but by the 2010s that pro­ portion had doubled. In short, not only has the quantity of psychological publications on dehumanization undergone a steep rise, but psychological research also represents a rising proportion of all publications. At the risk of oversimplification, the disciplinary story of the dehumanization litera­ ture has three chapters: an early stage of relative quiescence from the 1960s to the 1980s, a period of increased but steady activity from the 1990s to the mid-2000s in which fields other than psychology were prominent, and a period of striking growth since the mid-2000s in which psychology, and social psychology in particular, has been ascendant. As a result of these developments, over the entire 1960–2019 period psychology publications constitute 27 percent of the indexed dehumanization literature. Social psychology publications make up almost half of this proportion (13 percent), by the far the largest proportion of any discipline recognized by Web of Knowledge. It need hardly be said that the quantity of publications generated by a field does not dir­ ectly reveal the importance, influence, or quality of its intellectual contribution.The publica­ tion norms of psychology vis-à-vis the humanities and social sciences, tilted as they are toward relatively short, multiauthored empirical pieces, is undoubtedly partly responsible for the discipline’s numerical dominance in the dehumanization literature. Nevertheless, that domin­ ance is a crucial fact in the history of dehumanization scholarship and one whose implications must be critically examined.

8.3 The psychology of dehumanization before 2000 Dehumanization scholarship as a whole may be crudely divisible into three periods, but the psychological literature on dehumanization can arguably be divided into two.The complexion of psychological studies of dehumanization changed dramatically at about the turn of the mil­ lennium, and the sharp increase in dehumanization research within the field in the past two decades represents a “new look” at the topic. Prior to about 2000, psychological studies of dehu­ manization tended to have three key features: they were generally theoretical or qualitative in nature, addressed extreme contexts such as war and genocide, and examined correspondingly blatant and extreme forms of dehumanization. Since 2000, a period that by the end of 2019 had seen 561 dehumanization-related psychology publications compared to 31 in the years that preceded it, most investigations have adopted quantitative methods, such as experiments or surveys, investigated dehumanization in a variety of more everyday contexts, and emphasized subtler forms of dehumanizing perception. In effect, within the past two decades psychological research on dehumanization has made it tractable for the mainstream methodologies of their dis­ cipline while expanding its definition of dehumanization to include relatively banal expressions. As I make clearer later in this chapter, these developments have somewhat mixed blessings, bringing gains as well as losses. 129

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The writings of Kelman (1976) and Staub (1989) exemplify the early psychological writings on dehumanization. Kelman’s paper was written in the shadow of the Holocaust and, more proximally, the Vietnam War, and addressed mass violence and the case of the My Lai massacre in particular. In his analysis, extreme dehumanization loosened moral restraints on killing and involved denials of the other’s individual identity and community. This dehumanization was itself enabled by histories of exclusion and racial and colonial contempt. Staub’s book The Roots of Evil formed part of a long and influential series of works on the psychology of mass killing, focusing attention on atrocities perpetrated against Jews,Armenians, and Cambodians, among others. Like Kelman, he addressed the complex origin and temporal unfolding of genocidal violence and torture and gave dehumanization a central role in enabling killings. More so than Kelman, however, Staub’s work inspired a tradition of activist study of the psychology of organized violence and its prevention. Nevertheless, both writers’ psycho­ logical contributions were atypical of their discipline, emphasizing nuanced historical analysis over generalization, rich contextual detail over abstraction, social theory over the investiga­ tion of individual cognition and motivation, and humanistic analysis over the kinds of quanti­ tative methodology that was then dominant in social psychology, and that only became more dominant in the following decades. Kelman and Staub’s work was influential in adding dehumanization to the conceptual apparatus of social psychologists who study violence and peace. One impactful line of inquiry initiated by Susan Opotow (1990) used the concept to illuminate the broader idea of “moral exclusion,” or the placing of some individuals or groups outside the domain in which normal considerations of morality and fairness apply. Opotow listed dehumanization as one of a large set of exclusionary processes, grounded in “repudiating others’ humanity, dignity, ability to feel, and entitlement to compassion” (p. 10). In doing so, she brought dehumanization into the realm of moral psychology and made it relevant to forms of harm less severe than wars and genocides. In a somewhat similar vein, Bar-Tal (1989) proposed dehumanization as one of several forms of delegitimization. The delegitimizing belief that outgroup members are subhuman, typically held in the context of violent intergroup conflict, enabled aggressive behavior by excluding people from the sphere of normative acceptability. Like Opotow’s work on moral exclusion, Bar-Tal’s analysis of delegitimization has been highly influential, but despite informing textured examinations of specific conflicts it did not directly generate quantitative studies of dehumanization within the social psychology mainstream. Both lines of work also represented dehumanization as a species of a broader concept of primary interest, rather than placing it in the theoretical foreground. One key exception to these trends can be found in the work of Bandura and colleagues. Beginning in the 1970s, they employed dehumanization as a central explanatory concept in the disinhibition of aggression, understanding it as a mechanism of “moral disengagement.” Bandura, Underwood, and Fromson (1975) carried out a pioneering laboratory experiment that demonstrated heightened punitiveness toward groups described in a dehumanizing fashion. In later research, Bandura and colleagues (Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara & Pastorelli, 1996) developed a questionnaire measure of dehumanization and related mechanisms (e.g., “Some people deserve to be treated like animals”) and showed that school children who endorsed such items were especially likely to engage in delinquent behavior.A second excep­ tion to the general rule that pre-2000 psychological studies of dehumanization were chiefly theoretical and qualitative can found in the work of Struch and Schwartz (1989). These researchers assess dehumanization quantitatively—as the perceived dissimilarity of values between ingroup and outgroup, and as the outgroup’s rated lack of humane traits such as compassion—in a study of religious conflict. 130

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As we have seen, social psychologists writing on dehumanization prior to 2000 developed complex understandings of the phenomenon and applied their insights to analyses of a var­ iety of conflicts and hostilities. However, with the influential exceptions just noted, their investigations were primarily conceptual and qualitative, and consequently outside the quan­ titative, laboratory-based mainstream of social psychology. All this was to change around the millennium with the advent of a program of research on “infrahumanization” led by Jacques-Philippe Leyens.This program initiated a radical reorientation that led to dehuman­ ization research becoming predominantly laboratory-based and focused on relatively subtle and everyday forms of inhumanity rather than on extreme behaviors and violent conflicts. Psychological scholarship on dehumanization became mainstream, prolific, and, perhaps, somewhat domesticated.

8.4 Psychological theories of dehumanization in the 21st century The new look at dehumanization that has been underway within social psychology over the past two decades has generated several distinct theoretical models, each with a somewhat distinct understanding of what dehumanization is and how it should be studied. Prior to reviewing some of the research literature we will review some of the most influential the­ oretical accounts. Infrahumanization theory. Infrahumanization research (see Leyens et al. 2003, 2007 for reviews) initiated the rapid growth in the social psychological study of dehumanization. This pivotal research program was launched from the recognition that through history and across cultures people tend to see their ethnic ingroups in an ethnocentric fashion, one aspect of which involves a tendency to reserve full humanness for their own kind. Leyens and colleagues sought a simple method to assess these ethnocentric perceptions in a way that aligned with the strong European social psychology tradition of research in intergroup relations. That tradition had placed emphasis on the evaluative dimension of group percep­ tion, notably how ingroup members were liked and favored more than outgroup members, but Leyens and colleagues’ focus on ethnocentrism implied a new focus on a separate dimen­ sion of humanness. An informal survey that they conducted found that laypeople tended to believe that rationality, the use of language, and the capacity to experience refined emotions (sentiments as distinct from the emotions for these Francophone researchers) were key markers of humanness. Leyens and colleagues therefore decided to take the capacity to experience uniquely human “secondary” emotions, such as nostalgia and delight, as an index of the perceived humanness of groups. In a series of studies where participants had to select from a list of emotions those examples that members of different ethnic groups experienced, they consistently found that people reserved secondary emotions for their ingroup while ascribing non-uniquely human “primary” emotions, such as fear and happiness, equally to ingroup and outgroup.The “infrahumanization effect” was born. Several observations must be made about this effect. First, it is not merely a side-effect of derogating a disliked outgroup. Infrahumanization could be shown in perceptions of groups with whom there was no strong conflict or prejudice (e.g., perceptions of Germans by French people or Canary Islanders by mainland Spaniards), and it could be shown for both positive and negative emotions (i.e., people tended to reserve refined positive and negative emotions for their ingroup). Second, in addition to being evaluatively neutral, infrahumanization was not so much a denial of humanness to an outgroup as the reservation of humanness for the ingroup. Third, the infrahumanization effect is a relative rather than absolute perception: it refers to a tendency to perceive the ingroup as more human than the outgroup rather than 131

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to perceive the outgroup as categorically subhuman. These three distinctions reveal the extent to which infrahumanization departs from traditional understandings of dehumaniza­ tion, which typically present it as a hateful and categorical denial of humanness to others. In this manner, infrahumanization theory and research opened up an enlarged field of inves­ tigation in which differences in the perceived humanness of groups could be investigated rigorously using the standard methods of quantitative social psychology. Dehumanization, in a broadened sense, could be studied in laboratories and classrooms, not just in war zones and killing fields. The dual model of dehumanization. Infrahumanization theory opened up a new way of thinking about subtle forms of dehumanization by introducing humanness as a dimension of group perception. It also offered a simple way of assessing the differential humanizing or dehu­ manizing of groups by assessing the ascription of uniquely human emotions to them. A second account of dehumanization, Haslam’s (2006) dual model, extended this account in three pri­ mary ways. First, it generalized beyond infrahumanization theory’s focus on uniquely human emotions to include other uniquely human attributes, such as personality traits, which have been the domain of most prior research on person and group perception. Second, it explicitly linked the idea of uniquely human attributes to its converse, the concept of animality, thereby invoking a spectrum of forms of dehumanization. Infrahumanization, as the attribution of fewer uniquely human attributes to members of a group, is on a continuum with the explicit likening of group members to animals, the former simply a subtler form of the latter. Third, the dual model challenged the view that humanness is a single dimension, proposing that there are in fact two distinct senses of humanness.Whereas “human uniqueness” represents attributes that distin­ guish humans from (nonhuman) animals, “human nature” represents attributes that distinguish humans from inanimate objects, such as robots or automatons. Haslam and colleagues’ empirical work (e.g., Haslam, Bain, Douge & Bastian 2005) suggested that whereas human uniqueness is usually understood in terms of civility, rationality, and refinement, human nature is composed of themes such as warmth, emotionality, and openness, and is represented as a deep-seated human essence (see Kronfeldner, this volume). The dual model aspired to be an integrative framework that encompassed quantitative and qualitative variations in dehumanization. It captured differences in severity from blatant meta­ phorical equations of humans with nonhumans to subtle denials of human characteristics, and differences in quality through the form of humanness that was implicated.“Animalistic” dehu­ manization, marked by denying people uniquely human attributes or likening them to animals, typically involves seeing others as primitives, savages, or brutes.“Mechanistic” dehumanization, marked by denying people their human nature or equating them to objects, typically involves seeing them as cold, robotic, and unfeeling (see Paladino, Vaes & Jetten, this volume). Like infrahumanization, then, the dual model developed an explicit account of dehumanization that was grounded in a well-specified account of humanness: dehumanization occurs to the degree that persons are perceived as lacking one or both forms of humanness and/or as akin to one or both corresponding kind of nonhuman.This model provided a framework for a body of empirical research on the two proposed forms of dehumanization (e.g., Bain, Park, Kwok & Haslam 2009) and on laypeople’s conceptions of what it is to be human (e.g., Bain,Vaes, Kashima, Haslam & Guan 2012). Mind perception. In parallel with the development of the dual model, an alternative account of dehumanization arose from research on “mind perception” by Gray, Gray, and Wegner (2007) and Epley, Waytz, and Cacioppo (2007). Gray et al. carried out a study of laypeople’s intuitive understandings of kinds of minds, asking them to judge the extent to which diverse

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entities—human adults and children, animals, machines, and Gods—possessed diverse mental capabilities. Contrary to the common-sense view that people ascribe mind along a single con­ tinuum from less to more, they found two distinct dimensions of perceived mind: Agency, representing mental capacities associated with higher cognition and morality, such as planning and self-control, and Experience, representing capacities associated with feeling, motivation, and subjectivity. Intriguingly, adult humans were judged to diverge from different nonhuman entities along different dimensions. Primarily, they differed from nonhuman animals (and human chil­ dren) in having greater Agency, and differed from inanimate objects in having greater perceived Experience. These two contrasts aligned closely with the animalistic and mechanistic forms of dehumanization posited by the dual model, reinforcing the claim that dehumanization may take distinct forms as a function of different dimensions of humanness—here recast as dimensions of mind—and different contrastive nonhumans. Dehumanization could therefore be conceptualized as different forms of mind denial. In parallel with Gray et al.’s work on the duality of mind perception, Epley and colleagues carried out theoretically innovative research on anthropomorphism, understood as the per­ ception of mind in entities that lack it, akin to hallucination in the domain of sensory percep­ tion.These researchers noted that from a mind perception perspective, dehumanization is the opposite of anthropomorphism, representing a failure to perceive mentality in human entities who possess it. Inspired by this reframing of dehumanization as denial of mind, researchers in this tradition have continued to make empirical contributions to the psychology of dehu­ manization, notably to the motives that promote it and its social consequences (Waytz, Gray, Epley & Wegner 2010). For example, tendencies to dehumanize others appear to be linked to the perceiver’s motives for prediction, control, and social connection and, because the moral status of entities depends on the kinds of mentality ascribed them (e.g., capacities to act intentionally or to suffer), dehumanization powerfully influences the moral standing afforded to the person perceived. The stereotype content model. A fourth major psychological theory of dehumaniza­ tion springs from the stereotype content model (Fiske, Cuddy, Glick & Xu 2002), an influential account of the dimensions of social perception and judgment (see Fiske, this volume).According to the model, social groups tend to be apprehended on two primary dimensions, normally labeled Warmth and Competence.Warmth captures the extent to which groups are perceived as cooperative and friendly, whereas Competence captures their perceived status, intelligence, and general capability. Arguably a theory of who is liable to be dehumanized as much as a theory of what characterizes dehumanizing perception, the stereotype content model proposes that groups stereotyped as low in both Warmth and Competence are most likely to be denied humanity. Whereas groups that rate high on one of these dimensions elicit pity or envy, these pariah groups, which are seen as both incapable and antagonistic, induce disgust, an emotion that disqualifies them from humankind. Research from a stereotype content model perspective has documented the diminished perceived humanity of pariah groups in patterns of language use and in neural responses to images of group members. The four social psychological accounts of dehumanization presented here are not intended to be exhaustive or entirely distinct. Other theorists have developed influential theories, not­ ably Hodson and colleagues’ work on the importance of perceived human-animal similarity (Costello & Hodson 2010). However, they demonstrate the diversity of current approaches within the field as to the primary forms that dehumanization takes, the ways in which human­ ness is theorized within them, and the guiding ideas about the centrality of mind denial in dehumanization.

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8.5 Conceptualization and measurement of dehumanization One of the implications of the proliferation of social psychological theories of dehumanization is that there has been a growing number of more or less distinct conceptualizations of the phenom­ enon. In addition, because mainstream social psychology is a quantitative discipline that relies on operational measures of its concepts, the proliferation of conceptualizations has been accom­ panied by a profusion of ways of assessing dehumanization. On the positive side, this emphasis on measurement lends social psychological research on dehumanization a level of conceptual clarity and concreteness that is sometimes lacking in scholarship from other disciplinary perspectives. On the negative side, the multiplying means of assessing dehumanization within social psycho­ logical research makes it difficult to generalize across studies or to align substantially different working definitions of dehumanization between different research groups and traditions. In the absence of a single agreed approach to defining and measuring dehumanization, it is important to assess some of the existing alternatives. Rating scales & questionnaires. The most popular method of assessing dehuman­ izing perceptions of individuals or groups is to provide research participants with a list of statements or attributes (e.g., traits or emotions) that are taken to implicate humanness or its denial in some way. Participants are then asked to make judgments of whether these statements or attributes apply to a particular entity, and these judgments are then combined into a numerical index, such as by summing a set of ratings. Normally, the selection of statements or attributes and the method of combined judgments have undergone a process of validation beforehand. Researchers have employed a large assortment of measurement instruments of this kind. These measures vary substantially in their levels of transparency or blatancy: some self-evidently invite research participants to endorse derogatory and dehumanizing views of a target, whereas others are entirely unobtrusive. Examples of subtle measures include lists of secondary and pri­ mary emotions in infrahumanization research (Leyens et al. 2001), or traits differing in human uniqueness and human nature (Haslam & Bain 2007), where the varying levels of humanness of the emotions or traits is very unlikely to be salient to participants.These participants can therefore betray high levels of dehumanization or infrahumanization without awareness of having done so, or even having rendered an undesirable judgment of a group.At the other end of the spectrum of blatancy are questionnaires with items with explicitly dehumanizing content, such as “Terrorists are vermin that need to be exterminated” (Jackson & Gaertner 2010).Transparent measures such as these run the risk of generating self-censoring responses from research participants who do not wish to avow demeaning views. However, there is considerable evidence that many people are surprisingly willing to endorse overtly dehumanizing judgments. Most striking is the evidence from studies by Kteily and colleagues (e.g., Kteily, Bruneau,Waytz & Cotterill 2015), which ask participants to rate groups on a sliding scale anchored by the famous “Ascent of man” image, which stretches between a knuckle-dragging ape (0) to a modern human (100). In numerous studies, large minorities of participants give ratings below 100 to groups such as Muslims, Roma, and African Americans. These blatant dehumanization ratings are associated with a collection of harsh, punitive, and violence-justifying opinions and policy preferences, often more so than subtler measures of dehumanization. Implicit methods. Although rating tasks such as these are most widely used in psychological research on dehumanization, some work has gone into developing assessment instruments that bypass reflective judgments. These computer-based instruments for assessing automatic, unconscious, or “implicit” dehumanization are motivated by the goal of measuring perceptions or beliefs that people may not know they possess, or know they possess but want to conceal. 134

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The most popular method has been versions of the well-known Implicit Association Test (IAT), which uses rapid classification judgments to measure the degree to which people mentally associate a particular social target, such as a racial group, with nonhuman entities (e.g., animals) or human attributes (e.g., uniquely human emotions or traits). In theory, these implicit asso­ ciation measures cannot be faked in socially desirable ways. Studies using tasks similar to the IAT have shown that particular occupational groups are implicitly associated with animals or machines or associated less with human attributes than other groups. For example, Saminaden, Loughnan, and Haslam (2010) found that indigenous people and others living in traditional societies were associated with animals and non-uniquely human traits more than people living in industrialized societies. Other researchers have used different implicit methods to assess dehumanization. In a powerful series of studies on the persistence of ape metaphors in White Americans’ perceptions of African Americans, Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, and Jackson (2008) used priming methods to demon­ strate that this metaphor operated to justify violent action toward a Black criminal suspect. Participants were shown a video of police beating a racially ambiguous suspect, and when the concept of “ape” was presented to them and they were informed the suspect was Black they judged the beating to be more warranted than when the prime and the suspect’s supposed race were different. Research such as this has established that dehumanizing perceptions that influ­ ence social judgments and behavior can operate outside of awareness and can be assessed validly in ways that do not require conscious, reflective judgments. Language use. The paradigm cases of dehumanization involve the overt use of animal metaphors to refer to human groups, such as the use of vermin metaphors in the Holocaust, cockroach metaphors in the Rwandan genocide, or simian metaphors in colonial representations of Africans.Although most measures of dehumanization in social psychology have been linguis­ tically mediated, as in the case of questionnaires and ratings scales, the use of linguistic metaphors has been relatively neglected. One study by Haslam, Loughnan, and Sun (2011) explored the perceived offensiveness of a range of animal metaphors used to refer to persons.They found that metaphors varied markedly in their offensiveness and that there were two main routes through which offensiveness was generated. Some metaphors were adjudged to be highly offensive because they likened persons to disgusting or taboo animals (e.g., leeches, snakes, rats), whereas others acquired their offensiveness because the comparison itself was seen as dehumanizing, even if the animal itself was not detested (e.g., apes, dogs).This distinction implies that dehumanizing metaphors are diverse, some picturing their human targets as degraded and others as reviled: the former implies a contemptuous vertical judgment of hierarchical inferiority, the other a disgusted horizontal judgment of exclusion. The use of dehumanizing metaphors has been relatively neglected by psychology researchers, and the same can be said for other ways of studying the linguistic manifestations of dehuman­ ization. One notable exception is the work of Harris and Fiske (2011), who coded the language used in spontaneous descriptions of people from different quadrants of the stereotype con­ tent model. Study participants wrote a description of a day in the life of a person from groups stereotyped as high or low in Warmth and Competence, and as the researchers predicted, verbs associated with mental states were used significantly less in descriptions of people from pariah groups (i.e., drug addicts and homeless people). By implication, people from groups perceived in more dehumanized ways are not spontaneously cognized as having intentional states to the same degree as other humans. Neuroimaging. A final approach to assessing dehumanizing perceptions employs neuroimaging methods. Although brain scanning is in general not a feasible way to measure dehumanization, Harris and Fiske (2006) employed it to show that dehumanization has a 135

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distinctive neural signature. Recording brain activity in response to images of social targets from the quadrants of Fiske’s stereotype content model, they showed that brain regions involved in social cognition, such as the medial prefrontal cortex, were activated for targets from all but one quadrant (see Fiske, this volume). Consistent with their prediction, pariah groups in the low Competence/low Warmth sector, such as homeless people and drug addicts, instead evoked activation in the amygdala, a brain structure associated with strong negative emotions of fear and disgust. By implication, and in accordance with the mind percep­ tion account of dehumanization, members of non-pariah groups are neutrally processed as social beings with inferable mental states whereas members of reviled groups are processed as disgusting objects. Later research has suggested that different forms of dehumanization may involve somewhat different brain regions, and that the neural substrates of dehumanization can be distinguished from those of prejudice. Jack, Dawson, and Norr (2013) found that Haslam’s animalistic and mechanistic forms of dehumanization implicated overlapping but distinct brain networks, and Bruneau, Jacoby, Kteily, and Saxe (2018) showed that brain regions implicated in dehu­ manizing groups (i.e., left inferior parietal and frontal cortex) were distinct from those implicated in disliking them (posterior cingulate cortex). This last finding is theoretically critical, helping to establish that dehumanization cannot be reduced to a side-effect of preju­ dice or dislike. This section of the chapter has catalogued the diverse methods psychologists have used to measure dehumanizing perceptions. These assessment approaches ground abstract conceptualizations of dehumanization in concrete measurement instruments, allowing research consumers to see, and critique, what dehumanization is taken to be in particular research projects. That transparency is a scientific virtue, but the diversity of methods also raises legit­ imate concerns that different projects may be assessing quite different phenomena under the same rubric.What counts as evidence for dehumanization of a group or person in the psycho­ logical research literature can range from the explicit use of hateful slurs to the nonconscious, and disavowed, mental association of a group with nonhuman entities, or the failure to activate a brain region associated with social cognition. Psychologists have only begun the wrestle with the definitional complexities and measurement challenges implied by the great variability in what is taken to constitute dehumanization.

8.6 Fields of application This chapter is not the appropriate venue for a comprehensive review of the very large body of social psychological research on dehumanization. Interested readers should consult a review article by Haslam and Loughnan (2014) and the edited collection by Bain, Vaes, and Leyens (2014). However, the next two sections of this chapter will provide an overview of the foci and preoccupations of the existing research literature. In this section, I examine the wide range of individuals and groups whose dehumanization has been explored in that literature. Race & ethnicity. In early psychological research on dehumanization, the possible targets of dehumanizing perceptions were almost exclusively racial or ethnic groups, particularly in the context of interethnic conflict. In line with the broadened understanding of dehu­ manization that has emerged from more recent research and theory, the range of entities whose dehumanization has been studied has also widened. Nevertheless, perceptions of ethnic, national, or racial groups remain staples of dehumanization studies. Infrahumanization

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research mainly addressed perceptions of national or sometimes subnational regional groups in nonconflictual settings. Several studies have examined interethnic conflicts in the Middle East (e.g., Leidner, Castano & Ginges 2013), the Balkans (Cehajic, Brown & Gonzalez 2009), or the American and Australian colonial frontiers (Castano & Giner-Sorolla 2006), and else­ where. Dehumanization of African Americans has been a major theme, especially in Goff and colleagues’ (2008) work on ape metaphors and the effects of implicit or nonconscious dehumanization in criminal justice contexts. One noteworthy aspect of this work has been its uncommon interest in perceptions of children as well as adults (Goff, Jackson, DiLeone, Culotta & DiTomasso 2014). Immigrants & refugees. Although generally confounded with ethnicity or race, perceptions of displaced persons have been a distinct focus of some psychological work on dehumanization. The work of Esses, Hodson, and colleagues (e.g., Esses,Veenvliet, Hodson & Mihic 2008; Hodson & Costello 2007; see Esses, Medianu & Sutter, this volume).These researchers have documented the role of dehumanizing perceptions associated with authoritarian ideologies in attitudes toward immigrants and refugees, and the importance of emotional reactions, and especially disgust and contempt, in underpinning these aversions. Gender. Several researchers have examined the possibility that women, or subgroups of women, may tend to be dehumanized. Several studies have found evidence that when women are depicted in sexualized or appearance-focused ways they tend to be perceived, often by women and men alike, as lacking human qualities or as being implicitly associated with nonhuman animals (e.g., Heflick & Goldenberg 2009; Vaes, Paladino & Puvia 2011). There is also evidence that men who implicitly dehumanize women, either by associating them with animals or with inanimate objects, are especially prone to sexual harassment and violence (Rudman & Mescher 2012). Medical & psychiatric. A growing body of research is also establishing evidence that some patient groups may be perceived in dehumanizing ways (e.g., the mentally ill: Martinez, Piff, Mendoza-Denton & Hinshaw 2011), that modern medical practice is vulnerable to institutionalized dehumanization (Haque & Waytz 2012), and that the strains of clinical work make medical and nursing practitioners vulnerable to perceive those in their care in compassionless ways (Vaes & Muratore 2013). Self-perceptions. Most psychological research on dehumanization has examined perceptions of other individuals or groups, but a growing body of work suggests that under some circumstances people may experience an attenuated sense of humanness in themselves.Although there is some evidence that people normally see themselves as embodying humanness more than other individuals (Haslam et al. 2005), they may feel a loss of humanness when socially excluded or ostracized (Bastian & Haslam 2010) or when participating in violent interactions (Bastian, Jetten & Radke 2012). Recently, Kouchaki, Dobson, Waytz & Kteily (2018) have shown that people feel less human when they have behaved immorally and are also more likely to behave immorally when they self-dehumanize (see Demoulin, Maurage & Stinglhamber, this volume). These findings point to the possibility of intrapersonal and interpersonal cycles of dehumaniza­ tion in which the person’s own antisocial behavior or another person’s maltreatment of them promotes further dehumanization and destructive behavior. Other targets of dehumanization. Although most social psychological research on dehumanization has studied perceptions groups based on ethnicity or race, religion, gender, or disease, or on perceptions of the individual self, researchers have recently explored dehu­ manizing perceptions of a broad range of other targets. Recent studies have investigated perceptions of violent criminals and pedophiles (Bastian, Denson & Haslam 2013), people

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from low social class backgrounds (Loughnan, Haslam, Sutton & Spencer 2014), short people (Kunst, Kteily & Thomsen 2019), romantic partners within couples (Pizzirani & Karantzas 2019), and partisan political opponents (Cassese 2019), among others.This work demonstrates the versatility of psychological concepts, theories, and measures of dehumanization, and its ever-expanding field of vision. Dehumanization as a phenomenon continues to expand away from its early prototypes in war and conquest, and into new territory, capturing novel forms of “us and them” conflict and also “me and you” frictions that do not have an obvious intergroup dynamic. Psychological understandings of dehumanization have also extended into lines of research on such cognate topics as the objectification of women and the denial of mind to nonhuman animals (see Crary, this volume). As with the growing diversity of methods for assessing dehumanization raised earlier in this chapter, questions can be asked about whether the concept of dehumanization may have been stretched too far or spread too thinly in some of this work.

8.7 Causes, correlates, and consequences of dehumanization In the preceding section we reviewed the range of targets whose humanity has been diminished or denied according to recent research in contemporary social psychology. In some cases, that research has primarily endeavored to document the existence of these dehumanizing perceptions. In most cases, however, a major research goal has been to understand the factors that cause or promote dehumanization and its effects, or at least the outcomes associated with dehumanization where it is not possible to infer whether dehumanizing perceptions have played a causal role. Causes of dehumanization. Psychological research on the factors that promote dehu­ manization has variously implicated factors in the perceiver and in their targets. Considering perceivers first, there is strong evidence that some people are more likely to dehumanize than others, based on their personalities, ideologies, or social attitudes. A thorough overview of the many individual difference variables implicated is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, studies suggest that people with disgust-prone, psychopathic, and narcissistic personalities may be especially prone to dehumanize others. High “social dominance orientation,” the tendency to view the social world as a competitive hierarchy, is consistently associated with the tendency to perceive low-status groups as less than human (e.g., Hodson & Costello 2007), and hawkish, nationalistic, and authoritarian ideological commitments also predict dehumanization in some contexts. Unsurprisingly, tendencies to dehumanize particular groups tend to co-occur with holding negative attitudes toward them—dehumanization of women with sexism, dehumaniza­ tion of ethnic groups with racist attitudes toward them—although most research suggests that the correlation is only moderate, so that dehumanization and prejudice are associated but distinct (e.g., Kteily, Bruneau,Waytz & Cotterill 2015). In addition to relatively enduring characteristics, such as personality traits and social attitudes, transient psychological states in perceivers can also promote dehumanizing perceptions. Researchers have found evidence that feelings of disgust and perceived threat can have this effect, as can becoming aware of one’s responsibility for a historical wrong. Being placed in a position of power over others also appears to ascribe lesser humanness to those others. Activated motives other than the need to assuage guilt have also been found to promote dehumanizing perceptions, including sexual motives in heterosexual men viewing women and desire to avoid emotional exhaustion among people interacting with stigmatized groups. In sum, many influences con­ tribute to people’s liability to perceive others as less than human, and these perceptions serve a variety of psychological functions, from enabling aggression to avoiding emotional discomfort. 138

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Outcomes of dehumanization. Although dehumanization is classically understood as a phenomenon that enables violence by dissolving inhibitions against aggression, within contem­ porary social psychology its effects are understood more broadly.To be sure, many studies have examined how dehumanizing perceptions enable harm or provide support for it. Some of this work points to direct links between tendencies to dehumanize others and personally conducted aggressive behavior, as in work on bullying by children (Obermann 2011) or sexual harassment by men (Rudman & Mescher 2012).A much larger body of research reveals links to support for aggressive behavior by others, such as support for torture of prisoners of war (Viki, Osgood & Phillips 2013), forced displacement of enemies (Maoz & McCauley 2008), beating of criminal suspects (Goff, Eberhardt, Williams & Jackson 2008), or harsh sentences for criminal offenders (Bastian, Denson & Haslam 2013). Other apparent outcomes of dehumanizing perceptions go beyond support for the commission of present or future harm to others. Several studies have shown that dehumaniza­ tion can also foster omission of help or compassion, such as failures to volunteer personal help (Cuddy, Rock & Norton 2007), reluctance to support reparations for harmed parties (Zebel, Zimmermann, Viki & Doosje 2008), unwillingness to support rehabilitation for offenders (Viki, Fullerton, Raggett,Tait & Wiltshire 2012), and refusal to forgive enemy groups for their real or perceived sins (Tam et al. 2007). Dehumanization can thus block empathy in the pre­ sent (Cehajic, Brown & Gonzalez 2009) and impede efforts at reconciliation following past strife. In addition to allowing people not to let go of historical grievances by preventing for­ giveness, some studies suggest that it can also erode moral emotions associated with personal or group responsibility. Castano and Giner-Sorolla (2006), for example, showed that people made aware of their group’s responsibility for a past atrocities tended to dehumanize the victim group in response, thereby removing guilt and restoring moral equanimity. In short, the consequences of dehumanization can concern harm or help, behavior or emotion, and they may point forward or backward in time.

8.8 Conclusion This chapter has attempted to give a wide-angle view of the expanding terrain of dehuman­ ization studies within social psychology.The large volume of work and the speed with which it has grown make it impossible to do more than sketch this landscape. By doing so, it should be possible for interested readers to have a sense of what has been done and where a more detailed view might be sought. In the remainder of the chapter I will reflect on the state of the social psychology of dehumanization and lay out four concerns that future work within the discipline, but ideally carried out in collaboration with scholars from other fields, might address. A first concern, adverted to repeatedly in this chapter, is whether the expansion of the con­ cept of dehumanization comes with a cost. By turning their attention to subtler, milder, less explicit, and more everyday phenomena, psychologists have allowed “dehumanization” to be imported from extreme settings of war and conflict into the laboratory, allowing it to be studied rigorously using the tools of quantitative behavioral science. As a result, psychological studies conducted under the rubric of dehumanization may now be assessing whether humans are explicitly likened to apes, rated as lacking certain emotional states but not others, unconsciously associated with inanimate objects, or less likely to evoke strong responses in the posterior cin­ gulate cortex according to fMRI scans. They may be investigating virulent racial propaganda, attitudes to political opponents, or patronizing perceptions of spouses. It can reasonably be asked whether the phenomena currently collected under the umbrella of “dehumanization” have more 139

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differences than similarities, how the differences might be systematized in future research, and whether the similarities are sufficient to allow generalizations about dehumanization (singular) rather than dehumanizations (plural). There is historical evidence that the meanings of many harm-related concepts have broadened or “crept” (Haslam, 2016) in recent years, and that this semantic inflation may have mixed blessings. Dehumanization has also undergone concept creep in recent social psychology, and it will be important for future researchers to debate the costs and benefits of this expansion.There is clearly a place here for philosophically informed clarification of the concept of dehumanization (see Smith, this volume). A second concern is related to this issue of conceptual broadening. As psychologists have increasingly examined more banal forms of dehumanization, they have arguably abandoned the more extreme forms that historical scholarship, including some of the seminal social psy­ chological studies of the 1970s and 1980s, has emphasized, such as examples from genocides, terrors, and invasions. This is to be expected, both because newer scholarship has aimed to broaden the scope of dehumanization research and because it is rarely possible to apply rigorous quantitative methodologies of the sort psychologists employ to historical events or in the thick of current conflicts. However, it leaves social psychology vulnerable to the charge that it has little to say about some of the most atrocious forms of inhumanity and that it must surrender the study of them to other disciplines. In the author’s view this would be a mistake, and it will be important for future research to recommit to study the most severe forms of dehumanization as well as the most subtle. Connected to the need to examine the most severe episodes and contexts is a third con­ cern; namely, that the social psychology of dehumanization sometimes sacrifices depth for breadth and rigor. Many studies in the discipline have primarily aimed to document that certain people perceive certain other people as lacking humanness. This aim is legitimate, because demonstrating that dehumanization exists has not always been obvious and because the goals of the research have been to test general theories of how dehumanized perception operates. However, research should also aim to clarify specific contexts of dehumanization in richer detail, and to reveal how dehumanization and its causes and effects unfold over time and in context rather examining it as a static, abstracted occurrence. In some respects, this goal represents a return to the focus of some of the pre-2000 classic writings on dehuman­ ization by Straub, Kelman, Bar-Tal, and others. Relatedly, social psychologists have almost invariably studied dehumanization as perception rather than behavior, attending primarily to how others are viewed rather than acted on, and using research methods that can be employed in the air-conditioned comfort of the laboratory rather than in the heat of live conflict. To some extent this emphasis is well justified, as it is challenging to determine what forms of behavior, if any, are intrinsically dehumanizing. Nevertheless, it might be hoped that social psychology will contribute to detailed, contextualized, and longitudinal studies of dehuman­ ization, either in close interdisciplinary collaboration with colleagues from other disciplines who favor complementary approaches to research, or by integrating qualitative methods into their hitherto exclusively quantitative methodological toolkits. A final concern involves the need to clarify the boundary conditions of dehumanization as a contributor to violence or other forms of harm. It is sometimes assumed that dehu­ manization is involved whenever harm is perpetrated, and that it does so by diminishing empathy for victims and weakening restraints on aggression toward them. This assumption is rarely made explicitly by psychologists—it is largely a holdover from models of dehu­ manization prevalent in the 1970s that are no longer current—but it is a popular narrative among the general public. It has also been challenged by scholars outside psychology (Lang 2010), who argue that violence is often carried out precisely because the victim is seen 140

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as human. On this account, violence typically has no sense except as a meaningful act committed against someone who the perpetrator sees as capable of awareness, suffering, humiliation, and other uniquely or essentially human attributes. If this is the case, dehu­ manization would be less central to violence and aggression than some psychological research and theory might suggest. It is important that social psychologists wrestle with this issue, and encouraging that they are beginning to do so. Rai,Valdesolo, and Graham (2017), for example, have argued that dehumanization may enable violence where the perpetrator stands to benefit instrumentally but not when the victim is judged to have acted immor­ ally. Alternatively, to argue that the motivation for violence often requires that victims be apprehended as human does not conflict with the dehumanization of those victims if it is recognized that dehumanization typically involves a perception of attenuated rather than categorically denied humanity. It is possible—and, indeed, disturbingly easy—to revel in the mortification and suffering of others, see them as lesser humans, and still recognize their shared membership of our species. In the context of conceptual and theoretical challenges such as these, it will be important for social psychologists to engage with scholars from other disciplines to clarify where and when dehumanization is implicated in inhumanity. The emerging field of dehumanization studies is broad, and social psychology should be an integral component of it.

References Bain, P., Park, J., Kwok, C. & Haslam, N. (2009) ‘Attributing human uniqueness and human nature to cultural groups: Distinct forms of subtle dehumanization,’ Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, vol. 12, pp. 789–805. Bain, P., Vaes, J., Haslam, N., Kashima, Y. & Guan, Y. (2012) ‘Folk psychologies of humanness: Beliefs about distinctive and core human characteristics in Australia, Italy, and China,’ Journal of CrossCultural Psychology, vol. 43, pp. 53–58. Bain, P., Vaes, J. & Leyens, J.-P. (eds) (2014) Humanness and dehumanization. Psychology Press, New York. Bandura, A., Barbaranelli, C., Caprara, G.V. & Pastorelli, C. (1996) ‘Mechanisms of moral disengagement in the exercise of moral agency’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 71, pp. 364–374. Bandura, A., Underwood, B. & Fromson, M.E. (1975) ‘Disinhibition of aggression through diffusion of responsibility and dehumanization of victims’, Journal of Research in Personality, vol. 9, pp. 253–269. Bar-Tal, D. (1989) ‘Delegitimization: The extreme case of stereotyping’, in D Bar-Tal, C Grauman, A Kruglanski & W Stroebe (eds), Stereotyping and prejudice: Changing conceptions. Springer, New York, pp. 169–182. Bastian, B., Denson, T.F. & Haslam, N. (2013) ‘The roles of dehumanization and moral outrage in retribu­ tive justice’, PLoS ONE, vol. 8, p. e61842. Bastian, B. & Haslam, N. (2010) ‘Excluded from humanity: Ostracism and dehumanization’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 46, pp. 107–113. Bastian, B., Jetten, J. & Radke, H. (2012) ‘Cyber-dehumanization: Violent video game playing diminishes our humanity’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 48, pp. 486–491. Bruneau, E., Jacoby, N., Kteily, N. & Saxe, R. (2018) ‘Denying humanity: The distinct neural correlates of blatent dehumanization’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, vol. 147, pp. 1078–1093. Cassese, E.C. (2019) in press, ‘Partisan dehumanization in American politics’, Political Behavior. Castano, E. & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2006) ‘Not quite human: Infrahumanization in response to col­ lective responsibility for intergroup killing’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 90, pp. 804–818. Cehajic, S., Brown, R. & Gonzalez, R. (2009) ‘What do I care? Perceived ingroup responsibility and dehu­ manization as predictors of empathy felt for the victim group’, Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, vol. 12, pp. 715–729. Costello, K. & Hodson, G. (2010) ‘Exploring the roots of dehumanization: The role of animal-human similarity in promoting immigrant humanization’, Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, vol. 13, pp. 3–22.

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Nick Haslam Crary, A. (2020) ‘Dehumanization and the question of animals’, in M Kronfeldner (ed), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 159–172. (this volume). Cuddy, A., Rock, M. & Norton, M. (2007) ‘Aid in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina: Inferences of secondary emotions and intergroup helping’, Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, vol .10, pp. 107–118. Demoulin, S., Maurage, P. and Stinglhamber F. (2020) ‘Exploring metadehumanization and selfdehumanization from a target perspective’, in M Kronfeldner (ed), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 260–274. (this volume). Epley, N., Waytz, A. & Cacioppo, J. (2007) ‘On seeing human: A three-factor theory of anthropo­ morphism’, Psychological Review, vol. 114, pp. 864–886. Esses, V. M., Medianu, S. and Sutter, A. (2020) ‘The dehumanization and rehumanization of refugees’, in M Kronfeldner (ed), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 275–291. (this volume). Esses, V., Veenvliet, S., Hodson, G. & Mihic, L. (2008) ‘Justice, morality, and the dehumanization of refugees’, Social Justice Research, vol. 21, pp. 4–25. Fiske, S.T. (2020) ‘How status and interdependence explain different forms of dehumanization’, in M Kronfeldner (ed), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 245–259. (this volume). Fiske, S., Cuddy, A., Glick, P. & Xu, J. (2002) ‘A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from perceived status and competition’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 82, pp. 878–902. Goff, P., Eberhardt, J., Williams, M. & Jackson, M. (2008) ‘Not yet human: Implicit knowledge, historical dehumanization, and contemporary consequences’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 94, pp. 292–306. Goff, P., Jackson, M.C., DiLeone, B.A.L., Culotta, C.M. & DiTomasso, N.A. (2014) ‘The essence of innocence’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 106, pp. 526–545. Gray, H., Gray, K. & Wegner, D. (2007) ‘Dimensions of mind perception’, Science, vol. 315, p. 619. Haque, O. & Waytz, A. (2012) ‘Dehumanization in medicine: Causes, solutions, and functions’, Perspectives on Psychological Sciences, vol. 7, pp. 176–186. Harris, L. & Fiske, S. (2006) ‘Dehumanizing the lowest of the low: Neuroimaging responses to extreme out-groups’, Psychological Science, vol. 17, pp. 847–853. Harris, L. & Fiske, S. (2011) ‘Dehumanized perception: A psychological means to facilitate atrocities tor­ ture, and genocide?’, Zeitschruft fur Psychologie, vol. 219, pp. 175–181. Haslam, N. (2006) ‘Dehumanization: An integrative review’, Personality and Social Psychology Review, vol. 10, pp. 252–264. Haslam, N. (2016) ‘Concept creep: Psychology’s expanding concepts of harm and pathology’, Psychological Inquiry, vol. 27, pp. 1–17. Haslam, N. & Bain, P. (2007) ‘Humanizing the self: Moderators of the attribution of lesser humanness to others’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol. 33, pp. 57–68. Haslam, N., Bain, P., Douge, L., Lee, M. & Bastian, B. (2005) ‘More human than you: Attributing human­ ness to self and others’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 89, pp. 937–950. Haslam, N. & Loughnan, S. (2014) ‘Dehumanization and infrahumanization’, Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 65, pp. 399–423. Haslam, N., Loughnan, S. & Sun, P. (2011) ‘Beastly: What makes animal metaphors offensive?’, Journal of Language and Social Psychology, vol. 30, pp. 311–325. Heflick, N. & Goldenberg, J. (2009) ‘Objectifying Sarah Palin: Evidence that objectification causes women to be perceived as less competent and less fully human’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 45, pp. 598–601. Hodson, G. & Costello, K. (2007) ‘Interpersonal disgust, ideological orientations, and dehumanization as predictors of intergroup attitudes’, Psychological Science, vol. 18, pp. 691–698. Jack, A.I., Dawson, A.J. & Norr, M.E. (2013) ‘Seeing human: Distinct and overlapping neural disgantures associated with two forms of dehumanization’, Neuroimage, vol. 79, pp. 313–328. Jackson, L. & Gaertner, L. (2010) ‘Mechanisms of moral disengagement and their differential use by rightwing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation in support of war’, Aggressive Behavior, vol. 36, pp. 238–250. Kelman, H. (1976) ‘Violence without restraint: Reflections on the dehumanization of victims and victimizers’, in G Kren & L Rappoport (eds), Varieties of psychohistory. Springer, New York, pp. 282–314.

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The social psychology of dehumanization Kouchaki, M., Dobson, K.S.H., Waytz, A. & Kteily, N.S. (2018) ‘The link between self-dehumanization and immoral behavior’, Psychological Science, vol. 29, pp. 1234–1246. Kronfeldner, M. (2020) ‘Psychological essentialism and dehumanization’, in M Kronfeldner (ed), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 362–377. (this volume). Kteily, N., Bruneau, E., Waytz, A. & Cotterill, S. (2015) ‘The ascent of man: Theoretical and empir­ ical evidence for blatant dehumanization’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 109, pp. 901–931. Kunst, J.R., Kteily, N. & Thomsen, L. (2019) ‘“You little creep”: Evidence of blatant dehumanization of short groups’, Social Psychological and Personality Science, vol. 10, pp. 160–171. Lang, J. (2010) ‘Questioning dehumanization: Intersubjective dimensions of violence in the Nazi concen­ tration and death camps’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 24, pp. 225–246. Leidner, B., Castano, E. & Ginges, J. (2013) ‘Dehumanization, retributive and restorative justice, and aggressive versus diplomatic intergroup conflict resolution strategies’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol. 39, pp. 181–192. Leyens, J.-P., Cortes, B., Demoulin, S., Dovidio, J., Fiske, S. & Gaunt, R. (2003) ‘Emotional prejudice, essentialism, and nationalism: The 2002 Tajfel lecture’, European Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 33, pp. 703–717. Leyens, J.-P., Demoulin, S., Vaes, J., Gaunt, R. & Paladino, M. (2007) ‘Infra-humanization: The wall of group differences’, Social Issues and Policy Review, vol. 1, pp. 139–172. Leyens, J.-P., Rodriguez-Torres, R., Rodríguez-Pérez, A., Gaunt, R., Paladino, M. et al. (2001) ‘Psychological essentialism and the attribution of uniquely human emotions to ingroups and outgroups’, European Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 81, pp. 395–411. Loughnan, S., Haslam, N., Sutton, R.M. & Spencer, B. (2014) ‘Dehumanization and social class’, Social Psychology, vol. 45, pp. 54–61. Maoz, I. & McCauley, C. (2008) ‘Threat, dehumanization, and support for retaliatory aggressive policies in asymmetric conflict’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 52, pp. 93–116. Martinez, A., Piff, P., Mendoza-Denton, R. & Hinshaw, S. (2011) ‘The power of a label: Mental illness diagnoses, ascribed humanity, and social rejection’, Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, vol. 30, pp. 1–23. Obermann, M. (2011) ‘Moral disengagement in self-reported and peer-nominated bullying’, Aggressive Behavior, vol. 37, pp. 133–144. Opotow, S. (1990) ‘Moral exclusion and injustice: An introduction’, Journal of Social Issues, vol. 46, pp. 173–182. Paladino, M., Vaes, J. & Jetten, J. (2020) ‘Motivational and cognitive underpinnings of fear of social robots that become ‘too human for us’, in M Kronfeldner (ed), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 292–306. (this volume). Pizzirani, B. & Karantzas, G. (2019) ‘The association between dehumanization and intimate partner abuse’, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, vol. 36, pp. 1527–1541. Rai, T.S., Valdesolo, P. & Graham, J. (2017) ‘Dehumanization increases insrumental violence, but nor moral violence’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 114, pp. 8511–8516. Rudman, L. & Mescher, K. (2012) ‘Of animals and objects: Men’s implicit dehumanization of women and likelihood of sexual aggression’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol. 38, pp. 734–746. Saminaden, A., Loughnan, S. & Haslam, N. (2010) ‘Afterimages of savages: Implicit associations between ‘primitives’, animals and children’, British Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 49, pp. 91–105. Smith, D.L. (2020) ‘Dehumanization, the problem of humanity, and the problem of monstrosity’, in M Kronfeldner (ed), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 355–361. (this volume). Staub, E. (1989) The roots of evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence, Cambridge University Press, New York. Struch, N. & Schwartz, S.H. (1989) ‘Intergroup aggression: Its predictors and distinctness from in-group bias’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 56, pp. 364–373. Tam, T., Hewstone, M., Cairns, E., Tausch, N., Maio, G. & Kenworthy, J. (2007) ‘The impact of intergroup emotions on forgiveness in Northern Ireland’, Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, vol. 10, pp. 119–136. Vaes, J. & Muratore, M. (2013) ‘Defensive dehumanization in the medical practice: A cross-sectional study from a health care worker’s perspective’, British Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 52, pp. 180–190.

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Nick Haslam Vaes, J., Paladino, M. & Puvia, E. (2011) ‘Are sexualized females complete human beings? Why males and females dehumanize sexually objectified women’, European Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 41, pp. 774–785. Viki, G., Fullerton, I., Raggett, H., Tait, F. & Wiltshire, S. (2012) ‘The role of dehumanization in attitudes toward the social exclusion and rehabilitation of sex offenders’, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, vol .42, pp. 2349–2367. Viki, G., Osgood, D. & Phillips, S. (2013) ‘Dehumanization and self-reported proclivity to torture prisoners of war’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 49, pp. 325–328. Waytz, A., Gray, K., Epley, N. & Wegner, D. (2010) ‘Causes and consequences of mind perception’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 14, pp. 383–388. Zebel, S., Zimmermann, A., Viki, G. & Doosje, B. (2008) ‘Dehumanization and guilt as distinct but related predictors of support for reparation policies’, Political Psychology, vol. 29, pp. 193–219.

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9

DEHUMANIZATION AND THE

LOSS OF MORAL STANDING

Edouard Machery

9.1 Introduction Before and during the genocide in Rwanda, the Tutsi were frequently called “cockroaches” (“inyenzi”), “snakes” (“inzoka”), or “hyenas,” apparently one of the most despised species in Rwanda (e.g., Gourevitc, 1998; Higiro 2007; Ndahiro 2014). Such name calling was often accompanied by the suggestion, and sometimes explicit assertion, that it was permissible, if not required, to eradicate the Tutsi: “Equating Tutsi with cockroaches meant that few would think twice about killing and attempting to exterminate something so vile, dirty, and sneaky” (Ndahiro 2014). Using the names of despised animals to refer to human beings is, of course, not specific to the Rwandan genocide: Jews were constantly compared to rats and other disgusting creatures by Nazis, including by Hitler himself in Mein Kampf, and here too such comparisons went hand in hand with the suggestion and then explicit claim that harm, or even killing, was permissible. Himmler is reported to have called for the destruction of the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw with the following: “500,000 subhuman creatures, who are in any case useless to the Germans, must dis­ appear” (Pearlman 2015, 265; see also Steizinger, this volume; Brudholm and Lang, this volume; Smith, this volume;Wilson, this volume).The use of these and similar expressions is not limited to genocides or to the past: Duterte, the President of the Philippines, has recently described drug addicts as “the living, walking dead,” adding that “they are of no use to society anymore” (Custodio 2016) as part of an effort to justify his bloody wars on drugs (Ellis-Petersen 2019). The use of animal monikers to refer to other human beings is part and parcel of the phenomenon of dehumanization.1 Dehumanization is a complex phenomenon, with diverse manifestations, causes, and effects (Haslam 2006; Haslam and Loughnan 2014; Smith 2011, 2014), but as a first approximation it always involves viewing and treating others as nonhuman, as deficiently human, or as less human. It can be blatant or subtle (in which case it is often called “infrahumanization”); it can contribute to dramatic social events, such as genocides, but it may also be present in ordinary life, contributing to, among other things, discrimination and biased behavior.2 One important aspect of dehumanization, manifest in the examples given above, is its connection with the license to harm the dehumanized individuals: Because they are not humans, not fully humans, deficient humans, or subhumans, dehumanized individuals can be harmed in a way that is not permis­ sible with human beings or with full humans.That is, when people deliberate about what can be done to others, dehumanized individuals do not figure in their deliberation the way fully human 145

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individuals do: They are deprived of their moral standing. Something (a nonhuman animal, a human being, a species, a country, etc.) is assigned moral standing if and only if agents view it as the kind of things that can be morally wronged. Something that is recognized as being susceptible to being morally wronged (e.g., a human being) and something that is not so recognized (e.g., an artifact) feature in agents’ deliberations in very different ways: Things can be done to the latter (sell them, destroy them, etc.) that can’t be done to the former. So, dehumanization involves, among other things, a denial of the moral standing of the dehumanized individuals. The goal of this chapter is to examine how people can be deprived of their moral standing in order to cast light on this aspect of dehumanization (see also Haslam, Bastian, Laham, and Loughnan 2012). Recent work in psychology and experimental philosophy suggests that moral standing is attributed to creatures that display one of two characteristics (perhaps among others): agency and experience.3 An organism has agency if it can have rational plans of action; an organism has experience if it can feel plain and pleasure. Relatedly, I argue that dehumanization tends to take two different forms: denying others’ agency or denying their experience. (It can naturally involve both.) So, dehumanization displays constrained variation: It can take different forms, but its diversity is constrained by human psychology. In Section 9.2, I will say more about moral standing. In Section 9.3, I will review some recent work in psychology and experimental philosophy, looking at the ascription of moral standing from a psychological perspective. In Section 9.4, I will show how this psychological approach can cast light on why dehumanization takes the forms it takes.

9.2 Moral standing As noted earlier, something has moral standing if and only if it can be morally wronged (i.e., if what we do to it can amount to doing something morally wrong). If something has moral standing, how an agent’s actions affect it should matter morally to the agent when the agent deliberates about what to do. It should be noted that something can feature morally in agent’s deliberation in a direct or in an indirect way: either because it has moral standing or, if it does not have moral standing itself, because the way it is treated matters for something that has moral standing. So, even if nonhuman animals do not have moral standing themselves, their interests may still feature morally in agents’ deliberation. But in themselves they would not deserve moral consideration or concern; only those with moral standing would (see, e.g., Kant’s The Lectures on Ethics 2001). Philosophers disagree about what has moral standing, and a range of entities are possible candidates for having moral standing: from rational agents, to human beings, to sentient organisms, to whole species, to ecosystems, to groups, to nations, etc. (for a useful overview, see Jaworska and Tannenbaum 2013). Between the clear cases of moral standing—conscious, neurotypical adult human beings—and the clear cases of entities deprived of moral standing—rocks and artifacts— philosophical controversy focuses on a gray area: animals, ecosystems, species, groups, etc. (see Crary, this volume on nonhuman animals). Relatedly, philosophers disagree about the grounds for moral standing: that is, in virtue of what an entity has moral standing. (Naturally, what has moral standing depends on what the grounds for moral standing are.) There are two main philosophical traditions about the grounds of moral standing.The Kantian tradition insists on the capacity for self-determination as the ground for moral standing (Kant 1785/1998, 2001; Korsgaard 1996, 2018). Kant wrote in the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785/1998, 40), Beings whose existence rests not indeed on our will but on nature, if they are non-rational beings, still have only a relative worth, and are therefore called things, whereas rational beings are called persons because their nature already marks them out as ends in themselves. 146

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Here, Kant draws a distinction between entities that have only relative worth, on the one hand, and ends in themselves, on the other. Entities have only relative worth if they are valued by entities that are ends in themselves. Considered independently of what the ends in themselves value, what is done to these entities that have only relative worth (sold, destroyed, etc.) is of no moral significance. Entities that are ends in themselves have an intrinsic value, independent of how they matter for others. By contrast, the utilitarian tradition highlights the capacity to experience pain and pleasure.As Bentham put it eloquently in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1781/2011: 235–236), The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.The French have already discovered that the blackness of skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the ter­ mination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps, the faculty for discourse?…the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? This chapter does not focus on the philosophical questions of what has moral standing or why things have moral standing but on the psychological question of what is assigned moral standing and why some things, and not others, are assigned moral standing. Something is assigned or recognized as having moral standing by an agent if and only if that agent views it (rightly or wrongly) as susceptible of being morally wronged.The cues for the assignment of moral standing (what Sytsma and I have called elsewhere “the sources of moral standing”) are the psychological counterparts of the grounds for moral standing: They are the characteristics of things (or our relations to them) by virtue of which we treat these things as having moral standing. These characteristics are not necessary for the assignment of moral standing; rather, they often merely make it more likely that moral standing is assigned to the entities that have those properties. When something is assigned moral standing, it tends to feature in the deliberations of those who acknowledge its moral standing in a distinctive manner: Harming or promoting its interests is a moral matter, and moral norms bear on it.When something is deprived of moral standing, its interests tend to have no moral significance when others decide what to do. Our belongings have no moral standing, and whether they should be sold, given away, or destroyed only depends on what we want, not on how our decisions would affect them independently of our wants. From a psychological point of view, moral standing can be viewed as either a gradable or a categorical property. Concerning the former, we give more moral consideration to some entities than to others in our reasoning.With respect to the latter, one might wonder what makes it the case that we give moral consideration to something at all: what cues lead us to treat something as deserving moral consideration at all.

9.3 Two sources of moral standing In this section, I review the growing body of evidence suggesting that the assignment of moral standing is influenced by at least two cues, which, following Gray, Gray, and Wegner (2007) and Sytsma and Machery (2012), I call “agency” and “experience.”4 These two cues are related to what philosophers have often taken to be the grounds of moral standing. Agency relates to 147

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rational self-determination, as understood in the Kantian tradition, while experience relates to the capacity to feel pain and pleasure, as understood in the utilitarian tradition. Agency is a vaguer notion: An entity is viewed as an agent to the extent that it has a complex cognition and lifestyle; it is intelligent, makes plans, etc. Experience is the capacity to feel plain and pleasure. An important line of research in psychology and experimental philosophy has focused on experience as the crucial cue for moral standing (for review, see also Goodwin 2015).5 Gray and colleagues (2007) asked participants to compare 13 entities (a seven-week-old fetus, a fivemonth-old infant, a five-year-old girl, an adult woman, an adult man, a man in a persistent vegetative state, the respondent him- or herself, a frog, a family dog, a wild chimpanzee, a dead woman, god, and Kismet, a sociable robot) with regard to 18 mental capacities (e.g., the capacities to feel pain, hunger, fear, recognition, planning, communication, and thought) on a fivepoint scale. For instance, they were asked which of god or a frog “is more capable of conveying thoughts or feelings to others.” Gray and colleagues then factor-analyzed participants’ pairwise comparisons, finding that two factors, which they called “agency” and “experience,” explained 97 percent of rating variance. Eleven of the 18 mental states loaded on experience (e.g., the capacities to feel pain, hunger, or fear) and 7 on agency (e.g., recognition, planning, communication, and thought). The 13 entities had different degrees of agency and experience: a robot, for instance, was viewed as having no experience, and an intermediate agency; god was viewed as having no experience either, but full agency; a fetus was viewed as having intermediate experience, but no agency; participants themselves were viewed as having full agency and experience. Finally, people’s motivation to avoid harming an entity, which we can take to be a proxy of moral standing, was measured by asking participants to answer the following question: “If you were forced to harm one of these characters, which one would it be more painful for you to harm?” Their answers correlated heavily with experience (r= 0.85) and substantially less with agency (r = 0.26). On this basis, Gray and colleagues (2007, 619) concluded that “agency is linked to moral agency and hence to responsibility, whereas experience is linked to moral patiency, and hence to rights and privileges.”6 Gray and colleagues’ findings converge with the results reported by Knobe and Prinz (2008) who, in one of their studies,7 gave participants one of the following two vignettes (2008. 81): Memory Condition Imagine a person who has a job working with fish. He finds himself wanting to know the answer to a particular question about them. Specifically, he wants to know whether fish are capable of remembering which part of a lake has the most food. Experience Condition Imagine a person who has a job working with fish. He finds himself wanting to know the answer to a particular question about them. Specifically, he wants to know whether fish are genuinely capable of feeling anything. Participants in both conditions were then asked the following questions: “Why do you think he might want to know this?” and “Why might the question be important to him?” Knobe and Prinz then coded participants’ answers depending on whether they had something to do with “prediction, explanation, or control” or something to do with “moral judgments.” They give the following example for the first category: “So it will be easier to feed them, b/c he only has to distribute food in one place or so he’ll know where to go in order to give bait, if they are capable of remembering such things.” The following is an example of the second category: “He might want to know whether fish genuinely feel things because in doing his job, he does lots of things 148

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to the fish that might possibly hurt them if they can really feel things. It might be important to him to find out if he causes them pain because he might feel it is unethical or immoral to cause harm to other things. He could hold this belief for several reasons, such as religion.” Knobe and Prinz found a stark contrast between the two conditions: 100 percent of participants in the memory condition mentioned reasons related to prediction, explanation, or control, for only 9 percent mentioning reasons related to moral judgment. Of participants in the experience condition 100 percent mentioned reasons related to moral judgment, for 0 percent mentioning reasons related to prediction, explanation, or control. Knobe and Prinz (2008: 80) conclude that “when we are wondering whether to treat an entity with moral concern, we are not principally concerned with questions about whether this entity is capable of complex reasoning, planning, or comprehension—what we really want to know is whether or not the entity is capable of having genuine feelings.” In the terminology used in this article, in Knobe and Prinz’s view, experience, but not agency, is a cue for the assignment of moral standing. This empirical literature supports the view that experience is an important cue for the assignment of moral standing: When we view an entity as able to feel pain and pleasure, we are inclined to treat it as having moral standing.The suggestion that agency is not a cue for moral standing is, however, less compelling. Gray and colleagues did find a correlation between agency and moral standing, although of a lower magnitude than the correlation between experience and moral standing.This is particularly remarkable in light of the fact that the question probing the relationship between moral standing and experience or agency was loaded in favor of experience (asking about a painful empathetic response to harming an entity). Knobe and Prinz’s two conditions are poorly balanced: The experience condition merely refers to a general capacity—the capacity to feel anything— while the memory condition refers to a specific capacity—specifically, the capacity to remember which part of a lake has the most food. Because it is unclear why this specific capacity would be relevant to assigning a general property like moral standing, it isn’t very surprising that very few participants mentioned anything related to moral judgment. In contrast to the views just discussed, Haslam (2006) proposed that dehumanization can take two different forms: “animalistic” and “mechanistic.” The former involves denying the characteristics that are “uniquely human” or that distinguish human beings from nonhuman animals. Haslam (2006: 256) describe these characteristics as follows: “cognitive sophistication, culture, refinement, socialization, and internalized moral sensibility.” The latter, mechanistic dehumanizing, involves denying “characteristics [that] might be referred to as human nature,” which “would be expected to link humans to the natural world, and their inborn biological dispositions” (256). Furthermore, Haslam and colleagues (2012) relate the denial of either type of characteristic to what we have taken to be the two cues for the ascription of moral standing: In their view, animalistic dehumanization involves the denial of agency, while mechanistic dehu­ manization involves the denial of experience. Haslam’s view is similar to the two-source hypothesis put forward by Sytsma and Machery (2012), which proposes that lay judgments about whether an entity has moral standing depend on two independent cues: experience and agency. Despite the similarities between Haslam’s approach and the two-source hypothesis reviewed in this chapter, the two views about the forms of dehumanization differ in an important respect. Haslam follows Gray and colleagues (2007) in tying the denial of agency to the disavowal of responsibility for actions—animals are not respon­ sible for their actions—and the denial of experience to the disavowal of what we have called here moral standing—mechanical objects can’t be morally harmed. By contrast, Sytsma and Machery (2012) argue that both experience and agency matter for moral standing, and denying agency and denying experience are both involved in licensing harm against the dehumanized individuals. 149

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Sytsma and Machery ran five studies to support the two-source hypothesis. Each study described various entities (monkeys or aliens), highlighting their agency or their experience, and asked participants whether it was morally wrong to harm them in various ways. As an example, I report here the materials and results of Study 4. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions; in each condition they had to read one of the following four vignettes8: High experience and high agency Imagine that life has developed on a planet in a nearby solar system. Further, imagine that one species—call them the atlans—has developed an advanced civilization. Not only do atlans look somewhat similar to humans, they are quite similar to us in other respects as well: For example, they are soft and fleshy, and they feel both pleasure and pain. For instance, an atlan would feel horrible pain if you were to strike her hand with a hammer. Further, atlans are like us in having thoughts, opinions, beliefs, and desires. They are very intelligent, and engage in highly complex social and polit­ ical interactions.They have highly developed literary, musical, and artistic traditions, in addition to having made great advances in the sciences. Overall, the atlan way of life is very peaceful. Now imagine that in the future explorers from Earth discover one of the atlans.The atlan welcomes the explorers and is very friendly toward them. The explorers realize that they could easily capture this atlan for purposes of scientific experimentation.After the experiments, they would then kill the atlan and dissect the body. High experience and low agency Imagine that life has developed on a planet in a nearby solar system. Further, imagine that one species—call them the atlans—are the most prevalent life form on the planet. While atlans look somewhat similar to slugs, they are quite different from then in other respects: Most notably, they feel pleasure and pain very acutely. For instance, an atlan would feel horrible pain if you were to step on it. Nonetheless, atlans do not have thoughts, opinions, beliefs, or desires.They are not very intelligent and seldom interact with other atlans. Atlans spend most of their time sitting on rocks. Overall, the atlan way of life is very peaceful. Now imagine that in the future explorers from Earth discover one of the atlans.The atlan does not seem to notice the explorers and continues to sit on its rock.The explorers realize that they could easily capture this atlan for purposes of scientific experimentation. After the experiments, they would then kill the atlan and dissect the body. Low experience and high agency Imagine that life has developed on a planet in a nearby solar system. Further, imagine that one species—call them the atlans—has developed an advanced civilization.While atlans look somewhat similar to humans, they are quite different from us in other respects: For example, instead of being soft and fleshy, they are hard and metallic. In fact, they resemble incredibly sophisticated robots. As such, they neither feel pain nor pleasure. For instance, an atlan would feel no pain at all if you were to strike her hand with a hammer. Nonetheless, atlans are like us in having thoughts, opinions, beliefs, and desires. They are very intelligent, and engage in highly complex social and polit­ ical interactions.They have highly developed literary, musical, and artistic traditions, in addition to having made great advances in the sciences. Overall, the atlan way of life is very peaceful. 150

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Now imagine that in the future explorers from Earth discover one of the atlans.The atlan welcomes the explorers and is very friendly toward them. The explorers realize that they could easily capture this atlan for purposes of scientific experimentation.After the experiments, they would then kill the atlan and dissect the body. Low experience and low agency Imagine that life has developed on a planet in a nearby solar system. Further, imagine that one species—call them the atlans—are the most prevalent life form on the planet. While atlans look somewhat similar to slugs, they are quite different from then in other respects: For example, instead of being soft and fleshy, they are hard and metallic. In fact, they resemble simple machines. As such, they neither feel pain nor pleasure. For instance, an atlan would feel no pain at all if you were to step on it. Further, atlans do not have thoughts, opinions, beliefs, or desires.They are not very intelligent and seldom interact with other atlans.Atlans spend most of their time sitting on rocks. Overall, the atlan way of life is very peaceful. Now imagine that in the future explorers from Earth discover one of the atlans.The atlan does not seem to notice the explorers and continues to sit on its rock.The explorers realize that they could easily capture this atlan for purposes of scientific experimentation. After the experiments, they would then kill the atlan and dissect the body. Participants were then asked the following questions on a seven-point scale: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Would it be morally wrong for the explorers to capture the atlan? Would it be morally wrong for the explorers to experiment on the atlan? Would it be morally wrong for the explorers to kill the atlan? Would it be morally wrong for the explorers to dissect the atlan?

Agency and experience both contributed to participants’ moral judgments in Study 4. Furthermore, these two cues influenced moral judgment additively.These findings suggest that moral standing is influenced by two distinct cues, as proposed by the two-source hypothesis. Sytsma and Machery (2012) observed another pattern: Whether experience and agency contributed to the assignment of moral standing varied across contexts. In Study 1, which used vignettes describing the use of monkeys for a painful experiment, only experience mattered. In Study 2, which used sci-fi vignettes describing the destruction of a whole alien civilization, only agency mattered. We acknowledged that many factors probably determine which cues influence the assignment of moral standing in different contexts, but we proposed that experience matters more when one is thinking about individuals and agency more when one is thinking about groups. More recent work has examined the influence of additional factors (for review, see Goodwin, 2015). In particular, Piazza, Landy, and Goodwin (2014) asked participants to rate 17 animals (out of 34) on 20 traits, which were related to experience (sensitive, can suffer, etc.), intelligence (intelligent, clever, creative, etc.), activity (potent, powerful, etc.), and harmfulness (aggressive, dangerous). They then asked participants to assess whether these animals had moral standing, using five different questions to probe the issue. They found that the 20 traits were related to two factors: a factor combining experience and agency and a factor related for harmful­ ness. Importantly for our purposes, harmfulness negatively predicted moral standing ascription, although to a lesser degree than their first factor: The more harmful a creature, the less moral standing it had.Vignette studies confirmed the importance of harmfulness in people’s attitude toward moral standing. 151

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9.4 The loss of moral standing in dehumanization The proposal to be discussed now is that dehumanization tends to take two main forms because of its connection to moral standing. Because dehumanization often happens in connection to licensing harm and because there are two different ways in which moral standing can be denied— by denying agency or by denying experience—dehumanization should involve representing other human beings as having no agency—that is, as being stupid or simple and unable to build complex lives and entertain structured plans—or as having no experience—that is, as being unable to feel pain. I support this prediction by examining various historical cases of blatant and subtle dehumanization.As was the case with moral standing, dehumanization can be a graded or a categorical phenomenon. Some cases below seem to involve a full denial of moral standing and humanity; others an assertion of lesser moral standing and humanity. The literature on moral standing predicts that one form of dehumanization should involve presenting the dehumanized individuals as lacking agency. Because agency is a fairly broad concept, this form of dehumanization can take different forms, but in all cases it involves representing the dehumanized human beings as having a brutish life:They should lack culture, morality, and complex languages; they should be unable to plan and to have a future-oriented lifestyle; their life should be focused on the present moment, etc. Whenever the notion of a great chain of beings is widely shared, dehumanized beings should be put at a lower stage of this chain, one characterized by less sophistication than the subsequent stages (e.g., Kteily, Bruneau, Waytz, and Cotterill 2015). Instances of this form of dehumanization abound throughout history. A particularly striking example can be found in the debate about indigenous peoples in the 16th century, particularly in Pope Paul III’s papal bull Sublimus Dei (1537) and in the exchange between Las Casas and Sepúlveda in Valladolid (1550–1551) (see Kontler, this volume). In Democrates Secundus, or, on the Just Causes for War Against the Indians, Sepúlveda (1545/2007: 285) justified the domination by Spaniards by contrasting their civilization to the alleged barbarous nature of the indigenous peoples (my emphasis): With the prudence, intelligence, magnanimity, temperance, humanity, and religion of these men [the conquistadors], now compare these less than men [homunculi], in whom you will scarce find any traces of humanity.They lack learning, have no use or knowledge of writing, and keep no historical records, other than a tenuous and vague memory of some events, recorded in pictographs.They have no written laws, but only certain barbarous institutions and customs. As to virtues, if you look for temperance and mildness, what can be hoped from people who were immoderate in every form of intemperance and unspeakable lust, and of whom not a few fed on human flesh? He then goes on to compare the indigenous peoples to animals, referring (here and elsewhere) to Aristotle’s notion of a natural slave (286): They are for the most part slavish and barbarous. For the fact that they have houses, some means of communal living, and trade, which natural necessity brings about, proves nothing but that they are not bears or monkeys, which totally lack reason. By contrast Las Casas insists on the complexity of “Indians’” language and society, as is illustrated by the five-page prologue to his book The Only Way, entitled “Humanity of the Indians.” He describes “Indians’” social organization in glowing terms: 152

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Then too there exist extraordinary kingdoms among our Indians who live in regions west and south of us. There are large groupings of human beings who live according to a political and a social order. There are large cities, there are kings, judges, laws, all within civilizations where commerce occurs, buying and selling and lending and all the other dealings proper to the law of nations. That is to say, their republics are properly set up, there are institutions. And our Indians cultivate friendship and they live in large cities. They manage their affairs in them with goodness and equity, affairs of peace as well as war. They run their governments according to laws that are often superior to our own… He goes on describing their capacity for autonomy: the Indians come to be endowed, first by force of nature, next by force of personal achievement and experience, with the three kind of self-rule required: (1) personal, by which one knows how to rule oneself, (2) domestic, by which one knows how to rule a household, and (3) political, knowledge of how to set up and rule a city. Las Casas’s strategy to rebut Sepúlveda’s claims is as expected: If dehumanization involves denying the agency of the dehumanized people, humanizing them should involve asserting it; that is, asserting that their life and cognition are complex and sophisticated. African Americans’ character was constantly redefined in the minds of white Americans in the 19th century (Fredrickson 1987). One of the tropes to emerge in this century identified African Americans as simple children in need of guidance, a trope found among both proponents and opponents of slavery (for further discussion, see Kontler, this volume; Sebastiani, this volume). George Fitzhugh, in the 1850s, describes African Americans as children subjected to “family government” (Fredrickson 2008: 56). On the other side, while Alexander Kinmont endorsed polygenism—whites and blacks are different species—like many apologists of slavery in the sci­ entific racism tradition, he himself opposed slavery, rejected the inequality of races, and thought that blacks and white could complement each other (Fredrickson 2008: 104–5). But African Americans’ distinctive talent was subservience and despondency: Kinmont refers to African Americans’“willingness to serve,” in his view, a positive human virtue (Fredrickson 2008: 105). Similar themes are found, for example, in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influential anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Stowe refers to African Americans’ character as follows (1982: 213): “their gentleness, their lowly docility of heart, their aptitude to repose on a superior mind and rest on a higher power, their childlike simplicity of affection, and facility of forgiveness.” While Stowe undoubtedly intended this description to be positive (African Americans are natural Christians), it also deprives them of the complex form of life that she’d be prone to assign to white Americans. While opposed in many respects, and used for very different purposes (including to jus­ tify violence against African Americans during Reconstruction), the representation of African Americans as “wild beasts” (Fredrickson 1987; Jahoda 1999) has something in common with their representation as gentle, simple children: In both cases, it denies their capacity for selfcontrol, what I have called in this chapter, “agency.”The “superpredator” trope of the 1990s, as expressed, for example, by Hillary Clinton in 1996 (“They’re not just gangs of kids anymore, they are often the kinds of kids that are called superpredators. No conscience, no empathy.We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we must bring them to heel”) is the heir of the wild beast representation: Dehumanization is not a thing of the past. 153

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The idea that some people are in need of civilized guidance, as generously provided by Europeans, was also often used to justify European colonialism.This idea is infamously expressed in Kipling’s poem, The White Man’s Burden, the first stanza of which reads, Take up the White Man’s burden—

Send forth the best ye breed—

Go bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives’ need;

To wait in heavy harness,

On fluttered folk and wild—

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half-devil and half-child.

Kipling wrote this poem to encourage the colonization of the Philippines by the United States. The human zoos in Europe, which presented Africans as barbarians, embody the same form of dehumanization (Blanchard, Boetsch, and Snoep 2011; see Abbattista in this volume).9 Another manifestation of the loss of agency is Rosenberg’s insistence that, in contrast to the Nordic race, Jews are unable to be genuinely creative and are limited to copying the work of others. Steizinger describes Rosenberg’s assault on Jewish culture as follows (2018: 150): He emphasizes time and again the “uncreative character” of Jews and contrasts their properties to what he regards as uniquely human. Jews are, according to Rosenberg, “copycats” (“Nachäffer”), “plagiarizers” and “nihilists” who possess “no talent for indigenous growth, no organic shape of the soul and therefore no racial shape.” (…) Moreover, he claims that Jewish life is without any metaphysical and cultural dimension and hence animal-like. Many of the examples of loss of agency provided above are intertwined with dramatic, often bloody, historical episodes: the destruction of indigenous people’s culture in South America, American slavery, European colonialism and imperialism, and the Jewish genocide. Less dramatic forms of agency-based dehumanization also abound, including in more or less recent history: in the now dated representation of Japanese as ants or as robots (Honoré 1994 for the French nippophobia) or in the suggestion that they are only able to copy the work done in Europe and in North America instead of being creative (Honoré 1994 in a faint echo of Rosenberg’s antisemitic obsession). A very different form of dehumanization involves denying people their experience—their capacity to feel pain and pleasure.The history of racism saw numerous manifestations of the loss of experi­ ence leading to dehumanization. Christoph Meiners (1747–1810), a German philosopher and his­ torian, expressed his polygenism and his opposition to the Enlightenment in his treatise The Outline and History of Mankind. An important component of his conviction of the deep difference between Europeans and Africans is his conviction that Africans are insensitive to pain (Jahoda 1999: 67): [Negroes] are seldom ill, even in the West Indies where they are maltreated, and can endure any amount of pain “as if they had no human, barely animal, feeling.” Meiners tells the story of a Negro, condemned to death by slow burning fire; when his back was already half cooked, he asked for a pipe and smoked it placidly. Furthermore, in his view, Africans were nearly lacking in emotions. Unsurprisingly perhaps, Meiners’s fame was given a second life in Nazi Germany. 154

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The idea that black people are much less sensitive to pain than whites was often echoed during the 19th century in America. Riss points out that South Carolina physician Philip Tidyman (1826) argued “against the humanity of the Negro by citing evidence that the Negro’s nervous system exhibited ‘less sensibility and irritability than is generally witnessed among whites’” (Riss 2006: 95). A few decades later,“Vogt’s Lectures on Man (1864) informed readers that ‘the Negro stands far below the white race’ in terms of the ‘acuteness of the senses.’Admittedly, in hospitals that had sprung up during the civil war,‘we see Negroes suffering from the gravest diseases cowering on their couches without taking any notice of the attending physicians.’ But their wretched endurance was ‘certainly more from disposition than from habit or education’ ([1864], 188)” (Bourke 2014: 303). Not only were dehumanizing, racist claims about black people’s lack of pain sensitivity common, they were often explained by appealing to black people’s less developed brains (Bourke 2014). As was already noted with Meiners, the loss of experience is not limited to the denial of the capacity for pain; sometimes, it is centered on the capacity to feel emotions. Psychologists have examined how dehumanization often involves the denial of “secondary emotions,” that is, emotions that are specifically human, such as shame, guilt, regret, or melancholy (Leyens 2009).This experimental evidence echoes many episodes of dehumanization in recent centuries. Proponents of paternalistic slavery such as George Fitzhugh, for instance, thought that gratitude and shame had to be cultivated in their black slaves by giving them a place in the extended family of the white slave owner (Fredrickson 2008: 56), suggesting that they viewed slaves as naturally deprived of such emotions. Another image of African Americans represented them as lustful beasts. Charles Smith describes African Americans as follows: “When a desire to indulge his bad passions comes over him, he seems to be utterly devoid of prudence or conscience” (Fredrickson 2008: 278). A century later, Hitler and Rosenberg both insisted that Jews were unable to feel shame (Steizinger 2018, this volume). Another manifestation of the denial of experience is the representation of dehumanized groups as being cold, or robot-like. Japanese were regularly stereotyped in those terms in the 1970s. Honoré describes this stereotype among French people as follows (1994: 29, my translation): The radical antipersonalism ascribed to the society and culture of this country [i.e., Japan] manifests itself as an inner void, moral and sentimental. The relation to others is emptied of all feeling, and is characterized as “coldness,” “lack of sensibility,” and “impersonal courtesy.” This stereotype no doubt lingers among Westerners, as illustrated by the recurrent articles about the lack of sexuality and love in the Japanese society. Systma and Machery (2012) found that in experimental situations at least, experience and agency matter in different contexts, although the nature of this contextual variation remained somewhat unclear.We speculated that experience matters more when individuals are to be taken into account in reasoning, and agency matters more when groups are. However, dehumanization of whole groups involved both experience and agency in the historical examples provided above: Africans are said to be unable to feel pain, for instance.This observation is of course consistent with Sytsma and Machery’s claim, as they merely proposed an affinity between experience and the denial of moral standing to individuals, but it may also be that the denial of agency and experience work in a more complex manner, to be investigated in further work. Following Gray, Gray, and Wegner (2007), Sytsma and Machery (2012) also argued that experi­ ence and agency are orthogonal dimensions, and both studies provided experimental evidence in support of this claim: Denying agency and experience influenced moral judgment additively. Naturally, when one examines historical examples of dehumanization, dehumanization often 155

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involves the denial of both agency and experience: Black slaves, for instance, are treated as children (or as beasts) and are denied the capacity for pain or complex emotions, while Japanese in the 1970s are viewed as ants and as cold.10 The denial of emotions like shame can also be understood as a denial of experience and of agency.This observation, too, is consistent with Sytsma and Machery’s claim, since additive factors can both contribute to an effect, but it raises the question of whether there are historical occurrences of dehumanization that involve either experience or agency, but not both. It is plausible that blatant dehumanization typically involves the disavowal of moral standing by denying both experience and agency, while subtle everyday forms of dehumanization may sometimes involve the denial of either agency or experience. More detailed historical work is needed to assess this speculation.

9.5 Conclusion In this chapter, I have reviewed how recent research on the psychology of moral standing casts light on the forms that dehumanization takes in history and in the present. Both experience (the capacity of feel pain and pleasure) and agency (the capacity to have an intelligent, complex life) influence the ascription of moral standing, and since dehumanization is often meant to license harming dehumanized individuals, we would expect dehumanization to involve denying either or both, and indeed, this is what is found repeatedly through the most dramatic as well as in the more mundane examples of dehumanization.

Notes 1 Bloom (2017) has recently argued that cruelty can also arise from humanization, and that historical acts of persecution (e.g., Jews in Nazi Germany) are mischaracterized as examples of dehumanization, since they presuppose the humanity of the victims: One does not humiliate cockroaches. For discussion, see Smith, this volume. 2 On blatant dehumanization, see Kteily, Bruneau, Waytz, and Cotteril (2015); on subtle dehumanization, see Leyens (2009). 3 For a more general review of the psychology of dehumanization, see Haslam (2006); Haslam and Loughnan (2014); Smith (2014). 4 There may be other cues influencing the ascription of moral standing, as we discussed briefly below (e.g., Khamitov, Rotman, and Piazza 2016). Moral standing is often treated as a gradable property in experimental research: Psychologists examine which cues make various entities matter more when participants make a moral judgment about what can be done to them. 5 See also Jack and Robbins (2012). 6 By “moral patiency” Gray and colleagues mean roughly what I mean by “moral standing.” 7 For critical discussion of this article, see Sytsma and Machery (2009, 2010). 8 A limitation of this study is that agency is confounded with similarity to human beings, which may also matter for the ascription of moral standing. 9 The Japanese also created human zoos, where Koreans were presented, as part of their justification for their imperialistic invasion of Korea. 10 Piazza, Landy, and Goodwin (2014) also show that agency and experience are highly correlated in Gray, Gray, and Wegner (2007) data.

References Abbattista, G. (2020) “Dehumanizing the Exotic in Living Human Exhibitions,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge handbook of dehumanization (pp. 83–97), London and New York: Routledge, (this volume). Bentham, J. (1789/2011) An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, London: British Library. Blanchard, P., Boetsch, G., and Snoep, N. J. (eds.) (2011) Human Zoos: The Invention of the Savage, Paris: Actes Sud.

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Dehumanization and loss of moral standing Bloom, P. (2017) “The Root of all Cruelty?” The New Yorker, November 20, 2017. https://www. newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/27/the-root-of-all-cruelty. Bourke, J. (2014) “Pain Sensitivity: An Unnatural History from 1800 to 1965,” Journal of Medical Humanities 35: 301–19. Brudholm, T. and Lang, J. (2020) “On Hatred and Dehumanization,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge handbook of Dehumanization (pp. 341–354), London and New York: Routledge, (this volume). Crary, A. (2020) “Dehumanization and the Question Of Animals,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge handbook of dehumanization (pp. 159–172), London and New York: Routledge, (this volume). Custodio, A. (2016) “The Ill Effects of Shabu Addiction,” Manila Times, September 06, 2016. https:// www.manilatimes.net/the-ill-effects-of-shabu-addiction/284322/. de Las Casas, B. (1992) The Only Way, ed. H. R. Parish, tr. F. P. Sullivan, New York: Paulist Press. Ellis-Petersen, H. (2019) “Rodrigo Duterte’s Drug War is ‘Large-Scale Murdering Enterprise’ Says Amnesty,” The Guardian, July 20, 2019. www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/08/rodrigo-dutertes­ drug-war-is-large-scale-murdering-enterprise-says-amnesty. Fredrickson, G. M. (1987) The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Goodwin, G. P. (2015) “Experimental Approaches to Moral Standing,” Philosophy Compass 10: 914–26. Gourevitch, P. (1998) We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, New York: Picador. Gray, H., Gray, K., and Wegner, D. (2007) “Dimensions of Mind Perception,” Science 619: 315. Haslam, N. (2006) “Dehumanization: An Integrative Review,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 10: 252–64. Haslam, N., Bastian, B., Laham, S., and Loughnan, S. (2012) “Humanness, Dehumanization, and Moral Psychology,” in M. Mikulincer and P. R. Shaver (eds.), The social psychology of morality: Exploring the causes of good and evil (pp. 203–218), Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association. Haslam, N. and Loughnan, S. (2014) “Dehumanization and Infrahumanization,” Annual Review of Psychology 65: 399–423. Higiro, J. M. V. (2007) “Rwandan Private Print Media on the Eve of the Genocide,” in A. Thompson (ed.), The media and the Rwanda genocide (pp. 73–89), London: Pluto Press. Honoré J.-P. (1994) “De la Nippophilie à la Nippophobie. Les Stéréotypes Versatiles dans la Vulgate de Presse (1980–1993),” Mots 41: 9–55. Jack, A. I. and Robbins, P. (2012) “The Phenomenal Stance Revisited,” Review of Philosophy and Psychology 3: 383–403. Jahoda, G. (1999) Images of Savages: Ancient Roots of Modern Prejudice in Western Culture, Florence, KY, US: Taylor & Frances/Routledge. Jaworska, A. and Tannenbaum, J. (2013) “The Grounds of Moral Status,” in E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Summer 2013, Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Kant, I. (1785/1998) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, ed. M. Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (2001) Lectures on Ethics, ed. J. B. Schneewind, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Khamitov, M., Rotman, J. D., and Piazza, J. (2016) “Perceiving the Agency of Harmful Agents: A Test of Dehumanization Versus Moral Typecasting Accounts,” Cognition 146: 33–47. Knobe, J. and Prinz, J. (2008) “Intuitions about Consciousness: Experimental Studies,” Phenomenology and Cognitive Sciences 7: 67–85. Kontler, L. (2020) “‘Humanity’ and Its Limits in Early Modern European Thought,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge handbook of dehumanization (pp. 52–63), London and New York: Routledge, (this volume). Korsgaard, C. (1996) Creating the Kingdom of Ends, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——. (2018) Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kteily, N., Bruneau, E., Waytz, A., and Cotterill, S. (2015) “The Ascent of Man: Theoretical and Empirical Evidence for Blatant Dehumanization,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 109: 901–31. Leyens, J. P. (2009) “Retrospective and Prospective Thoughts about Infrahumanization,” Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 12: 807–17. Ndahiro, K. (2014) “Dehumanisation: How Tutsis Were Reduced to Cockroaches, Snakes to be Killed,” The New Times, March 13, 2014. https://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/read/73836. Pearlman, M. (2015) The Capture and Trial of Adolf Eichmann, Pickle Partners Publishing.

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Edouard Machery Piazza, J., Landy, J. F., and Goodwin, G. P. (2014) “Cruel Nature: Harmfulness as an Important, Overlooked Dimension in Judgments of Moral Standing,” Cognition 131: 108–24. Riss, A. (2006) Race, Slavery, and Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sebastiani, S. (2020) “Enlightenment Humanization and Dehumanization, and the Orangutan,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge handbook of dehumanization (pp. 64–82), London and New York: Routledge, (this volume). Sepúlveda, J. G. de. (1545/2007) “Democrates Secundus, or, on the Just Causes for War Against the Indians,” in D. Hugues (ed.), Versions of blackness: Key texts on slavery from the seventeenth century (pp. 285–286), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, D. L. (2011) Less than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, New York: St. Martin’s Press. ——. (2014) “Dehumanization, Essentialism, and Moral Psychology,” Philosophy Compass 9: 814–24. ——. (2020) “Dehumanization, the Problem of Humanity, and the Problem of Monstrosity,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge handbook of dehumanization (pp. 355–361), London and New York: Routledge, (this volume). Steizinger, J. (2018) “The Significance of Dehumanization: Nazi Ideology and Its Psychological Consequences,” Politics, Religion & Ideology 19: 139–57. ——. (2020) “Dehumanizing Strategies in Nazi Ideology and their Anthropological Context,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge handbook of dehumanization (pp. 98–111), London and New York: Routledge, (this volume). Stowe, H. B. (1982) Three Novels, New York: Literary Classics of the United States. Sytsma, J. and Machery, E. (2009) “How to Study Folk Intuitions about Phenomenal Consciousness,” Philosophical Psychology 22: 21–35. ——. (2010) “Two Conceptions of Subjective Experience,” Philosophical Studies 151: 299–327. ——. (2012) “The Two Sources of Moral Standing,” Review of Philosophy and Psychology 3: 303–24. Wilson, R. A. (2020) “Dehumanization, Disability, and Eugenics,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge handbook of dehumanization (pp. 173–186), London and New York: Routledge, (this volume).

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10

DEHUMANIZATION AND THE

QUESTION OF ANIMALS1

Alice Crary

If people behave brutally toward Animals, no form of democracy is ever going to help them, in fact nothing will at all (Tokarczuk 2019: 101).

10.1 What do animals have to do with dehumanization? “Dehumanization” is a term that gets used, in popular and scholarly discussions, for some of the most terrible things human beings do to each other. While employed in various ways (Haslam and Loughnan 2014), the term is most often applied to rhetoric and practices that deploy invidious comparisons between members of socially vulnerable human groups and animals and that, moreover, do so in ways that serve to degrade and marginalize the human beings at issue, exposing them to great and sometimes genocidal violence. A brutally clear case of such dehu­ manization is what the political theorist Claire Jean Kim describes as a “central [and] perhaps even indispensable ideological practice for enacting and stabilizing the practice of slavery” in the United States; namely, the “likening [of] black people to animals—to apes in the jungles of Africa, to ‘livestock’ animals such as oxen and horses, to savage ‘brutes’” (Kim 2018). Despite having been publicly declared defunct, in the United States slavery continues to have what the historian Saidiya Hartman calls an “afterlife” (Hartman 2007), persisting in structurally racist features of institutions such as prisons, police departments, and schools, and we continue to find these sorts of dehumanizing practices in the use of comparisons between Black people and animals that is part of the ongoing functioning of these institutions (Ko and Ko 2017). U.S. President Donald Trump and some of his supporters were wont to describe the inflow of immigrants to the United States from Caribbean, Latin American, and African countries as “infestations” (see, e.g., Zimmer 2019)—thereby likening the targeted humans to animals, such as insects or rats—while also calling for immigration policies that systematically increase social suffering and mortality.These politically charged discursive practices represent yet another closely related case of the pertinent, all-too-familiar kind of dehumanization. Animal-indexed forms of dehumanization depend for their power to degrade on representations of animals as morally insignificant beings who invite the callous and even lethal treatment that is urged upon members of specific human groups. Given the scope and magnitude of the horrors visited upon dehumanized humans, it might seem frivolous—or worse—to take up the question of animals and inquire into the accuracy and justice of these representations. But this charge of 159

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moral irresponsibility is misplaced. This is not only because nonhuman animals merit greater respect and solicitude than their role in dehumanizing discourses would indicate.That is true, but there is an additional consideration that should carry weight even with activists who disavow any concern with the treatment of animals and who dedicate themselves exclusively to contesting the oppression of specific groups of dehumanized human beings.What should move these indi­ viduals is that the revaluation of animal life is a crucial for developing clear-sighted, effective strategies for fighting the dehumanization of human beings.

10.2 The abjection of human beings through animalizing ideologies Suppose that we speak of animalization in reference to the rhetorical and practical use of animal comparisons to denigrate, marginalize, and kill human beings who are members of non-dominant social groups (for general discussions of animalization, see Roberts 2008: ix–x; Spiegel 1996; Steuter and Wills 2011: 49).Animalization is an arrestingly widespread phenomenon, figuring in the subjugation of humans in many different times and places. It has a long and violent history in the abjection of members of racialized groups (see, e.g., Livingstone Smith 2011, which describes the “dehumanization of Jews, sub-Saharan Africans, and Native Americans” (6)). But animaliza­ tion isn’t limited to race-based modes of oppression. There is, to mention another set of cases, a long and gruesome history of the use of animalizing methods in the systematic deprivation of women of social resources, and in practices of violence against women, including femicide. Indeed, strategies of animalization have contributed substantially to the oppression of an openended number of overlapping social groups, including the gender non-conforming, the cogni­ tively disabled, the physically disabled, combatants, the very old, the very poor, the homeless, and the drug addicted. There are scholarly disputes about how to describe animalizing rhetoric and practice that are apposite here because they have substantial implications for how to conceive effective forms of resistance. It is fairly uncontroversial to describe these discursive practices as ideologies, but there is consequential disagreement about what talk of ideology amounts to.Within discourses of liberation, “ideology” is typically employed, pejoratively, for certain ethically charged beliefs that are woven into the fabric of social practices (Geuss 1981: 5–7). Standard accounts of what is pernicious about ideological beliefs mention both an epistemic aspect, concerning how these beliefs misrepresent the lives of the individuals who are participants in the practices and the institutions that the beliefs support and stabilize, and a functional aspect, concerning how, in supporting particular practices and institutions, they arrange society in relations of domination and subjugation—and how, despite their epistemic flaws, they have a material heft that gives them the appearance of truth. The question of how to escape ideological formations is fraught, inviting methodological inquiry, and reflection on this functional aspect helps to explain why. It is widely held that, to combat ideologies, we need the material weight of methods that engage us practically and that, insofar as they shape our senses of what is important, are rightly classed as ethically non-neutral. One pivotal dispute about how to understand ideologies—animalizing or otherwise—has to do with the authority of these methods.Theorists who work within liberating intellectual traditions (e.g., post-colonial, feminist and critical race theorists) don’t generally regard reliance on the per­ tinent methods as a merely temporary stratagem, but there are theorists who do.These thinkers assume that any ethically charged resources must as such be non-rational, and they urge us to look upon the use of such resources as an inherently suspect, if necessary, step to removing barriers to a discursive domain that is maximally ethically neutral and—as the thinkers at issue see it—hence, rational and politically palatable.This conception of ideology critique is currently 160

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prevalent in Anglo-American analytic philosophy (see accounts of the work of Jason Stanley, Miranda Fricker, and José Medina in Crary 2017; Crary 2018d; Crary 2020), but it conflicts with dominant currents of 20th and 21st century emancipatory social thought. Social theorists more frequently assume that social phenomena are distinctive kinds of things and that distinctive, eth­ ically charged resources are required to bring them into focus. It has long been a leitmotif of lib­ erating social theory that we can’t get in view the behaviors that make up specific social injustices (e.g., race-, gender- or class-based ones) apart from a non-neutral sense of the forms of social vulnerability that systematic (e.g., race-, gender- or class-based) bias produces (Crary 2018d). This sort of hostility to demands for ethically neutral mental access to the world is some­ times associated with doubts about our entitlement to the notion of objectivity. A posture that combines such hostility with such doubts is characteristic of post-structuralist critics (e.g., Allen 2016). But this position is both politically questionable, insofar as it obliges us to deny objective authority to our best critical claims, and philosophically questionable, insofar as it remains in thrall to the account of our cognitive predicament from which it supposedly frees us. Equating reliance on ethically non-neutral methods with the forfeiture of wholehearted objectivity is tantamount to reiterating, in reversed form, the logic of a philosophically influential understanding of object­ ivity on which steps toward greater neutrality are inevitably steps toward greater accuracy (Nagel 1979; Nagel 1986: 208;Williams 1978: 244). If we speak of the neutral conception of reason in refer­ ence to the idea that neutrality is a regulative ideal for all world-guided thought, we can say that this post-structuralist stance bears the imprint of the neutral conception of reason in inverted form. In segueing from insisting on the need for ethically non-neutral resources to concluding that any claims to objective authority are misplaced, its advocates respect the neutral conception’s constraints, while also depicting its image of neutral access to the world as forever out of reach. There are major bodies of liberating social theory that break more cleanly from the neutral conception of reason.These are the work of theorists who echo the post-structuralist criticism of the imperialist, racist, and sexist violence that has been done in the name of false ideals of neutrality while also resisting the thought, internal to the neutral conception, that we are obliged to impugn the cognitive legitimacy of modes of thought simply on the grounds that they are ethically non-neutral. A central concern of feminist and Black epistemologies, for instance, has been arguing that we are right to resist this thought (Crary 2002; Mills 1998; Mills 2020), and, even independent of these traditions, a powerful case can be made for thinking that the influence of the neutral conception outstrips the merits of arguments offered in its favor (Crary 2019b). So, there is good reason to hold that ethically non-neutral methods are necessary for fighting ideologies, and that, far from being necessarily non-rational measures, these methods are essential for objectively capturing decisive aspects of the social world.This point about how to understand and challenge ideologies is germane to the current discussion of dehumanization via animalizing ideologies because, in maneuvering to resist such ideologies, we wind up at least tacitly assessing the assumptions about human and animal moral standing that they encode, and we need to ensure that our assessments aren’t shaped by “neutral” assumptions that obstruct our ability to devise effective strategies of resistance.

10.3 Theoretical concerns about “dehumanization” as a critical category Consider against this backdrop a set of disputes about whether we are justified in referring to animalizing (and similar) ideologies as “dehumanizing.”Taken at face-value, discourses in which “dehumanization” is used to pick out humanly degrading modes of speech and conduct pre­ suppose that human beings, as such, merit specific forms of treatment and that it is possible to speak of circumstances in which they fail to receive such treatment (see Frick in this volume). It 161

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is, hence, unsurprising to find arguments against a critical emphasis on the notion of dehuman­ ization in the work of theorists who are skeptical about the classic idea that merely being human matters morally.Yet many of these arguments undercut their own apparent claims to be pertinent to animalizing ideologies by taking on board the constraints of neutral conceptions of reason that block a clear view of these and other ideologies’ workings. The analytic moral philosopher Kate Manne, for instance, sets out to challenge what she sees as overreliance on the idea of dehumanization in social theory, declaring that theorists shouldn’t appeal to “characteristically humanist explanations of abhorrent behavior as often as they do” (Manne 2016: 391). Manne bases her attack on dehumanization-talk squarely on doubts about whether the bare fact of being human is practically significant, and she derives her doubts from her commitment to a neutral conception of reason. Her starting point is the view, entailed by this conception, that beliefs about the world are, as such, ethically neutral in the sense of being practically inert. Or, as she puts it, she starts from the “Humean Theory of Motivation, according to which beliefs and other ‘world-guided’ mental states don’t motivate by themselves” (Manne 2016: 397). Manne tacitly assumes that the category “human being” is a category for picking out worldly things. Pairing this natural assumption about the category “human being” with a “neutral” view of the practical inertness of world-guided thought, she concludes that merely being human is not of practical significance and that it has such significance only when yoked to “a suitable desire or other world-guiding mental state” (Manne 2016: 397). Manne is in good company, within analytic ethics, in making these moves. Her counterparts include prominent bioethicists such as Peter Singer and Jeff McMahan who favor analogous cases for the view that being human is by itself morally insignificant (McMahan 2010; Singer 2010). While these bioethicists mostly do not criticize emancipatory discourses that accent the notion of dehu­ manization, their view of the moral indifference of mere humanity represents a rebuke to such discourses. Manne uses her own defense of this view to attack the idea that cruel behavior “often stems from the perpetrators’ dehumanizing view of their targets” (Manne 2016: 398), thereby effectively employing the neutral conception’s logic to argue that we should be more hesitant to speak of dehumanization. Turning to the literature on post-humanism, we find additional arguments against critical overreliance on dehumanization-talk that start from forms of skepticism about the moral sig­ nificance of bare humanity and presuppose, albeit in a different manner, restrictions of the neu­ tral conception of reason. Post-humanists tend to arrive at their skeptical stance by adopting a roughly post-structuralist image of discourse that draws, in the aforementioned inverted form, on the neutral conception of reason insofar as it takes the claim that all mental contact with the world is irredeemably marked by sensibility to imply that world-guided categories are irredeemably non-objective (Wolfe 2010: 88 and 176–177). Because post-humanist theorists regard world-directed intellectual resources as necessarily colored by sensitivities, they can allow that some of these categories are, as such, ethically charged. But they resist saying that merely being human matters morally.This is because, as it appears here, no world-guided categories do objective justice to how things are. So, there seems to be no way to insist with objective authority that particular modes of treatment are humanly degrading. To represent claims about humanly debasing behavior as having such authority would inevitably be to lapse into ethnocentrism (Wolfe 2003: 48–53; Wolfe 2010: 88–89). Not all post-humanist theorists who develop this “neutrally inflected” line of reasoning contest the use of “dehumanization” as an important critical term. But all are positioned to do so. For here it seems confused to appeal to “claims to knowledge about human beings” either to demonstrate the wrongness of practices and institutions that we see as degrading or to demonstrate the superiority of practices and institutions that we see as properly respectful of humans (inset quote from Rorty 1998: 117). The apparent upshot 162

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is that—as Richard Rorty maintains in an influential post-structuralism-influenced attack on humanist thinking—we should drop efforts to establish our rational right to speak of harms of dehumanization (Rorty 1998). The fact that these two sets of arguments against dehumanization-talk are shaped by conceptions of reason ill-suited for illuminating ideological formations should give anyone interested in clear-sighted responses to animalizing ideologies reason to mistrust them. Moreover, we can easily find thoughtful support for dehumanization discourse in the form of defenses of the idea that merely being human matters morally.Admittedly, some of these defenses are them­ selves designed to respect the logic of the neutral conception of reason. Some Kantian moral philosophers, for instance, claim that Kant represents “humanity” as a legitimate, morally loaded concept, consistent with this logic, treating it not as a theoretical resource but rather as an exclu­ sively practical tool for tracing the structure of rational agency (e.g., Korsgaard 2009; Korsgaard 2018). Yet there are notable defenses of the moral importance of bare humanity that openly reject the restrictions of the neutral conception of reason. Hostility to the neutral conception is a hallmark of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy (Crary 2019b), and there are philosophers who take their cue from Wittgenstein in rejecting the conception’s constraints and also argue that the plain fact of being human is morally significant.The heart of these projects is a Wittgenstein-inspired approach to mind on which there is an ineradicably ethical dimension to mental attribution.The idea is that we can only use mental concepts with authority if our image of the human individ­ uals to whom we’re applying them is suffused by an ethically non-neutral conception of what is humanly important (Cavell 1979; Winch 1987). By suggesting that, in ethics, humans come into empirical view in a manner permeated by conceptions of human flourishing, this approach to mind equips us to affirm that humans, as such, are morally important (Crary 2016: Section 4.2; Diamond 1991b). It provides support for the idea that “dehumanization” is a valid critical term in a way that, because independent of the constraints of the neutral conception of reason, is compatible with helpful analyses of (animalizing and other) ideologies. Against this backdrop, it makes sense to retain the term “dehumanization” for thinking about resistance to animalizing ideologies.

10.4 On not saying: “We are not animals” It is common for members of social groups subjected to dehumanization via animalization to resist by protesting that they are not animals.The critic Syl Ko gives a persuasive account of this mode of political protest in reference to anti-Black racism in the United States. Ko notes that “the label animal was one of the most destructive ever applied to us,” and she goes on to observe that “it’s no wonder that one way we have historically sought and continue to seek social visi­ bility is by asserting our ‘humanity’ [and rejecting this label]” (Syl Ko 2017: 20). Kim likewise describes how defiant insistence on superiority to animals has been pivotal for struggles against anti-Black racism and for civil rights (Kim 2011; Kim 2019), and there is ample evidence of the same tone of insistence in struggles against many other animalizing ideologies, including, for instance, some that have targeted other racialized groups (Crary 2019a) and some that have targeted the cognitively disabled (Crary 2018c; see also Wilson in this volume). These responses to animalizing ideologies depend for their force on reasserting the ideologies’ denigration of animals.The strategy is to valorize the human beings in question by repositioning them above—presumably abject—animals. It is not difficult to understand the strategy’s appeal. Many liberation movements derive their inspiration from the idea, discussed in the last section, that all humans are owed respect simply in virtue of their humanity, and assumptions about human superiority to animals have been a common feature in thought about how to account 163

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for this idea. One place to see this is in the history of discussions about human dignity. There is a tradition running back to Cicero, arguably reaching its apex in Kant, in which humans are represented as having a worth—dignity—that is a function of “how greatly the nature of a man surpasses domestic animals and other beasts” (Cicero [44BC] 1991: 41; for Kant’s take on dignity, see Kant [1785] 2012: 47; Kant [1786] 1991: 225).The rise of the contemporary animal protec­ tionist movement in the 1970s brought with it efforts to conceive human dignity in ways that do not involve placing humans above animals (Butler 2006; Nussbaum 2007; Satz 2013; Sen 2005), with some theorists arguing explicitly in favor of talk not only of human but also of animal dig­ nity (Gruen 2014; Nussbaum 2006). But there has been a revival of interest in dignity as a core concept for political thought, and one striking thing about this trend—sometimes labeled the “new dignitarianism”—is that it resuscitates without commentary the idea of human superiority over animals (Anderson 2014; Kateb 2011; Rosen 2012; Waldron 2012; for remarks on how animals figure within this corpus, see Kymlicka 2018; Rossello 2017). Granted the continued influence of such “human supremacism” (Kymlicka 2018), it is natural for animalized individuals to resist oppression by denying they are animals and claiming what is seen as a more elevated human status. For all of its naturalness, this move is arguably politically limited. One consideration against it is the sociologically well-documented fact that the abuse of humans often accompanies the abuse of animals. It is, for instance, well established that households in which animals are abused are likely to be sites of the abuse of women and children (Adams 1995;Arkow and Ascione 1999; Zinley 2007). It has also been demonstrated that industrial slaughterhouses, sites of the callous treatment of animals, are often locations of substantial human rights violations (see, e.g., Compa 2004; Schlosser 2002: Chapters 7 and 8; Stull and Broadway 2004: Chapter 5). Or, again, sites of the large-scale clearing of tropical and other forests, which feature the wholesale uprooting or killing of animal populations, are often scenes of the devastation of vulnerable human groups. With an eye to making sense of observations along these lines, social psychologists set out to demonstrate a causal tie between modes of thought and conduct that place animals normatively beneath humans and the dehumanization of outgroups.There is good evidence for what is called the “interspecies model of prejudice”; that is, the view that “beliefs in a human–animal divide set the foundation for outgroup dehumanization” (Costello and Hodson 2014: 178; see also Dhont et al. 2016; Hodson et al. 2014). Granted that “inculcating attitudes of human superiority over animals worsens, rather than alleviates, the dehumanization of minorities, immigrants, and other outgroups” (Kymlicka 2017: 13), it is non-optimal to organize against animalizing ideologies by protesting that oppressed humans are not animals and thereby simply reinscribing the subjuga­ tion of animals. This doesn’t mean that liberating movements centered on such protests are never locally successful. History indicates otherwise (e.g., Kim 2018). It does, however, mean that, whatever their local value, liberating movements centered on the idea that animalized humans are not animals reassert discursive patterns that make future dehumanizing trends more likely. A more far-reaching liberating strategy would need to affirm that members of an animalized human group have claims to consideration equal to those of other humans and, moreover, affirm this without placing the relevant individuals on top of a normative human–animal ranking. It is pos­ sible to find support for the requisite notion of human moral equality in the work of Kantian moral philosophers who argue for inheriting fundamental themes from Kant’s ethics in a manner that eliminates Kant’s own intimations of a human dignity involving placement above animals (Korsgaard 2018: esp. Part II). But these Kantian enterprises are arguably unhelpful because they tend to presuppose a neutral conception of reason that is of little help for making sense of the— animalizing—ideologies at issue in the current discussion.The Wittgenstein-inspired defenses of 164

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the moral importance of mere humanity touched on earlier are more promising because they baldly repudiate the neutral conception’s restrictions—by suggesting that, if we are to arrive at the sort of empirical grasp of human beings we seek in ethics, we need our vision of human life to be irradiated by a (non-neutral) conception of human flourishing. Moreover, in making this suggestion, these projects’ authors aver that merely being human matters morally and do so without implying that human moral standing somehow involves elevation above the status of other animals. This is a necessary but not sufficient step toward a more far-reaching liberating politics. It is insufficient to affirm the equal and “not-superior-to-animals” moral worth of humans because by itself this gesture does nothing to challenge the denigrating understandings of animals encoded in animalizing rhetoric and practices. Such understandings of animals, while not transhistorical, have been prevalent at numerous times and places (see, e.g.,Thomas 1983: 4.1).They are a char­ acteristic feature of advanced industrial societies, where on a massive scale in many settings (e.g., confined feeding operations, industrial abattoirs, aquafarms, laboratories, and sites of the largescale clearance of forests) animals are treated as morally indifferent objects that are available to be exploited in any way that achieves a recognized human aim. Here and now no critical response to dehumanization via animalization can free itself from the politically corrosive idea of human superiority to animals unless it directly challenges dismissive attitudes toward animals.

10.5 An excursus on animals and ethics In the search for ways of elevating animals’ moral standing without implying that this standing is inferior to that of human beings, it seems reasonable to turn to the literature on animal ethics that has sprung up in tandem with the contemporary animal protectionist movement.What we find is that some of the most well-known of contributions to animal ethics are unsatisfactory, not only because they fail to satisfy these desiderata, but because they also weaken our sense of ani­ malizing ideologies’ perniciousness by tacitly contesting the idea that these ideologies are forms of dehumanization. In doing so they accept constraints of a neutral conception of reason that obscures our understanding of the ideologies’ workings. The most widely discussed family of approaches to animal ethics draws its original inspiration from the work of Peter Singer and some of his collaborators and colleagues. Although textbook accounts of these approaches don’t mention their guiding philosophical assumptions, for the purposes of this chapter it’s helpful to bear the following in mind. We already saw that Singer and some of his colleagues presuppose both a neutral conception of reason and an understanding of “human being” as a theoretical category, appealing to these presuppositions in arriving at the view that merely being human is morally indifferent.These thinkers also reason along analogous, “neutral” lines to the conclusion that merely being an animal of some kind is morally indif­ ferent. So, it appears to them that establishing that a human or an animal has moral status is a matter of finding theoretical grounds for that status. This is the backdrop against which Singer et al. develop their influential views of human and animal moral status. Their starting point is the thought that such status is grounded in individual mental capacities, such as the capacity for suffering (see Machery in this volume).With an eye to showing that animals should be treated better, Singer and others then invite us to think about humans with severe cognitive impairments, arguing in reference to these individuals that there is no morally salient capacity that all humans possess and no animals do, and hence no justification for treating animals worse than compar­ ably endowed humans.That is their basic argument for the view that many animals merit more consideration than they currently receive (see, e.g., Dombrowski 1997; Kagan 2019; McMahan 2005; McMahan 2010; Rachels 1990; Singer 2009; Singer 2010). Critics of the argument have 165

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taken issue with its representation of humans with severe cognitive impairments as meriting less solicitude in virtue of their impairments (for surveys of the critical literature, see Crary 2018b; Crary 2018c). So, even if the argument were helpful for contesting some animalizing ideologies, it is unhelpful for contesting the—historically real and atrociously violent—animalization of humans with cognitive disabilities. But, in fact, this Singer-style argument is not clearly a good resource for combating animalizing ideologies.This is because it ties creatures’ moral statuses to their individual capacities of mind, and because creatures typically have the capacities typical for their species, with homo sapiens typically having sophisticated psychological faculties that enrich whichever capacities are taken to be morally salient, giving them greater claims to solicitude in most cases.While Singer and others call for radically improving the way animals are treated, their thinking, thus, still bears the traces of the sort of human–animal normative hierarchy associated with animalizing ideologies (even if the intellectual terrain has recently been complicated by a new contribution to the Singerian tradition in animal ethics that explicitly claims to identify a people–animal hierarchy, aspiring to be hierarchical in a sense in which even Singer’s own theory is not (Kagan 2019)). Additionally, since the sort of Singer-style argument at issue presupposes that merely being human is morally insignificant, thereby undercutting the idea that “human” is a moral category, it forfeits the pragmatically valuable thought that animalizing ideologies are wrong because they dehumanize. Consider now what is arguably the second most high-profile set of approaches to animal ethics; namely, a set developed in the writings of post-humanist theorists. As noted earlier, posthumanists characteristically operate with roughly post-structuralist accounts of discourse that bear the imprint of the neutral conception of reason in a transposed form.These theorists display their “neutral” commitments by taking the idea that all world-guided resources are necessarily non-neutral to imply that such resources invariably fail to afford an objective taken on the world. The basic account of discourse that emerges accommodates the possibility of categories that are world-guided and, as such, morally charged, including not only, as discussed earlier, such cat­ egories of human beings but also such categories of animals of different kinds (see Wolfe 2010: 83–85). The account thus seems to make it possible to depict human beings and animals as mattering morally, and, indeed, to make this possible in a manner free from any hint of a norma­ tive hierarchy. Post-humanist projects may thus appear to afford clear support to efforts to combat animalizing ideologies. But this appearance is deceptive. Post-humanists favor accounts of dis­ course from which it seems to follow that, even supposing that we develop satisfactory—ethic­ ally loaded and non-hierarchically-ordered—concepts of humans and animals, we are obliged to erode the authority of any critical gestures we use these concepts to make by conceding that, by our own lights, the concepts’ applications lack objective authority.This tendency to undercut the objective authority of the moral concept “human” in particular, like the analogous (if differently motivated) move of analytic bioethicists like Singer, is problematic in that it sabotages the polit­ ically potent thought that the cardinal sin of animalizing ideologies is dehumanization. Alongside other respects in which the foregoing two sets of views of animals’ moral standing are unhelpful for resisting animalizing ideologies, these views are shaped by neutral conceptions of reason that fail to shed light on the workings of ideologies. If the goal is to affirm the moral standing of animals in a manner supportive of liberating politics, we need to look elsewhere. Within the animal ethics literature, there are suggestive strategies for showing that animals matter in a way that neither situates them morally below human beings nor waffles on the issue of objective authority. While Kant is not obviously a friend to animals, Korsgaard has spent the last decades developing a revised Kantian strategy that fits this description (Korsgaard 2018: Chapter 1). But Korsgaard’s neo-Kantian take on animals, like her Kantian take on human beings, presupposes the logic of a neutral conception of reason (Korsgaard 2018: 11–12, 95, and 145), 166

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and there is good reason to think that, if we are to advance the critique of animalizing ideologies, we need a compelling story about animals and ethics that, while also satisfying other desiderata, refuses this logic. One place to find such a story is in a body of work that follows up on the approach to mind, associated with Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, sketched two sections back. The cornerstone of this approach is the idea that we can only extend mental concepts with authority if our understanding of the human individuals to whom they apply is infused by a (non-neutral) conception of what is humanly important. What distinguishes the counterpart projects in animal ethics at issue is an analogous view of animal minds. These projects’ authors bring out how in ethics animals likewise come empirically into view in a manner essentially permeated by our (non-neutral) conceptions of what is important for the kinds of animals in question.They show that this ethically infused view of animal minds can be used to support the conclusion that merely being an animal is morally salient (Crary 2016, 4.3; Diamond 1991a; Gaita 2002), thereby defending a strategy for showing that, like humans, animals matter just as the kinds of creatures they are. Here there is no trace of any normative human–animal hierarchy, and there is no suggestion that we are obliged to deny the objective authority of reasoning about respect owed to animals. This is the kind of resource for thinking about the moral standing of animals that a liberating, anti-dehumanizing politics calls for. This section’s main line of thought suggests that there is a yet tighter connection between harming animals and harming human beings than has thus far been indicated. What emerges is that, whether we are trying to get humans or animals into view in ethics, we need the same basic cognitive capacities—capacities for imaginatively seeing what’s in front of us in the light of specific ethical conceptions. If this is right, then, in addition to talking about the causal tie that cognitive psychologists and other social scientists have found between behavior harmful to animals and behavior harmful to humans, we can speak of a conceptual connection between these two modes of behavior. We can say that in treating animals cruelly we are degrading the very kinds of capacities we need in order to be able do justice to human beings in ethics and politics.

10.6 Resisting dehumanization via animalization We now have before us a picture of what it is to resist dehumanization through animalization. It is, we saw, politically ill-advised and ethically problematic—albeit utterly comprehensible—to resist by protesting that members of an oppressed human group are not animals. Questions of pol­ itical strategy, complemented by considerations of justice to animals, speak for affirming the value of animalized humans simply as humans (and not as beings somehow superior to animals) while at the same time affirming the value of animals of different kinds simply as the creatures they are (and not as beings somehow inferior to humans). Effective gestures of affirmation will be nonneutral in the sense of being practical and imaginative, involving efforts to improve our sense of what is important for the—human and nonhuman—beings in question and to assess these changes in our ethical conceptions by asking whether allowing them to pervade our perception distorts our vision, or whether instead it enables us to see the—human and nonhuman—beings more clearly. This discussion would be incomplete without concrete examples of how and where the imaginative, political, and intellectual work under discussion—the work of bringing humans and animals into focus in ways that advance attacks on dehumanization via animalization—gets done. First, activists who aim to bring out the humanity of animalized humans face substantial challenges. Practices in which members of dominant human groups use invidious comparisons to animals to dehumanize their human fellows are typically structured by conceptions of human flourishing that are distorted in ways that reflect the self-image of the dominant group. 167

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Consider, for instance, the United States, a society in which modes of animalization have been, and continue to be, internal to the social meaning of Blackness. To appreciate political difficulties of combating forms of animalization that are partly constitutive of anti-Black racism we need to register that in the U.S.“human” is frequently employed for “a certain way of being, especially exemplified by how one looks or behaves, what practices are associated with one’s community, and so on” that aligns with constructions of whiteness (Syl Ko 2017: 23).A number of historians have undertaken to show how assumptions about humanity thus became racialized. These scholars explain that major periods of European colonialism coincided with European zeal for classificatory systems distinguishing humans from great apes, and they also explain that the resulting accounts of human–ape differences not only depicted the manners and modes of con­ duct of privileged Europeans as distinctively human but also in gender-inflected ways that treated Eurocentric gender-norms having to do with one’s skin color, gestural habits, texture and length of hair, tone of voice, and posture as integral to femininity (Morgan 2004; Schiebinger 1993; Sebastiani in this volume). The contributions of these historians are invaluable, demonstrating that prevalent conceptions of human flourishing bear the warped marks of histories of violent racist repression. But to disempower the racist images of humanity internal to animalizing ideolo­ gies, we need something more (on this general methodological point, see Timár in this volume). It is also necessary to develop practices of looking upon social interactions under white suprema­ cism more clear-sightedly, through the lens of the more just images these historians position us to form. Generations of anti-racist activists have striven to develop such practices.This includes Ida B. Wells and members of the National Association of Colored People (NAACP) whose anti-lynching campaigns centered on reclaiming, not eliminating, the postcards and other photo­ graphic material associated with the terror so viewers would see them for the horrors they were (Crary 2020), and it includes the analogously resignifying Twitter tactics of activists associated with Black Lives Matter (BLM) (Threadcraft 2017: 557–559). Generations of anti-racist artists have similarly contributed to shifting the way we look upon racialized social interactions in the United States.This includes historical Black-led efforts to counter racist ideology through film, for instance, at the Lincoln Motion Picture Company and in the productions of Oscar Micheaux (see Taylor 2016: 41, 50 and 59–60), and it includes efforts by BLM-associated documentary and narrative filmmakers such as Ava DuVernay and Barry Jenkins, and painters such as Chris Ofili, to get viewers to see the grace and pathos in overlooked and denigrated modes of Black expression (Gooding-Williams 2020). Within these sorts of efforts to bring out animalized humans’ humanity, there need be no suggestion of a wrongheaded exceptionalism that represents humans as in some sense immune to—or above—the vulnerability and accidents of animal life. On the contrary, nothing stands in the way of describing these projects as attempts to affirm the individual human beings’ moral standing as the animals they are. This way of speaking is available because, as we saw, affirming the moral standing of animals as the kinds of animals they are is necessary for combating animal­ izing ideologies and because, in undertaking this project of affirmation, animal activists confront challenges analogous to those confronted by activists who want to bring out the humanity of animalized humans. Within animalizing ideologies, animals of different kinds are represented as meriting the cruel and callous treatment urged on human beings. So, in societies in which these ideologies are prevalent, animal activists who strive to bring out the moral importance of denigrated animals need to contest images of these animals that have been distorted by histories of repression.The writings of scholars who describe how animals of particular kinds came to be regarded as morally negligible beings are a key support for such animal activists.There are, for instance, authors who explain how, in different parts of Europe and the United States, many 168

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animals came to be seen as the sorts of exploitable resources that would justify the atrocious treatment to which they are now subjected in laboratories and the industrial food system (Harrison 1964; Merchant 1980), and who thereby show that, far from being unvarying and unquestionable, denigrating views of animals arise in specific historical and political contexts. But to deprive these views of their force, we need to do more than historicize them. It’s also necessary to cultivate new, more accurate, habits of looking at animals, as creatures to whom things matter, so that the horror of what humans are doing to them is taken for what it is, as a horror demanding an urgent response. Over the last fifty years, a steadily increasing number of animal activists have dedicated themselves to fostering such habits. This includes, among others, sanctuary directors, such as Gene Baur, who create space for members of the public to interact with and see “farm” animals as creatures with individual life trajectories (Baur 2008), and it includes photographers, such as Isa Leshko, who, by taking these same animals as subjects for portraits, likewise enable us to see them as individuals who matter (Leshko 2019). It includes authors, like Jonathan Safran Foer, who use literary gestures to try to get us to see the momentousness of the killing and eating of animals (Safran Foer 2009), and it includes any number of painters, filmmakers, and other artists, who, as or alongside participants in animal protectionist organizations, try to get us to see animals, not as tools for use, but as creatures, like us, irrevocably launched on mortal voyages. The efforts of these animal activists, when undertaken in social settings in which dehuman­ ization through animalization is rampant, are rightly regarded as integral to efforts to fight dehumanization. This is because these individuals are positioning us to recognize particular animals as having moral standing just as the kinds of animals they are, not as beings somehow inferior to humans, and because they are thereby subverting the idea of a human–animal normative hierarchy. Granted that normative hierarchies that subjugate animals baldly mis­ represent animals’ moral importance, it should be clear that, far from simply providing indif­ ferent hooks on which to hang oppressive ideologies, these hierarchies actively set the stage for the ideologies, inflicting on animals violence of the very sort that hierarchical thinking prepares us to inflict on human beings.We might rightly conclude—to use a formulation of Theodor Adorno’s—that cruelties done to animals will “reappear…irresistibly in cruelties done to [animalized] human beings, the perpetrators having again and again to reassure them­ selves that it is ‘only an animal’, because they could never fully believe this even of animals” (Adorno 1974: 105).

Note 1 My thanks to Cayla Clinkenbeard, Nathaniel Hupert, Maria Kronfeldner, Tara Mastrelli, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on a draft of this chapter.

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11

DEHUMANIZATION, DISABILITY,

AND EUGENICS

Robert A. Wilson

11.1 Introduction Eugenics and dehumanization are often thought to be closely related because the best-known state-sponsored eugenic program—that of the Nazis, from 1933 until 1945—involved the extreme dehumanization of certain sorts of people, such as Jewish people and people with disabilities (Black 2003: Chs.15–17; Smith 2001). Under the Nazi regime, there was the systematic segregation, internment, sterilization, and murder of such people. This formed part of an explicit program of genocide and extermination of Jewish people and people with disabilities (amongst others), who were subject to such treatment because they were deemed to be less than fully human and, in some cases, had “lives without value” or “lives not worth living” (Binding and Hoche 1920; Proctor 1988;Taylor 2015).They were not merely viewed as different from those that the Nazis envisaged as populating the Third Reich, but they were depicted as inferior sorts of people: Untermenschen (subhumans) or a Gegenrasse (counter-race) who lacked the desired characteristics and abilities to stock future generations (Stone 2010; see Steizinger, this volume).Thus, we find the standard tropes of dehumanization—assimilating Jews to vermin and social diseases, comparing disabled people to burdensome animals—in Nazi propaganda and in public forms of state communication. These dehumanizing depictions were sufficiently extreme in nature that the Nazi state apparatus, with the support of the German volk, could see itself justified not simply in protecting the German nation from the concocted threats posed by such sorts of people, but as dutifully eliminating those threats from present and future generations altogether. In the name of eugenics, between 70 000 to 100 000 German citizens with disabilities (Weindling 2014) were systematically murdered by the Nazis through the Aktion T4 euthanasia program early in the Second World War; approximately 6 000 000 Jews were murdered during the more temporally and geographically expansive geno­ cidal Holocaust that was the culmination of the Nazi enthusiasm for “racial hygiene,” or eugenics. Recognition of the dehumanizing nature of these genocidal and murderous laws and policies is often thought to have been important in the ending of what I have called the “short history” of eugenics (Wilson 2018a: Ch.2), that being a history that runs for the 80 years between Galton’s early thoughts about eugenics in 1865 and the end of the Second World War in 1945.What about eugenics itself? Is there something about the very idea of eugenics itself that is dehumanizing or, instead, should we properly reserve that judgment about eugenics for extreme implementations of the practice of it, such as one finds in Nazi laws and policies? 173

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Addressing these questions will involve shifting from contexts of mass violence to those in which dehumanization operates in more subtle ways (High 2015; see Milam, this volume).The question is neither rhetorical nor merely what is sometimes called (disparagingly) a “matter of academic interest,” for two reasons. Contemporary philosophers and bioethicist have explored forms of eugenics in a more favor­ able light under the headings of utopian eugenics (Kitcher 2000), liberal eugenics (Agar 2004), and moderate eugenics (Selgelid 2014). Here, their discussions link directly to social policies and norms governing our thinking about biotechnological advances, such as those concerning “procreative beneficence” (Savulescu 2001; Savulescu 2008; Savulescu and Kahane 2009).These explorations might be seen as aiming to sift the worthy wheat at the core of eugenics from the dehumanizing chaff that is mixed together with it as a result of the association of eugenics with what might be thought of as its “Nazification.” As Selgelid says, circumspectly, “The fact that the previous practice of eugenics was bad does not imply that eugenics, per se, is necessarily an altogether bad thing or that a better future eugenics would not be possible” (Selgelid 2014: 6).This note of inferential caution about “eugenics, per se” is well-taken. I would issue my own caution about signaling the possibility of a “better future eugenics,” however, in light of a second reason for viewing the question of whether eugenics itself is dehumanizing as more than merely academic. From the standpoint of many people with disabilities, eugenics does not feel that distant from their lived experience (Garland-Thomson 2012; Kafer 2013; Wilson 2018b). Whether or not Selgelid himself intends to convey a more enthusiastic view of a possible eugenic future, from the perspective of those with disabilities, especially disabilities that were the focus of past eugenic policies, practices, and laws, even signaling the possibility of a brighter eugenic future functions as a red flag. Since eugenics viewed from such a standpoint seems very much a project aimed at eliminating people like them, identifying a possible “better future eugenics” exemplifies the eugenic logic (Garland-Thomson 2012) that they are all too familiar with. Be that as it may, to address further the question of whether eugenics in and of itself is dehu­ manizing, one needs to understand both the context in which Nazi eugenics developed and the general ideas at the heart of eugenics. First, consider the context.

11.2 Eugenics: Heart and history Eugenics made its legislative appearance in Germany during the first six months of the Nazi regime’s rule in July 1933 in the form of a sterilization law, a law modeled in part on a Prussian law drafted in the previous year. It mandated sterilization for people with a variety of conditions, including those thought to have hereditary forms of schizophrenia, blindness, and deafness, as well as chronic alcoholics, epileptics, those with Huntington’s chorea, and “mental defectives.”This sterilization law was further extended later in 1933 to allow for the castration of criminals and homosexuals and was used as the basis for sterilizing “mixed race” children from 1935 onward, although the law did not strictly allow for their sterilization (Weindling 2014; see Steizinger, this volume). The interwar beginnings of Nazi eugenics were located in an international milieu in which eugenic ideas, practices, policies, and laws were commonplace. For example, by the early 1930s, more than thirty North American state or provincial jurisdictions had passed eugenic steriliza­ tion laws, typically multiple times as these laws were modified or amended, often in order to avoid legal challenges based in the violation of constitutional rights. In Europe, Denmark passed a eugenic sterilization law in 1929, and the other Scandinavian countries—Norway, Sweden, and Finland—followed suit in 1934 and 1935 (Broberg and Roll-Hansen 1996). The Nazis passed their first eugenic sterilization law not only in an accepting international political context (Paul 1995: Ch.5; Proctor 1988: Ch.4), but also against the background of a supportive scientific 174

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community; large International Eugenics Congresses were held in London in 1912, and in New York in 1921 and 1932 (Kühl 2013). Moreover, as Allan Chase (1977), Edwin Black (2003), and Stephan Kühl (1994) have each argued, the Nazis viewed themselves in the early 1930s as extending what was commonly practiced in North America.They even based their sterilization legislation on Harry Laughlin’s “model sterilization law”, developed over the preceding decade at the Eugenics Records Office in Cold Spring Harbor in New York. Although the international reach of eugenic ideas was vast, not all countries in which those ideas had significant support enacted eugenic laws. For example, despite being home to active eugenics societies with prominent supporters and spokespersons, neither Great Britain nor Australia passed eugenic sterilization laws. In countries such as Portugal, Spain, and Brazil, eugenics was cast racially but did not lead to substantial sterilization or immigration laws anchored in eugenic ideas. In Asia, eugenic thinking was implemented in laws and social policies typically after 1945, often being associated with policies of population growth control, as was also the case in China and in India (Connelly 2008; Kühl 2013). Eugenics itself began three generations earlier as a progressive-sounding, meliorative project of intergenerational human improvement. It was articulated as such a project by the polymath Francis Galton in the last third of the 19th century, starting with a pair of articles in the popular British magazine, Macmillans (Galton 1865). Galton’s eugenics arose within a broader context in which evolutionary thinking had been adapted to social transformation and change, with forms of artificial selection having been moved to center stage in Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Darwin’s classic “one long argument” for natural selection begins, after all, with an extended analogy between the power of artificial selection—directed by human agency and applied to farming animal stocks and plant species—and of selection without such direc­ tion—natural selection. This analogy and focus on human improvement sometimes creates the impression that early eugenic thought was chiefly directed at what later would be called positive eugenics, the selection of desirable traits to be passed down to future generations.Yet the devel­ opment of eugenics in late 19th-century North America around the so-called eugenic family studies (Rafter 1988; Wilson 2014a) with their focus on “degenerate” families should remind us that negative eugenics was an integral part of eugenic thinking from the outset. Consider two general ideas at the heart of eugenics, brought forcefully together by Galton, that go beyond the bare-bones idea that eugenics is a project of human improvement.These are, first, the idea that human reproductive value is unevenly distributed both within and across human populations, and second, the idea that we can harness the insights of science and technology to direct the constitution of human populations over generational time. As Galton said in defining the term “eugenics” in 1883, eugenics is “[t]he science of improving stock, not only by judicious mating, but whatever tends to give the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had” (Galton 1883: 25n).What the science of eugenics was to do was to provide the means both to distinguish those of higher quality reproductive value from those of lower quality reproductive value, and to guide, constrain, and even shape human populations to promote higher-quality people in future generations.

11.3 Eugenic traits and reproductive value To say that human reproductive potential is unevenly distributed within and across human populations is a euphemistic way of expressing the idea that some people have traits that make them more valuable as hereditary contributors to future generations, while others have traits that make them less valuable in this respect.That is because the traits themselves have differential value to human society and are assumed to be heritable. 175

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Such traits are what I have elsewhere (Wilson 2014b) called eugenic traits: traits that are the basis for treating people thought to have them differentially via eugenic ideas, policies, laws, and practices. Eugenic traits include both valued traits, such as high intelligence, and devalued traits, such as intellectual disability. Historically, the most common eugenic traits that served as the basis for the eugenic practice of eugenic sterilization in at least North America were feeblemindedness, mental deficiency, epilepsy, and relatively indeterminate forms of mental illness, such as insanity (Wilson 2018a: Ch.3; see also Kaelber n.d.; Reilly 2015). Here, many eugenic traits are disabilities. The exemplary and historically predominant eugenic traits for sterilization indicate that intel­ lectual abilities and psychiatric tendencies loom large when eugenic evaluations are made. In other contexts, race and ethnicity and their proxies, such as country of origin or geographical ancestry, have functioned as eugenic traits, such as when they have been the basis for eugenic immigration policies. Consider the 1924 Johnson-Reid Immigration Act in the United States, which tightened existing quotas for the number of immigrants from certain countries or geo­ graphical regions, or the so-called White Australia Policy, beginning with Australia’s original immigration restriction act in 1901, which included a fifty-word dictation test that could be conducted in any European language and that few people of non-European ancestry passed. In both cases, people of certain colors and ethnicities were excluded as potential immigrants to the United States and Australia because they were viewed as less suitable “races” to stock these growing nations (Baynton 2016; Stern 2005; see Esses, Medianu, and Sutter, this volume). So eugenic traits are used to distinguish those perceived as having more valuable reproductive potential from those deemed to have less. Eugenic traits also serve as the basis for social policies, such as sexual sterilization and immigration restriction acts, that directly influence the compos­ ition of future generations. Science and technology can inform social decisions here, such as by developing ways to measure intelligence (e.g., IQ tests) or to quantify ancestry (e.g., genetic tests). Science and technology also contribute to providing the means through which the reproduction of some is curtailed (e.g., surgical sterilization) or promoted (e.g., prenatal genetic diagnosis and in vitro fertilization). One might argue that there is nothing dehumanizing about the detection of eugenic traits per se nor about the uses of science and technology to implement eugenic social policies. Following the pathway explored by proponents of utopian, liberal, or moderate eugenics, the idea here is that even if there have been particular implementations of eugenics during its short history that have dehumanized some people, eugenics is essentially a meliorative project, one that aims to use science and technology to make human lives better over generational time (see also Cavaliere 2018; Glover 2006;Wilson 2019;Wilson and St. Pierre 2016).With recognition of the limits to state-level policies in the regulation of reproductive rights, and assuming respect for the rights of individuals to determine the character of their own life trajectories, eugenics itself need be no more dehumanizing than other forms of preventative health care, bioenhancement, and the technological enabling of individual human flourishing. It is this line of thinking, which I find surprisingly prevalent amongst bioethicists and other applied ethicists, that underlies Selgelid’s gesture toward the possibility of a “better future eugenics,” as well as the application of the idea of procreative beneficence to avoid creating children with disabilities (Barker and Wilson 2019; Garland-Thomson 2020).

11.4 The epistemic importance of standpoint The historical research that has been done on eugenics and ongoing philosophical reflection on the nature and significance of eugenics are often sensitive, however, to the possibility that eugenics may arise in problematic new forms. Yet, despite that sensitivity, very little of that 176

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historical research and philosophical reflection has drawn directly on the voices and perspectives of those who have lived through a eugenic past. When one is focused on the short history of eugenics, ending in 1945, this is understand­ able. This is both because of the distance in time and because of the radically eliminativist outcomes of the implementation of eugenic ideas: murder, euthanasia, and genocide. Despite the respectable place that oral history has established for itself as an epistemic resource over the past forty years, it has only recently been drawn on in understanding eugenics beyond its short history. This has been primarily via the testimony of sterilization survivors from North Carolina in the United States (Begos et al. 2012) and Alberta in Canada (EugenicsArchives.ca; Muir 2014).There are at least three reasons why the voices and narratives of eugenics survivors are important to understanding the dehumanizing effects of eugenics as practiced beyond the extremes of Nazism. First and most straightforwardly, the details provided in audio and video narratives specify numerous ways in which those who became eugenic targets were dehumanized beyond their institutionalization and sterilization.Those details range across the confinements and regimenta­ tion of everyday institutionalized life and include reflections on ignorance about and the belated discovery of sterilizations having been performed on oneself, as well as the downstream sequelae of having been (often wrongfully) classified as “low-grade morons” or “incapable of intelligent parenthood.” For example, children at the Provincial Training School in Red Deer,Alberta, were subject to psychotropic medical experimentation, were typically deceived about the nature of the surgeries that were performed on them, and were subject to extreme physical punishment and extended periods of isolation in what was called “the side room” (Fairbrother 2014a; Fairbrother 2014b).As their stories reveal,Alberta’s eugenics survivors have faced limited employment oppor­ tunities throughout their long post-institutional lives and have been shut out of even adoptive parenthood.This is due to their having been targets of eugenics in the diagnostic labels applied to them, the quality of the education they received, and the fact that they had been institutionalized and sterilized. Thus, a standpoint eugenics—eugenics from the perspective of those most directly marginalized by the associated ideas and practices—is a rich source of content about the forms that dehumanization has actually taken for people classified so as to become targets of eugenics (Dyck 2013;Wilson 2018c). Second, the process of narrative formation itself and its role in constructing shared experiences and community serve to rehumanize the subjective experience of individual survivors (see Machery, this volume).They do so not only by linking survivors together to form kinship-like communities that they were denied through their institutionalization, segregation, and steriliza­ tion, but also by showing the value of the content of what is narrated to audiences and other local community members.This effectively creates a receptive audience for the stories told, drawing attention to how those perspectives have seldom been sought out or heard.The typical absence of the voices and perspectives of those with intellectual disabilities in particular is in part a function of the dehumanized status that they have been accorded in the larger community. By making their oral histories a centerpiece of the constructed collective memory of eugenic his­ tory, the subhumanizing tendency of silence or hearer negligence is at least partly countered (Wilson 2015). Third, the narratives of eugenics survivors have found particular resonance with people living with disabilities. This is especially true around issues of parenting with disability, the uses of reproductive technologies that invite the option to selectively terminate fetuses flagged as having some designated genetic condition—the best-known case being that of Trisomy 21 and Down syndrome—and the eugenic logic behind views that assume it would be better to eliminate dis­ ability in the individual early on than to accommodate to the lived reality of life with disability 177

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later. Connecting people now living with disability with the shared experiences of those sub­ ject to eugenic sterilization more than fifty years ago has been instrumental in motivating a broadening of the concept of eugenic survivorship to include some who are several generations younger than the youngest survivors of eugenic sterilization programs that ended only in the 1970s. This in turn provides a motivating context in which people living with disability today, particularly those parenting with disability in one way or another, can locate their own narratives, understand their own life histories, and form a sense of community that they likely otherwise would lack. It is part of the rehumanization of people living with disability today (see Esses, Medianu, and Sutter, this volume).

11.5 Disability, reproductive technologies, and newgenic traits A focal point for discussions of the continuing effects of a eugenic past on contemporary society has been the relationships between reproductive technologies and disability (Ladd-Taylor 2014; Parens and Asch 2000;Wilson 2017).As already noted, given that disability, especially intellectual disability, has functioned as a strongly negative eugenic trait in the past, people with disabilities tend to view with scepticism the reconsideration of eugenics as a neutral or endorsement-worthy project. Reproductive technologies—including contraception, prenatal screening, and in vitro fertilization—are generally viewed by able-bodied citizens and in public discourse as increasing parental autonomy and are portrayed within medical contexts as health-conducive. Within the disability community, however, such optimism is often viewed as naïve and ignorant about the realities of the eugenic past. In addition, for those with the traits seen as important to prevent in future generations—for example, Down syndrome, spina bifida, blindness—enthusiasm for the view that such technologies provide for the means of human improvement is often taken to be problematic. The best-known of the claims made from the standpoint of those with the very traits targeted in prenatal screening is often called the expressivist objection: the claim that the practice of pre­ natal screening with selective abortion expresses a strongly negative view of people with those traits, a view sufficiently strongly negative to be dehumanizing (Asch 2000; Parens and Asch 1999; Saxton 1997; Saxton 2000). This general claim rests on three others, beginning with a claim about the function of prenatal testing, that we can view as premises in an argument for the expressivist objection: 1. The practice of prenatal testing functions chiefly to detect fetuses that have a biological pro­ file predictive of postnatal impairment. 2. The general expectation (but not requirement) in individual instances of this practice is that a fetus with such a profile will be terminated, rather than carried to term. 3. That expectation implies the judgment that such a fetus is not worth carrying to term to become, in turn, a baby, infant, child, then adult with that impairment. Although one might challenge any one of these claims, it is, typically, the inference being made within the expressivist objection—an inference not about the fetus terminated but, more gen­ erally, about people with these negatively valued traits—that has been challenged. For example, Bonnie Steinbock states,“From the fact that a couple wants to avoid the birth of a child with a disability, it just does not follow that they value less the lives of existing people with disabilities, any more than taking folic acid to avoid spina bifida indicates a devaluing of the lives of people with spina bifida” (Steinbock 2000: 121).What these claims—about a practice that, in effect, aims to prevent the birth of a child with a given impairment—indicate, according to Steinbock, is 178

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simply that the corresponding trait is not value neutral but negative.And this is something that is not dehumanizing of those with the trait. Although Steinbock’s example of taking folic acid is developed in terms of the decisions of individuals, rather than in terms of an overall societal practice, it is worth probing at whether there is something dehumanizing of those with a particular trait within in the practice described by points (1) through (3) that is not present in other societal practices that also aim to avoid or prevent the very same traits from appearing in future generations. One relevant difference that perhaps allows us to understand the attribution of dehumanization is that points (1) through (3) describe a practice of terminating an otherwise desired pregnancy, whereas the general practice of taking, recommending, or even prescribing folic acid does not. The first expresses a view of the trait that is so negatively valued that its presence provides a sufficient reason to terminate a process that would otherwise produce a child with that trait; the second expresses only the view that it would be better, other things being equal, for that individual not to have that trait.That first expression needs to be understood against the historical reality of the devaluation of the lives of people with disabilities.As Asch has said, For people with disabilities to work each day against the societally imposed hardships can be exhausting; learning that the world one lives in considers it better to ‘solve’ problems of disability by prenatal detection and abortion, rather than by expending those resources in improving society so that everyone—including those people who have disabilities—could participate more easily, is demoralizing. It invalidates the effort to lead a life in an inhospitable world. (Asch 2000: 240) The demoralization here is directly connected to the perception of dehumanization: traits such as Down syndrome, spina bifida, or blindness, unlike other less desired traits (such as having an elevated risk of high blood pressure or being hemaphilic), are sufficiently devalued that the indi­ viduals with them are better prevented from coming into existence than accommodated with the challenges they will face as people with those disabilities. Like the eugenic traits of the past, such newgenic traits serve to identify individuals whose lives are not viewed as being as valuable as those without such traits. That connection to shared practices of non-inclusion or even outright elimination makes the contemporary uses of reproductive technologies a site for a form of dehumanization of people with a variety of disabilities, one perceived to be continuous with the eugenic past. More generally, contem­ porary technologies that are deployed to prevent or eliminate disabilities in future generations raise more than the specter of eugenic dehumanization, from the standpoint of those with kindred disabilities.

11.6 How marked human variation dehumanizes Let us take stock of where we are. In Section 11.3, I suggested that the mere designation and detection of eugenic traits itself, based as it is on the idea that people have differential levels of reproductive value, might be thought of as dehumanizing. I concluded that section, however, by returning to the countering thought that eugenics itself is essentially meliorative, contrasting in this respect with particular dehumanizing implementations of the core idea of eugenics. In Sections 11.4 and 11.5, I explained why the standpoints of eugenics survivors and of those who strongly identify with those standpoints make that countering thought an uneasy one to main­ tain. In this section, I probe further into the relationship between eugenics and disability in order to advance this dialectic. 179

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In Enforcing Normalcy, the disability theorist Leonard Davis argued that eugenics served as a crucible for the social construction of disability in the late 19th century (Davis 1995). While Davis’s claim has, rightly, been influential, the resulting constructivist view of disability provides only a limited answer to what I have called the puzzle of marked variation (Wilson 2018a: Ch.5).That puzzle raises questions, in part, about how we think about human variation, and addressing it allows for further reflection on the relationship between eugenics, disability, and dehumanization. The puzzle is this: why is it that, amongst the infinite range of variation we find within human populations, we view some of it as mere variation—variation that hardly draws our attention— and some of it as marked variation, where marked variation becomes the basis for positive and negative evaluations, together with corresponding forms of social expression, such as laws, pol­ icies, and practices? In the context of eugenics, marked variation appears as eugenic traits. So the puzzle of marked variation here is to explain why we distinguish between eugenic traits and mere human variation in the ways in which we do. The general answer I have argued for to the puzzle of marked variation blends together psychological and social dimensions to our perceptions of and responses to marked variation (see Haslam, this volume; Fiske, this volume).We are socio-cognitive beasts, with psychological tendencies to distinguish between those who are like us and those who are unlike us. Those dispositions operate on highly value-laden categorizations of other people, and their content is sensitive to specific social and scientific contexts.With the rise of eugenic thinking and its link to putatively meliorative practices in the late 19th century, those not like us came to be viewed as subnormal, particularly as intellectually and emotionally subnormal.This is a form of cognitively mediated normativity that marks off disability in terms of subnormalcy. It is created, reinforced, and transmitted through individual, extended, and group-level cognition (see Kronfeldner, this volume). Many of the values that underpin the constitutive categorizations of people participating in eugenic thinking are dehumanizing—some essentially so.To negatively value a eugenic trait suf­ ficiently to justify the bodily intervention of compulsory sexual sterilization is to dehumanize those with that trait. Proponents of the expressivist objection would say that the same is true of traits such as Down syndrome, since results from screening and diagnostic tests that elevate awareness of the perceived chance of one’s fetus having Down syndrome are sufficient for the vast majority of pregnant women (or couples) to terminate an otherwise desirable pregnancy. In the first case it is the person sterilized who is treated as less than fully human; in the second case, it is people with Down syndrome, more generally. In both cases, a process beginning with the detec­ tion of marked variation in our species ends with the dehumanization of individuals or putative sorts of people with disabilities. If the psychological tendencies in play here run deep in human nature, as I think they do, this may suggest to some a pessimistic conclusion about our capacity to counter or even resist these forms of dehumanization (Garland-Thomson 2020). Selgelid’s “better future eugenics” is little more than wishful thinking. One might well object to this pessimism as overstating or oversimplifying the relation­ ship between marked variation (and so, disability) and dehumanization. Cognitively mediated normativity that operates through “like us” detectors may well be a part of our species’ psycho­ logical profile.Yet, the values on which it does so are themselves a function of historical contin­ gencies.And those contingencies are subject to social progress and change.To illustrate, consider the cases of race or gender. Both race and gender may serve as inputs to the same kind of “like us” detection mechanisms, and the response to those determined not to be like us may be differential (Kendig 2018). But it doesn’t follow that such detection and response to these kinds of marked variations are 180

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themselves dehumanizing.The detection of race and gender can be—indeed, have been in rela­ tively recent history—socially scaffolded in positive ways.We have come to see these as neutral traits across many contexts in which they are detected, including contexts of employment, demo­ cratic participation, and community leadership.And in other contexts, such as athleticism or care, we have come to valorize those who, in the past, had been negatively valued by virtue of not being “like us.” Disability should be no different here. Whether or not disability should be viewed together with race and gender in this way, the cases of race and gender are indeed instructive for understanding disability as marked variation that dehumanizes. For while there have been changes to the values underlying the perception of gendered and racialized differences that constitute advances and counters to some forms of devaluation, those changes are significantly more pronounced as ideals than as variables that govern our day-to-day perception and response of those differences. The cognitively mediated normativity that operates on racialized and gendered differences certainly need not be dehuman­ izing, and can even be rehumanizing. But, as a matter of fact, it often is dehumanizing, not just historically but in contemporary society. When we turn to disability, the contrast between ideal and reality is even more striking.This is especially so when we consider the possibility of positively valuing what have been negative eugenic traits in the past and are still so in the present. It is logically possible that the detection of, say, intellectual disability as a form of marked variation could go hand in hand with valoriza­ tion, rather than devaluation, as has happened in some ways with race and gender. For example, celebration, rather that approbation and fear, might accompany the discovery during pregnancy that one’s fetus had screened positively for Trisomy 21 and so one’s child was likely to have Down syndrome. Or a diagnosis of schizophrenia in one’s teenage son might bring smiles and sighs of relief.Yet, sadly, this possible world seems very distant from the world we live in. Much like racialized and gendered differences, the actual ways in which such cognitively mediated normativity operates in the world we live in often create pathways of dehumanization. This is because racism, sexism, and ableism are all very real features of our social worlds. Even if we conceptualize the relevant psychological mechanisms here as value neutral, they operate on and reinforce the effects of dehumanizing evaluations of people who are not “like us.” In the case of disability, these dehumanizing evaluations continue to run surprisingly deep, as the valor­ ization thought experiment above indicates. For this reason, the distinction between, if you like, eugenic theory and the practice or implementation of that theory is not sufficiently robust to make one optimistic about the prospects for Selgelid’s “better future eugenics.”

11.7 Understanding the persistence of eugenic dehumanization Whether it is, ultimately, defensible to view practices like prenatal screening with selective ter­ mination (Section 11.5) or the kind of cognitively mediated normativity that I have postulated as underlying eugenic thinking (Section 11.6) as themselves dehumanizing for those who have been targets of eugenics or newgenics remain open issues. By contrast, eugenic sterilization, particularly involuntary eugenic sterilization, is a paradigm of a practice that is widely accepted as dehumanizing (Myerson et al. 1936; Reilly 2015). This is not simply because of its bodily invasiveness, but because of the negative changes that it brings to one’s overall life trajectory. One thing that stands in need of explanation is the persistence of this form of eugenic dehumaniza­ tion beyond 1950, well after the atrocities of Nazi eugenics became well-known, and even as reproductive rights have come to gain wider acceptance as basic rights to which all individuals are entitled. As recounted in Section 11.2, in Alberta eugenic sterilization persisted until the 1970s, as it did in the Scandinavian countries and in a small number of American states. 181

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Moreover, in more recent years a number of cases of sterilization with eugenic undertones have emerged (Women With Disabilities Australia 2013). This includes the sterilization of girls and women with intellectual disabilities in Australia in 2012, of African-American and Latina women in the Californian prison system in 2013, and of low-caste women in the province of Chhattisgarh in India where a long-standing practice of paid sterilization was brought to the wider public eye in 2014 after about twenty women died following their careless sterilization (Wilson 2018b). What is it that explains the staying power of this form of eugenic dehumanization, particularly given its recognition as a core practice in the dark past of eugenics? An appeal to eugenics per se as an endorsable meliorative project seems particularly ill-suited to developing an answer to this question. More generally, the common tendency to search for an explanation here in terms of the positive attraction of powerful ideas should be resisted. Instead, one should move out from the realm of ideas to explore the social mechanics governing eugenic practices themselves in order to explain eugenic sterilization’s staying power (see Smith, this volume). I have suggested elsewhere (Wilson 2018a: Ch.8) that the first step here is to recognize at least some eugenic sterilization as manifesting wrongful accusation—accusation that doesn’t simply happen to get some details wrong about a particular case but that manifests a systematic set of errors that make mistaken categorization, institutionalization, and sterilization robustly supported outcomes. That was certainly the case in Alberta. But this idea of eugenics as wrongful accus­ ation itself derives from taking the standpoint of eugenics survivors seriously, since it was an idea suggested, in nascent form, by one such survivor from Alberta, Ken Nelson (Whiting 1996). The robustness here stems, in part, from the social dynamics governing what is sometimes called witnessing, whereby bystanders or “witnesses” are called on to side with either perpetrator or victim.The psychiatrist Judith Herman has developed a rich, three-agent model of the per­ petration of, and resistance to, sexual crimes, particularly in her influential Trauma and Recovery (1992). I have argued that this model can be adapted (no doubt in ways that Herman herself would reject) to understand the social mechanics of eugenics as a form of wrongful accusation, and so too the persistence of dehumanizing eugenic practices, such as sexual sterilization. The key here is to return to the distinction between what we might call eugenic ideology or the eugenic ideal, on the one hand, and, on the other, how eugenics was implemented in at least some practices of sexual sterilization. In eugenic ideology, we can think of those with eugenic traits as perpetrators of a eugenic crime, the victims of which are normal citizens, and the bystanders or witnesses to which are advocates, such as community and political leaders. Given that conceptualization, what we see in cases of eugenics, in practice is an occupant-role shift, as depicted in Table 11.1, letting “the feebleminded” stand in for those with eugenic traits more generally. Here the activity of eugenic allies or advocates becoming perpetrators looms large in the psy­ chosocial dynamics in play. Called to act on behalf of the normal, allies or advocates come to play crucial causal roles in making those deemed “feebleminded” and ascribed other eugenic traits Table 11.1 From eugenic ideology to eugenics in practice Role: occupant in eugenic ideology

Occupant-role shift in eugenics in practice

perpetrator: the feebleminded victim: the normal bystander: ally or advocate

the feebleminded become victims the normal become bystanders advocates become perpetrators 182

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into victims of a kind of eugenics crusade. Those roles direct the persistence of dehumanizing eugenic practices. That persistence is typically conceptualized in terms of the resurgence of appealing eugenic ideas and ideals: unfettered social improvement, the excise of disease and disability, and increased human perfection. Insofar as such ideas play a role in the persistence of dehumanizing eugenic practices, however, they do so through the psychosocial dynamics expressed in this three-agent model featuring perpetrator, victim, and bystander. I have hypothesized that the corruption of the bystander or witnessing role is especially powerful in driving this dynamic in the history of eugenics and in its continuation in contemporary forms. If this is correct, then it identifies a dimension to the persistence of eugenic dehumanization that involves the complicity of “good citizens,” those who see themselves as acting for the promotion of the social good, in such dehumanization.

11.8 Concluding larger questions about dehumanization If this account of the psychosocial dynamics of eugenic dehumanization is on track, larger questions about eugenic dehumanization loom. Can the perceived eugenic threat of degeneracy and the degradation of the gene pool justify policies regarding institutionalization and steriliza­ tion at all? Should the systematic wrongfulness that results when eugenics moves from theory to practice be viewed as an unfortunate but, on balance, necessary evil for the protection of society? Are there any people who are legitimate targets of eugenic practices? As I hope this chapter as a whole suggests, these are not simply abstract questions to be thrown around in some history, philosophy, or bioethics seminar. Eugenic dehumanization persists not simply as a set of ideas or utopian ideals but in technologically mediated practices (See Paladino, Vaes, and Jetten, this volume). Collectively, those practices continue to affect many individual lives today. With expansions in the reach of genetic and reproductive technologies to direct intergenerational change, addressing these questions will take on even more importance for decisions about what sorts of people populate our future. Answers to these large questions are hard, and they are not settled by anything I have said here. But, both recognizing the fundamental persistence of eugenic dehumanization in practice and understanding the psychosocial dynamics that give that dehumanization its staying power are constraints on how we should answer them. Finally, eugenics is just one specific cluster of ideas that governs how we, collectively, respond to human variation and difference, a cluster centered on the intergenerational improvement of the putative quality of future populations. The psychosocial mechanisms that operate in eugenic dehumanization that I have specified likely operate beyond the realm of eugenics (Kendig 2018). Consider, for example, much-discussed, recent U.S. policing practices resulting in the deaths of African-American citizens who not only had committed no relevant crime but had little objective basis on which even to be detained or questioned by police. Important work on implicit bias and dehumanization by Jennifer Eberhardt and colleagues has been applied both to understand and to counter this form of dehumanization (Eberhardt et al. 2004; Eberhardt et al. 2006; Goff et al. 2008). In addition to how we understand the input representations (e.g., stereo­ types) and the in-the-head processing (e.g., implicit associations), operant here are processes and mechanisms governing the interpersonal dynamics that have often resulted in the killing of an innocent person. Attending to the occupant-role shift that characterizes the dynamics of witnessing in cases of wrongful accusation may shed complementary light on how such policing practices persist and what else might be adopted as a countering strategy of rehumanization. 183

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References Agar, N. (2004) Liberal Eugenics: In Defence of Human Enhancement, Cambridge: Blackwell. Asch, A. (2000) “Why I Haven’t Changed My Mind About Prenatal Diagnosis: Reflections and Reminders,” in E. Parens and A. Asch (eds.) Prenatal Testing and Disability Rights, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, pp. 234–258. Barker, M. J. and R. A. Wilson (2019) “Well-Being, Disability, and Choosing Children,” Mind 128 (April 2019):305–328. Baynton, D. C. (2016) Defectives in the Land: Disability and Immigration in the Age of Eugenics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Begos, K., D. Deaver, J. Railey, and S. Sexton (2012) Against Their Will: North Carolina’s Sterilization Program and the Campaign for Reparations, Florida: Gray Oak Books. Binding, K. and A. Hoche (1920) Die Freigabe der Vernichtung Lebensunwerten Lebens: Ihr Mass und Ihr Ziel, Leipzig: Felix Meiner. Black, E. (2003) War Against the Week: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, New York, NY: Four Walls/Eight Windows. Broberg, G. and Roll-Hansen N. (1996) (eds.) Eugenics and the Welfare State: Sterilization Policy in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland, East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press. Cavaliere, G. (2018) “Looking into the Shadow: The Eugenics Argument in Debates on Reproductive Technologies and Practices,” Monash Bioethics Review 36(1–4):1–22. Chase, A. (1977) The Legacy of Malthus: The Social Costs of the New Scientific Racism, New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Connelly, M. (2008) Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Davis, L. (1995) Enforcing Normalcy: Deafness, Disability and the Body, London: Verso. Dyck, E. (2013) Facing Eugenics: Reproduction, Sterilization, and the Politics of Choice, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Eberhardt, J. L., Goff, P. A., Purdie, V. J., and Davies, P. G. (2004) “Seeing Black: Race, Crime, and Visual Processing,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87(6):876–893. Eberhardt, J. L., Davies, P. G., Purdie-Vaughns, V. J., and Johnson S. L. (2006) “Looking Deathworthy: Perceived Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-sentencing Outcomes,” Psychological Science 17(5):383–386. EugenicsArchive.ca Esses, V. M., Medianu, S. and Sutter, A. (2020) “The Dehumanization and Rehumanization of Refugees,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 275–291. (this volume). Fairbrother, N. (2014a) “Nelson, Ken and Nelson, Crystal”, EugenicsArchive.ca. Retrieved December 12, 2019, from http://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/our-stories/ken Fairbrother, N. (2014b) “Sinclair, Glenn”, EugenicsArchive.ca. Retrieved December 12, 2019, from http://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/our-stories/glenn Fiske, S. T. (2020) “How Status and Interdependence Explain Different Forms of Dehumanization,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 245–259. (this volume). Galton, F. (1883) Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development, London: MacMillan. Garland-Thomson, R. (2012) “The Case for Conserving Disability,” Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 9(3):339–355. Garland-Thomson, R. (2020) “How We Got to CRISPR: The Dilemma of Being Human,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 63(1):28–43. Glover, J. (2006) Choosing Children: Genes, Disability, and Design, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Goff, P. A., J. L. Eberhardt, M. J. Williams, and M. C. Jackson (2008) “Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization, and Contemporary Consequences,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94(2):292–306. Haslam N. (2020) “The Social Psychology of Dehumanization,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 125–144. (this volume). Herman, J. (1992) Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, New York, NY: Basic Books. High, S. (2015) “Introduction,” in S. High (ed.) Beyond Testimony and Trauma: Oral History in the Aftermath of Mass Violence, Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, pp. 3–28.

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Dehumanization, disability, and eugenics Kaelber, L. (n.d) Eugenics: Compulsory Sterilization in 50 American States. Available from http://www.uvm. edu/%7Elkaelber/eugenics/. Kafer, A. (2013) Feminist, Queer, Crip, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Kendig, C. (2018) “Considering the Role Marked Variation Plays in Classifying Humans: A Normative Approach,” Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 10(13):1–15. Kitcher, P. (2000) “Utopian Eugenics and Social Inequality,” in P. R. Sloan (ed.) Controlling Our Destinies: Historical, Philosophical, Ethical, and Theological Perspectives on the Human Genome Project, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 229–262. Kronfeldner, M. (2020) “Psychological Essentialism and Dehumanization,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 362–377. (this volume). Kühl, S. (1994) The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Kühl, S. (2013) For the Betterment of the Race: The Rise and Fall of the International Movement for Eugenics and Racial Hygiene, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Ladd-Taylor, M. (2014) “Contraception or Eugenics? Sterilization and “Mental Retardation” in the 1970s and 1980s,” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 31(1):189–211. Machery, E. (2020) “Dehumanization and the Loss of Moral Standing,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 145–158. (this volume). Milam, E. L. (2020) “Theorizing the Inhumanity of Human Nature, 1955–1985,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 112–124. (this volume). Muir, L. (2014) A Whisper Past: Childless after Eugenic Sterilization in Alberta, Victoria: Friesen Press. Myerson, A., J. B. Ayer, T. J. Putnam, C. E. Keeler, and L. Alexander (1936) Eugenical Sterilization—A Reorientation of the Problem. By the Committee of the American Neurological Association for the Investigation of Eugenical Sterilization, New York, NY: Macmillans. Paladino, M. P., Vaes, J. and Jetten, J. (2020) “Motivational and Cognitive Underpinnings of Fear of Social Robots That Become ‘Too Human For Us’,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 292–306. (this volume). Parens, E. and A. Asch (1999) “Disability Rights Critique of Prenatal Genetic Testing: Reflections and Recommendations” Hastings Center Report, S1–22,” reprinted in E. Parens and A. Asch (eds.) Prenatal Testing and Disability Rights, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000, pp. 3–43. Parens, E. and A. Asch (2000) (eds.) Prenatal Testing and Disability Rights, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Paul, D. B. (1995) Controlling Human Heredity: 1865 to the Present, New York, NY: Humanity Books. Proctor, R. (1988) Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rafter, N. (1988) White Trash: The Eugenic Family Studies 1977–1919, Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press. Reilly, P. (2015) “Eugenics and Involuntary Sterilization: 1907–2015,” Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics 16:351–368. Savulescu, J. (2001) “Procreative Beneficence: Why We Should Select the Best Children,” Bioethics 15(5/6):413–426. Savulescu, J. (2008) “Procreative Beneficence: Reasons to Not Have Disabled Children,” in L. Skene and J. Thompson (eds.) The Sorting Society: The Ethics of Genetic Screening and Therapy, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, pp. 51–68. Savulescu, J. and Kahane G. (2009) “The Moral Obligation to Create Children with the Best Chance of the Best Life,” Bioethics 23(5):274–290. Saxton, M. (1997) “Disability Rights and Selective Abortion,” in R. Solinger (ed.) Abortion Wars: A Half Century of Struggle, 1950–2000, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 374–395. Saxton, M. (2000) “Why Members of the Disability Community Oppose Prenatal Diagnosis and Selective Abortion,” in E. Parens and A. Asch (eds.) Prenatal Testing and Disability Rights, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, pp. 147–164. Selgelid, M. J. (2014) “Moderate Eugenics and Human Enhancement,” Medical Health Care and Philosophy 17:3–12. Smith, D. L. (2001) Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.

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Robert A. Wilson Smith, D. L. (2020) “Dehumanization, the Problem of Humanity, and the Problem of Monstrosity,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 355–361. (this volume). Steizinger, J. (2020) “Dehumanizing Strategies in Nazi Ideology and their Anthropological Context,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 98–111. (this volume). Steinbock, B. (2000) “Disability, Prenatal Testing, and Selective Abortion,” in E. Parens and A. Asch (eds.) Prenatal Testing and Disability Rights, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, pp. 108–123. Stern, A. M. (2005) Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Stone, D. (2010) Histories of the Holocaust, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Taylor, A. (2015) “Expressions of ‘Lives Worth Living’ and Their Foreclosure through Philosophical Theorizing on Moral Status and Intellectual Disability,” in Shelley Tremain (ed.) Foucault and the Government of Disability, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, revised edition, pp. 372–395. Weindling, P. (2014) “Nazi Sterilization.” Retrieved 12 December, 2019, from http://eugenicsarchive.ca/ discover/encyclopedia/535eed207095aa0000000243 Whiting, G. (1996) The Sterilization of Leilani Muir, Ottawa: National Film Board of Canada. Wilson, R. A. (2014a) “Eugenic Family Studies.” Retrieved 12 December, 2019, from http://www. eugenicsarchives.ca/discover/encyclopedia/535eebbb7095aa0000000225 Wilson, R. A. (2014b) “Eugenic Traits.” Retrieved 12 December, 2019 from http://eugenicsarchive.ca/ discover/encyclopedia/535eeb757095aa0000000221 Wilson, R. A. (2015) “The Role of Oral History in Surviving a Eugenic Past,” in S. High (ed.) Beyond Testimony and Trauma: Oral History in the Aftermath of Mass Violence, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, pp. 119–138. Wilson, R. A. (2017) “Contemporary Forms of Eugenics,” eLS Wiley Online Library. DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0027075 Wilson, R. A. (2018a) The Eugenic Mind Project, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wilson, R. A. (2018b) “Eugenics Never Went Away,” Aeon Magazine, https://aeon.co/essays/ eugenics-today-where-eugenic-sterilisation-continues-now Wilson, R. A. (2018c) “Eugenic Thinking,” Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 10(12):1–8. Wilson, R. A. (2019) “Eugenics Undefended,” Monash Bioethics Reviews 37(1):68–75. Wilson, R. A. and St. Pierre J. (2016) “Eugenics and Disability,” in P. Devlieger, B. Miranda-Galarza, S. E. Brown and M. Strickfaden (eds.) Rethinking Disability: World Perspectives in Culture and Society, Antwerp: Garant Publishing, pp. 93–112. Women With Disabilities Australia (2013) “Dehumanized: The Forced Sterilisation of Women and Girls with Disabilities in Australia, WWDA Submission to the Senate Inquiry into the Involuntary or Coerced Sterilisation of People with Disabilities in Australia.” Retrieved 12 December, 2019 from http://wwda.org.au/papers/subs/subs2011/

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12

DEHUMANIZATION AND

HUMAN RIGHTS

Marie-Luisa Frick

12.1 Introduction From a common sense perspective, the nexus between dehumanization and human rights is self-explanatory: Where the former occurs, the latter will suffer. There are, however, a number of questions that are worth raising from a philosophical perspective: What is dehumanization really and how exactly does it affect human rights? What is the moral wrong in dehumanization? Conceived as its antipode, is the concept of human rights, in itself, immune to the feasting of dehumanizing views and practices on its normative source? And what, after all, is the “human” in “human rights”? In the following, I will embed these questions in a conceptual landscape where both dehu­ manization and human rights will first be analyzed and specified independently. In a next step, I want to look at the heuristic potential that the two concepts might hold for each other, with the main focus being on what the concept of human rights could add to our understanding of dehu­ manization. I am particularly interested in the moral wrongness of specific types of dehuman­ ization. As for looking at human rights through the lens of dehumanization, I will ask to what extent dangers of dehumanization not only stem from “outside” human rights, but are already invested in the idea of human rights as such. Furthermore, I will look toward examining what the least exclusive notion of the “human” in human rights could look like. Human rights, and on an increasing scale, dehumanization, occupy a pivotal place in a global ethos that has gathered strength over the course of the last decades, with it even gaining enough momentum to become hegemonic in particular societies. Consequently, the interrelation of both these concepts is a promising start for deliberating what we owe each other as human beings and on what grounds.

12.2 What is dehumanization? What are human rights? As I am aware that dehumanization itself is a contested concept and stipulated in different ways, I will first outline my own understanding of dehumanization before turning to human rights. Although I do not seek to dissolve all the controversies present on what dehumanization actu­ ally is (supposed to be), I nevertheless hope the following proposal that draws upon already established theoretical approaches will be useful. 187

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As a nominalization of a verb, the term “dehumanization” refers to an activity or practice. If dehumanization is something that humans do, the next question would naturally be, what acts or practices constitute dehumanization? To seriously look at the prefix “de,” dehumanization can be delineated as an act or practice that takes away the “human” of an individual or a collective. This leads to the question of how could somebody withdraw “the human” in a human being? I will argue that in order to make sense of the concept of dehumanization, we do not need a full-fledged concept of what being human actually denotes, but rather, we should look at the perspectives of those we believe are dehumanizing others. Depending on what these people are lacking in the eyes of their dehumanizer(s), the former will lose their (full) status as a human being in this perspective. This suggestion admittedly prioritizes the perspective of the alleged dehumanizer(s) over those of the alleged victims of dehumanization. The main reason for this definition is to factor out the intricate matter of an unwitting dehumanization.While there is no point in disputing that sometimes a person feels dehumanized by another, regardless of the other party’s intent or motives, personal standards of vulnerability are potentially prone to turning dehumanization into everything and, ultimately, nothing.That is why, for the sake of definition, we will pay foremost attention to the agent(s) of dehumanization.This should, however, not mis­ lead us into overlooking the inherent antagonistic dimension within the concept of dehumaniza­ tion (“This person is not fully human” vs.“This person is fully human”) (cf. sec. 3). Next, to turn to the perspectives of those performing dehumanization, it needs to be asked, what would be the “human” that they are (trying to) take away from others? Drawing to Maria Kronfeldner’s distinction between humankind and humanity (2018), we can distinguish dehu­ manization as a form of a denial of species membership (denial of humankind) and in the form of a denial of belonging to a social or moral group that would be defined as humans (denial of humanity). In the former case, the question of who belongs is a genealogical one, whereas in the latter it is a social one (ibid.: 216). One could further emphasize this categorical divide by describing dehumanizing in terms of humankind as denying another person is a real human. Lacking humanity, by contrast, prevents someone from being a true human. However, it is to be noted that in both cases, the content of “humankind” and “humanity,” respectively,“is completely exchangeable and perspectival” (ibid.: 28). Following this, dehumanization is defined as an activity that consists of a denial of status as a true/real human being, and can be subdivided along the lines of different possible actions and practices.The term “activity” here is used in a broad sense in order to span as many phenomena that constitute a denial of belonging to the group that would be considered (fully) “human.” A low-key denial of this sort can already occur where someone holds the view that another person or group of others is not (fully) human.The holding of views, particularly when anthropological/ biological and evaluative/normative beliefs conjoin, are hardly ever accidental. Denying that someone is (fully) human presupposes a complex set of beliefs as to what a human being is or should be like. Granted that the thought processes in our minds are not entirely passive but are, in fact, (at least in parts) governed by the choices we make in sorting out and combining (sen­ sual and non-sensual) information as well as reviewing and reiterating it, we can speak of latent dehumanization. It consists in the holding of views and attitudes according to that another person or group is not (“fully”) human. Sometimes, this would also be referred to as “not seeing” others as humans, and it is important to stress that this form of dehumanization is not a mere percep­ tual error (“The shirt you described as green is actually red”) and also not equivalent to an error in judgment (“The food reviewer underrated the quality of this dish”). In addition, it does not simply result from an inadequacy of information (“If I had known it was a white lie, I would not have thought badly about you”). Latent dehumanization—that is, not seeing someone as (fully) human—is better described as not accepting someone as (fully) human.1 This would stem from 188

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the personal view that what is held to be human is incompatible with what is seen: irritating or even disgusting aliens who differ from “us” in relevant ways.Take, for example, the words of Kantano Habimana, who worked at the Rwandan radio station RTLM and fuelled the geno­ cide with his rhetoric against the Tutsi: “I do not know,” he stated on air in July 1994,“how they are created. I do not know.When you look at them, you wonder what kind of people they are” (Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies 2018: doc 0040 2015e).2 In the dehumanizer’s eyes, the respective person or group is nothing but a “counterfeit human being” (Livingstone Smith 2011: 101)—a view determined by assumptions and sentiments about unique, typical, or proper features of human beings. When such views are expressed, this can be viewed as expressive dehumanization. Activist dehumanization—that is, willful dissemination of beliefs according to which some other person or group is not (fully) human—is but an escalation of expressive dehumanization.The phenomena of speech that fit into this subcategory are such that they aim at convincing others that some people are not (fully) human and may also coerce action upon that belief. Activist dehumanization usually consists in frequent and/or repeated acts of expressive dehumanization in front of significant audiences within a given context. Such promotion of dehumanization can, as studying the course of genocides quickly reveals, lead to actualized dehumanization—that is, all forms of treatment of others grounded in the belief they are not (fully) human. In addition to holding the view that someone is not (fully) human and expressing it, actualized dehumanization is also imposed upon the dehumanized person or group: They suffer this very view, with every beating and every smirk, with every feeling of suffocation, every impassive look. By acknowledging that the lines between speech and acts can sometimes be blurred, we can also conceive of actualized dehumanization as (sometimes) activist dehumanization. One infamous example of this was how after Austria’s annexation to Nazi Germany in 1938, Vienna’s Jews were forced to clean the streets amidst the laughter of Nazi officials and co-citizens, some jolly, some bewildered. This was as much an act of actualized dehumanization as it was activist dehumanization. These “scrub parties” (Reibpartien) served as symbolic public degradation that prepared the viewers for finally accepting the “truth” that Jews are not of the same kind (see also Steizinger, this volume). If a group brazenly performs acts against a certain group in a way that the former would never dare do to a peer, the impression would naturally suggest that these people are not humans like us. If someone is not accepted as human being, what—in the eyes of the dehumanizing person— would he or she be? A standard answer reads as such: Dehumanization equals subhumanization. Although violence that is associated with the latter can explain why only few scholars pay attention to its opposite (cf., e.g., Hodson/MacInnis/Costello 2014), suprahumanization is the other side of the same coin. If dehumanization is viewed as removal of the “human” from some­ body, the question of what remains in the eyes of the dehumanizing person after the fact is still an open one. This would all depend on what is seen as lower in worth and status when compared to a “human” or also higher. If someone, for instance, is being held at an equal worth to a dog and dogs are deemed less than humans, we are dealing with subhumanization. If, by contrast, cats were believed to be sacred, God-embodying animals, and someone was equated or compared to a cat (within the contextualized timeframe), calling it suprahumanization is more apt. Dehumanization can take both forms and it is important to develop a concept that would be broad enough to shine light on potentially relevant phenomena. Promising candidates for the perception of others as more than human would be the deification of people or their demonization (cf. also Livingstone Smith, this volume). Examples for the latter would stem from the beliefs in witchcraft, a universal phenomenon in human history which still exists in many parts of the world (cf. Behringer 2004; cf. sec. 2). 189

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When it comes to subhumanization, what is actually considered to be of a lower worth than humans can, as indicated above, vary. However, there is a consistent pattern in the ways which subhumanized people are equated with objects and animals—the traditional entities humans ontologically and axiologically distance them from in bottom-up hierarchical terms (cf. Kasperbauer 2018; see also Crary, this volume, and Sebastiani, this volume). Indeed, it is commonplace know­ ledge that putting people on a level with animals that are usually considered dirty or dangerous (“rats,”“cockroaches,” or “dogs”) are related to the most serious crimes since it increases the readi­ ness to inflict otherwise indefensible violence.You would not be killing someone alike, you are killing a “black monkey”—an expression used by the Janjaweed in South-Sudan (cf. Livingstone Smith 2011: 154)—or “human fleas,” as Buddhist nationalists in Myanmar refer(ed) to Rohingya Muslims whom they regard as “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh (cf. Oo 2016). Whereas some (cf. Haslam 2006; 2014) define animalistic dehumanization—in contrast to objectivist dehumanization—as the denial of supposedly unique human features, I will not follow this path since it is simply not beyond imagination that supposedly lacking a unique human property can make you something instead of someone. If, for example, in a dehumanizer’s perspec­ tive supreme faculties of the mind are what make us human, then he or she might place someone with a certain cognitive impairment on the same level as an ape. Yet, it is equally likely that the same person may compare a person in a vegetative state with an object (“vegetable”). By contrast, Nick Haslam assumes that objectivist (“mechanistic”) subhumanization is characterized by the exclusion from a shared human nature in terms of typical human needs and behavior or essentially human properties.3 Given that Haslam has particular methodological reasons for differentiating dehumanization based on denying human uniqueness or human nature—to give empirical evi­ dence of these forms of behaviours and attitudes (cf. also Haslam, this volume)—whereas I am interested in clarifying what dehumanization is from a phenomenological or philosophical point of view, I will not resort to such theoretical presuppositions in the following. In summation, dehumanization, as understood in this contribution, stands for acts or practices that deny someone the status of a (real/true)human being. This can be a partial or full denial and it can be principally done in two modes: subhumanization and suprahumanization. Dehumanization can assume the form of latent dehumanization (the manner in which I think of someone), expressive dehumanization (the manner in which I talk about someone) including activist dehumanization (the manner in which I talk about someone to others that matter), and actualized dehumanization (the manner in which I treat someone). If dehumanization applies to an individual who is dehumanized, we can call it individual dehumanization, and if a group is dehumanized, we can speak of collective dehumanization, a term that shares a family resem­ blance with (cultural) pseudospeciation (cf. Eriksen 1966).4 I now turn to clarifying the notion of human rights.When thinking of human rights, treaty documents and declarations are often the first markers that come to mind. Spanning from the bills of rights that the British colonies in North America had established in the course of their struggle for and upon their independence (1776–1788), the French Declaration of The Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), and the United Nations (UN) Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) to the two major UN Covenants (1966), it can be stated that human rights are predominantly perceived as catalogues of claims that people are said to possess simply because they are human. However, careful observers of these documents soon, and rightly so, would be able to spot the discrepancies in the stipulations of these rights.That people can disagree about the priority, scope, and content of human rights is further evidenced by the numerous human rights charters that today accompany or rival the UN human rights catalogues. They include, for instance, the European Convention on Human Rights (1950), issued by the Council of Europe; the African “Banjul” Charta of Human and Peoples’ Rights, issued by the African Union in 1981; 190

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or the “Cairo” Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, adopted by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in 1990. One particular way to not get carried away by such dissonances and lose sight of the bigger picture has already been discussed in a previous work that I have authored (cf. 2019), and this looks toward complementing an understanding of human rights in terms of catalogues by the idea of human rights. What all these cited documents (maintain to) share is the position that every human being has a right to have human rights.Where people usually differ, then as now, is in deciding what rights humans should have and how these rights relate to each other, to larger collective objectives, and of course, what duties they imply and for whom.The idea or concept of human rights enables us to put aside such differences for a moment and define a common ground from which arguments as to why humans need or deserve a particular right and the sub­ sequent distribution of duties that stem from them can be brought into deliberation.The bound­ aries for such reasoning can be drawn from the idea of human rights itself—that is, its equality dimension and its liberty dimension.The equality dimension of human rights, its universalistic pillar, consists in the belief that human rights are claims of each and every one whereas the liberty dimension of human rights, its individualistic pillar, stipulates these rights as rights of individuals that principally can, and often will, compromise larger communal goals (of the family, the reli­ gious community, the nation, etc.). What is particularly relevant for the question of dehumanization is that human rights rely on a notion of “human” that generally remains unspecified. Despite the fact that, or maybe precisely because historically the question of what counts as a (full) human being has produced a variety of exclusions from the full enjoyment of rights for different groups of people, human rights documents usually do not expend effort in defining the subject of the rights that are established. However, in light of the presumed moral wrong in (different types of) dehumaniza­ tion, can we really do without a substantive notion of what the “human” is referring to in human rights? I will return to this question after a further examination of dehumanization through a human rights lens in the following section.

12.3 Dehumanization through the lens of human rights Dehumanization is usually conducted by people who—and this would remain a paradox until a second perspective is added to the conceptual scheme—hardly ever describe their practices as dehumanizing. From the point of view of the enactor of dehumanization, nothing is actually taken away from others.Their full humankind or humanity, respectively, was never acknowledged in the first place.What is “taken away” from the dehumanized person or group is done so only in the eyes of the “victim” or a third party who disagrees with the dehumanizer.Without such a counter-perspective, dehumanization would not exist in a strict sense. Let us imagine, for instance, that the Democratic Republic of Kambuchea had never been overcome and the ontologized dis­ tinction between the “new” and the “old” people had survived until every single person under the control of the Maoist regime was fully brought into line (“new people”) or extinguished (“old people”). Furthermore, let us include within this scenario school books that praise the heroic—unfortunately dirty, yet necessary—elimination of the enemies of the people. These books would even be explicit about practices such as breaking people mentally by forcing them to eat human excrements (cf. Hinton 2013).Who, in this experiment of thought, would—without being granted the freedom to come to the conclusion by their own reasoning that being a human is a morally relevant category that expands even to one’s adversaries—be able to feel moral disgust? Dehumanization is not a problem of any sort unless we presuppose that every human being deserves a basic form of respect that stems from acknowledging our shared identity as human 191

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beings (cf. also Stuurman). The antagonism ingrained in the concept of dehumanization becomes apparent in the ways that charges of dehumanization are used in social-political discourse—that is, to blame someone for doing injustice to others.Those who claim to identify dehumanizing acts and distribute charges of dehumanization generally do so because they are aiming at its pre­ vention or demise. As such, dehumanization lies at the heart of modern humanism, yet it is a concept that would not be able to keep its place if it was not for the idea of human rights—the indispensable background concept without which dehumanization would be largely unintelli­ gible. As trivial as this truth may seem, it is not always related to the challenge that presents itself should we take this conceptual nexus between dehumanization and human rights seriously. If counter-perspectives to dehumanizing ones refer to and rely on rivaling notions of what makes a human being and what we owe such a being, our own (normative) anthropologies would need further attention (see sec. 3). Yet, if dehumanization is a moral problem once we take human rights as basis of evaluation, where exactly does its injustice reside? Let us begin with the most extreme one, that is, actualized dehumanization, defined as the treatment of others which is grounded in the belief that they are not (fully) “human.” In the case of actualized dehumanization, these beliefs serve as justification for behaviour that under different circumstances would be unacceptable—that is, where one assumes that they are dealing with others that are more or less sharing the same status as human beings. This can be seen through an example: Charged for selling beef in the Indian State of Assam in spring 2019, Shaukat Ali had fallen victim to an angry mob who encircled and lashed out on him (cf. Bhattacharjee 2019).A video circulating on social media showed the 68-year-old on his knees and being forced to eat pork.As Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee, who denounced this as an incident of dehumanization (ibid.), notes,“The mob that surrounds Ali, isn’t talking to a man with whom it feels it shares an equal status, moral, or political.They are talking to an insect.Ali is robbed of his speech because speech is human. In the preying eyes of the gang,Ali is not human” (ibid.). If we look at this incident merely from a perspective where human rights are, first and fore­ most, a list of rights, the moral wrongness of the vigilantes’ treatment of Shaukat Ali would most likely consist in denying him a fair trial (since he was accused of violating the Assam Cattle Preservation Act 1950 that restricts the slaughter of cattle).Apparently, he was not attacked phys­ ically and while it might have caused him great harm to eat pork as a Muslim, it is not clear which—if any—legal human rights obligations were violated in his case not least because no State actors were involved.5 However, few would be prepared to say that what is wrong with treating Shaukat Ali in such ways is that his (moral) right to a fair trial is disregarded. Indeed, the idea of human rights sets an axiological path to a different assessment. From this perspective, we not only have this or that right as human beings but we also have the right to have rights in the first place.6 Treating someone as a holder of rights is the principal moral right that will be used to condition all the other specific entitlements we might want to assign to others. In this light, human dignity is the normative bedrock for any human right (cf. also Frick 2019). In assigning a special worth to human beings as such and without exception, the idea of human rights can thus shed further light on what was really wrong with the Assam incident:A human being was treated as if anything could be done to him without moral concerns and what was done to him was utterly at the discretion of his masters. He can be forced to his knees and be made to eat what “true humans” see fit for him. While he yells, no one listens to him, just like other animals under their control. As David Livingstone Smith notes,“When a group of people is dehumanized, they become mere creatures to be managed, exploited, or disposed of, as the occasion demands” (2011: 130). Again, the moral wrongness present in actualized dehumanization is reflected only through the mirror of the idea of human rights. More precisely, it is in its basic premise that humans should not be treated without any constraints, and that regardless of what we think of them in a 192

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given situation or how much we despise them, we do owe them something.When referring back to the plight of Shaukat Ali, the people harassing him do not seem to exhibit a commitment to that crucial acknowledgment and that is what makes their actions morally wrong in the eyes of those who take the idea of human rights to be a minimal, yet universal, standard for determining that we owe each other. An assault on someone’s dignity—that is, their status as a human being—amounts to, as George Kateb puts it, an “existential loss” (2011: 36f.). Just like animalistic subhumanization, objectivist subhumanization is morally wrong for the exact same reason. When Stanford student athlete Brock Allen Turner sexually assaulted an intoxicated and unconscious young woman in 2015 outside a fraternity facility (cf. Carroll 2016), he—in many observers’ eyes—not only committed a felony (for which he later was convicted).7 The 20-year-old, who was also drunk, had crossed a decisive moral line by not treating the incapacitated person in front of him as a human being (deserving aid), but rather as a mere thing—to be played around with. The wrongness of objectifying others is a tradition-steeped question in moral philosophy. A standard answer would state that treating another person as an object is wrong because this person gets instrumentalized and his or her autonomy is violated (cf. also Kaufmann 2011). Others maintain that only with a view to the ends of objectification can we assess its moral wrongness (cf. Mikkola 2012; 2016; in this volume) or that objectification is a complex cluster term that comprises different types of actions that have different qualities of moral wrongness attached to them (cf. Nussbaum 1999: 218ff.), while others focus on the domination aspect in objectifica­ tion (cf. Tarasenko-Struc 2020). The concept of human rights offers a lens to cut through this normative woodland (without, of course, voiding the respective approaches which are norma­ tive spotlights in their own right).Taking it on a prima facie level, treating another human being as an object raises the question as to the extent in which an objectified person is still regarded as a human being—that is, a member of a social/moral community that determines what we are not allowed to do to him or her. Thus, from the perspective of human rights, the question is not so much whether someone is instrumentalized or objectified but whether this objectifi­ cation reduces someone to something less than a human. This approach would not only correspond to common sense intuitions, according to which we cannot help but use others as instruments for our means from time to time (e.g., the bus driver, the museum guide, etc.) or at some point even treat them as objects (e.g., our lover, a surgeon’s patient, etc.). It also resonates with the origins of problematizing objectifications within moral philosophy; that is, with Immanuel Kant’s dictum that we should treat others “always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means” (1796/2012: 41). It is often overlooked that Kant actually does not regard every form of objecti­ fying treatment as a violation of his categorical imperative. Rather, he particularly stresses the moral wrongness of reductionist instrumentalization (being taken “merely as a means”). Taking the concept of human rights as a starting point for deliberation, objectification is mor­ ally wrong insofar as it reduces another person to the moral status of a subhuman object—an item we can deal with exactly in the manner that we see fit, without any moral considerations in terms of duties toward others.8 This denial of (human rights) subjectivity also features in Nussbaum’s cluster concept of objectification and is described by her as treating someone “as something whose experience and feelings (if any) need not be taken into account” (1999: 218). In this light, nuances matter as much as phenomenological precision.The institution of slavery, for example, is rightly considered a paragon of dehumanization. Yet, some historical forms of slavery, as well as those in present times, can differ in their reductionist violence and, hence, in their moral wrongness. Reports of slave owners granting their “property” (limited) time and means to the care for their own life (study, marry, travel, etc.) are in stark contrast with examples from the opposite spectrum, like the case of the recent slave masters in Mesopotamia (Daesh) 193

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who have abducted thousands of girl children and women from “kuffar” populations, trading them amongst each other as sex and household slaves and holding many in captivity until the present day. Or—as taken from Hinton’s research—the masters of Tuol Sleng prison in Cambodia (2013: 161): There is no possibility to imagine that killing enslaved others by draining the blood out of their bodies—blood used for your “own” fighters—is not an ultimate reductionist object­ ification and thus unambiguous subhumanization. If actualized subhumanization is morally wrong because it disregards the basic respect that we owe human beings (human dignity) and wrong independently of possible ramifications, that is, violations of specific human rights, this finding—if accepted—holds implications for assessing moral wrongness in other types of subhumanization. Latent subhumanization, then, does not differ in the quality of moral wrongness as compared to actualized dehumanization but it does in the gravity of this wrongness. One could say that views and beliefs that are unspoken and unshared are less problematic since—unlike expressive or activist subhumanization—it does not carry the potential of undermining the commitment to respecting the human dignity of some person or group in the view of others. In short, it is not infectious. Still, I would argue that adherents to the idea of human rights cannot be unruffled by even the latent forms of dehumanization—not least because they could, at any random time, motivate or sanction actualized dehumanization. As far as expressivist dehumanization is concerned, the gravity of its moral wrongness relates to its mimetic dynamics, which is particularly true for activist dehumanization. Expressive subhumanization, even in subtle forms or codes, can effectively lower inhibition thresholds for treating others as less than human—not in everyone exposed to it, but in some and that is enough to lead to worries about its manifestations.When the global public sought explanations as why (even female) US-American soldiers were capable of doing what they did to prisoners in Abu Ghraib in 2004, Susan Sontag rightly put part of the blame on “the demonization and dehumanization of anyone declared […] to be a possible terrorist” (2004). Such rhetoric resonates in “the evolved design of the human psyche,” as Livingstone Smith explains (2011: 101), and it is harder for many to resist it than to bend accordingly when subhumanization, as “a joint creation of biology, culture, and the architecture of the human mind” (ibid.: 4), rears its head. Thus, antagonizing ideologies that disseminate the archetypes of the subhuman (via equating humans’ worth either with that of animals or objects) is therefore a key objective on the road to a universal human rights ethos (cf. also Sikkink 2017: 200ff.). However, this objective is jeopardized if we apply an under-differentiated notion of dehumanization and take our own hermeneutical position to be exclusively authoritative. That is the case, for example, if certain words—without paying heed to the context or the perspective of the person that we are charging with dehu­ manization—are considered to be essentially dehumanizing. Based on the notion that “[a]ny time someone reduces a human being to a single characteristic, especially a negative one, they are dehu­ manizing,” psychologist Sherry Hamby maintains that labels such as “alcoholic,”“schizophrenic,” or “illegal” are already dehumanizing (2018). In such an approach, dehumanization gets merged with deindividuation, which is, I believe, phenomenologically inaccurate.The important nexus between deindividuation and dehumanization evades us once we simply equate the two. Deindividuation can be a (by-)product of dehumanization—if someone is not (morally) relevant to us, we are less likely to care about their personal traits (cf. also Swencionis, J. K. Fiske, S.T. 2014: 278; see also Fiske, this volume)—or maybe sometimes invite to dehumanization. It might, for example, be easier to see soldier Brian as a human being than an anonymous mass of men in uniforms who might resemble fighting machines (friendly soldiers) or even swarms of insects (enemy soldiers). Thus far, I have been concerned with assessing the moral wrongness in subhumanization.Yet the other side of the coin, suprahumanization, has yet to be discussed. Could seeing or treating 194

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others as more than human be problematic at all? If so, why has suprahumanization not received a fraction of the attention paid to subhumanization? Just like with subhumanization, the perspective of the dehumanizing person matters in order to understand what is “added” to the humanness of a particular person or group. In the case of deification—for example, someone being hailed as a demigod—this person’s elevated status could, through the suprahumanizing eyes of others, make her or him less blameworthy for harm done to others.The sexual abuse of their followers by reli­ gious dignitaries that are tolerated and belittled in obscure cults, as well as in major religions for instance, can partly be explained by the higher status of the “more than human” perpetrators. In that sense, suprahumanization can contribute to human rights violations even if the moral status of the (indirect) victims of such dehumanization as full human beings remains intact. In a more severe form, suprahumanization can take the form of demonization. This can be the case with witchcraft beliefs, where someone is perceived as holding suprahuman faculties. Depending on whether these faculties are described as evil or beneficial, and whether they are believed to be deployed for good or bad purposes, respectively, the suprahumanized person may face different social consequences. The persecution of “witches” is prevalent in many regions in the global South, with often disastrous consequences for the victims. This is as they are thought to bring harm to others. Ironically, the suprahuman status assigned to them by others cannot protect these women— often aged or widowed—from being driven away from their communities or being the victim of violent and often deadly attacks or lynching (cf., e.g., Unicef/Cimpric 2010; Behringer 2004: 196ff.). Even in cases where their suprahuman faculties are seen as not merely harmful or neutral, these groups of people are still at risk of mutilation and violent deaths. Instances of this can be seen with albino children in parts of Africa whose body parts, often commercially traded, are believed to have healing or protective powers (Unicef/Cimpric 2010: 27ff.; Kiunguyu 2019). Another example of suprahumanization through demonization can be found in the story of creation, as propagated by the Nation of Islam.The teachings of this African American politicalreligious organization include the narrative which states that black people are the only true people whereas white people are the creation of a scientist on the island of Patmos in Greece (“white devils” or “Yacob’s crafted devil”) (cf. Southern Poverty Law Center 2019). In all these cases where “more than human” means “more dangerous than humans,” the suprahumanized/ demonized people, just like the victims of subhumanization, lack the protective status of equal human beings compelling other’s basic moral consideration. Like the subhuman animals or objects, suprahumanized individuals or groups who are demonized can be treated without scruple—if fears of their higher powers do not set certain boundaries. The moral wrong in such demonization is no different from the one found in subhumanization: the disregard of the human dignity and, hence, human rights subjectivity, of these people that from a position committed to the idea of human rights represents the central point of any acceptable social intercourse.

12.4 Human rights through a dehumanization lens Since the main focus of this contribution was to see dehumanization through the lens of human rights, the remarks in this last section cannot be more than mere hints. Indeed, the preliminary findings from interrelating the two concepts have important implications and suggest avenues for future research. One benefit garnered from looking at human rights through the lens of dehu­ manization is that grave human rights violations can be methodologically contrasted with other acts. Grave, or more aptly, radical human rights violations are such that they represent a denial of a universal human rights subjectivity or human dignity, respectively. Where people are denied the moral status of a human being, their rights to have rights—the precondition of all other rights possibly granted—are violated. For the protection of human rights, the sensibility to respective 195

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phenomenological variations, as well as the conceptualization of different sorts of obstacles that hinder the enjoyment of human rights, are vital tasks that need to be addressed. Applying the concept of dehumanization, we can try to distinguish between fundamental exclusions (from a right to rights) and discrimination among people that are already granted such a radical right (“unequal rights”). This holds a lesson human rights campaigners should bear in mind if they want to test common ground even with those whom they sometimes disagree with: That human rights do not exhaust the whole moral cosmos and only set minimal standards for all humanity to respect everywhere. Furthermore, these minimal standards—that is, regarding others as humans with rights—would be non-negotiable (whereas what sort of rights humans should have in any given context could be discussed in earnest) (cf. also Frick 2019). A second important aspect pertains to the inherent antagonist dimension in dehumanization, as aforementioned. What is a human being after all? What am I not allowed to do to such beings and why so? Either through a surrendering to fear or perhaps holding contempt for their metaphysical weight, many in the human rights camp shy away from addressing such tough questions. Following Richard Rorty’s rejection of shielding human rights from their enemies via final vocabularies— urging the cultivation of inclusivist-altruistic sentiments, instead (1989: 196)—questions like these have to appear anachronistic at the minimum and are meaningless in the worst case. While it is true that constantly enlarging the “we” in “we, humans” is a pivotal effort, thinking deeply about foundational questions is not a waste of time. If dehumanization is the taking away of the “human” from some individual or group, how can we counter, or at least resist (not least within ourselves), the dehumanizing perspective, if the “human” in human rights is left blank? In fact, I would argue that the “human” in human rights remains vulnerable unless we also subject the reasons that people offer as to why some are less human than others to critical scrutiny and, consequently, interrogate our own assumptions on the matter, should we find ourselves arguing against it. The feat we are asked to accomplish is to identify a concept of “the human” maximally inclu­ sive and sufficiently meaningful. The notion of species membership, for example, is—recent questions to the logics of taxonomy that arise from new insights into human phylogenesis aside (cf. also Frick 2019; Kronfeldner 2019: 96ff.)—a potentially all-inclusive one.Yet, from a philo­ sophical perspective, biological facts—or constructs, if you will—do not carry normative weight. Why should members of the human species enjoy certain rights? Pointing to them needing such rights and protections would be again begging the question. Why would their needs matter? Grounding human rights, ultimately, is a question of deserving such rights. Thus, biology needs normative anthropologies to be meaningful. Without reflecting and explicating the reasons in that regard, the human rights project risks charges of speciesism. Indeed, even if our reasons turn out to be human prejudices (cf.Williams 2006), justifying commitment to human rights eventu­ ally relies on them. Blinding ourselves from facing such fundamentals—regardless of the theoret­ ical leanings used—is not advisable when others confront us with (robust) reasons suggesting the inferiority and superiority of certain people. What then makes humankind important enough to grant every of its members rights sub­ jectivity? Here, different axiological paths unfold, religious as well as non-religious ones, pro­ viding possible answers to the question wherein the dignity of the human person lies. The most promising approach, in my opinion, would be the blending of negative anthropology and political theory (cf. 2019). In a nutshell, one way of perceiving the human race is to set it apart from most, if not all, other living creatures past and present by emphasizing the non-ascertained nature of humans and the flexibility or openness of their being casting doubt on a human essence beyond such negative anthropology. Indeed, the claim that these typical human characteristics are a blessing, not a curse, has been argued ever since the Renaissance movement, challen­ ging religious litanies of (wo)man’s misery and helping to replace them by positive and even 196

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euphoric views on human nature.The praises of humankind by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (2014/1486), Giannozzo Manetti (2014/1452–53), or also Shakespeare (2008/1601–2: 2.2.295– 302), for instance, have laid the foundations for the type of modern humanism the idea of human rights is anchored in. It would thus be wise for us to mind this particular axiological depth of the “human” in human rights—in other words, the “sacredness of the human person” (cf. Joas 2013)—even when we are aware that such normative anthropologies will produce their very own rationales for excluding certain individuals from belonging to the “true” humans (in par­ ticular all those who appear to lack agency, autonomy, self-rule) (cf. also Crary, this volume). There is, I believe, not one notion of “the human” that is not in some way or another exclu­ sive at some point (unless, of course, it is utterly empty). We can only aim at diminishing such exclusive potential. Thus, the negative anthropological approach suggested here is best accom­ panied with a deep pluralism and the insight offered by Hannah Arendt, which states that the human individuals are never fully sovereign—that is, their individual wills are always barred from absolute power by the mere existence of other such wills (cf. 1974/1985: 234). As humans exist in an inextricable plurality, we are, in fact, equally non-sovereign.That also holds true, I argue, when attempting to conclusively define what a human being is.Adding this political viewpoint, the best strategy for the purpose of human rights is to open the doors for diverse approaches as to what humans are so that these doors never completely and permanently close. No one, in this light, can arrogate to themselves the right to define “the human” (in human rights) for an eternity—not least because human beings are mortal beings. Some maintain that “(over)valuing humanness” itself increases intergroup prejudice (cf. Hodson/MacInnis/Costello 2014).9 The fact that there is some truth to this is another important lesson that can be drawn from interrelating human rights and dehumanization. Contemplating the cases of dehumanizing others, as cited earlier, one cannot help but come across the infamous questions raised in the context of severe violent crimes in general: Are perpetrators of such crimes still “human”? “Humans” here refers to the moral category “humanity” that insinuates some people are less than human because of their very own actions toward others. In the eyes of many, these people do not deserve the same kind of respect as “true” humans or even other, “ordinary” criminals. “Self-dehumanized,” their exclusion from various human rights (as in the criminal law system) or even the right to have rights as such would be justified. In the “war on terror,” manifestations of such beliefs are not difficult to spot (cf. also Bittner 2005) and human rights advocates in particular should take them seriously. In the end, the idea of human rights itself offers rationale for the exclusion of people categorized as “criminals against humanity” (e.g., perpetrators of genocides, mass enslavement, and torture). Such moral-based moral disengagement (cf. also Opotow 1990) can be seen as a consistent and appropriate reaction precisely because the concept of human rights is taken as a premise (cf. esp. Luban 2018a).When looking at human rights through the lens of dehumanization, these almost inevitable potential mechanisms for exclusion become apparent and lead to the question of how to respond to that uncomfortable truth? A simple rejection in the form of “they are still human beings, no matter what their deeds are” will not suffice as it only affirms but does not tackle the antagonism that needs to be dissolved in this case. As I have suggested elsewhere (2019: 207ff.), the argument of reciprocity (“Why grant human rights to those who violate them in the most shocking ways?”), is not easily refuted. Fortunately, it does not have to be refuted altogether. Rather, it should be tamed and incorporated in a solid human rights framework as a restricted reciprocity: Who violates the human rights of others has to expect that their own rights get curtailed as far as it is neces­ sary to safeguard the rights of others but still deserves to be regarded as a person with a right to rights. As David Luban puts it, even the “enemy of humanity” remains a “member of humanity and accountable to humanity” (2018b: 136). 197

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The reason, however, why we should be alert to any attempts to subhumanize the “moral monster” and to dispute their human rights subjectivity, is that the treatment of criminals against humanity as part of humanity is not a duty we have toward them. Rather, it is a duty that people committed to human rights have, first and foremost, to themselves. In becoming subhumanizers, we annihilate the moral and, ultimately, existential difference between humanity and barbarity, between “us” and “them.” This is the challenge we ultimately face, then: In order to minimize the exclusionary potential of the moral category of humanity, we have to mind this frontier con­ stantly and be faithful to it by attempting to never switch sides.

12.5 Summary In this contribution, I have sought to bring the concepts of dehumanization and human rights into dialogue after laying them out in a philosophical perspective keen on doing justice to phenomena in the first place. Human rights were then identified as a background concept for dehumanization, allowing us to understand why manifestations of dehumanization are a problem, along with enabling us to highlight the particular moral wrongness of dehumanization in terms of the denial of the right to have rights or universal human rights subjectivity.This moral wrong is principally the same in various forms of dehumanization, yet can vary in its gravity. Implications that the concept of dehumanization holds for human rights have been addressed, too. In particular, the possibility of distinguishing human rights violations along the line of radical denial of moral status has been pointed out, as well as the necessity for human rights advocates to engage in conceptional efforts as to what defines the “human” in human rights. Finally, I have explored the dehu­ manization risks that are buried in the idea of human rights and proposed how to tackle this challenge.

Notes 1 Also for the neighbouring concept of infrahumanization, introduced by Jacques-Philippe Leyens, in-group favoritism can stem from “seeing” others as less human for they supposedly lack typical human (secondary) emotions (cf. Leyens, J.-P./Paladino, P. M./Rodriguez-Torres, R. 2000). 2 He completed this line of thought with the following confession: “In any case, let us simply stand firm and exterminate them, so that our children and grandchildren do not hear that word Inkotanyi [i.e., the Rwandan Patriotic Front] ever again” (ibid.). 3 For Haslam, characteristics that are held to be uniquely human [UH], “primarily reflect socialization and culture whereas HN [human nature] characteristics would be expected to link humans to the natural world” (2006: 256). Such concept of human nature ignores non-naturalist (aspects of) anthropologies and at the same time the concept of human uniqueness misses that anthropic traits can as well pertain to “natural” properties (e.g., distinctive human precision grips). 4 “Man has evolved […] in pseudospecies, i.e., tribes, clans, etc., which behave as if they were separate species created at the beginning of time by supernatural will […]. Thus each develops a distinct sense of identity, held to be the human identity and fortified against other pseudo-species […]” (1966: 340). 5 In such a different setting, his abuse would amount to a violation of his right to freedom from torture, cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment (e.g., Art. 7 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights). 6 The term “right to have rights” was originally coined by Hannah Arendt in referring to (the loss of) political subjectivity/citizenship but it can also be understood in terms of moral status. For a discussion and various interpretations of the right to have rights, see also DeGooyer et al. 2018. 7 Needless to say, cases of the sexual objectification of incapacitated persons can take extreme forms. While I am writing this, eleven men—ten migrants and a German citizen—are on trial in the German city of Freiburg for an incident last year where they raped an intoxicated, unconscious woman for over 2 hours after they were told by the one who first assaulted her outside a club that there lied “a woman one could fuck” (cf. Merkur 2019). Unsurprisingly but important for our purpose, such violent crimes regularly give rise to derogatory public reactions, as for instance on social media, which often demon­ strate considerable dehumanizing desire.

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Dehumanization and human rights 8 In this sense, Mari Mikkola is right in her critique of tying the moral wrongness of objectification to the aspect of instrumentalizing another person. The example she referred to in that regard was sadistic rape (in war times). For the sadistic rapist to bring the desired satisfaction depends on seeing the other not as object but exactly as a human being who is able to suffer and who will continue to suffer beyond the act (2012: 98ff.). In such a case, the perpetrator sees his victim as subhuman but still draws pleasure from this “object” having genuine human traits—like sensations of dread, escape reflex and vulnerability. However, Mikkola´s proposal to evaluate the aims of the objectifying person is not the only way for assessing the ethical gravity of certain forms of such dehumaniza­ tion. We could also scan objectifications for reductionist dimensions on the basis of the idea of human rights. 9 “We may collectively face an inconvenient truth: The premium placed on humans over animals […] fuels some forms of dehumanization, especially the animalistic forms characterizing our ethnic outgroups” (ibid., 106). For the claim that efforts to combat dehumanization need to challenge species hierarchies, see also Crary, in this volume.

References Arendt, H. (1974/1985) The Human Condition, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Behringer, W. (2004) Witches and Witch-Hunts. A Global History, Cambridge: Polity Press. Bhattacharjee, M. F. (2019) “Shaukat Ali’s Humiliation and the Dehumanization of the Human Condition”, The Wire 10.4.2019. Available at: (Accessed 20 June 2019). Bittner, R. (2005) “Morals in Terrorist Time”, in: G. Meggle (ed.), Ethics of Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism, Frankfurt a. M.: Ontos, pp. 207–213. Carroll, R. (2016) “Standford swimmer convicted of sexually assaulting woman after fraternity party”, The Guardian 31.3.2016. (Accessed 20 June 2019). Crary, A. (2020) “Dehumanization and the Question of Animals”, in: M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 159–172. (this volume). DeGooyer, S. et al. (2018) The Right to Have Rights, London: Verso. Eriksen, E. (1966) “Ontogeny of Ritualization in Man”, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 251: 337–349. Fiske, S. T. (2020) “How Status and Interdependence Explain Different Forms of Dehumanization”, in: M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 245–259. (this volume). Frick, M.-L. (2019) Human Rights and Relative Universalism, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Hamby, S. (2018) “What is Dehumanization, Anyway?”, Psychology Today 21.6.2018. Available at: (Accessed 20 June 2019). Haslam, N. (2006) “Dehumanization: An Integrative Review”, Personality and Social Psychology Review 10: 252–264. ——. (2014) “What Is Dehumanization?”, in: P. Bain, J. Vaes, J.-P. Leyens (eds.), Humanness and Dehumanization, New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 34–48. ——. (2020) “The Social Psychology of Dehumanization”, in: M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge

Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 125–144. (this volume).

Hinton, L. A. (2013) “The Paradox of Perpetration: A View from the Cambodian Genocide”, in:

M. Goodale (ed.), Human Rights at the Crossroads, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp. 153–162. Hodson, G., MacInnis, C. C., Costello, K. (2014) “(Over)Valuing ʽHumannessʼ as an Aggravator of Intergroup Prejudices and Discrimination”, in: P. Bain, J. Vaes, J.-P. Leyens (eds.), Humanness and Dehumanization, New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 86–110. Joas, H. (2013) The Sacredness of the Person, Washington: Georgetown University Press. Kant, I. (2012/1796) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. M. Gregor and J. Timmermann, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kasperbauer, T. J. (2018) Subhuman. The Moral Psychology of Human Attitudes to Animals, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Kateb, G. (2011) Human Dignity, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

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Marie-Luisa Frick Kaufmann, P. (2011) “Instrumentalization: What Does It Mean to Use a Person?”, in: P. Kaufmann et al. (eds.), Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization. Human Dignity Violated, Leiden: Springer, pp. 57–65. Kiunguyu, K. (2019) “Witchcraft continues to fuel killing and maiming of children with albinism”, This is Africa 31.1.2019. Available at: (Accessed 20 June 2019). Kronfeldner, M. (2018) What’s Left of Human Nature? A Post-Essentialist, Pluralist, and Interactive Account of a Contested Concept, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Leyens, J.-P., Paladino, P. M., Rodriguez-Torres, R. (2000) “The Emotional Side of Prejudice: The Attribution of Secondary Emotions to Ingroups and Outgroups”, Personality and Social Psychology 4: 186–197. Livingstone Smith, D. (2011) Less Than Human. Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Luban, D. (2018a) “The Enemy of All Humanity”, Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy 47: 112–137. ——. (2018b) “On the Humanity of the Enemy of Humanity. A Response to My Critics”, Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy 47: 187–199. Manetti, G. (2014/1452–53) “On the Dignity and Excellence of Man”, in: Renaissance Humanism: An Anthology of Sources, trans. M. L. King, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company. [Merkur] (2019) Gruppenvergewaltigung in Freiburg. Angeklager brüllt und pöbelt vor Gericht, 26.6.2019. (Accessed 27 June 2019). Mikkola, Mari (2020) “Why Dehumanization is Distinct from Objectification?”, in: M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 326–340. (this volume). Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (2018) Rwanda Radio Transcripts. (Accessed 20 June 2019). Nussbaum, M. (1999) Sex & Social Justice, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Oo, K. M. (2016) A Flea Cannot Make a Whirl of Dust, But –. (Accessed 20 June 2019). Opotow, S. (1990) “Moral Exclusion and Injustice: An Introduction”, Journal of Social Issues 46: 1–20. Pico della Mirandola, G. (2014/1486) “Oration on the Dignity of Man”, in: Renaissance Humanism: An Anthology of Sources, trans. M. L. King. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company. Rorty, R. (1989) Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Sebastiani, S. (2020) “Enlightenment Humanization and Dehumanization, and the Orangutan”, in: M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 64–82. (this volume). Shakespeare, W. (2008/1601–2) Hamlet, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sikkink, K. (2017) Evidence for Hope:Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Smith, D. L. (2020) “Dehumanization, the Problem of Humanity, and the Problem of Monstrosity”, in: M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 355–361. (this volume). Sontag, S. (2004) “Regarding the torture of others”, The New York Times Magazine, 23.4.2004. Available at: (Accessed 20 June 2019). [Southern Poverty Law Center] (2019) Nation of Islam. Available at: (Accessed 20 June 2019). Steizinger, Johannes (2020) “Dehumanizing Strategies in Nazi Ideology and their Anthropological Context”, in: M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 98–111. (this volume). Swencionis, J. K./Fiske, S. T. (2014) “More Human. Individuation in the 21st Century”, in: P. Bain, J. Vaes, J.-P. Leyens (eds.), Humanness and Dehumanization, New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 276–293. Tarasenko-Struc, A. (2020) “Objectification and Domination”, forthcoming. [Unicef]/Cimpric, A. (2010) Children Accused of Witchcraft. An Anthropological Study of Contemporary Practices in Africa. Available at: (Accessed 20 June 2019). Williams, B. (2006) “The Human Prejudice”, in: Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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13

DEHUMANIZATION BY LAW1 Luigi Corrias

13.1 Introduction Law and dehumanization have a complicated relationship. First, law relates indirectly to dehu­ manization.Within a legal context, dehumanization is often, albeit not necessarily, linked to the use of the term humanity within international criminal law.When humanity is violated, within international criminal law we deal with a crime against humanity or genocide. One might say that law, and more specifically the legal categories of genocide and crimes against humanity, pro­ tect against dehumanization, understood as the violation of human rights (for more on human rights and dehumanization, see Frick, this volume). This protection is the expression that cer­ tain acts are against the law (international treaties and national legislation) and will be punished (by national and international institutions). The law, accordingly, provides a language and an institutional framework in order to combat dehumanization. It protects against dehumanization through this language.The legal language translates the category of the human into that of the legal or juridical person. While there are more possible juridical persons, the law in principle addresses every adult human being as a juridical person—that is, a responsible agent and bearer of legal rights and duties. The protection of the law focuses on core legal values (such as legal certainty and equality) that enable the juridical person to act responsibly and, as a consequence, the human being to lead what he or she considers a good life. One might call this the anthro­ pology of modern law. My second remark concerning the relation between law and dehumanization takes another perspective and stresses that law can also be used as an instrument of dehumanization.This per­ spective will be central in this chapter. Given the indirect relationship between law and dehu­ manization (having the concepts of humanity and juridical personhood as interlocutor), I argue that dehumanization by law, or legal dehumanization, is also an indirect process: through legis­ lation and other means, law makes dehumanization possible, or even prescribes dehumanizing treatment.The law thus expresses the official (state) view that dehumanization is allowed, or even a legal duty. Nevertheless, as I will later argue in more detail, dehumanization by law only works up to a certain point. In sum, the law is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for dehumanization. Still, dehumanization by law can be an important step in a dehumanization process.As the state sends the message that some people are neither juridical persons, nor full citizens, dehumanization 201

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obtains an institutional character. Because of this institutional nature of dehumanization by law, a societal climate comes about in which it becomes normal to dehumanize. In this chapter, I will make use of the following definition of legal dehumanization: a legal act is dehumanizing if and only if it is an indefensible infringement of legal values, where this infringement constitutes a violation of an individual or a group of people in their status of a full juridical person, making it possible to treat the victim(s) as subhuman. Crucially, dehu­ manization does not only occur by the exclusion from the category of legal personhood, but also by the inclusion within this category as a subhuman (Çubukçu 2017). Building upon this definition, the chapter aims to show how law and lawyers are complicit in the process of dehumanization. In the remainder of the chapter, I will proceed as follows. Section 13.2 unpacks my defin­ ition of legal dehumanization, drawing on Gustav Radbruch and Mari Mikkola among others. Section 13.3 introduces the anthropology necessary to capture legal dehumanization. More con­ cretely, it serves a twofold purpose: it introduces the notion of a juridical person (drawing on Hannah Arendt and Paul Ricoeur) and, by looking at stateless people and refugees, it imme­ diately shows how the violation of this status can be dehumanizing. Section 13.4 presents a number of additional miniature case studies that undergird the chapter’s main thesis on legal dehumanization. I will briefly discuss the Nuremberg laws, the apartheid regime, and the torture memos.The chapter ends with an epilogue in which I touch upon possibilities to reverse legal dehumanization.

13.2 Legal dehumanization and the values of the law This section and the next one develop a legal conception of dehumanization. While I whole­ heartedly acknowledge that dehumanization is a multifaceted phenomenon that ought to be studied through a variety of perspectives, I defend two related theses. First, I argue that it is pos­ sible to develop a legal perspective on dehumanization, a stance independent of and irreducible to other disciplinary perspectives. Second, I submit that a legal view on dehumanization makes it possible to articulate a dimension of dehumanization that is not highlighted within other disciplines. My definition of legal dehumanization—an indefensible infringement of legal values, where this infringement constitutes a violation of an individual or a group of people in their status of a full juridical person, making it possible to treat the victim(s) as subhuman—is inspired by the general definition of dehumanization as developed by Mari Mikkola (2011: 128–149). In my definition, ‘humanity’ is understood as a normative community, members of which we take to be full juridical persons and to whom we owe it to treat them accordingly. From this philosophical perspective, both crimes against humanity and genocide can be understood as indefensible infringements of legal values, condemned by ‘we, humanity.’ In a way parallel to Mikkola (2011: 142),‘indefensible’ is important here because some infringements of legal values are indeed justifiable. Here, the example of human rights may be helpful. Human rights may be seen as expressions or concretizations of legal values. Not all infringements of human rights are prohibited, however.This is reflected in the way in which contemporary human right treaties state the conditions under which the infringement of a particular right may be justified. Furthermore, not all indefensible infringements are immediately dehumanizing (Mikkola 2011: 142). One may speak of legal dehumanization when the very status of a full juridical person is violated. Within Gustav Radbruch’s legal philosophy and more explicitly in his famous formula, one can find a thorough reflection on the values of the law. By an a-contrario reading of this formula, I will delineate a legal concept of dehumanization.To grasp what is at stake here, I will first sketch 202

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Radbruch’s general framework as he developed it before Second World War and will then turn to his postwar thinking, culminating in his formula. Working from within a neo-Kantian framework, Radbruch aims to develop the a priori presuppositions of law, or the idea of law (Radbruch 1950: 72–75, 90–97, and 107–112).The idea of law is composed of different elements or constitutive values.These are justice, legal certainty, and the purposiveness of law. Justice ought to be understood as distributive justice in the classical sense of suum cuique tribuere (to give each his due).This presupposes the standpoint of a third party, C, (e.g., the state) in a vertical relationship with parties A and B, whose relationship is a horizontal one. Radbruch stresses that this horizontal—that is, equal—relation between parties within a state (e.g., citizens) is not a natural one. Indeed, in nature no two parties are equal.Thus, equality between people is always legal equality, that is, equality brought about by law. Legal certainty demands that the law puts an end to social uncertainty.The law ends conflicts within society through a procedure that, ultimately, results in a final verdict between parties.This verdict is based on laws that are promulgated beforehand, thus making it foreseeable what the state will do and enabling citizens to adapt their behavior accordingly. Also, procedures ought to be clear beforehand and are to be applied to all people equally. The purposiveness of law (Zweckmässigkeit) stipulates that law always has a purpose. Such a purpose is given by politics; hence, it depends on the ideology of the ruling party which purpose the law is set to pursue. Purposiveness unveils how law is (also) always an instrument in the hands of politics to bring about social change, or to maintain the status quo. Now that we have a picture of each of the three elements of the idea of law, let us look into their relationship.The three components are antinomies.This entails being both complementary and mutually exclusive. Furthermore, there is no fourth element above the three components in which the tensions between the elements can be solved and some sort of synthesis reached. Hence, every legal standpoint regarding a problem will necessarily bring to the foreground one or two elements making it vulnerable to criticism of the remaining one(s). An example may clarify this antinomic relationship. After a terrorist attack, the first reaction of the authorities is often to introduce legislation to prevent attacks, and more severe punishments for those who have eventually been found guilty of committing and/or preparing the attacks. This kind of legislation prioritizes a specific social (collective) goal at the expense of individual basic rights. In this case, the social goal of national security prevails over fundamental rights of potential suspects and fair punishment of perpetrators. In terms of values, the purposiveness of law trumps legal certainty and justice. This very same example can also be used in order to illustrate how the components or values attract one another. For as soon as a solution triggered by an emphasis on the element of pur­ posiveness is taken to the extreme, say in the form of an infinite state of emergency giving the executive ever more powers to infringe on individual rights and sidestep normal legal procedures, criticism in the name of legal certainty and justice will rise. Often, this will result in a shift of emphasis, for example, from purposiveness to legal certainty. Next to their relation, there is also the question of the order of the three components. In this regard, usually a distinction is drawn between the early Radbruch (pre-Second World War) and the late Radbruch (post-Second World War). The early Radbruch stresses the equal weight of the three elements. Nevertheless, Radbruch argues that providing legal certainty is the first task of the law. That there is order is ultimately more important than the just quality of the order. Stability and predictability are to be valued per se, since they protect us from disorder and uncer­ tainty, Radbruch seems to say. Having witnessed the atrocities brought about by the Nazi regime, Radbruch formulates his famous formula.This formula constitutes an important step toward a notion of dehumanization 203

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by law. In his formula, Radbruch (2006: 1–11) still points to the importance of legal certainty. Tensions between legal certainty and justice should not immediately be resolved in favor of the latter.Yet, he now acknowledges the existence of statutory injustice and suprastatutory law. Positive law (statutes) can come in such a tension with legal equality that they constitute a form of injustice. Moreover, when positive law does not even aim at respecting equality it loses its legal character altogether. Here is the complete text of the formula: The conflict between justice and legal certainty may well be resolved in this way:The positive law, secured by legislation and power, takes precedence even when its content is unjust and fails to benefit the people, unless the conflict between statute and justice reaches such an intolerable degree that the statute, as “flawed law”, must yield to justice. It is impossible to draw a sharper line between cases of statutory lawlessness and statutes that are valid despite their flaws. One line of distinction, however, can be drawn with utmost clarity: Where there is not even an attempt at justice, where equality, the core of justice, is deliberately betrayed in the issuance of positive law, then the statute is not merely “flawed law”, it lacks completely the very nature of law. For law, including positive law, cannot be otherwise defined than as a system and an institution whose very meaning is to serve justice. Measured by this standard, whole portions of National Socialist law never attained the dignity of valid law (Radbruch 2006: 7). Legal dehumanization occurs when law is used as an instrument against two of the core components of the idea of law. In complete disregard of the antinomic nature of the three components, the value of purposiveness is prioritized by giving carte blanche to a political purpose at the expense of a just order. Accordingly, dehumanization by law consists in legally violating legal certainty and equality, in legally bringing about a condition of arbitrariness and inequality, and in legally infringing on someone or groups of people in their status of a full juridical person, making it possible to treat the victim(s) as subhuman.The next section will look at the notion of a juridical person, in order to complete the analysis of my definition of legal dehumanization.

13.3 The juridical person violated This section develops the notion of a juridical person. As I aim to show, legal dehumanization consists exactly in a violation of this status. Importantly, dehumanization by law does not only occur by the exclusion from the category of juridical personhood, but also by the inclusion within this category as a subhuman. In order to develop the notion of a juridical person, I will draw on the work of Paul Ricoeur and Hannah Arendt.The work of the latter is, furthermore, interesting, since it provides us with a first miniature case study on (the experience of) legal dehumanization by describing stateless people and refugees. Ricoeur argues that the protection of law (and politics) is a kind of institutional mediation that is necessary for an individual to become fully human.Trying to answer who the subject of rights is (what I have been calling here ‘the juridical person’), Ricoeur distinguishes between two traditions in Western political thinking. One the one hand, there is the social contract tradition. Despite their differences, thinkers within this tradition share the view that already full-fledged human beings enter the social contract. Hence, moving into political society is not necessary to live a full human life. On the other hand, there is the line of thought that originated in Aristotle. Writing from within this Aristotelian tradition to which Arendt also belongs, Ricoeur defends the view that the human is a political animal—that is, a being that can only flourish as a member of a political body (Ricoeur 2000: 1–10). 204

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Sketching an outline of his anthropology, Ricoeur (2000: 2–4) submits that the human out­ side of institutions is to be thought of as a capable subject, that is, a speaking agent, an acting self who is able of evaluating his own and other one’s behavior in terms of morality.Yet, without the standpoint of ‘the third’ that only institutions can provide, these capacities remain unactualized (Ricoeur 2000: 5). Note that this third is presupposed in the core ideas of the public space (as the hallmark of politics) and justice (as the core value of law), since both domains go further than just interpersonal relations. One is only a full-fledged human being if one is also a true juridical person and citizen.Accordingly, institutional mediation is pivotal (Ricoeur 2000: 5 and 10). What I take from Ricoeur is the anthropology implicit in my idea of legal dehumanization. Since the human outside of institutions cannot be fully human, deliberately withholding or vio­ lating juridical personhood is a form of dehumanization (Esmeir 2006: 1544–1551).2 Hannah Arendt (1963: 106–107) has made a similar point when she emphasized the etymological roots of the notion of person. Persona originally was a mask, worn by actors on a stage.The mask had the double function of both protecting the one who wears it (the ‘naked’ human being) and enab­ ling him or her to appear on stage with others.This is Arendt’s model for the public sphere as the symbol of politics: a stage where one may appear as an equal among one’s peers. According to Arendt, the exclusion from this sphere reduces one to a naked human being living in an inhuman condition of rightlessness. I will now look into my first miniature case study on legal dehumanization through a study of Arendt’s critique of human rights. Arendt’s view on dehumanization is immediately linked to her discussion of (the experience of) the failure of human rights to protect those most in need. In Arendt’s analysis, this condition of rightlessness is brought about as a corollary of the regimes of human rights in modernity, not despite them.These rights come with their own perplexities, leading to a situation in which large groups of naked human beings or ‘superfluous humanity’ are produced (for an analysis of this notion in Arendt’s reflections on the stateless, see Hayden 2008).These individuals have no membership in the political community; their speaking cannot be heard by any public. Arendt’s analysis of human rights is historically situated at the end of the Second World War, a time when, for various reasons, lots of people were moving across borders (Arendt 1951: 267–290). She takes the experiences and difficulties of these people as the starting point for her analysis. Ever since the declarations of the 18th century, the nature of human rights has been fiercely debated. Are these truly the rights of human beings to be acknowledged on the basis of their humanity, or are rights rather ascribed to citizens, that is, to members of a specific political community? One may already witness the whole ambiguity of the notion of human rights in the French declaration, which speaks of ‘the Rights of Man and of the Citizen’ (Arendt 1951: 290). What transpires from Arendt’s critique is that human rights cannot be invoked apart from citi­ zenship status.Those who have lost their legal standing and political membership cannot make a claim to human rights based on their belonging to humanity only (Arendt 1951: 297). Accordingly,Arendt shows the central place which sovereignty takes in the international order of nation-states.The trilogy of territory, people, and state is bound together under the heading of sovereignty as the ultimate right of a state to decide who does and who does not have a right to entry. Paradoxically, the system of human rights does not so much question this sovereign right but actually reinforces it. Those who are no longer able to claim legal rights fall outside of the civil condition associated with membership of the polity.Their acting and speaking does not have a place in the polity: they lead their lives in the shadows, unable to appear in public. Incapable to claim legal rights, they depend on the pity of others.They are not full juridical persons who live as equals under the law among their peers in a polity but rather pitiful victims, often worse off than criminals to whom a whole system of substantive and procedural rights applies (Arendt 1951: 286). 205

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What emerges from Arendt’s analysis of the condition of the stateless person is the constitutive role of the law and legal rights. Contrary to the view that proclaims the natural equality and dig­ nity of all men,Arendt’s (1951: 301) argument highlights—akin to Radbruch’s—how equality is not found in nature but actually instituted by law. Indeed, it is through rights, more specifically, through juridical personhood entailing the possibility to become the bearer of rights, that men are made equal to one another.The phrase to which this conception is linked is ‘the right to have rights’ (Arendt 1951: 296).With this notion,Arendt seeks to loosen the link between the trilogy of territory, people, and state on the one hand and sovereignty on the other.The right to have rights entails the insurance of a condition within a (political) community, as an equal under the rule of law, a recognized member of humanity. As we have seen, these are three characteristics of one and the same status: that of the acting subject in a polity among peers, a juridical person equal under the law, a full-fledged human being. Only under these circumstances may one also be a human agent recognized as an integral part of the plurality of men who may appear in public. Such an agent is someone who has legal rights and access to an independent and impartial judge to actually enforce them, whenever this is necessary. Both Arendt and Ricoeur have pointed to the constitutive character of rights for the human condition itself.As the example of the stateless person shows, the violation of full juridical per­ sonhood (in the name of the sovereign right of the state) can be understood as dehumanization by law, for such a person can no longer act, nor be addressed as a responsible agent, and is seen as a subhuman. Nevertheless, dehumanization by law may also occur by the inclusion within the category of legal personhood as a subhuman. The next section will discuss several examples of this.

13.4 Cases The first case of dehumanization by law discussed in this section regards the way in which the Nazis used legal means to dehumanize the Jews and other ‘non-Arian’ groups (for more on Nazi strategies of dehumanization, see Steizinger, this volume). Nazi Germany may be seen as a state based on law, or a ‘system of legal barbarism’ extending to all the territories occupied by the Nazis between 1939 and 1945 (Bazyler 2017: 3).The recognition of Jews and other ‘non-Arian’ groups as legal persons under law (but lesser persons, subhumans) made dehumanization possible. After legally coming to power on January 30, 1933, the fire to the Reichstag triggered a process whereby the political system was transformed into a dictatorship of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). With the death of President von Hindenburg on August 2, 1934, Hitler was both Chancellor and President.This marked the establishment of the Führer principle, according to which Hitler’s will was the supreme law (Bazyler 2017: 6–7). For the Nazification of German law, racial equality, a notion that replaced the central legal value of equality before the law, was even more important (Majer 1984: 112–3).The principle of racial equality was directly tied to the notion of the people in a racial sense, the Volksgemeinschaft (Majer 1984: 112). Understood as racial equality, the value of equality was decoupled from rights. In the total state of Nazi Germany there was no room for the concept of right as a legal guar­ antee, since the individual had no legal status by right but by privilege only; instead of being protected by law, she was now dependent on the whim of the authorities (Majer 1984: 113 & 118).Those who were not considered to be ‘true Germans’—Jews, Roma, but also ‘communists’ and, hence, potentially all opponents of the Nazi regime—were subject to ‘special law’ and basic­ ally had no juridical personhood whatsoever (Majer 1984: 114–5). Hence, from the viewpoint of traditional legal doctrine, the Nazi legal order can, at most, be called ‘a state of outlawry’ (Majer 1984: 118, see also Radbruch 2006: 14). 206

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I will now focus on the legal measures taken against the Jews. It is common among historians to draw a distinction between four stages of the Nazis’ persecution of the Jews, and in all these stages law played an instrumental role (Bazyler 2017: 7).The role of legislation was pivotal, since the category by which the Nazis defined what constituted a Jew was codified in law and based on race. By using genealogy instead of religion, the group of people who counted as a Jews was considerably expanded: people with three Jewish grandparents, so-called Mischlinge, were legally seen as Jews (Bazyler 2017: 7–9). The final stage is that of extermination (1941–1945) (Bazyler 2017: 7), ‘the legal holocaust’ (Bazyler 2017: 21).The systematic and state-ordered murder of the Jews began when the Nazis entered the territory of the Soviet Union in 1941 (Bazyler 2017: 21–2).The Final Solution was based on a criminal state conspiracy and secret orders, culminating in the Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942, where it was officially adopted (Bazyler 2017: 29).The legal nature of the Final Solution is evident from the minutes of the conference that state,‘The aim of all this was to cleanse German living space of Jews in a legal manner’ (The Wannsee Protocol 1942). Arendt’s reflections may again help us to obtain a clearer view of how (and how far) dehuman­ ization by law works. It is important to note at the outset that Arendt stresses that the produc­ tion of naked human beings is not restricted to totalitarian regimes (albeit, it forms the hallmark of it) (Veraart 2014: 267–278). Indeed, the purely instrumental use of the law is, Arendt points out, part and parcel of modern legal systems, even the non-totalitarian ones (Veraart 2014: 277). Consequently, an individual cannot take its status as a juridical person for granted (Veraart 2014: 273). It is in totalitarian legal systems that the law’s dehumanizing potential reaches its apex, even if dehumanization by law is only a first step (Veraart 2014: 271). In this analysis, we can also see that dehumanization by law cannot ever be complete. In the concentration camps,Arendt argues, the totalitarian regime managed to achieve its goal of total domination through the creation of what she calls ‘living corpses.’This process unfolds in three steps: the killing of the juridical person, the killing of the moral person, and the overcoming of man’s individuality (Goldoni & McCorkindale 2012: 7–9).The process ought to be understood against the background of Arendt’s argument that totalitarian rule constitutes a distinct (and paradoxical) form of legality that should not be confused with the complete lawlessness of tyranny.Totalitarian legality was instrumental to the goal of domination (Goldoni & McCorkindale 2012: 7). Central to it was that it replaced law’s normal stabilizing function with what she named ‘the rule of movement.’The form of legality upheld by totalitarianism may then be formulated as follows: At this point the fundamental difference between the totalitarian and all other concepts of law comes to light.Totalitarian policy does not replace one set of laws with another, does not establish its own consensus juris, does not create, by one revolution, a new form of legality. Its defiance of all, even its own positive laws implies that it believes it can do without any consensus juris whatever, and still not resign itself to the tyrannical state of lawlessness. (Arendt 1951: 462) The killing of the juridical person was done by selecting inmates for the concentration camps without them having violated any laws. In other words, the selection process was based not on an individual’s actions (as is normally the case with punishment in a system of criminal law) but on their identity (Goldoni & McCorkindale 2012: 8). In this way, arbitrary detention destroyed the idea of free consent on which the (mythical) social contract was based, since the very reason for the arrest (Jewish identity) was outside of what one can consent to. The moral person was killed by robbing the individual’s death of its meaning.The anonymous death that awaited the inmates of the concentration camps made it impossible to find out whether 207

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they were dead or alive and, hence, whether or not they were to be mourned. In this way, even their deaths were taken away from them.The dehumanization was completed in the third stage in which the human loses his individuality completely and becomes nothing more than ‘beast’ and ‘cattle.’This is done in various ways; for example, torture, mass transportation, the shaving of the head, etc. Here, one can see that dehumanization as a process cannot be achieved by legal means only. After the killing of the juridical person, there is simply no legal agent left who can be addressed by law (Veraart 2014: 271). Hence, non-legal means are called upon to further the dehumanization process. Let us now turn to the second case of dehumanization by law: South Africa under apartheid. The apartheid legal order existed in South Africa from 1948 to 1994. During this era, South Africa was formally not only an order that stipulated the supremacy of the constitution but also one that acknowledged the rule of law (Dyzenhaus 2007: 735).This can only be understood if one upholds a formal conception of the rule of law; that is, one that equates it with the prin­ ciple of legality. In such a view, law can be an instrument for a racist ideology without losing its character of legality (Dyzenhaus 2007: 736). In short, the rule of law was interpreted as the rule by law (Dyzenhaus 2007: 738). Apartheid was (also) a legal regime: the racist ideology was defined by law and enforced by legal means (Madala 2000: 744). The aim of the system was to establish ‘a policy of white supremacy,’ safeguarding the interests of the white minority while repressing all other groups (Madala 2000: 744–5). Legal measures were pivotal in maintaining ‘racial purity,’ as can be witnessed in the promulgation of the Population Registration Act of 1950. With the act, the Nationalist Party wanted to introduce a more systematic classification of race in order to make a person’s racial classification central in all spheres of life (Posel 2001: 98).3 There were three racial groups determined by the act: A white person is one who in appearance is, or who is generally accepted as, a white person, but does not include a person who, although in appearance obviously a white person, is generally accepted as a coloured person. (Section 1 [xv]) A “native” is a person who is in fact or is generally accepted as a member of any aboriginal race or tribe of Africa. (Section 1 [x]) A coloured person is a person who is not a white person nor a native. (Section 1 [iii]) (quoted in Posel 2001: 102) It was through this classification that races could be held separate (apart) from one another (Posel 2001: 98–9).The act was, in other words, crucial in the daily bureaucratic practice of South Africa under apartheid and could be called upon in order to (violently) defend racial boundaries (Posel 2001: 104). As the apartheid laws permeated every aspect of life (from marriage to education, and from freedom of speech to land ownership), the result was a split in society brought about by a legal system benefitting the few and repressing the many (Madala 2000: 746–8). In order to impose the apartheid legal order on the majority, the government had to take ever more far-reaching measures, such as solitary confinements, detentions without trial, and the forced removal of whole communities (Madala 2000: 748–9). With this kind of measures, a human’s full juridical personhood is violated; her status of a bearer of rights is infringed. Bernadette Atuahene’s socio-legal study on the forced taking of land and other property from the black population is especially important to the subject of this chapter because she argues that dehumanization by law can be interpreted as an assault on human dignity. Atuahene develops a theoretical framework that enables her to show the entanglement of legal measures expropriating 208

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people and dehumanizing them at the very same time (Atuahene 2016: 796–823). For this pur­ pose, she coined the concept of ‘dignity takings’ (Atuahene 2016: 817). Usually, such a confisca­ tion of private property is done under the auspices of the conquered not owning it in the first place (Atuahene 2016: 817).The law has, also in normal situations, allowed for the possibilities of the confiscation of private property.These takings are considered constitutional, even if they happen against the will of the owner, if and only if they are done for a public cause and a fair compensation is rendered to the original owner (Atuahene 2016: 798). In contrast to these lawful takings, there are also takings that involve diminishing people’s property rights (dispossession) or moving people physically from their property (displacement), or even both (Atuahene 2016: 798).These kinds of takings may become dignity takings when infantilization and/or dehuman­ ization occur. Atuahene develops the notion of dignity takings against the background of recent critiques of Locke’s theory of the social contract. Locke has been crucial, for he pointed out the relation­ ship between membership within a political community and property. Hence, unlawful takings violate a person to the extent that she can no longer be regarded as a full member of society (Atuahene 2016: 799). Atuahene explains how her notion of dignity taking stresses how taking property away also means violating someone’s dignity—one’s status as a full member of society (Atuahene 2016: 800).Acknowledging the rich history of the notion of human dignity,Atuahene (2016: 800–1) stresses the elements of autonomy and equal worth as enabling a human being to live an autonomous life. Dehumanization thus occurs because a person’s ability to enter the social contract is denied (Atuahene 2016: 801). The third and last case study in this section concerns the so-called torture memos. I have included this case study to show that dehumanization by law does not only occur within a legal order that can be called wicked or evil but also within an order that, on the whole, does not merit those epithets. Furthermore, and related to the first point, another difference between Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa on the one hand and the USA under George W. Bush on the other must be noted.While in the former official legislation was used to dehumanize, this was not the case in the latter. Official law (both international and domestic) clearly stated that what was practiced by the CIA between 2002 and 2009 was not permitted. Unofficial law or legal practice, however, stipulated that these practices were allowed for the sake of national security (Cole 2009: 2–3).This unofficial law has become known as the torture memos. Following the attacks of 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan, numerous detainees were held captive by the USA, all possibly affiliated with Al-Qaeda. Since they might possess valuable infor­ mation regarding this organization—one of the main opponents in the so-called War on Terror— the Bush Administration was confronted with the question of how to obtain this information from the detainees. Which interrogation techniques could be legally used in their questioning (Wendel 2006: 5)? The lawyers of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) were called upon to answer this question. In the period of 2002–2007, lawyers of the OLC wrote a whole range of memos, basically permitting any interrogation technique on the grounds that they were legal given the circumstances (Cole 2009: 2).4 Interestingly, for our purposes, one scholar formulates the core of the problem in terms of dehumanization: History has shown that even officials acting with the best intentions may come to feel, especially in times of crisis, that the end justifies the means, and that the greater good of national security makes it permissible to inflict pain on a resisting suspect to make him talk. History has also shown that inflicting such pain—no matter how “well­ intentioned”—dehumanizes both the suspect and his interrogator, corrodes the system 209

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of justice, renders a fair trial virtually impossible, and often exacerbates the very threat to the nation’s security that was said to warrant the interrogation tactics in the first place. (Cole 2009: 2–3) It is important to acknowledge that, while there is reason to speak of a ‘law-free zone’ (Cole 2009: 6), it is, paradoxically, one created by law and the interpretative work of (very high ranking) lawyers. These lawyers presented their interpretation as a creative but defensible reading of the law. So, in the case of the torture memos, dehumanization by law occurred through interpreting the law—something lawyers are typically trained and paid to do. Unsurprisingly, the torture memos have, and rightfully so, been analyzed in terms of (failing) legal ethics, or even bad legal advice, since the non-derogation clause of the 1984 Torture Convention simply prohibits the OLC’s justification in terms of emergency (Wendel 2006: 6–7). Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to frame the case of the torture memos in terms of indi­ vidual legal ethics, only (Luban 2014). This would neither do justice to the dehumanization involved, nor to the claimed goal of the use of torture: safeguarding national security (Wendel 2009: 108–9). The underlying political argument was, basically, that since the responsibility (to safeguard security) was so great it came with all the powers necessary, or claimed to be necessary. At stake is nothing less than the rule of law itself: is it, ultimately, an instrument in the hands of power, or, rather, a restraint on power (Wendel 2009: 117–8). David Luban has recently proposed to understand the torturer as an enemy of humanity (Luban 2018: 112–137, see also Corrias and Veraart 2018). According to him, the notion of the hostis humani generis, understood as a substantial and a jurisdictional concept, can and should play a role within international criminal law.While the concept is usually related to the way in which international law—following the famous Roman jurist and politician Cicero—understands pirates, Luban argues for an alternative genealogy that takes its cue from the tyrant.This makes the modern torturer (together with other perpetrators of the core international crimes) the prime example of an enemy of all humanity. While pirates, in Luban’s view, were considered hostes humani generis because of their complete disrespect for state authority, the torturer often acts on behalf of a state.Torturers are, however, also to be considered enemies of humanity, since they assault human rights. Here the link between tyrant and torturer comes to light: both the crimes of torturers and those of tyrants violate ‘our character as political animals’ (Luban 2018: 129, for a more elaborate defense of this view, see Luban 2004). In this way, the torture memos gave a legal blessing to a practice that blatantly violated full juridical personhood.

13.5 Epilogue: Rehumanization by law While the previous sections have discussed the way in which law and lawyers are complicit in the process of dehumanization, this epilogue looks at the law as a restorative enterprise. Partly as a response to some of the episodes described above, law has been called upon to combat dehu­ manization.This epilogue will briefly discuss the possibilities of a reversal of dehumanization by law; what would legal rehumanization look like? As a sheer minimum, the specific way in which the law ought to play a role in the process of rehumanization is by the restoration of the violated juridical person. This is, indeed, something that can only be done by legal means.Whether this is enough, remains the question. Since, as I have argued throughout this chapter, dehumanization by law is characterized by its institutional nature, a solution should necessarily also be thought of at this level. With regard to the torture memos, David Cole seeks it in ‘some form of official acknowledgement of wrongdoing’ (Cole 2009: 7). One might also think of public apologies to the victims, like Duch made in his trial for 210

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crimes against humanity (Corrias 2016). Interestingly, these apologies could serve a double pur­ pose. Not only could the victims could be rehumanized, but the perpetrators, too.The perpetrator is, himself, dehumanized by his own dehumanizing acts. Casting himself as some sort of ‘enemy of mankind,’ Duch seems to be the perfect example of the recent reinterpretation of this figure, according to David Luban.The notion of an enemy of all humanity is needed, so Luban argues, in order to point out the radical evil of these types of crimes and to claim that fighting them is everyone’s business and responsibility. In this respect, Luban refers to a notion of humanity as a moral community calling to account its enemies by way of a fair trial (Luban 2018: 137). Another approach would focus more directly on the legal possibilities for rehumanization. One of the most interesting aspects of Atuehene’s work is that it not only offers the tools to capture what is at stake in the deprivation of property, but that it also suggests a remedy. Since dignity has been infringed, Atuahene (2016: 802) argues, simple reparations are insufficient and need to be combined with some form of restorative justice. Hence, a so-called dignity restoration may be defined as ‘a remedy that seeks to provide dispossessed individuals and communities with material compensation through processes that affirm their humanity and reinforce their agency’ (Atuahene 2016: 818). On the other hand, since the dehumanization was achieved by a legal act, the law should also be involved in the restoration. Simple apologies will not do. While dignity restorations come in many forms dependent on the specific dignity-taking, it is vital that both the legal damage (i.e., the loss of property) is compensated and that the victim is recognized again as having dignity (i.e., equal worth and autonomy). In this respect, attention to the concrete pro­ cess of dignity restoration is of the essence (Atuahene 2016: 802). Building on Atauhene’s work,Wouter Veraart (2016: 957) has argued that dignity restoration is a multifaceted as well as a context- and time-dependent notion. Comparing the restitution of confiscated property and dignity restoration of the Jewish population in France and The Netherlands after the Second World War, he notices important differences between the imme­ diate postwar period and the 1990s. Immediately after the war, Jewish victims were treated as full juridical persons legally equal to other citizens, thus marking an important break with their treatment under Nazi law (Veraart 2016: 962–3). In the 1990s, another understanding of dignity restoration became dominant; one based on the recognition of the singular suffering of the con­ crete victim (Veraart 2016: 965). Both approaches have their pros and cons,Veraart (2016: 970) shows.Yet, the most important conclusion seems to be that, with complex cases, several rounds of dignity restoration may be needed, with each round adding another layer (Veraart 2016: 971). With the recurrence of legal dehumanization, the reversal of this process—legal rehumanization—becomes a task that cannot be accomplished once and for all. In this regard, what retains its importance is the lesson of the ‘legal barbarism’ of the Nazis, as one scholar put it (Bazyler 2017: 3). One of the most shocking aspects of the Holocaust, especially for lawyers, is that it was conceived of and executed as an act of justice in the very name of human dignity (Van Roermund 2013: 85–6). In this regard, the Holocaust remains as a burden on legal practice and legal philosophy (Van Roermund 2013: 87). Perhaps, one can extend this to dehumanization by law at large. Dehumanization by law is a topic with which lawyers and legal philosophers are never done, for it confronts them with a burden on their actions as well as on their thinking.

Notes 1 The research for this contribution was supported by a fellowship of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS-KNAW) in 2019/2020. 2 In a radical critique of what she calls the ‘liberal equation’ of humanity and legal status, Samera Esmeir (2006) argues that the whole language of humanity in law makes dehumanization possible, as the colo­ nial project makes clear. Her alternative is to make room for ways of being human that do not strive for

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Luigi Corrias the recognition of law. I take this to be an important warning against any (government driven) project of humanization. I do not believe my approach within this chapter falls prey to Esmeir’s critique, since I focus explicitly on dehumanization by law. Hence, I acknowledge Esmeir’s underlying point that law and inclusion within legal categories may actually be a way to dehumanize. 3 Posel (2001: 98): ‘The Population Registration Act, passed in 1950, was an attempt to produce fixed, stable, and uniform criteria for racial classifications which would then be binding across all spheres of a person’s life. Every citizen was to be issued an identity document recording his or her race, as either “a white person, a colored person or a Native,” assessed according to the Act’s specifications.’ 4 Cole (2009: 2).To have an idea of what we are dealing with, see the quote from a memo of August 1, 2002: ‘It concluded that all of the CIA’s proposed tactics were permissible: specifically, (1) attention grasp, (2) walling, (3) facial hold, (4) facial slap (insult slap), (5) cramped confinement, (6) wall standing, (7) stress positions, (8) sleep deprivation, (9) insects placed in a confinement box, and (10) the waterboard’ (Cole 2009: 4).

References Arendt, H. (1951) The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York, NY: Harcourt. Arendt, H. (1963) On Revolution, London: Penguin Books. Atuahene, B. (2016) “Dignity Takings and Dignity Restoration: Creating a New Theoretical Framework for Understanding Involuntary Property Loss and the Remedies Required,” Law & Social Inquiry 41: 796–832. Bazyler, M. (2017) Holocaust, Genocide, and the Law: A Quest for Justice in a Post-Holocaust World, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cole, D. (2009) “The Torture Memos: The Case Against the Lawyers,” The New York Review of Books, October 8. Accessed at https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/14 Corrias, L. D. A. (2016) “Crimes Against Humanity, Dehumanization and Rehumanization: Reading the Case of Duch with Hannah Arendt,” Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence: An International Journal of Legal Thought 29: 351–70. Corrias, L. D. A. and Veraart W. J. (2018) “The Hostis Generis Humani: A Challenge to International Law,” Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy 47: 107–11. Çubukçu, A. (2017) “Thinking Against Humanity,” London Review of International Law 5: 251–67. Dyzenhaus, D. (2007) “The Pasts and Future of the Rule of Law in South Africa,” South African Law Journal 124: 734–61. Esmeir, S. (2006) “On Making Dehumanization Possible,” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 121: 1544–51. Frick, M.-L. (2020) “Dehumanization and Human Rights,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 187–200. (this volume). Goldoni, M. and McCorkindale, C. (2012) “Introduction,” in M. Goldoni and C. McCorkindale (eds.) Hannah Arendt and the Law, Oxford and Portland, NY: Hart Publishing. Hayden, P. (2008) “From Exclusion to Containment: Arendt, Sovereign Power, and Statelessness,” Societies Without Borders 3: 248–69. Luban, D. (2004) “A Theory of Crimes against Humanity,” Yale Journal of International Law 29: 85–167. Luban, D. (2014) Torture, Power, and Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Luban, D. (2018) “The Enemy of All Humanity,” Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy 47: 112–37. Madala, T. (2000) “Rule under Apartheid and the Fledgling Democracy in Post-Apartheid South Africa: The Role of the Judiciary,” North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation 26: 743–65. Majer, D. (1984) “Racial Inequality and the Nazification of the Law in Nazi Germany,” Israel Yearbook on Human Rights 14: 111–19. Mikkola, M. (2011) “Dehumanization,” in T. Brooks (ed.) New Waves in Ethics, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Posel, D. (2001) “Race as Common Sense: Racial Classification in Twentieth-Century South Africa,” African Studies Review 44: 87–113. Radbruch, G. (1950) “Legal Philosophy,” (transl. by Kurt Wilk) in E. W. Patterson (ed.) The Legal Philosophies of Lask, Radbruch and Dabin, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Radbruch, G. (2006) “Statutory Lawlessness and Supra-Statutory Law,” (transl. by B. L. Paulson and S. L. Paulson) Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 26: 1–11.

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Dehumanization by law Ricoeur, P. (2000) “Who Is the Subject of Rights?” (transl. by D. Paullauer) in P. Ricoeur (ed.) The Just Chicago, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Steizinger, J. (2020) “Dehumanizing Strategies in Nazi Ideology and their Anthropological Context,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 98–111. (this volume). The Wannsee Protocol (1942) January 20. Translation, available at http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/ news/uploads/WanseeProtocols.pdf Van Roermund, B. (2013) “Legal Thought and Philosophy: What Legal Scholarship is about,” Cheltenham (UK)-Northampton, MA/USA: Edward Elgar. Veraart, W. (2014) “The Experience of Legal Injustice,” Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy 43: 267–78. Veraart, W. (2016) “Two Rounds of Postwar Restitution and Dignity Restoration in the Netherlands and France,” Law & Social Inquiry 41: 956–72. Wendel, W. (2006) “What’s Wrong with Being Creative and Aggressive?” Cornell Law Faculty Publications. Paper 478. Accessed at http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/facpub/478 Wendel, W. (2009) “The Torture Memos and the Demands of Legality,” Legal Ethics 12: 107–24.

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14

DEHUMANIZATION IN

LITERATURE AND THE FIGURE

OF THE PERPETRATOR1

Andrea Timár

14.1 Introduction This chapter will examine the relationship between dehumanization and literature by focusing on the ways in which dehumanization is presented in literary works. Even though the truth claims literature makes are non-referential (i.e., fictional works are not expected to have a historical, verifiable referent), this chapter is based on the assumption that the critical study of literary fiction, can open new paths in our understanding of real world atrocities, too. As Aristotle fam­ ously claims, “the function of the poet is not to say what has happened, but to say the kind of thing that would happen, i.e., what is possible in accordance with probability or necessity. […] For this reason poetry is more philosophical and more serious than history. Poetry tends to express universals, and history particulars” (Aristotle 1987, p. 12). Indeed, the fictional status of literature does not reduce its heuristic potential; literary fiction may invite to imaginatively experience what it is like to be dehumanized, to dehumanize, or both, while also offering a “safe distance” necessary for critical thinking to take place. This duality of proximity and distance, emotional engagement and critical reasoning, the immersion in and reflection on language offered by the literary space may equally contribute to the better understanding of “our”2 own potential impli­ cation in processes of dehumanization (Rothberg, 2019). Meanwhile, the language of literature as a non-transparent medium that draws attention to itself may help us ask questions about the relationship between dehumanization and representation per se. The kind of dehumanization I shall consider is not an ontological or (post-)historical given, nor is it the consequence of some natural or biological disaster (induced or not by humans), as is the case with climate change fiction or with fictive accounts of the development or spread of a disease (which would make a timely topic, at present). On the contrary: I understand dehumanization as a complex interper­ sonal experience, embedded in human history, acted out in human relations, and inflected by human beings onto other human beings. I shall treat dehumanization as a process, rather than a state, or a single event.

14.2 Literature, empathy, and human rights There is scholarly agreement that the literary representation of the experience of victims of dehu­ manization advances the cause of human rights (Slaughter, 2007). Literature has the potential to brush history against the grain and present a story from the point of view of the dehumanized, 214

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generating empathy with victims (Rorty, 1989). According to the historian Lynn Hunt, it was particularly the 18th century novel’s ability to generate sympathy for those who had previously been considered as “less than human” that paved the way for the invention of universal human rights (Hunt, 2007).3 According to Martha Nussbaum’s influential account, when “one does manage for whatever reason to take up to the individual the literary attitude of sympathetic imagining, the dehumanising portrayal is unsustainable” (Nussbaum 1995, p. 92). Nussbaum’s key term is “sympathetic imagining,” a derivative of what Adam Smith, the 18th century Scottish philosopher, calls “sympathetic imagination”; however, while Smith argues that sympathy is, in fact, “deceitful” and only permits to put ourselves in others’ shoes to feel what we ourselves would feel in their situation (Smith 2000, pp. 6–7), Nussbaum’s sympathy is supposed to allow us to imaginatively experience what it feels like to be another person.While scholars offer various criteria to define degrees and forms of sympathy (depending on whether the emphasis is on similarity, difference, the self, the other affects, cognition, etc.4), this chapter, rather than discussing these complexities further, will simply use the terms sympathy, narrative empathy, and readerly identification interchangeably, and focus on their role in the imaginative experience of dehu­ manization generated by literary fiction. Although narrative fiction is still seen by many as “a communicative process in extending the reach of human rights,” the link between literary representations of previously dehumanized others and the extension of human rights has also often been questioned (Bex, Craps,Vermeulen, 2019, p. 2). For there is no direct relationship between readers’ willingness to indulge in the pleasures of narrative empathy, and their empathy for real “others” (Keen, 2007; Smith, 2000, p. 33; Zunshine, 2006), let alone, their willingness to help them (Prinz, 2011), and/or never to dehumanize them again (Bloom, 2016). Further, Hunt’s advocacy of the fundamental similarity of all human beings, which makes readerly identification possible, may equally yield the appro­ priation of the voice of the other, and the comfortable certitude of always “knowing what they mean and how they feel” without respecting their difference and distance (cf. Spivak, 1999). As Lyndsey Stonebridge puts it, “[i]magining what it means to be someone other than ourselves might (just) still be the ‘core of our humanity,’ but unless we reckon with the chequered history of that ‘humanity,’ generous imagining will remain just that: imagining” (Stonebridge, 2017, p. 8).

14.3 Perpetrators of dehumanization or criminals? In what follows, rather than concentrating on the ways in which victims of dehumanization are or can be represented in literature, I shall examine three novels written from the point of view of the perpetrator. In fact, it is “easy” to empathize with the victims; as Leake puts it,“As readers we are commonly asked to empathize with those who are seen as most deserving of our empathy. These are victims of abuse and oppression.This is a relatively easy form of empathy, because who would not want to empathize with those who are the victims of abuse by others” (p. 176). On the other hand, Leake calls narrative empathy with the perpetrators “difficult empathy,” because it affects the image we entertain of ourselves as a good person: when we are invited to identify with a perpetrator, we have to engage, according to Leake, with the potential evil in ourselves. (p. 177) However, as I will later show, stories are never singular, but multiple and ambiguous, and the story of one individual is always more than one: most often, it is not (only) with the perpet­ rator that we empathize, but (also) with the victim within the perpetrator. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s conception of the “banality of evil,” Simona Forti (2014) makes a historical distinction between, on the one hand, the old image of evil conceptualised as revolt (epitomised by Milton’s Satan), and, on the other, our contemporary concept of the “normality of evil.”This latter is characterized by obedience to rules and the perpetuation of existing social 215

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norms, and is epitomized by the Nazi (see also Adorno, 2005, pp. 197–198). In a similar vein does Robert Eaglestone (2017) distinguish, via Arendt, between the fascinating monstrosity of characters like Milton’s Satan or Richard III on the one hand, and the “emptiness,” the “thought­ lessness” of perpetrators on the other (2017, pp. 38–39; see also Brudholm and Lang on dehu­ manization with or without hate, in this volume.).These latter, as Hannah Arendt (1963) says of Eichmann, are totally unable “ever to look at anything from the other fellow’s point of view” (47–48). Although Arendt is careful not to use the term “empathy” because it denotes a feeling that we should be weary of, and prefers the phrase “enlarged thinking,” we may still say, in the context of the present argument, that these perpetrators of dehumanization lack what we would today call cognitive, or perspective-taking empathy. As Arendt puts it, “the ability to see things not only from one’s own point of view but in the perspective of all those who happen to be present” and to “mak[e] present to my mind the standpoints of those who are absent” (Arendt, 1968, pp. 220–222). Although the term “perpetrator” generally designates a perpetrator of crimes, or, more recently, of genocide (Üngör and Anderson, 2019, p. 7), I shall first focus on perpetrators of dehumaniza­ tion who do not commit crime(s) in the legal sense of the term. In other words, I shall examine characters whose acts are immoral but conform to the political and the legal system of their own place and time. In this context, Ivan Raskolnikov (from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment), or Patrick Bateman (from American Psycho), or Shakespeare’s Richard III would not be considered perpetrators, but criminals, whereas Mr B. from Richardson’s Pamela, or Alec from Tess of the D’Urbervilles5 are perpetrators of dehumanization who do not break the laws of their own place and time. The best way to discern the difference between criminals and those whom I call perpetrators of dehumanization is to look at literary works presenting criminals and perpetrators side by side as antagonists. As is established, individual revolt against systemic dehumanization instituted as the norm often takes the form of criminal violence (Arendt, 1970, p. 64.), and literature can con­ tribute to our understating of the process and the consequences of dehumanization through its exquisite potential to show the gap between ethical and legal justice. For example, when Moses, the black handyman in Doris Lessing’s Grass is Singing (1950) murders his cruelly racist white mistress and is awaiting trial, Tony Marston, the bystander, has the “feeling that a monstrous injustice is being done” (Lessing, 1973, p. 31). This “feeling” of “injustice,” just like the novel as a whole, reveals an abyss between ethics and law, which may turn out to be more pervasive, more general than the concrete context of Lessing’s book. To take another example, in Dezső Kosztolányi’s Anna Édes (1926), which otherwise constitutes a world apart, the eponymous ser­ vant girl,Anna, similarly kills her mistress, and the bystander witness’s, Mr. Moviszter’s, testimony at the court equally evokes a “feeling” that points to a kind of justice that is beyond the grasp of the law: ‘They [the mistress and the master] behaved coldly towards her [Anna],’ stated Moviszter […]‘I always felt so.They gave her no affection.They were heartless.’ ‘And how did this heartlessness show itself?’ ‘It is hard to say precisely. But it was distinctly my impression.’ ‘Then these are only feelings, doctor, mere suspicions, such delicate shades of behav­ iour that this bench, faced by such a brutal and terrible crime, can hardly take them into account. Because on one side, we have facts: bloody facts.And we too require facts. […]’ ‘My impression,’ he stubbornly repeated, ‘my impression is that they did not deal with her as with a human being.To them she was not a human being but a machine.’ (Kosztolányi, 1993, pp. 210–211) 216

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Whereas the law is applicable only to “facts,” to criminal acts, the process of dehumanization often consists of “shades of behavior” that cannot be pointed at and condemned in a legal proceeding. However, literature is able to show these shades of behavior (from both their perpetrator’s and their victim’s side), and make the reader, like Mr. Moviszter, imaginatively engage with them. Meanwhile, what makes it possible for ordinary perpetrators of dehumanization, such as the colonizers in The Grass is Singing or the exploitative bourgeois in Anna Édes, to become what they are is the political and social system (the machine) that renders what is ethically unjust (the everyday perpetration of dehumanization) “normal” and legal. Therefore, imaginative engage­ ment with complex perpetrator characters may also bring one closer to an engagement with the potential perpetrator of dehumanization in oneself; rather than strengthening one’s feeling of moral superiority by offering the satisfaction of an easy empathy with the victims (Leake, 2014), they may make one realize that even though it is highly improbable that one ever becomes a criminal, one may easily become a perpetrator of dehumanization. In what follows, I shall examine four novels foregrounding the experience of perpetrators. I shall read them as literary commentaries on the relationship between dehumanization and literary representation, and focus throughout on the function of readerly identification in negotiating this relationship.The first one, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) will serve as an example for dehumanizing literary representations which lure the reader in the position of the perpetrator. The second one, J.M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986), this critical 20th-century rewrite of Robinson Crusoe, will serve as an example for the literary representation of dehumanization. As I will show, Foe critically reflects on the dehumanizing potentials of representation itself, and draws attention to the potentially violent aspects of sympathetic imagination, too.The third novel, Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones [Les Bienveillantes, 2006], apart from critically representing dehumanization, also makes us question, through the polyphony of the voice of the protagonist, the very notions of narrative voice and readerly empathy. Eventually, I shall briefly touch upon the problem of the aesthetic (as pertaining to the appreciation of the beautiful) and the comic via Nabokov’s Lolita.

14.4 Readerly complicities: Dehumanizing representations, representations of dehumanization In the beginning of the 18th century, there was unanimous agreement on “the conceptualisation of blacks as less than fully human” (Boulukos, 2008, p. 95). Defoe’s 1719 novel, Robinson Crusoe is the fictional autobiography of a sailor who builds up a civilization on a desert island, and who eventu­ ally turns into the slave-owner of a man he names Friday. Robinson has been canonized as the first English novel and the first Bildungsroman, as well as the paradigmatic fictional representation of the British colonial expansion, predicated on the dehumanization and concomitant enslavement of the non-European other. Curiously, as Joseph Slaughter reminds us, the novel also served as an example for drafting Article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).Adopted in 1948, UDHR says,“Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible” (quoted by Slaughter, 2007, p. 48). According to Slaughter, human rights discourse “presumably aspires to promote the free and full personality development [not only of bourgeois white men like Crusoe but also] of so many Fridays” (Ibid., p. 53. italics added). We get to know from Crusoe’s first person singular account that he rescued, from the hands of cannibals, a “hand some fellow” who had “had all the sweetness and softness of a European in his countenance”: At last he lays his Head flat upon the Ground, close to my Foot, and sets my other

Foot upon his Head, as he had done before; and after this, made all the Signs to me of

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Subjection, Servitude, and Submission imaginable, to let me know, how he would serve me as long as he liv’d; I understood him in many Things, and let him know, I was very well pleas’d with him; in a little Time I began to speak to him, and teach him to speak to me; and first, I made him know his Name should be Friday, which was the Day I sav’d his Life; I call’d him so for the Memory of the Time; I likewise taught him to say Master, and then let him know, that was to be my Name. (Defoe, 2007: 174) Later, Crusoe teaches Friday to speak English, instructs him of the existence of the “true God,” and converts him into a Protestant.This may indeed appear as a process of Bildung initiated by a benevolent master/educator, Crusoe, who typically wishes Friday to become almost the same, but not quite as, cultivated, Protestant, healthy white Englishman. And since the first person singular narration makes us identify with Crusoe’s point of view, we are made to forget that it is precisely by trying to “humanize” Friday that Crusoe dehumanizes him: Crusoe’s sole purpose is to render Friday obedient—that is, to use him as a means rather than an end in himself. And even though the thematic level of the novel is supportive of Crusoe’s perspective (Friday not only consents to his subjection, but also happily offers to become Crusoe’s subject), what we can witness on a rhet­ orical level is the erasure of Friday as an individual with a proper name and language of his own. In fact, the humanist ideology of Bildung, emerging in the 18th century, has long been shown to be conditioned by the forgetting of the processes of dehumanization on which it relies, and by the exclusion of its dehumanized others from the category of the human (cf. Redfield, 1996 as well as Kontler in this volume). And since the 18th-century Defoe does not frame Crusoe’s dehu­ manizing narrative and practice as dehumanizing (Defoe shares Crusoe’s values), dehumanization is not critically displayed as such. Hence, the first person singular narration used in Robinson Crusoe may still generate readers’ identification with Crusoe’s point of view, and they therefore become complicit in dehumanization.This is the result of what literary historians call Defoe’s “realism”: the text is presented as the true autobiography of a sailor called Robinson Crusoe and seeks to deny its own literary status. In other words, it is the absence of critical distance between author and narrator and the absence of any moral reflection on the part of the narrator that has the most potential to yield naïve readings sympathetic with the narrator protagonist. Only critical readings attentive to Defoe’s narrative technique can debunk the dehumanising processes at work in this arch-humanist narrative, which is supposed to represent the process of becoming fully human. As a contrast to Robinson Crusoe, J.M. Coetze’s Foe is a highly self-conscious novel, which con­ stantly foregrounds its own literary status. Further, it puts on critical display the violent erasures necessarily involved in representation, while equally offering a challenge to the widely accepted claim, propagated by human rights discourse, that it would be desirable to give “human” voice to the “other.” As Stonebridge puts it, human “[r]ights […] are rewarded for the ability to voice the human” (Stonebridge, 2013, p. 117). Coetzee’s Foe does not vindicate a voice for Friday, but rather acknowledges the complexities involved in the notion of voice, and the equation often made between voice and rights (Rickel, 2013, p. 162). Foe is a rewrite of Robinson Crusoe but bears strong links to Defoe’s other novels, such as Moll Flanders and Roxana, too.Whereas women are curiously absent from Robinson Crusoe (they have no place in the project of subject and/or empire building), Coetzee introduces a female narrator, Susan Barton, a castaway arriving belatedly and eventually being rescued from Cruso’s island. After Cruso’s death, she lands in England with Friday and becomes obsessed with the imperative to “confess” to Foe, the novelist, what happened to the three of them by telling the story of the loss of Friday’s tongue. However, in the absence of a either a shared language or any other means of communication with Friday, her ability to testify becomes predicated on a leap of the sympa­ thetic imagination—on her ability to feel what it feels like to be Friday. 218

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Susan’s first reaction to Friday, who is unable to tell his story, is not sympathy but disgust: “But now I began to look on him—I could not help myself—with the horror we deserve for the mutilated. […] it was the very secretness of his loss that caused me to shrink from him” (p. 24). Indeed, as Adam Smith has already argued in the 18th century, in order for our sympathy to rise, and we can imaginatively place ourselves in the other’s situation, it is essential that the other’s situation be part and parcel of a narrative: General lamentations that express nothing but the anguish of the sufferer don’t cause in us any actual strongly-felt sympathy.The Propriety of Action what they do is to make us want to inquire into the person’s situation, and to make us disposed to sympathize with him.The first question we ask is ‘What has happened?’ Until this is answered, our fellow-feeling is not very considerable. (Smith, 2000, p. 4) And, as opposed to Susan, who, as a woman, is silenced “only” in the fields of politics and arts, Friday’s silence is definitive: You err most tellingly in failing to distinguish between my silences and the silences of beings such as Friday. Friday has no command of words and therefore no defence against being re-shaped day by day in conformity with the desires of others. I say he is a cannibal and he becomes a cannibal. I say he is a laundryman and he becomes a laundryman.What is the truth of Friday? […] No matter what he is to himself (is he anything to himself?—how can he tell us?), what he is to the world is what I make of him.Therefore the silence of Friday is a helpless silence. (Coetzee, 1986, pp. 121–122) In fact, Susan’s relentless but always frustrated desire to get to know Friday’s story equally reveals the potentially dehumanizing violence necessarily involved in representation, even in the most benevolent attempt to extract a “human voice” from the other.As another of Coetzee’s narrators puts it, “Is it she I want or the traces of a history her body bears?” (Coetzee, 2000, p. 70). Differently put, Foe not only questions the equation between humaneness and narrative voice, but equally reminds us that without having respect for the non-transparency, “secrecy” at the heart of the other (see also Crary, 2010, p. 263.), the wish to sympathize with or extract the voice of the other, may turn into imaginative violence. Both Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Coetzee’s Foe invite us to put ourselves in the shoes of the one who is in a relative power position and has the potential to be or to become a perpetrator of dehumanization (Crusoe and Susan compared to Friday). Their first person singular appeal to our narrative empathy puts us into a difficult position as readers: do we take their side or that of their victim? Whereas Defoe does not invite us to take a critical stance toward his narrator, Coetzee’s purpose is to foreground the problematic character of representation itself: I say he is a cannibal and he becomes a cannibal; I say he is a laundryman and he becomes a laundryman. What is the truth of Friday? You ‘will respond: he is neither cannibal nor laundryman, these are mere names, they do not touch his essence, he is a substantial body, he is himself, Friday is Friday. But that is not so. No matter what he is to himself (is he anything to himself?—how can he tell us?), what he is to the world is what I make of him. (Coetzee, 1986, pp. 121–22) The question of the relationship between representation and dehumanization provokes yet another important question; namely, the uneasy connection between the human and the aesthetic 219

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per se. Both Robinson Crusoe (uncritically) and Foe (critically) point to the aesthetic criteria as often determining whether one qualifies as “human” or not. In cases where aesthetic criteria are used to define the human, then humans have to live up to a certain context-dependent standard of beauty to count as fully human. Defoe’s purpose with emphasizing Friday’s aesthetic (i.e., European) qualities is to humanize him: “He was a comely, handsome fellow, perfectly well made […] he had all the sweetness and softness of a European” (Defoe, 2007, p. 173). On the other hand, as we will later see in the context of Nabokov’s Lolita too: aestheticization is also the high way to objectification, and, therefore, to dehumanization. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the Creature, because of his disproportionate, monstrous body, seems to fail the test of humaneness; the other characters, primarily Frankenstein, perceive him not as a human but as a monster.This novel, however, does problematize the equation between physical beauty and humanness. Readers (as opposed to the characters in the book) are able to read the Creature as human: he is given narrative consciousness and we get to know his story.The novel thereby also resists the ideology of the aesthetic. Meanwhile, as was mentioned, it is precisely the correlation between narrative voice and humanenness that is challenged by Coetzee’s Foe. Further, Foe equally complicates the link between the aesthetic and the human. Despite the fact that Friday is disgusting to Susan, who also compares him to “an animal wrapt entirely in itself ” ( Coetzee, 1986, p. 64.), she acknowledges his humanness. However, even though this may at first sight suggest that one’s acknowledg­ ment or recognition by another human individual is enough to make one human (i.e., no other “essentially human” characteristic is required), the novel does not present this individual, private solution as satisfactory. In the end, Friday withdraws to a symbolic place where “bodies are their own signs” (p. 157), which means that he has, in fact, remained outside the realm of the public and the political: despite Susan’s individual efforts, Friday has not acquired the right to have rights (Arendt, 1951), and does not become part of any human community.

14.5 Dehumanization and literariness: The difficulty of difficult empathy In another novel by Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello, the eponymous writer argues that “there is no limit to the extent to which we [especially writers] can think ourselves into the being of another,” but “certain things must remain off stage, […] certain things are not good to read or to write” (Coetzee, 2003, p. 173). The object of Costello’s critique, this time, is not imagina­ tive violence, but a living writer, Paul West (1935–2015), whose novel The Very Rich Hours of Count von Stauffenberg gives a detailed description of the tortures suffered by the members of a complot against Hitler. Costello calls West’s descriptions “[o]bscene because such things […] ought not to be brought into the light but covered up and hidden forever” (Ibid., p. 159). I shall now turn to a novel that is obscene in both the ordinary sense of the word and Costello’s sense: Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones. The first person singular narrator of this novel, with whom readers are invited to identify, is Dr. Aue, an ex-SS officer who retrospectively tells us about his public career in the SS, and about his private life as a passive homosexual with violent sexual fantasies who used to have an incestuous relationship with his twin sister.While Aue is adamant that he never actually killed any Jews, we get to know that he killed his mother and his step­ father who had separated him from his twin sister when they were children. After the murders, he is persecuted by two policemen until he eliminates them as well. Hence, he is both a crim­ inal with understandable human motives and a perpetrator of dehumanization whose acts are unjustifiable, and who embodies the “normality of evil” (Forti) in his own historical milieu.

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Meanwhile, he constantly tries to lure us into believing that we would have equally become perpetrators had we been in a similar situation.6 I am not trying to say I am not guilty of this or that. I am guilty, you’re not, fine. But you should be able to admit to yourselves that you might also have done what I did. […….] If you were born in a country or at a time not only when nobody comes to kill your wife and your children, but also nobody comes to ask you to kill the wives and children of others, then render thanks to God and go in peace. But always keep this thought in mind: you might be luckier than I, but you’re not a better person. (Littell, 2009, p. 20) Aue’s narrative looks persuasive. He presents himself as one of us, and, in a sense, he is right: he was only one among the many thousand perpetrators during the Second World War.And even though we may feel certain that we could never become a Nazi, and the psychological phe­ nomenon of “imaginative resistance”—that is, “readers always resist the invitation of authors to imagine morally deviant fictional scenarios” (Szabó, 2000)—equally puts an obstacle to the exercise of narrative empathy, readers may still recognise in themselves the moral laziness against resisting orders and acting against circumstances, as well as the good excuses for doing so. But, as opposed to a scientific knowledge of this all too human propensity for evil (that we can also derive from the famous Milgram and Stanford experiments), the fictional knowledge derived from novels is different: through our imaginations we experience what it feels like to be someone else, and can also critically reflect upon this reading experience. However, what makes it possible to empathize, to temporarily feel with a character who is a perpetrator, and even to become concerned about their fate, is not only or not necessarily our shared potential for evil. During the periods of imaginative identification, it is, in fact, not with the narrator’s deeds and thoughts as a perpetrator that we sympathize, but it is with someone telling us the all too human story of his victimization by certain (historical, biological, psychological, or even social and cul­ tural) circumstances, or someone sharing with us his all too human aspirations (e.g., his desire to climb the hierarchy ladder, to achieve his amorous goals, or to escape from a life threatening situation). Stories are never singular, but multiple and ambiguous, and the story of one individual is always more than one. Aue’s narrative moves, for example, always aim to temporarily make us forget about the bigger picture, his active agency as a victimizer (starkly contrasting the true lack of agency of the victims), so that the human individuality emerging from these stories obliterate his overall inhumanity. In other words, while we sympathize with his efforts in trying to escape the detectives or the other Nazis wanting to denounce him for his homosexuality, we identify with the victim within the perpetrator, and may temporarily lose sight of his active involvement in the perpetration of Nazi crimes. Considering this, difficult empathy might not even be so difficult after all. Slavoj Žižek calls our attention to the redemptive lure surrounding all narrative, since narratives can present everyone as human: What is truly unbearable about the Nazi executioners is not so much the terrifying things they did, as how “human, all too human” they remained while doing those things. ‘Stories we tell ourselves about ourselves’ serve to obfuscate the true ethical dimension of our acts. In making ethical judgments, we should be story-blind. (2010, pp. 38–39)

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Humanization through narrative is, indeed, a double-edged sword. On the one hand, because narratives individualize and present singular subjectivities, or souls, with a capacity to suffer, they have the potential, as Lynn Hunt and Martha Nussbaum have shown us, to re-establish the humanity of someone hitherto dehumanized. On the other hand, however, because of these same features, narratives can also present the inhuman as human, obscuring the ethical for the sake of the emotional. Curiously, Adam Smith, the 18th-century advocate of sympathy endorsed by Martha Nussbaum, actually destabilizes the connection between the emotional and the ethical in the first paragraph of The Theory of Moral Sentiments: This sentiment [sympathy], like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous or the humane […] The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it. (3) While sympathy is universal, people endowed with sympathy can still violate the laws of society (see also Bloom, 2016; Timár, 2016); that is, there is nothing in “human nature,” not even our allegedly universal capacity for sympathy, which could prevent people from becoming perpetrators of crimes. Dr.Aue is sensitive to the suffering of Jewish children, but his belief in the system (the machine) and his narcissism in advancing his career do make him a perpetrator, even though he is himself traumatized by the atrocities he committed (see also Meretoja, 2017, p. 230). Hannah Arendt frames perpetrator trauma in an absolutely non-forgiving manner in Eichmann in Jersusalem: “instead of saying: What horrible things I did to people! the murderers would be able to say: What horrible things I had to watch in the pursuance of my duties, how heavily the task weighed upon my shoulders” (Arendt, 1963, p. 98). Indeed, one of the perpetrators’ means of generating empathy is to exhibit the signs of the trauma he suffered while traumatizing and killing others. At the same time, I also suggest that what Littell puts on critical display is precisely the notion of narrative voice, and he thereby severs the link often established between voice, humanness, and “readerly” empathy. To see how this happens, we have to examine, first, the ways in which the novel foregrounds the arbitrariness and sovereignly performative character of the “we”–“them” opposition that conditions discourses of dehumanization positing this binary as “naturally existing.” First of all, the Nazi narrator, Dr. Aue, is the uncanny double of the American Jewish writer, Jonathan Littell, writing his novel in French: both can pass for French, which is not their native tongue (Redfield, 2016;Timár, 2019). Second, on the thematic level of the novel, the Nazis are always at pains to establish the Jewishness of the Jews, to draw—the impossible—distinction between Jew and non-Jew (the Nazi Aue, himself, is circumcised because of a childhood illness), and one of the significant “other voices” of the novel is a German scientist of the SS who rightly argues against the possibility of establishing separate “races.” And, third, because the distinction between self and others is merely performative (it does not describe an existing state of affairs but creates one), neither the victims (the “others”) nor the perpetrators (the “we”) can be defined based on some essential characteristics.The perpetrator is merely the one who perpetuates; that is, perpetrates the discourse that repetitively institutes the difference between enemy (other) and friend (same). One of the most trenchant definitions of dehumanization is pronounced by the SS Doctor Wirths: I came to the conclusion that the SS guard doesn’t become violent or sadistic because he thinks the inmate is not a human being; on the contrary, his rage increases and turns

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into sadism when he sees that the inmate, far from being a subhuman as he was taught, is actually at bottom a man, like him, after all, and it’s this resistance, you see, that the guard finds unbearable, this silent persistence of the other, and so the guard beats him to try to make their shared humanity disappear. Of course, that doesn’t work: the more the guard strikes, the more he’s forced to see that the inmate refuses to recognize himself as a non-human. In the end, no other solution remains for him than to kill him, which is an acknowledgment of complete failure. (Littell, 2009, p. 624) Dehumanization, as an attempt “to make their shared humanity disappear,” is the institution of a breach within humanity, yielding the “political,” the distinction between friend and enemy (Schmitt, 2007).The latter has lost the right to have rights (Arendt, 1951) and can be killed (but not sacrificed [Agamben, 1998]). But are we to take this speech at face value given that it is pronounced by a Nazi and figures in narrative fiction? Curiously, the literariness of this discourse does not reside either in its fictionality or in its unreliability but in the way in which it fails to perform what it says. What the words of the character Dr. Wirths (based on a historical Eduard Wirths, chief doctor of the Auschwitz con­ centration camp) anachronistically evoke are Emanuel Levinas’s Totality and Infinity, which offers exactly the same argument on the “ethical resistance” of the other as “the sole being I can wish to kill” (quoted by Eaglestone, 2017, pp. 56–57, note 61). By making a fictional Nazi anticipate the thoughts of a French philosopher of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry who survived the Holocaust as a prisoner of war, the novel performs what the Nazis strive to annihilate through the institu­ tion of “racial” difference. In other words, the novel shatters the differences (between “we” and “them,” friend and enemy) it thematically stages, and thereby reveals these differences to be performative, perpetuated by repetitive (speech) acts. Hence, The Kindly Ones equally destabilizes narrative voice, which later fails to do what it says. Other instances of intertextuality (including the title referring to the ancient Greek myth of Orestes; the initial address to the readers, “Oh my human brothers,” evoking poems by Francois Villon and Charles Baudelaire; or the textual evocations of Bataille, de Sade, etc.) as well as the occasional appearance of other voices (such as that of Aue’s mother, revealing that the narrator’s views of his parents are just as mistaken as his views on race) further undermine the self-identity of the first-person narrative, thereby equally challenging the possibility of empathetic identification.With whom shall we empathize? Whose voice is it that we hear? Is there one voice at all, or rather a web of intertexts that never entirely overlap, sliding upon each other? Fiction not only creates narrative voice but also often destabilizes it, challenging the possibility of any kind of empathetic identification. Meanwhile, the always self-differing voice of the cultivated Nazi can still generate if not so much empathy, then a certain degree of intellectual complicity in the reader. It was perhaps partly the sense of this complicity that provoked a critical scandal at the book’s publication (see Timár, 2019) similar to the one provoked by Nabokov’s Lolita (1995). Indeed, the novel echoes many aspects of one of the classics of perpetrator fiction, Lolita. In this latter book, the first person singular narrator, Humbert Humbert, not only wishes to make the reader forget, in various ways (Durantaye, 2007, p. 94; Péter, 2019; Zunshine, 2006, p. 106),that he is a pedophile and that the object of his desire is a twelve-year-old girl, but also that he seems to be in denial himself concerning the implications and manifold consequences of his abduction, seduction, and repetitive rape of his step daughter, Dolores. At the same time, however, as opposed to the characters previously discussed, who are banal perpetrators of dehumanization not violating the laws of their own social, political, and historical context, Humbert Humbert is clearly a criminal.Yet, his character is exemplary in summarizing

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some of the essential points that have been made so far about perpetrators of dehumanization. As Richard Rorty puts it, Lolita […] will survive as long as there are gifted, obsessive readers who identify them­ selves with Humbert. […]These books are reflections on the possibility that there can be sensitive killers, cruel aesthetes, pitiless poets—masters of imagery who are content to turn the lives of other human beings into images on a screen’ while simply not noticing that these other people are suffering. (1989, pp. 157, 169) While turning his victim into an (aesthetic) object, disregarding the pain she suffers, Humbert presents himself as an artist in distress, thus attempting to establish both an intellectual and an emotional complicity with the reader. Making highbrow stylistic allusions to various suffering male heroes of the Western literary tradition, he tries to make us believe that he is, in fact, a victim rather than a perpetrator. For example, he writes that Lolita was “like the cheapest of cheap cuties. For that is what nymphets imitate—while we moan and die” (1995, p. 120). At the same time, Humbert’s narrative not only supports but can equally complicate what has been said so far about the reading experience of perpetrator fiction; our feeling of intellec­ tual complicity is not only due to his being a “cultivated pedophile” (anticipating the cultivated Nazi of The Kindly Ones), but also, and even more importantly, due to his puns, his self-irony (cf. “we moan and die”) and his thoroughly ironic attitude to the world around him (Wepler, 2011). Especially provocative in the present context is the sense of comic resulting from his dehuman­ izing representation of others, especially those he considers “less then cultivated (i.e., human).” For example, Humbert describes his first wife,Valeria, as someone “waddling” by his side, shaking “her pobble head vigorously,” and uttering ridiculous clichés taken from pop culture (“There is another man in my life,” p. 27).Animal comparisons are, indeed, dehumanizing, but Humbert succeeds in making us see his fellow humans through the ironic lens of his highbrow misanthropy. For not only the tragic, the disastrous, the catastrophic, and the absurd but the comic, too, has been seen by artists and philosophers to emerge from our ability to dehumanize, to perceive others as well as ourselves as “less than human” (e.g., Baudelaire, 2008; Bergson, 1924; Freud, 2003).

14.6 Conclusion If literary representations of the victims of dehumanization can advance the cause of human rights because they make us empathize with people who are treated as if they were “less than human,” then literary representations of the experience of perpetrators of dehumanization may make us engage with the potential perpetrator in ourselves.The ordinary, everyday perpetrators of dehumanization foregrounded in this chapter do not violate laws; they simply follow the norms of their own historical, political, and social milieu.These perpetrators are not only not criminals, but, what’s more, they generally present themselves as victims, lacking agency. They pretend to be determined to a large extent by certain inner or external circumstances—psychological, biological, historical, political, social, or geographical. At the same time, the eminently literary character of novels that put dehumanization on critical display (such as the always self-differing voices of narrators, or the narratorial reflections on the relationship between representation and dehumanization) may equally make one realize that the difficulty involved in the process of dif­ ficult empathy with perpetrator characters lies not so much in the characters’ being perpetrators, but much rather in their being literary characters. Hannah Arendt argues in The Origins of Totalitarianism that dehumanization is always unjusti­ fied and unjustifiable, because the victims of dehumanization are criminals without crimes: they 224

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are punished just because they belong to a certain group (considered “less than human”) and not because they committed a crime.Their group membership is essentialized. However, our lit­ erary examples have equally shown that, quite paradoxically, the reverse of this statement might also be true. Perpetrators of dehumanization may also be criminals without crimes: they do not break the laws that are in place. And even though some of them are convicted later (when legal system has changed for the better: see Corrias in this volume), it might, in fact, be difficult to put such a perfect legal system into practice that could be applied to all of those “shades of behavior” (Kosztolányi, p. 210) that are dehumanizing. Indeed, this unbridgeable gap between ethics and the law (cf. Derrida, 1999) may equally reveal that it is the absence of legal transgression (as opposed to the moral transgression) in the most ordinary cases of dehumanization that may make it possible for us to imagine how we ourselves could become perpetrators of dehumanization.

Notes 1 I would like to thank Maria Kronfeldner, Marc Redfield, and the two anonymous referees for their suggestions.The chapter was prepared with the support of a 2019/2020 Senior Core Fellowship from the Institute of Advanced Study of the Central European University of Budapest. 2 This chapter is written from a European perspective, and by saying “us,” it posits various kinds of poten­ tially “implicated subjects” (Rothberg, 2019). 3 On the important difference between fictitious others (characters) and real others (people), see Felski (2019). 4 For a comprehensive take on this subject, see McGlothlin (2016) and Keen (2007). For the ethical stakes of the difference between identification and empathy, and the important notion of “empathetic unsettle­ ment,” see LaCapra (2000). For an emphasis on similarity and the necessity of a filtering helper figure, see Breithaupt (2019), pp. 130–148. Historically,‘“sympathy” is derived from the Greek συμπα´ θεια, the state of feeling together (derived from the composite of fellow [συν]- feeling [πα´ θος]). […].“Empathy” (from the Greek εˋ ν (en),“in, at”) is a word that was coined only in the 20th century in order to capture the meaning of the German Einfühlung, which means to enter into somebody’s feelings’ (Schliesser, 2015, p. 1). 5 Both characters (try to) seduce the female protanonists without their consent. However, both narratives are presented from the point of the female victim. 6 On the ethical challenges involved in this perpetrator’s narration, see Suleiman: “Should such a protag­ onist be allowed the privilege of the narrative voice, given the almost automatic call to empathy that accompanies first-person narrative?” (2009. p. 2.).

References Adorno, T. (2005) Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords. Transl. H. W. Pickford. New York: Columbia University Press. Agamben, G. (1998) Homo Sacer. Transl. D. Heller-Roazen. California: Stanford University Press. Arendt, H. (1951) The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York: Schocken Books. Arendt, H. (1963) Eichmann in Jerusalem, New York: Viking Press. Arendt, H. (1968) Between Past and Future New York, London: Penguin Books. Arendt, H. (1970) On Violence, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanonvics. Aristotle. (1987) Poetics. Transl. R. Janko. Indianapolis, Cambridge: Hackett. Baudelaire, Ch. (2008) De l’Essence du rire, Paris: Editions Sillages. Bergson, H. (1924) Le Rire, Paris: Éditions Aclan. Bex, S., Craps, S., and Vermeulen, P. (2019) “Beyond Identification in Human Rights Culture: Voice of Witness’s Voices from the Storm and Dave Eggers’s Zeitoun,” English Studies, 100(2), pp. 170–188. Bloom, P. (2016) Against Empathy, London: Random House. Boulukos, G. (2008) The Grateful Slave. The Emergence of Race in Eighteenth Century British and American Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Breithaupt, F. (2019) The Dark Sides of Empathy. Transl. A.A. Hamilton. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

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Andrea Timár Brudholm, T. and Lang, J. (2020) “On Hatred and Dehumanization,” in The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization. Ed. M. Kronfeldner. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 341–354. (this volume). Coetzee, J. M. (1986) Foe. London: Vintage. Coetzee, J. M. (2000) Waiting for the Barbarians, London: Vintage. Coetzee, J. M. (2003) Elizabeth Costello, London: Vintage. Corrias, L. (2020) “Dehumanization by Law,” in The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization. Ed. M. Kronfeldner. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 201–213. (this volume). Crary, A. (2010) “J. M. Coetzee, Moral Thinker,” in J. M. Coetzee and Ethics. Philosophical Perspectives on Literature. Eds. A. Leist and P. Singer. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 249–268. Defoe, D. (2007) Robinson Crusoe, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Derrida, J. (1999) Adieu to Emanuel Levinas, California: Stanford University Press. Durantaye, L. (2007) Style Is Matter: The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Eaglestone, R. (2017) The Broken Voice, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Felski, R. (2019) “Character,” in Character: Three Inquiries in Literary Studies. Eds A. Amanda, R. Felski, and T. Moi. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Forti, S. (2014) New Demons. Rethinking Power and Evil Today, California: Stanford University Press. Freud, S. (2003) Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. Transl. J. Crick. London: Penguin. Hunt, L. (2007) Inventing Human Rights, New York: Norton. Keen, S. (2007) Empathy and the Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kontler, L. (2020) “‘Humanity’ and Its Limits in Early Modern European Thought,” in The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization. Ed. M. Kronfeldner. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 52–63. (this volume). LaCapra, D. (2000) Writing History, Writing Trauma, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Leake, E. (2014) “Humanizing the Inhumane: The Value of Difficult Empathy,” in Rethinking Empathy through Literature. Eds. M. M. Marie Hammond and S. Kim. London: Routledge. Lessing, D. (1973) The Grass is Singing, London: Heinemann. Littell, J. (2006) Les Bienveillantes, Paris: Gallimard. Littell, J. (2009) The Kindly Ones, New York: Harper Collins. McGlothlin, E. (2016) “Empathetic Identification and the Mind of the Holocaust Perpetrator in Fiction: A Proposed Taxonomy of Response,” Narrative, 24(3), pp. 251–276. Meretoja, H. (2017) The Ethics of Storytelling, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nabokov (1995) Lolita, London: Penguin. Nussbaum, M. (1995) Poetic Justice, Boston: Beacon Press. Péter, T. (2019) “‘Miért kell nekem mániákusokról olvasni?’ Dehumanizáció és elkövetői nézőpont Vladimir Nabokov Lolitájában [Why should I read about maniacs? dehumanization and the Perpetretor’s Point of View in Nabokov’s Lolita]” in Dehumanizáció: az elkövető alakja [dehumanization: the figure of the perpetrator]. Ed. Andrea Timár. Helikon 2019/1. pp. 82–89. Prinz, J. J. (2011) “Is Empathy Necessary for Morality?” in Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Investigations. Eds. A. Coplan and P. Goldie. New York: Oxford University Press. Redfield, M. (1996) Phantom Formations: Aesthetic Ideology and the “Bildungsroman”, Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press. Redfield, M. (2016) “The ‘Cultured Nazi’ and the Cut of the Shibboleth: Les Bienveillantes, Inglourious Bastards, and the Globalization of English” in Points of Departure. Ed. Peter Fenves, Kevin McLaughlin, and Marc Redfield. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. pp. 167–196. Rickel, J. (2013) “Speaking of Human Rights: Narrative Voice and the Paradox of the Unspeakable in J. M. Coetzee’s Foe and Disgrace” Journal of Narrative Theory, 43(2), pp. 160–185. Rorty, R. (1989) Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rorty, R. (1998) “Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality,” in Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 167–185. Rothberg, M. (2019) The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators, California: Stanford University Press. Schliesser, E. (2015) Sympathy: a History, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schmitt, C. (2007) The Concept of the Political. Expanded Edition (1932). Transl. by G. Schwab. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Slaughter, J. (2007) Human Rights, Inc. The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law, New York: Fordham.

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Dehumanization in literature Smith, A. (2000) The Theory of Moral Sentiments, New York: Prometheus Books. Spivak, G. (1999) A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Stonebridge, L. (2013) “‘That which you are denying us’: Refugees, Rights and Writing in Arendt,” in The Future of Trauma Theory: Contemporary Literary and Cultural Criticism. Eds. G. Buelens, S. Durrant, and R. Eaglestone. London: Routledge. Stonebridge, L. (2017) “Once more, with feeling” New Humanist, Eurozine. June. [Online] Available at: https://www.eurozine.com/once-more-with-feeling/. (Accessed 24. January 2020.) Suleiman, S. R. (2009) “When the Perpetrator Becomes a Reliable Witness of the Holocaust: On Jonathan Littell’s Les bienveillantes,” New German Critique, 36(1), pp. 1–19. Szabó, T. (2000) “The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance,” The Journal of Philosophy, 97(2), pp. 55–81. Timár, A. (2016) “Reading Minds: Sympathy, Fiction, Ethics” in The Arts of Attention. Ed. K. Kállay. Budapest: L’Harmattan. pp. 253–267. Timár, A. (2019) “Nehéz empátia és fikcionalitás. Jonathan Littell A jóakaratúak (metakritika)” [“Difficult Empathy and Fictionality. Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones (Metacommentary)”] in Dehumanizáció: az elkövető alakja [Dehumanization: the figure of the perpetrator] Helikon. irodalom- és kultúratudományi szemle. Ed. A. Timár. Helikon 2019/1. Üngör, U. Ü. and Anderson, K. (2019) “From Perpetrators to Perpetration: Definitions, Typologies, and Processes” in The Routledge International Handbook of Perpetrator Studies. Eds. S. Knittel and Z. Goldberg. London: Routledge. Wepler, R. (2011) “Nabokov’s Nomadic Humor: Lolita,” College Literature, 38(4) General Issue, pp. 76–97. Žižek, S. (2010) First as a Tragedy then as a Farce, London: Verso. Zunshine, L. (2006) Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel, Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

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PART III

The complex facets of dehumanization

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15

DEHUMANIZATION

AND SOCIAL DEATH AS

FUNDAMENTALS OF RACISM

Wulf D. Hund

15.1 Introduction Racism, throughout its long history, was associated with different forms of dehumanization.These ranged from barbarization to racialization and from demonization to verminization, and were accompanied by a pattern of social exclusion, which, in the context of slavery, was conceptualized as ‘social death.’ This term describes a power relation in which the members of racist societies consider themselves entitled to ignore the sociability of their victims. Racist egalitarianism is the mirror of social inequality. The members of racist societies are linked by a discriminatory nexus.Their social positions are allocated, inter alia, by age, authority, education, gender, health, power, and wealth. In this landscape of social hierarchies, classism and sexism determine the crucial dividing lines. Such a societalization is fragile. It generates discontent and resistance. Early on, they were reciprocated with narrations about the functionality of social distinction, portraying society as a body with different limbs and organs, a house with various floors and rooms, or a ship with a commander and a crew.These images, intended as positive, were regularly flanked by negative legends about threats from without. They portrayed the cohesion between the unequal indi­ viduals as indispensable and, by this means, tried to bring about a feeling of shared identity. No matter how disparate they were among themselves, they could imagine oneness in relation to others who were constructed as utterly deviant. Societalization determined by dominance and power cannot exist without this negative dimension.The communality of the unequals produces untermenschen. In this panopticon of social differences, dehumanization assumes various forms. Where men of the ruling classes fancy themselves real, full humans, women and members of the lower classes are considered to be merely incomplete humans.They share the humanness of their masters not least because they, together with them, are free to consider themselves superior to those who, as barbarous, heathenish, impure, or inferior, lack substantial elements of humanity. Racism, as societalization by dehumanization, is a social relation that allows even the lowest member of society the imagination of belonging to a community, with all of its superior parts, in contrast to completely alienated others. In the process, tendencies of gradual dehumanization within society change into fundamental dehumanization of expelled outsiders.

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Hence, the analysis of racism cannot put blame on nature for its causes nor can it be restricted to ideological and psychological reasons. Its focus has to be on social structures and relations. That can be elucidated by the Irish example. In his analysis of racism toward the Irish,Theodore W. Allen (1994: 35, 32) offers a concise definition. He describes racism as desocialization; that is, ‘social death for the subjugated group as a whole,’ a process which ‘reduce[s] all members of the oppressed group to one undifferentiated social status beneath that of any other member of any social class within’ the oppressing population. This definition has some pertinent predecessors. Karl Marx already used the same example when he denounced the ‘ethnic hatred’ of the British toward Irish laborers.W. E. Burghardt Du Bois focused the problem on the ‘psychological wage’ of whiteness. Max Weber emphasized the relevance of ‘ethnic honor’ as a substitute for social equality. And Sigmund Freud discussed the issue in the context of chauvinism and antisemitism, pointing to ‘despite of outsiders’ as a means of social integration. All of these characterizations are consistent with Allen’s ‘desocialisation’ (Hund 2018: 18–24).They try to conceive of the negative side of repressive social relations as an element of its viability and stability.The inclusion in social systems shaped by power structures gives rise to the exclusion of stigmatized others. Racism manifests as negative societalization (Hund 2010, 2014). Historically, it was realized by different modes of discrimination.As the Irish case demonstrates, racist disparagement adopted different shapes over the course of time.Already toward the end of the 12th century, Gerald of Wales (1863: 122, 125) used the stereotype of the ‘barbarian.’ Besides the negative contrast of barbarian versus cultivated people, the racist discrimination against the Irish had also focused on the contrasts of pagan and pious, savage and civilized, and contaminated and pure people even before the antagonism of backward and developed races was generated. The similarity between these discriminations was their tendency of desocialization, subjugating all Irish people to the same patterns of denigration, and in this manner transforming them into an undifferentiated crowd of others. At the same time, these efforts for dehumanization were paralleled by a rhetoric of extinction. The former was associated with the characterization of the ‘wild Irish’ as ‘unreasonable beasts,’ like in William Thomas’‘Pilgrim’ (1861: 66) in the middle of the 16th century. At the beginning of the 17th century, Arthur Chichester, who accompanied Francis Drake on his last expedition to America before making a political and military career in Ireland, called the Irish ‘beasts in the shape of men’ (Canny 2001: 167). The latter notion was expressed in countless demands for ‘pulling up weeds.’ Viscount Falkland, Lord Deputy of Ireland in the 1620s, compared its inhabitants with nettles which had to be crushed (Canny 2001: 261). Some years earlier, John Davies (1787: 3 f.), the British poet and attorney general for Ireland, compared this ‘barbarous country’ with overgrown land that had to be weeded. In his ‘Discors Touching Ireland’ the Dublin merchant Rowland White recommended ‘the outrootinge of wickedness’ by the import of English peasants ‘as good sedes’ in order to eliminate ‘the weedes of incyvilitie’ (Montaño 2011: 146). Only in the 18th and 19th centuries did these forms of racist discrimination become over­ written by the newly developed race thinking. However, this process of racialization did not simply replace the old patterns but instead incorporated them into the new stereotypes. At it, the idea that so-called primitive races would die out also related to purportedly inferior parts of the white race, like the Irish.The comparison to animals was supplemented by new metaphors, and the simianization of Africans was adapted to the Irish. In the public discourse, caricaturists competed for the worst possible depictions. At the same time, the fact that the Irish were white was considered especially horrific. During his journey through Ireland in 1860, the clergyman Charles Kingsley (1899: 236) commented,‘I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along 232

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that hundred miles of horrible country’ – ‘to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not feel it so much, but their skins, except where tanned by exposure, are as white as ours.’

15.2 ‘Mindless bodies’ as ‘animated tools’ The racist discrimination against the Irish occurred without any connection to race for the longest time in its history. Race was, back then, an unknown concept. Instead, different binary modes of disparagement were used. Among them was the stereotype of the barbarian, which expressed the dichotomy of a cultivated and an uncultivated people that was already shaped in antiquity. Its Hellenocentric construction had an ethnic dimension, but it was a quintessentially cultural concept and by no means a race category. In fact, it did not even have a bodily dimension. Nevertheless, it is possible to study all elements of racist societalization in this early stage of its formation in Europe.This includes the connection of an internal social differentiation with an outward attempt of homogenization by the debasement of others. In addition, this comprises the categorical and systematic segregation of the non-belonging others and their expulsion from the realm of fully developed humankind. Moreover, this also implicates the ambiguity of respective theories, which exposes them as ideological legitimizations of oppressive dominance and unveils them as social constructions of natural inequality. Aristotle (1998: 70, 107, 139) drew on the logic of racist inclusion by exclusion. He propagated functionally and organically differentiated and hierarchical images of the state as ship or body. He augmented it with a detailed legitimization of slavery, which made full use of the means of dehumanization: reification, segregation, and animalization. Slaves are ‘tools’ in the form of ‘animated property’ and each slave is,‘despite being human,’‘a piece of property […] that is separate from its owner’—‘a sort of living but separate part of his body’ (Aristotle 1998: 6 f., 11).The political body imagery is put to a true acid test here. On the one side, the slave is a human being and a part of the oikos and its economy, but on the other side, her or his role is to function as a tool—as an animated extension of the master’s spirit and body that is nevertheless not part of this body but a segregated element of the master’s property, just like a plough or a horse. The metaphor of the segregated body epitomizes the violence of racist societalization. At the same time, the unconnected humanness of the slave symbolizes her or his subhuman status.This is also put into words by Aristotle: ‘people who are as different from others as body is from soul or beast from human […] are natural slaves’ and should be ruled as such.A slave ‘shares in reason to the extent of understanding it, but does not have it’—like ‘other animals’ who ‘obey not reason but feelings.’ Therefore, there is only a ‘small’ difference in the use of ‘slaves and domestic animals.’ Both ‘help provide the necessities with their bodies’ (8 f.). The body involved here is not a racialized body but a dementalized body, stripped down to its physical function as a mere work animal. The intellectuals of the time were well aware of the fact that this was an ideological defin­ ition and not a factual description (see Stuurman in this volume).The dehumanized others are socially dead, but they are no natural undead.They have to be violently desocialized by breaking and negating their sociability. And this is not a single act of enslavement but a social relation itself that, moreover, has to be perpetually reproduced. The ‘slave by nature’ does not volun­ tarily consent to her or his depraved social condition. Aristotle leaves no doubt as to this. The slavish subalterns can talk.That is why the philosopher recommends diversifying one’s slaves; they should be ethnically ‘heterogeneous and spiritless slaves’ in order to ‘be useful workers, unlikely to stir up change’ (208). 233

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The meaning of work in this comparison illuminates the social background of the ‘natural slave’ as a social construction. For Aristotle, the ordinary peasant or craftsman does not behave much differently from the slave.With regard to their work, they live in ‘a kind of delimited slavery’ (24). However, neither is their occupation an expression of a natural disposition nor are they ‘unfree’ but citizens of the state. Despite belonging to the lower classes, they are members of the Greek people (202). To operationalize this antagonism, Aristotle relied on the concept of the barbarian (that involved the comparison of true humans to undeveloped beast-like others). It made the difference between insiders and outsiders a dichotomy that was easy to manage, declaring all non-Greeks to be barbarians,‘implying that non-Greek and slave are in nature the same’ (2). Commenting on the ‘view of a natural enmity between Greeks and Barbarians,’ Giuseppe Cambiano (1987: 42) wrote,‘If racism is not necessarily linked to bodily differences, then that was undoubtedly racism.’ Moses Finley (1998: 186) has called ‘racism’ the ‘logical consequence of the slave-outsider equation.’And Claude Meillassoux (1986: 76) registered, in a general way, that the combination of alterity, class relations, and exploitation in slaveholding societies ‘engendre une réaction raciste à l’égard des esclaves.’The socio-historic backgrounds of this operation in ancient Greece were, as Edith Hall (1989: 50, 59) argues, the existence of older ‘[c]olonization myths,’ which often ‘conceptualize the enemy as subhuman, bestial, or monstrous’; the epochal political conflict with a foreign powerful rival, the Persians; and the inner social conflicts between the aristocracy and the dēmos—what Marxist historians like Arthur Rosenberg (1921) or Geoffrey de Ste. Croix (1981) called ‘class struggle’ in antiquity. The status of a slave is not a reflection of her or his nature, but of the social conditions of the slaveholding society. Slaves have neither different race features nor insufficient cultural capabilities.Their representation as untermenschen is not an expression of their nature but of their social condition.Their dehumanization is not a consequence of an innate malice of their oppressors but of social relations. If they were not slaves, one could even be friends with them. Aristotle’s construction of ‘slaves by nature,’ therefore, turns out to be ambiguous. Slaves are, at the same time, humans and subhumans. Socially, they are disembodied parts of the social body, depicted as animal-like. Naturally, they are humans and capable of, as well as entitled to, friendship. In fact, this is impossible ‘toward a horse or an ox, or toward a slave insofar as he is a slave’ because ‘a slave is an ensouled instrument’. ‘Insofar as he is a slave, then, there is no friendship toward him, but insofar as he is a human being there is’ (Aristotle 2014: 150). Racist social relations disregard the integrity of others.They are subjugated to a process of dehu­ manization which Orlando Patterson (1982), examining the example of slavery, has described as ‘social death,’ that is an encompassing depravation, including desocialization, deindividualization, desexualization, and decultivation. Racism, on the one hand, institutes illusory communality but, on the other hand, causes amorphous identity.The communality is illusory because it is not geared toward a real sharing of wealth, reputation, and power but leaves the relations of social inequality unaffected, and even strengthens them.The identity of the others remains amorphous because it includes a variety of social characters, strips off their peculiarities, and levels them out to a uniform category of subjection.

15.3 ‘Religious heresy’ by ‘impurity of blood’ When, in 1550, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda met Bartolomé de Las Casas in Valladolid to discuss the humanness of the people in the New World, both of them relied on Aristotle’s concept of the barbarian. Sepúlveda not only made use of the latter’s defense of slavery but also declared that the ‘barbarians of the New World […] are as inferior to the Spanish as children to adults, or women to men’ and ‘as monkeys to men’ (Ramey 2014: 108). 234

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But the stereotype of the barbarian was not the only classical heritage of dehumanization in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. On his first voyage to the continent later called America, Columbus had in his ship’s library Pliny’s ‘Natural History’ with its narrations on monsters (Seth 2010: 39). Besides barbarians, these represented another possibility to imagine the others’ suspect and abnormal likeness with, or dissimilarity to, humans. This also pertains to two modes of dehumanization that were already common in Spain before Columbus set sail: the demonization of the Jews as proponents of the devil and the conversion of their alleged heretical belief into an ascribed impurity of blood. Its scenery was the crisis of feudalism all over Europe and the reconquista in Spain. The one provided the social unrest of the lower classes, the other contributed the religious equipment for dealing with conflicts.The plot was determined by the transformation of Christians into Jews, following a time of forced conversion of Jews into Christians (Nirenberg 2013). In the years 1391–92, a wave of anti-Jewish pogroms affected Spain.The King of Castile imme­ diately blamed the ‘gentes menundas’ (small people) for the crimes (Gampel 2016: 14).Though people from all social strata were involved, the lower classes participated in large numbers; in some cities, they represented the driving force. In this atmosphere, over the course of the following century, a wondrous metamorphosis happened. The Jews (together with Muslims and heretics, like the Cathars) had already been regarded as followers of the devil.This attribution dates back to the times of the Church Fathers in antisemitic narrations. In respective fantasies, the devils wear Jewish badges, the Jews exude a devilish odour, the anti-Christ was to be born as the son of the devil and a Jewish whore, and Jews pray to the devil who, with their help, tries to annihilate Christendom. To this end, they brew poison from Christian hearts, spiders, frogs, and hosts and use it to taint wells and other diableries (Trachtenberg 1983). But up to this point, Jews had the possibility to escape this vicious circle by conversion to Christianity. In 1434, the Council of Basle declared that the converted ‘became by the grace of baptism fellow citizens of the saints and members of the house of God,’ because ‘regeneration of the spirit is much more important than birth in the flesh’ (Nirenberg 2013: 238). However, the transformation of a religious transgression into a hereditary sin like the lapse was already on its way. Souls once lost to the devil were said to be doomed for all eternity or at least until the Last Judgment. Even the sacrament of baptism was powerless against the enduring effect of the dia­ bolic turpitude of Jewishness. Converted Christians, and even their descendants, were considered as quintessentially Jewish. This was justified with a logic of ‘blood’ and its ‘purity’ (Anidjar 2016: 68). A paroxysm of fear of contamination materialized in the vision of pure and impure blood.This was not quasibiological, proto-racial thinking but a consequence of the religious myth pertaining to the salvific force of the holy bloodshed by the son of God. It was flanked by scenarios of dangerous threats, based on the ascribed Jewish attacks on Christian blood. Both mutually complemented each other in the mysticism of the cathartic and vulnerable blood of salvation (Bynum 2002). The Eucharist and the blood-libel were two sides of the same host. The one, together with wine, transubstantiated into divine flesh and blood and purified the communion of believers; the other was desecrated, tortured until bleeding, and abused. This was not only discussed by specialists and narrated by literati but also popularized in pictorial representations, accessible as paintings in churches or as broadsheets at fairs. The discourse of blood, beneficial or perni­ cious, was ubiquitous. And though its carrier was somatic, its source and its purpose were meta­ physical. The eternal battle between good and evil had entered the bloodstream of individuals, congregations, cities, monasteries, the court, and the ecclesia; and the body politic was exposed to contamination and perversion. 235

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The Dominican friar Vincent Ferrer, who would be canonized only a few decades after his death, sermonized a mixture of infernal threat and eschatological expectation in which the Christians had to fight off ‘demons, sins, and temptations’ as well as the Jews, who were ‘sons of the devil’ and ‘disposed to believe in demons’ (Lindeman 2016: 705).The Franciscan bishop Alonso de Espina conflated animalization and diabolization when he dealt with speculations that the Jews originated from the intercourse of Adam with animals and demons before the creation of Eve (Doval 2013: 100 f). Marcos García de Mora, one of the staunch advocates of the limpieza policy, called the synagogue (which was since Revelation 3:9 accused to be a place of Satan with, since John 8:44, idolaters fathered by the devil) a ‘congregaçión de bestias’ (Tritle 2015: 191). All these accusations were held together by the ideological gravitation field of the purity– contamination binary. Dehumanization was caused by an invisible but unalterable stain, inherited from generation to generation.This was not an impurity alterable by rites or penitence. It was an inward taint which enabled the ascription of Jewishness beyond conversion and baptism and it constituted ‘Jew-hatred against Christians’ (Hering Torres 2006: 130). The higher spheres of this transcendental alarmism went well together with worldly prag­ matism. Albert Sicroff (1960: 95) has judged, that ‘[l]a preoccupation de pureté de sang était d’origine plébéienne,’ and Leon Poliakov (2003: 228) has argued that the ‘racial nobility’ of the limpieza eventually was more important than the ‘social nobility’ of the hidalguería by quoting from a memoir from about 1600: ‘In Spain a commoner who is limpio is more highly esteemed than a hidalgo who is not limpio.’This indicated that the ascription of impure blood overwrote social distinctions of the discriminated group, threw their members together regardless of their social status, and treated them as socially dead. That this discourse already drew on an early usage of the word ‘raza’ is not an argument that could support a backdating of modern race thinking.The early meaning of ‘raza’ (in a semantic field together with ‘casta’ and ‘linaje’) was complex. Including the idea of a pedigree and blood­ line, it certainly had a genealogical dimension (Nirenberg 2009). But this was a traditional form of thinking, not least in connection with class origin and hierarchy. It did not express the division of mankind into races. This, at the latest, proved to be true in the ‘New World,’ to which raza had been exported together with the ideology of limpieza de sangre. Being of a pure and unstained lineage meant, as it did in Spain, being without the raza of Jews or Muslims. Before long, it included, as María Elena Martínez (2008) has shown, the requirement to be without the raza of ‘blacks’ and ‘mulat­ toes’ (164). But this added a social disparagement to the religious debasement of the limpieza. Blackness was not the color of a future race but the color of current slavery (159). Accordingly, ‘Indian blood,’ all the more so if it was ‘Mexica (and Inca) royal blood’ (111), did not provoke impurity. At least at the beginning of colonization, Indians were seen as ‘gentiles no infectados (uninfected gentiles)’ (96).

15.4 ‘Perfectibility’ or ‘extinction’ In November 1784, Immanuel Kant published his essay, ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose.’ Its conceptualization unfolded against the backdrop of colonial expan­ sion and philosophical pretension.The text was influenced by Kant’s engagement in answering the question ‘What is Enlightenment’ (published one month later). It was further characterized by the topic of geography which he had dealt with during his entire academic career (beginning with lectures on ‘physical’ geography, which he subsequently expanded to ‘moral’ and ‘political’

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geography).And it was composed under the impression of the new discourse on human races (to which he had already contributed with a respective publication). In his little treatise on universal history, Kant (2009) systematically unfolded the philosophical foundations of dehumanization in its modern version. In doing so, he used the terminology of progress as a means to combine self-development with alienation and colonialism with white supremacy. The course of his argument treated history as a process, in which ‘nature,’‘through the human being’s own art,’ is ‘leading our species from the lowest step of animality gradually up to the highest step of humanity’ (17). Regarding this development, Europeans have progressed farthest, which is why ‘our part of the world […] will probably someday give laws to all the others’ (21). Kant combined this conviction with the assertions of a European-centered race theory and its hierarchization of races.Though some proponents of the Enlightenment were willing to let the so-called undeveloped and primitive races demonstrate their ability for advancement and per­ fection, Kant assumed that the formation of races had been a prehistoric process that came to an end with the emergence of races incapable of modification. Hence, they would never reach the ‘highest step of humanity.’Therefore, Kant supposed that the non-white races were doomed to extinction (Hund 2011). As it happened,‘man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity’ went hand in hand with the deliberate repudiation of all those who were ascribed an incapability of progress. This was a double-edged maneuver, practicing dehumanization by the assumption of an inability for self-dehumanization. The theories of development by alienation and of extinction by under­ development had a theoretical nexus and a practical doppelganger. Both of them were affiliated with class.The philosophy of Enlightenment pronounced dehumanization a component of the ‘conditio humana.’ It is supposed to be immanent to human self-realization, which takes place as alienated labor.The progress achieved as a result would be affected by forced externalization, and eventually leads to perfect humanity. What was intoned by Jean-Jacques Rousseau as a lament was commemorated by Adam Smith as a beneficial delusion. Immanuel Kant interiorized it as unsocial sociability, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel hyped it as praise of servitude. The young Karl Marx (1844 a: 543, b: 303) turned this narration socially and, because of its inherent force and iniquity, called alienation ‘Entmenschung’—dehumanization.This ‘human self-estrangement’ befalls the entire civil society, but the ruling classes have arranged with it in a ‘semblance of a human existence.’ By contrast, the exploited class, the ‘proletariat,’ is ‘dehumanization which is conscious of its dehumanization, and therefore self-abolishing’ (Marx/Engels 1845: 36). At that time, Marx, as well as his contemporaries, knew quite well that the purportedly lower races were capable of being exploited. Colonialism and colonial slavery had a hundreds of yearsold history. This was paralleled by all forms of ideological and practical dehumanization. The basis was the knowledge, or at least the belief, of the colonizers that the colonized were human. They committed themselves to save their souls and to Christianize them, and they considered them contractual partners and made treaties with them. Dehumanization refers to humans, but it suspends the social, moral, and legal norms of mutual relations to an extent that is big enough to impugn even the image of humanity. Philosophy assisted this atrocity (Park 2013).The master thinker of the weltgeist left ‘Africa’ in the shadow of history—though he did not refrain from a disparaging classification of its people. ‘The Negro,’ Hegel (1840: 115) suggests, ‘represents the natural human being in its entire sav­ agery.’And he adds: ‘in this character, nothing reminiscent of humanity is to be found.’ This was, altogether, the philosophical condensate of colonialism and its legitimization. At the colonial frontier, dehumanization assumed the shapes of manhunt, slave trade, and genocide.

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Once the indigenous Australians resisted colonial land grabbing, the settlers even armed the convicts against them. The racist actions were fuelled by hate and murderousness. The settlers affirmed among themselves ‘that the black fellow was not a human being’ and spread the idea ‘that the best thing that could be done, would be to shoot all the blacks and manure the grounds with their carcasses’ (Kiernan 2007: 262). In the mere philosophical field trips, this policy resulted in mixtures of downplaying and regret. The philosophers frequently reckoned the methods of colonialism as excessive or even immoral. But that did not hinder them from degrading the people of colonized regions. The inhabitants of Australia were hit hard by anthropological disparagement and displaced to the bottom of human development or even below it. In any case, whether seen as humans persisting in a stone-age culture, collated to pre-homo sapiens, or simianized, indigenous Australians were pronounced so backward a race that any civilizing mission might be in vain and they would become extinct. The violent genocidal atmosphere of the colonial frontier was condensed as a theory of primitive races doomed to extinction (Brantlinger 2003: 117–140). In these and other cases, arguments and actions were neither principled by spontaneous repul­ sion nor intrinsic anxiety but by self-referred interests.This holds true even for one of the most (in)famous reactions of European minds to the experience of savage others: ‘the horror’ in the ‘heart of darkness.’ It was not from genuine feeling but an ideological exercise. The others had to be metamorphosed into savages, and the horror emanating from the heart of darkness was a purposeful conversion of several hundred years of common history. It opened with Congolese-Portuguese contact and the establishment of economic and dip­ lomatic relations. That was more or less unproblematic, because ‘[i]n most respects Kongo and Portugal were of the same world’ (Thornton 1981: 188), having many similarities.The conver­ sion of the Congolese nobility to Catholicism even established the foundation for the marriage of a Congolese noble into the royal household of Portugal and for the Episcopal consecration of a Congolese bishop in 1518. With the expansion of the trans-Atlantic trafficking in human beings, slaves became the piv­ otal commodity of the Congolese-European economic exchange. In the course of two centuries, the slave trade destabilized and destroyed economic, social, and political relations in the Congo. After this enduring decline, enlightened thinkers proceeded to a revaluation of the Congo. In the ‘Encyclopédie’ (1753: 868), the Congo still was a ‘grand pays de l’Afrique’ with a political system, natural resources, and trade with Europe; the slave trade being the ‘plus important commerce.’ For Hegel (1840: 89), the country was already descended into African darkness, where the ‘day of consciousness’ had not yet enlightened ‘the dark night being as black as the color of its inhabitants.’ From there, it was only a short step into the ‘heart of darkness’ where prehistoric humans roamed archaic jungles and Europeans despaired of the look back into their own unciv­ ilized past. However, their horror trip was not a cruise up the Congo, as Joseph Conrad (1988) pretended, but a drift on the ideological tide of European progress, past Marx’s and Hegel’s people alienating for development directly back to Kant’s ‘Conjectural Beginning of Human History’ (2007: 168, 171), where ‘the departure of the human being from paradise’ represented ‘the transition from the crudity of a merely animal creature into humanity,’ con­ stituting the beginning of a long journey ‘from the period of comfort and peace into that of labor and discord,’ mastered only by the white race, leaving behind their colored relatives in the night of hypogenesis, which could allegedly be scientifically measured by scientists of the Enlightenment as a slightly smaller brain pointing to a certain closeness to apes (Sebastiani 2015 and in this volume). 238

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15.5 ‘Herrenvolk’ against ‘Untermenschen’ After the First World War, Lothrop Stoddard, a racist journalist who discriminated against the entire spectrum of racism’s targets, started to spread alarmist messages about the end of white hegemony and the ‘rising tide of color’ (1921). His concoctions represented a conglomeration of the racist knowledge of his time. Furthermore, they expressed the alarmism of white middle- and upper-class consciousness in view of current anti-imperialist, anti-Western, and anti-capitalist events, such as the victories of Ethiopia over Italy and of Japan over Russia, or like the revolutions in Russia and Germany. Additionally, Stoddard addressed the class question and labeled com­ munism as a threat of the ‘under-men’ (1922). This was not an analysis of the connection between classism and racism. But after all, it indicated the significance of this relationship. During the revolutionary crisis of post-war Germany, it became increasingly important for the preservation of capitalism, and ‘national socialism’ was promoted (and financed) by parts of the ruling class as a surrogate for revolution. It was dependent on social demagogy and the presentation of a dummy capitalist target.The long European tradition of antisemitism, as well as the blatant mixture of political antisemitism and völkisch propaganda during the Wilhelmine era, provided a perfect base for this purpose. This hypostatization of an internationally networked enemy aiming at world domination was flanked by the evocation of a red scare, strengthened by the victory of communism in Soviet Russia.The racist expressions of these fears—antisemitism and anti-Slavism—which could well be combined, were supplemented by a reverberation of colonial racism and eugenic racism.The one was induced by the occupation of the Rhineland and the deployment of colored troops, scandalized as ‘Black Shame’ (Wigger 2017).The other was a manifestation of the possibility of inversion typical of all racisms (Weindling 1989). Geared toward inclusion by exclusion, racism can always affect those of its own communi­ ties who are labeled as incongruous, maladapted, abnormal, or unfit. In this context, the term ‘Untermenschen’ surfaced twice as a title for germanophone novels.The first one was authored by Paul Rohrbach (1929).A militant imperialist, colonialist, and revisionist during the Kaiserreich and the Weimar Republic, he adjusted his racism outwardly and inwardly.The hero of his novel was laid out as a doppelganger of his own history as a former globetrotter as well as, indicated by his surname Woltmann, a social Darwinist racist, who moved from the social-democratic party to the völkisch right at the beginning of the 20th century. Rohrbach’s fictional Woltmann is a phys­ ician who claims to have studied together with Lothrop Stoddard for some time. From him, he allegedly adopted the category untermensch and, afterward, detects untermenschen everywhere, not only in Africa,Asia, and America but also in Europe, and not least in post-revolutionary Germany. The second novel was published in the very year the Nazis were brought to power. It was written in German by the young refugee Walter Kolbenhoff (1933) at the urging of Wilhelm Reich. Its dramatis personae are provided by the alleged scum of the class society, the declassed outsiders of the urban social underground, and the prowling vagabonds of the rural roads. With the act against ‘Volksschädlinge’ (literally, vermin of the people) of 1939, virtually every criminal could be declared a ‘Volksschädling’ and be expelled from the ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ (Nüchterlein 2015). According to a widespread misunderstanding, ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ was thought to be ‘a homogeneous national community based on the supposedly “superior” racial worth of “Aryan” ethnic Germans’ (Kakel 2013: 65). Sometimes, the term is even translated as ‘community of the race’ (Levy 2005: 307). Nothing could be less accurate. In fact, one of the first massive controversies over the understanding of race in Nazi Germany pertained to the question whether the Germans were a race; the exponents of this concept of a German ‘Volksrasse’ (literally, folk race) lost not only the debate but also their jobs.According to 239

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the triumphant representatives of the ‘Nordic idea,’ the German ‘Volk’ was no discrete race but a racial mixture comprising components of different value (with the ‘Nordic race’ at the top) (Hutton 2005: 149–157). Besides, this ‘Volk’ was not only endangered by the decline of its most valuable racial element (in the wake of industrialization and as a consequence of the war) but also by degeneration. Under the auspices of modern life (with the consequences of industrialization, urbanization, and emancipation) even the iron laws of evolution ran into danger.The biologically valuable social circles bred fewer offspring than the less valuable, and the inferior residuum of addicts, idlers, and invalids multiplied because of misguided morality and social policy (see Wilson in this volume). Ill-omened to such an extent, superior humanity was in danger of being dehumanized, and the extermination of the unfit morphed into the rescue of mankind (Weikart 2004). Furthermore, the racially as well as hygienically threatened ‘Volk’ was also politically imperiled. Instead of ‘Volksgenossen’ (literally, folk comrades), communists prized ‘Genossen’ and under­ stood solidarity in a classist manner, betraying the völkisch unity to the International. Criticism of class society was considered a betrayal of the ‘Volksgemeinschaft’. Racism derives its energy from social tensions. It does not spring from a fear of strangers or defense against others but from the aporias of antagonistic societalization, whose negativity is double-edged. Even though it generates social cohesiveness by the discrimination of outsiders, such inclusion by exclusion also implicates a threat against the lower classes.Their members are under suspicion of being inferior themselves. This applies all the more to the lower classes in a state of resistance or even revolt. Racism analysis commonly has problems breaking up such an intertwining of class and race. A widespread opinion asserts that, under circumstances like these, ‘[t]he class enemy was not recognized as a legitimate political opponent, but was “racialized” and animalized’ (Traverso 2003: 108). But, as a matter of fact, such attitudes exist irrespective of the manner of racist discrimination. They apply to the lower classes of the Greek poleis (whose occupation was regarded by Aristotle as ‘limited slavery’) and the peasants of feudalism (whose membership in the communitas Christiana had to be called to the mind of the ruling classes again and again with lessons on the ‘three orders’).They also apply to the deported and destitute lower classes of the colonial societies (categorized as ‘white trash’ after the emergence of race thinking).And they likewise apply to the depraved parts of the industrial proletariat (characterized as ‘savages’ by bourgeois contemporaries). Nazi racism was unconditionally populist and even purported to be part of a national socialism. The twisted truth behind this ideology was a fundamental antagonism to all forms of socialist internationalism—first and foremost, communism—and a shifting of the focus of social struggles from the opposition of labor and capital to that of Germans and Jews.After the beginning of the war against the Soviet Union, these targets partly collapsed but did not become identical. The genesis of both politics shows that they had a shared purpose but realized two different strategies: the dissociation of a dangerous element of the own ‘Volk’ and the isolation, stigmatization, and elimination of a deadly foe of this ‘Volk.’ Dehumanization was applied to these two and other targets.Against all those defined as outside of the ‘Volksgemeinschaft’, the Nazis applied any and all accusations and suspicions agglomerated during the long history of racism.They were labeled subhumans, compared to animals, declared vermin, treated as the spawn of evil, and referred to as contagious danger.This logic, underlying all forms of racist societalization, was carried to the extremes by Nazi racism and executed within a martial process of European internal colonization (Baranowski 2011). After the formation of fascist dictatorship, racism became the key mode of the provision of legitimization (see Steizinger in this volume).While including colonial racism and the devaluation 240

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of ‘colored races,’ in practice, it was most of all turned against ‘whites’ and, before the war, directed against members of their own society: Jews, communists, the unfit, criminals, and ‘antisocial elements.’This unequivocally indicates that even in modern racism, which relied on an alleged scientifically proven race concept, race was not the only point of reference for racist doctrines and politics. In fact, all the historically developed different logics of racism were in place, and they formed a complex ideology of social marginalization and exclusion. The concentration camps developed as improvised instruments of terror against political opponents, and were soon converted into an agency for the isolation of so-called ‘Volksschädlinge’ (literally, vermin of the people), ranging from political opponents to ‘work-shy’ and ‘asocial’ per­ sons, criminals, sexual offenders and homosexuals, alcoholics, beggars, vagabonds, and other social outsiders to a growing number of Jews, and after the beginning of the war, more and more prisoners from Slavic countries (Friedlander 1995). From the beginning, neglect and violence along with lethal conditions of imprisonment and arbitrary murders in the camps were finally transformed into a system of mass killing by starvation, shooting, and eventually gassing, a tech­ nique initially developed for the killing of the mentally ill (Sofsky 1997). This system of large-scale dehumanization attracted all sorts of alexithymics and sadists. But, overall, it was realized by ‘ordinary men’ (Browning 1992), ‘ordinary Germans’ (Goldhagen 1996), and ‘ordinary organizations’ (Kühl 2014). And it was effectuated in different modes and steps: discrimination, deprivation of rights, stigmatization, desocietalization, deportation, hospi­ talization, imprisonment and internment, deindividuation, denaming and numbering, physical and mental torment and degradation, selection, and murder. Overwhelmingly, the victims did not belong to a different race and were, at least before the war, not strangers. Expelling them from the völkisch community was neither a spontaneous act of an in-group against outsiders nor the presumptuous abhorrence of subhumans. The perpetrators were well aware of the human status of their victims.They did not attack untermenschen but produced them. Dehumanization is executed ad hominem. The social and political basis of this process was the gradual desocialization of its victims, until the point at which they could be treated as socially dead (Steizinger 2018). When Walter Buch (1939: 15), head of the Nazi’s party court, declared: ‘The Jew is not a human,’ he condensed a process of dehumanization, in the course of which Jewish Germans (and later Austrians) had grad­ ually been deprived of their civil and political rights; excluded from public welfare and health care; banned from the institutions of the educational system; debarred from cultural life, including the ostracism of books, music, films authored by artists suspected of Jewish descent; dispossessed and expelled; conflated with other groups of ‘undesirables,’ like ‘asocials’ or ‘half-breeds’; exposed to arbitrariness and violence; forced to accept ‘Jewish’ names; altogether isolated and segregated from all dimensions of the social life; and transformed to enemies of the ‘Volksgemeinschaft’—until, during the pogroms of 1938, it was possible for activists of the Nazi party ‘to treat Jews publicly as non-persons’ (Longerich 2010: 113) with the acquiescence and involvement of bystanders and without opposition from the majority of the population. In reverse, the members of this ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ knew that they were not equals. They behaved like members of a ‘Herrenvolk’ against ‘Untermenschen’ but not as masters inside their own völkisch community. Even under the terms of war, the Reich Commissioner for Ukraine told his subordinates,“We are a herrenvolk that has to keep in mind that the lowest German worker is racially and biologically a thousand times more valuable than the local people” (Poliakov/Wulf 1978: 519).The worker was told to be a member of a ‘Herrenvolk’ but, nevertheless, remain on the lowest social stage of the ‘Volksgemeinschaft’. Racism does not infringe on the social differ­ entiation of the class society but, instead, transforms the social energy of discontent or resistance into the vilification, persecution, oppression, maltreatment, and extinction of others. 241

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References Allen, Th. W. (1994) The Invention of the White Race, vol. 1 (Racial Oppression and Social Control), London: Verso. Anidjar, G. (2016) Blood: A Critique of Christianity, New York: Columbia University Press. Aristotle (1998) Politics, ed. Ch. D. C. Reeve, Indianapolis: Hackett. —— (2014) Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Ch. D. C. Reeve, Indianapolis: Hackett. Baranowski, S. (2011) Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brantlinger, P. (2003) Dark Vanishings: Discourse of the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–1930, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Browning, Ch. (1992) Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: Harper Collins. Buch, W. (1939) Des Nationalsozialistischen Menschen Ehre und Ehrenschutz, München: Zentralverlag der NSDAP. Bynum, C. W. (2002) “The Blood of Christ in the Later Middle Ages,” Church History, 71, 4, pp. 685–714. Cambiano, G. (1987) “Aristotle and the Anonymous Opponents of Slavery,” in: M. I. Finley (ed.), Classical Slavery, London: Frank Cass, pp. 28–52. Canny, N. (2001) Making Ireland British 1580–1650, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Conrad, J. (1988) Heart of Darkness, 3rd ed., New York: Norton. Davies, J. (1787) Historical Tracts, Dublin: Porter. de Ste. Croix, G. E. M. (1981) The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Doval, R. V. (2013) Misera Hispania: Jews and Conversos in Alfondo de Espina’s Fortalitium Fidei, Oxford: Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature. Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des metiers, ed. D. Diderot, J. B. d’Alembert, vol 3, Paris: Briason 1753 [English version: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/]. Finley, M. I. (1998) Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, exp. ed., Princeton: Markus Wiener. Friedlander, H. (1995) The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Gampel, B. R. (2016) Anti-Jewish Riots in the Crown of Aragon and the Royal Response, 1391–1392, New York: Cambridge University Press. Gerald of Wales (1863) “The Topography of Ireland (Topographia Hibernica [1188]),” in: Th. Wright (ed.), The Historical Works of Giraldus Cambrensis, London: Bohn, pp. 1–164. Goldhagen, D. J. (1996) Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, New York: Knopf. Hall, E. (1989) Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hegel, G. W. F. (1840) Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, ed. E. Gans, 2nd ed., Berlin: Duncker und Humblot. Hering Torres, M. S. (2006) Rassismus in der Vormoderne: Die ‘Reinheit des Blutes’ im Spanien der Frühen Neuzeit, Frankfurt: Campus. Hund, W. D. (2010) “Negative Societalisation: Racism and the Constitution of Race,” in: W. D. Hund, J. Krikler, D. Roediger (eds.), Wages of Whiteness and Racist Symbolic Capital, Berlin: Lit, pp. 57–96. —— (2011) “‘It must come from Europe:’ The Racisms of Immanuel Kant,” in: W. D. Hund, Ch. Koller, M. Zimmermann (eds.), Racisms Made in Germany, Zürich: Lit, pp. 69–98. —— (2014) “Racism in White Sociology: From Adam Smith to Max Weber,” in: W. D. Hund, A. Lentin (eds.), Racism and Sociology, Zürich: Lit, pp. 23–67. —— (2018) Rassismus und Antirassismus, Köln: PapyRossa. Hutton, Ch. M. (2005) Race and the Third Reich: Linguistics, Racial Anthropology and Genetics in the Dialectic of Volk, Cambridge: Polity Press. Kakel, C. O. (2013) The Holocaust as Colonial Genocide: Hitler’s ‘Indian Wars’ in the ‘Wild East,’ Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Kant, I. (2007) “Conjectural Beginning of Human History,” in: G. Zöller, R. B. Louden (eds.), Anthropology, History, and Education, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 163–175. —— (2009) “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim,” in: A. O. Rorty, J. Schmidt (eds.), Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim: A Critical Guide, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kiernan, B. (2007) Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur, New Haven: Yale University Press.

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Dehumanization and social death Kingsley, Ch. (1899) His Letters and Memories of His Life, London: Macmillan. Kolbenhoff, W. (1933) Untermenschen, Kopenhagen: Trobris. Kühl, S. (2014) Ganz normale Organisationen, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Levy, R. S. (ed.) (2005) Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, vol. 1, Santa Barbara: ABC Clio. Lindeman, K. (2016) “Fighting Words: Vengeance, Jews, and Saint Vicent Ferrer in Late-Medieval Valencia,” in: Speculum, 91, 3, pp. 690–723. Longerich, P. (2010) Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Martínez, M. E. (2008) Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Marx, K. (1844a) Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte aus dem Jahre 1844, in: MEW [K. Marx, F. Engels, Werke, 44 + 3 vols., Berlin: Dietz 1956–2018], vol. 40, pp. 455–588. —— (1844b) Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, in: MECW [K. Marx, F. Engels, Collected Works, 50 vols. London: Lawrence and Wishart 1975–2005], vol. 3, pp. 229–346. Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1845) The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Criticism: Against Bruno Bauer and Company, in: MECW, vol. 4, pp. 5–211. Meillassoux, C. (1986) Anthropologie de l’esclavage: le ventre de fer et d’argent, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Montaño, J. P. (2011) The Roots of English Colonialism in Ireland, Cambridge: Cambridge University. Nirenberg, D. (2009) “Was there Race before Modernity?: The Example of ‘Jewish’ Blood in Late Medieval Spain,” in: M. Eliav-Feldon, B. Isaac, J. Ziegler (eds.), The Origins of Racism in the West, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 232–264. —— (2013) Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition, New York: Norton. Nüchterlein, J. (2015) Volksschädlinge vor Gericht: Die Volksschädlingsverordnung vor den Sondergerichten Berlins, Marburg: Tectum. Park, P. K. J. (2013) Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780–1830, Albany: State University of New York Press. Patterson, O. (1982) Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Poliakov, L. (2003) The History of Anti-Semitism, vol. 2, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Poliakov, L. and J. Wulf (1979) Das Dritte Reich und seine Denker, reprint, München: Saur 1978. Ramey, L. T. (2014) Black Legacies: Race and the European Middle Ages, Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Rohrbach, P. (1929) Der Tag des Untermenschen, Berlin: Safari-Verlag. Rosenberg, A. (1921) Demokratie und Klassenkampf im Altertum, Bielefeld: Velhagen & Klasing. Sebastiani, S. (2015) “Challenging Boundaries: Apes and Savages in Enlightenment,” in: W. D. Hund, Ch. W. Mills, S. Sebastiani (eds.), Simianization: Apes, Gender, Class, and Race, Zürich: Lit, pp. 105–137. —— (2020) “Enlightenment Humanization and Dehumanization, and the Orangutan,” in: M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge. pp. 64–82. (this volume). Seth, V. (2010) Europe’s Indians: Producing Racial Difference, 1500–1900, Durham: Duke University Press. Sicroff, A. (1960) Les controverses des statuts de ‘pureté de sang’ en Espagne du XVe au XVIIe siècles, Paris: Didier. Sofsky, W. (1997) The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Steizinger, J. (2018) “The Significance of Dehumanization: Nazi Ideology and Its Psychological Consequences,” in: Politics, Religion & Ideology, 19, 2, pp. 139–157. —— (2020) “Dehumanizing Strategies in Nazi Ideology and their Anthropological Context,” in: M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge. pp. 98–111. (this volume). Stoddard, L. (1921) The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy, New York: Scribner’s Sons. —— (1922) The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under Man, New York: Scribner’s Sons. Stuurman, S. (2020) “Dehumanization Before the Columbian Exchange,” in: M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge. pp. 37–51. (this volume). Thomas, W. (1861) The Pilgrim: A Dialogue of the Life and Actions of King Henry the Eighth, London: Parker, Son, and Bourn. Thornton, J. (1981) “Early Kongo-Portuguese Relations: A New Interpretation,” in: History of Africa, 8, pp. 183–204. Trachtenberg, J. (1983) The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Antisemitism, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society.

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Wulf D. Hund Traverso, E. (2003) The Origins of Nazi Violence, New York: New Press. Tritle, E. (2015) “Anti-Judaism and the Hermeneutic of the Flesh: A Converso Debate in FifteenthCentury Spain,” in: Church History and Religious Culture, 95, 2/3, pp. 182–202. Weikart, R. (2004) From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Weindling, P. (1989) Health, Race and German Politics Between National Unification and Nazism, 1870–1945, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wigger, I. (2017) The ‘Black Horror on the Rhine:’ Intersections of Race, Nation, Gender and Class in 1920s Germany, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Wilson, R. A. (2020) “Dehumanization, Disability, and Eugenics,” in: M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge. pp. 173–186. (this volume).

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16

HOW STATUS AND

INTERDEPENDENCE EXPLAIN

DIFFERENT FORMS OF

DEHUMANIZATION

Susan T. Fiske

16.1 Introduction “Smart People,” by playwright Lydia Diamond (2014), features an anti-racist innovator, a liberal White male assistant professor of neuroscience at Harvard, who shocks the establishment by demonstrating that all his White students are hard-wired to dehumanize Black people. Imagine a social psychologist’s surprise when the main character’s opening monologue began, “In the Stereotype Content Model, …” His speech went on to recapitulate the SCM’s standard collo­ quium introduction. Even the theatre playbill described his theory as the SCM, complete with a figure from an article. It went on to explain that Diamond’s husband had come across the article (Harris and Fiske 2006), suggesting that people’s brains respond to pictures of homeless people with dehumanizing disgust and without considering their minds.This finding inspired her char­ acter, the idealistic but ill-fated assistant professor. (More about him later.) Dehumanizing neural patterns disturb audiences, as Diamond realized, and as any researcher experiences when showing brain scans to that effect. But unsettling as that phenomenon might be, Diamond’s play has another message, which is the focus of this chapter:The play features a variety of characters experiencing varieties of dehumanization—a Black Shakespearean actress, a Black surgeon, and an Asian therapist. Each confronts specific ethnic stereotype content that casts doubt on their professional abilities.The actress cannot possibly manage a sophisticated role while the surgeon cannot possibly have achieved such advanced credentials; as Black people, they might have other advantages, such as athletic prowess, but not intellect. In contrast, as an Asian, the therapist cannot possibly be empathic, but she could be stereotypically intelligent. Or, at the gender-ethnicity intersection, she could be sexually objectified, also demeaning. Being stereotyped––as stupid, as unfeeling, or as a sex toy—each can be dehumanized, but in different ways. “Smart People” and the Stereotype Content Model both explore systematically distinct stereo­ types (mental representations of groups’ characteristics). Many stereotypes produce dehumaniza­ tion: denying other people their full humanity, diminishing them by reducing them to animals (the super-athletic Black surgeon), robots (the brilliant but cold Asian therapist), or objects (the sexy Asian therapist). Each kind of stereotype-dehumanization linkage inflicts its own distinct damage. The patterns are systematic and knowable. The White liberal neuroscientist and SCM researchers both sought the neural signatures for distinct dehumanizing prejudices, with mixed 245

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success. But the brain scans are not needed to show that dehumanization is systematic.Although dehumanization may seem relentless, as a subtext, this chapter will suggest that dehumanization is not inevitable.The neural patterns are not hard-wired but socially constructed, starting from a seemingly universal tendency to trust the familiar. The most disturbing message about the variety of ways to dehumanize outgroups is pre­ cisely their generality.To start, humans spontaneously feel discomfort around people they think are different from them.The culture builds on children’s early proclivities to categorize other people (by language, gender, age) and adds others (race, religion, social class) (Kurzban et al. 2001;Waxman 2010).The categories and associated stereotypes are social constructions stored in the brain. All cultures supply the “nouns that cut slices,” to use Allport’s term (1954:174). His abiding insight was the normality of prejudgment, and others agree that social categor­ ization is basic to perceiving self and others (see Demoulin et al., this volume). From a young age, across cultures, daily, rapidly, and without instruction—that is, spontaneously—people cat­ egorize each other, just as we categorize objects, to decide how to interact with them. However functional this is, being treated as an interchangeable category member depersonalizes the other, at a minimum diminishing the person’s humanity. Categorization does not necessarily dehumanize, but it creates the conditions for it. Most culturally meaningful human categories come with stereotypic associations. The nature of the stereotypes shapes the nature of the dehumanization. Clearly, some stereotypes are worse than others.As cultural products, stereotypes can change as the context changes;American ethnic stereotypes are accidents of immigration history (Bergsieker et al. 2012: Study 4; Lee and Fiske 2006; see Esses et al. 2019 in this volume, re Canada). In China, changing social capital is associated with generational differences in stereotypes (Jia et al. under review). In international comparisons, inequality, peace and conflict, resource competition, and mobility all shape stereotype content (Cuddy et al. 2009; Day and Fiske 2017; Durante et al. 2013, 2017; see Fiske and Durante 2016). Thus, the current chapter argues, cultural circumstances operate on knowable dimensions for differ­ entiating societal groups—resulting in systematically different forms of dehumanization. Group stereotypes appear in a warmth-by-competence space, described next. Not all stereotypes are uniformly nega­ tive (granting, e.g., ingroup positivity), but most stereotypes (even the partially positive ones) reduce the others’ humanity, as seen next. Groups’ perceived warmth-by-competence stereotypic place—and form of dehumanization—depends on features of the social structure.The focus here will be groups’ apparent status (prestige) and interdependence (cooperation and competition) as structural relations predicting competence and warmth stereotypes, respectively. Stereotype content model. Parallel invention suggests the idea was needed. That psy­ chological scientists explaining how people navigate their social world have repeatedly settled on similar constructs illustrates this. Many models of social evaluation distinguish two evaluative dimensions (for a historic overview, see Fiske 2018; for currently competing views, see the chapter’s later section, or Abele et al., in press). Among these models, the Stereotype Content Model (SCM; Fiske et al. 2002) provides a cultural map of groups, spanning dimensions of competence and warmth, declaring them cardinal directions for locating societal groups (see Table 16.1). The core idea is a functional analysis of what people need to know in order to interact with each other; the SCM is intrinsically relational (Nicolas et al. under review). People are first of all intent detectors: “Who goes there? Friend or foe?” If the other has benign intent, they seem trustworthy and friendly—warm. Warmth entails both morality and sociability (Abele et al. 2016),

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Different forms of dehumanization Table 16.1 Stereotype Content Model: Examples

High Warmth Low Warmth

Low Competence

High Competence

Ambivalent Outgroups: Elders, Disabled, Children, Traditional Women (Pity) Extreme Outgroups: Homeless, Undocumented Immigrants (Disgust)

Cultural Ingroups: Middle Class, Majority Religion, Citizens (Pride) Ambivalent Outgroups: Rich, Outsider Successes, Nontraditional Women (Envy)

which result from their apparent intent. Cooperators are warm; competitors are not. In everyday belief, people’s shared or unshared goals determine their warmth. Besides learning the other’s intent, one needs to know their capability, or whether they can enact their intent. If they cannot, there’s no need bothering to pay attention. If they can, they require close attention. Competence includes both capability and confidence (activity/potency) (Abele et al. 2016), so competent people can have a significant impact. Everyday people associate competence with status, and people do attend more to higher-status people, who often control outcomes that matter (Fiske 1993). To understand the model’s intuitive appeal, consider some canonical results across nearly fifty countries (Cuddy et al. 2009; Durante et al. 2013, 2017; Fiske and Durante 2016). The most straightforward illustration divides the warmth-by-competence space into four quadrants— distinct clusters of stereotypes that turn out to differ systematically (see Table 16.1). These differences are useful in describing dehumanization’s different forms.

16.2 Unambivalent stereotypes: Ingroups versus fully dehumanized outgroups The favored quadrant is stereotypically both warm and competent. Most societies view their own citizens, the middle class, the dominant ethnic group, and the dominant religion in this idealized way. People report pride and admiration for these societal ingroups (top corner of Table 16.1; related to Brewer’s 1998 ingroup love). At the opposite extreme are the worst-off outgroups, who turn out almost always to be people without an address—notably, homeless people—but also other displaced or nomadic groups: immigrants, refugees, Roma (gypsies), Bedouins (nomads), Bedoons (stateless), travelers (in Ireland or England), and drug addicts. Other groups land in this space, depending on a country’s idiosyncratic history (e.g., Muslims, for some Europeans; Latinos, for some North Americans). Social class also comes in, as sometimes poor people and unemployed people are viewed as utterly incompetent and as immorally exploiting government largesse. All these most dehumanized outgroups are extremely derogated, as stereotypically both untrust­ worthy (not warm) and incompetent. These are low status, allegedly exploitative outgroups viewed with contempt and disgust. Their often lacking a fixed address suggests to others that they do not reliably engage with society in two ways:They do not achieve a stable-enough income to settle down (they are incompetent), and by not investing in the community, they have no accountability and earn no trust. Altogether, they seem undeserving—neither competent nor warm.

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These are the groups that elicit neural signatures of dehumanized perception (Harris and Fiske 2006). Areas usually implicated in social cognition, in considering the other’s mind, are hardly activated by photos of homeless people and drug addicts; instead, the insula comes on line, a response correlated with disgust.The brain responds as if seeing a contaminated, mindless thing (at the extreme, perhaps a pile of garbage, or a scavenging rodent), not another human. This form of dehumanization most resembles animalistic dehumanization (Haslam 2006, this volume)—defined as lacking uniquely human characteristics, such as culture and morality. Infra-humanization theory (Leyens et al. 2003; see Demoulin et al., this volume) would view these SCM low-low groups as stereotypically primitive, unrefined, and with crude emotions (rather than sensitive sentiments). Other people report difficulty in imagining the minds and life experiences of people in these groups (Harris and Fiske 2009). On an evolutionary scale of human development, they would rate as most ape-like (Kteily et al. 2015). Cultural associations with ape-images also dehumanize Black people, especially young men. If they first see an ape face,Whites are faster to identify a Black face. News media and police media use ape references to describe Blacks; a “gorilla in the mist” is dispatch-speak for a Black man in a White neighborhood (Eberhardt et al. 2004; Goff et al. 2008). Among animal species that also fall into this quadrant are pests: vermin, rats, mice, snakes, and lizards (Sevillano and Fiske 2016). Only disgusting animals fit this quadrant: Pairing an appar­ ently homeless man with a mangy dog fits his image, and both are dehumanized. But pairing him with a nice middle-class pet breed (golden retriever) humanizes him (Maitlin 2019), as do some other interventions described later. So, while all is not quite lost, being human is precarious for the homeless and other allegedly incompetent, untrustworthy groups with no fixed address (see Hund, this volume on social death).

16.3 Dehumanizing ambivalent stereotypes: Envy and pity Beyond the stark contrast between admired ingroups and contemptible outgroups, just described, are more complicated stereotypes. Combining separate degrees of warmth and competence generates mixed images. For example, hyper-competent but cold outgroups everywhere include the rich. Outsider entrepreneurs—often Jews, Indians, Koreans, or Chinese in their respective diasporas—are seen as admittedly successful but not necessarily to be trusted.As another example, women who are successful in nontraditional spheres seem competent but cold (“bitch” is the relevant epithet); this includes career women, athletes, feminists, and lesbians (Eckes 2002). Such women seem dangerous, viewed as predators (cougars, tiger moms): respected but psycho­ logically distant (Sevillano and Fiske 2016). Psychological distance determines envy. When an ingroup member succeeds, their ingroup peers (“we”) assimilate the outcome and feel pride, as noted, but when the outgroup succeeds, people contrast the other’s outcome with the ingroup’s and feel envy (Smith 2000). Competentbut-cold outgroups eliciting envy admits they possess something desirable (money, talent, prestige, and power) that others would like to take from them, because they are not “us” (Fiske et al. 2002). Envy is volatile. One may go along to get along with an enviable other precisely because of their coveted features and possessions, but one is constrained by law and by custom from seizing their assets.When such laws and norms do collapse under social breakdown (riot, rebel­ lion, coup, and revolution), envied outgroups are often targeted for mass violence, looting, and genocide. Dehumanization enables this group-level envy to turn into depersonalized violence. Competent-but-cold groups stereotypically have capability and activity but no real emotions, so they are distinctively dehumanized as machines—all competence and agency, but no 248

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Different forms of dehumanization

typically human warmth (Haslam 2006; this volume). High-achieving women and minor­ ities are sometimes seen as automatons, not people. Harming a machine evades the inhibition against harming a person. But our reactions to automatons are becoming more complicated (see Paladino et al., this volume).And some envied outgroups are also dehumanized as predator animals (e.g., bitches, cougars), so the parallel to Haslam’s typology is imperfect. Overall, the competent-but-cold and envy results themselves are reliable, targeting rich people, especially outsiders. Much as people resent successful others, some also report admiring them and believing in fair competition. People generally believe in meritocracy: Supposedly, status goes to the deserving, who earned it. This correlation between status and competence is high and almost universal. (The exceptions: Countries in the former Soviet Union are even now dubious that everyone with status earned it [Grigoryan et al. 2020].) Enviable automatons help justify the system—hard work and talent pay off—but people do not have to like them. Even though high status, envied outgroups can be dehumanized and targeted for group violence.They are viewed as dangerous predators (the Lion of Wall Street; the Wolf of Wall Street; a bull or bear market) (Sevillano and Fiske 2016) or as merciless robots (the Terminator). Ambivalent stereotypes also imply another, less examined form of dehumanization. Pitiable warm-but-incompetent groups reliably include older adults and people with disabilities, viewed as deserving societal help. Buffoon outgroups—nonthreatening, dim, and the target of ethnic jokes—also land here. In the United States, in earlier times (and even now, in deplorable settings), this has included African Americans, Irish, Italians, Poles, and Swedes (Allport 1954; Bergsieker et al. 2012, Study 4). More consistent over time and place are the ambivalent age and disability stereotypes, which I propose to represent as a rarely recognized form of dehumanization, akin to objectification of women, which makes them inert objects of the observer’s agency. To elaborate: Age stereotypes target older people as “doddering but dear” (Cuddy et al. 2005; 2016). Age thus carries a prescriptive stereotype: Older people should know their place, cooper­ ating with expectations to step aside, become less agentic, to allow orderly succession (of power, agency, and wealth), and to cede consumption of shared resources (highways, healthcare costs); as well, they should not try to dominate the current generation’s cultural identity (music, style) (North and Fiske 2012; 2013). Older people receive affection (but not respect), if they align with the warm-but-incompetent stereotype by cooperating and by restraining their own agency and competence.To deserve pity, an ambivalent emotion, requires not only playing by the rules but also agreeing to subordination. Becoming utterly passive and deferent dehumanizes one into a neutral lump. Rebellious grey panthers (elder activists) gain perceived competence but forfeit perceived warmth (Cuddy et al. 2005; North and Fiske 2013). Disability stigma (Dunn 2019; Wu and Fiske 2019) also dehumanizes by enforcing a pitiful stereotype of warm-but-incompetent. Ambivalent stereotypes support selective empathy for disabled outgroups; they elicit pity because the default assumption is that they are blameless. Perceived fault, however, moderates empathy for people with disabilities. So, first, they have to be well-intentioned, and second, they have to accept their lower status. If they rebel against this passive position, they forfeit sympathy. Disability rights activists who claim agency—“No about-us, without us.”—no longer seem so warm, but they do seem more competent. Finally, another prescriptive, ambivalent stereotype dehumanizes objectified women. Sexualized women are passive objects, deprived of agency and competence (Cikara et al. 2011). Ambivalently sexist men primed with bikini-clad women responded faster to first-person verbs (I act on her) than third-person verbs (she acts on me)—consistent with depriving the women of agency and autonomy.Ambivalent sexism characterizes women subordinated to men as warm (nice, moral) but not competent (not challenging) (Glick and Fiske 1996). This “benevolent” 249

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sexism also demands deference in exchange for affection and protection. Rebels again land in the competent but cold quadrant. The argument in this quadrant, then, is for a third kind of dehumanization; besides being viewed as an animal or a machine, some categories can make a person into a lump or an object, useful to others but having no legitimate standing otherwise. Being passive makes a person more like prey, to be pursued and used.Among the animals in this quadrant are those that people turn into meat, to consume (sheep, cows, and pigs) (Sevillano and Fiske 2016). Likewise, other people consume older people’s resources. In the case of sexualized women, sexist men view them as objects of their own consummatory actions.

16.4 How do we know? Methods for studying warmth and competence So far, this chapter has asserted the general patterns of SCM findings for the last two decades, from overviews, with only minimal reference to specific evidence. Supportive results do gen­ eralize over method, place, and time. The methods range across the spectrum from compara­ tive national surveys to representative sample surveys, convenience sample surveys (the most common evidence), scenario experiments, interpersonal interaction studies, and fMRI and EMG. Survey data come from about fifty countries.And historical data come from retrospective SCM re-analyses of 1930’s magazine text (Durante et al. 2010) and the earliest stereotyping study (Katz and Braly 1933). First, to illustrate the most frequent method, a preliminary study collects names of groups salient in a particular society.These surveys begin (in the relevant language) by asking how they think people in their society view social groups, not their personal view. [This aims both to make them less self-conscious and to get the sample’s consensus.] Three questions follow: 1. Off the top of your head, what various types of people do you think today’s society categorizes into groups (i.e., based on ability, age, ethnicity, gender, occupation, race, reli­ gion, etc.)? Please list 8 to 16 groups. [The examples aimed to get them to list specific group names, such as “Blacks,” not dimensions such as “race.”] 2. What groups are considered to be of very low status by the [your] society? [This aimed to solicit groups that might be taboo or so derogated that naming them is impolite; e.g., unmentionable or untouchable.] 3. What groups, based on the same kinds of criteria used in the first question, do you consider yourself to be a member of?

[People, especially a society’s majority, often forget to name their own group.]

Groups mentioned by at least 15 percent of the sample presumably would be familiar in common discourse, so they become the stimuli in the main survey. The main survey always asks for ratings of warmth and competence; the items with the best psychometric properties are (Fiske and North 2014; Kervyn et al. 2013), “To what extent do most [e.g.] Americans view members of this group as warm ….trustworthy …competent … capable?” [Response scale from 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely).] Sometimes, surveys also ask about the predictors of stereotype contents (i.e., status and cooperation/competition; more on that, next), or the consequences of stereotypes for emotional prejudices (e.g., pride, pity, disgust, and envy). After establishing each group’s average rating on warm and competence, plotting them provides a visual summary, quantified by a statistical cluster analysis. Because the two dimensions 250

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generally yield clusters in all four quadrants, both dimensions are needed; they do not usually reduce to a single overall evaluation. Also, the ambivalence prediction—many groups are mixed, high on one dimension and low on the other—has support from countries with moderate-to-high degrees of income inequality. Consider as a baseline the most egalitarian nations (Scandinavia, Switzerland): Almost everyone is in the high-high national ingroup quadrant, eligible for the social safety net. The few lowlow exceptions (usually refugees, Roma) are viewed as total outgroups. The resulting contrast shows almost no ambivalence—no mixed groups (high on one dimension but low on the other). Groups are either all-in or all-out in egalitarian societies. However, ambivalence increases with national inequality. Compared with very equal coun­ tries, the most unequal societies have the same undeserving poor, rootless outgroups, but in effect they separate out the deserving poor (elderly, disabled), viewing them as well-intentioned but incompetent, so eligible for pity and paternalistic help. As to the other kind of ambivalence, to some extent the unequal societies also separate the deserving rich (well-off citizen professionals, who earned it) and undeserving rich (outsider entrepreneurs, whose work is not recognized; Durante et al. 2013). In separating the deserving and undeserving rich, the deserving and undeserving poor, it seems that more unequal societies have more explaining to do: Why is status not always rewarded? Why is the meritocracy imper­ fect? Why does society care for only some low-status people? Partially dehumanizing some of the ambivalent groups—the “undeserving” ones—explains why society accepts some rich (but not others) and some poor (but not others). Warmth and competence dimensions receive further support from their ability to predict dis­ tinct emotions, described previously, and behaviors (omitted here, due to space constraints; see Cuddy et al. 2007). Besides surveys, experimental data have been frequent also. Confidence in warmth and com­ petence as fundamental dimensions has received support from scenario studies that manipulate the social structural antecedents—interdependence and status—then reproduce the warmthcompetence stereotypes (Caprariello et al. 2009). Especially compelling are two in-person experiments that did the same thing, with parallel results (Russell and Fiske 2008). Princeton students volunteered for a study that involved playing an economic game with a partner. If the game incentivized competition, they expected their partner to be less warm—as a person, not just in the game.Told that their partner had parents with low-status (versus high-status) jobs, they expected less competent performance and guessed lower test scores and grades. Social-class biases may not be the most dehumanizing face-to-face encounters so far simulated in lab experiments. Earlier, university students volunteered for a study of hospital patient reinte­ gration (Neuberg and Fiske 1987). When they learned they would be paired with a recently discharged schizophrenic, videotapes recorded their nonverbal dismay (e.g., uncomfort­ able shifting in their seats). Among clinical diagnoses, schizophrenia is the most dehumanized (Fiske 2012). The chapter’s introduction referred to neuroimaging data. The neuroscience studies gen­ erally required curated sets of instantly recognizable photographs of stereotyped groups from each quadrant. For the Harris and Fiske (2006) study in the brain scanner, participants saw dozens of photos and labeled their reactions by choosing one of the four main SCM emotions; they disproportionately cited disgust for the homeless and drug-addicted target people. Examining the brain scans particularly focused on the medial prefrontal cortex, an area reli­ ably implicated in social cognition, as noted. This area activated to three quadrants: ingroup, pity outgroups, and envy outgroups. For the dehumanized homeless or drug user, which acti­ vation fell to half, not statistically different from zero. Also as noted, the disgust-related insula 251

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did reliably activate. What’s more, participants reported difficulty mentalizing—inferring the mind of—the homeless or drug-addicted. They could not easily imagine a day in the life of these people, and they reported rarely if ever speaking to these lowest of the low. Denying their inner life is one form of dehumanization, with elements of animalistic and objectifying responses. Physiological responses also support the dehumanization distinguishing envied, competent-but­ cold targets.Their status is undeniable,so people have to acknowledge their desirable characteristics or possessions, but they are not one of society’s ingroups, so their good events do not make people feel good but perhaps even bad. And their misfortunes are secretly satisfying. Particular to the envy quadrant is schadenfreude—malicious glee at another’s ill fortune (Cikara and Fiske 2012). Demonstrating this phenomenon required pairing photos from all quadrants with everyday good and bad events (“ate a nice sandwich for lunch”;“was splashed by a taxi”).Then, attaching sensors to people’s cheeks picked up activation, however slight, of their smile muscles. People reliably smiled more to good events than bad ones—except when the unlucky person appeared to be rich or an executive.They smiled more when an executive sat on chewing gum, stepped in dog poo, or got splashed.The same events are not amusing when they happen to an older or homeless person. Thus, this section has focused on methods: the nature of current evidence for the SCM from surveys and lab experiments. (For cultural comparative evidence, see Fiske and Durante 2016.) Many examples came from the extreme outgroups, the most dehumanized. Having summarized what the SCM says about dehumanization, the next section addresses what alternative theories have to say, and comments on points of consensus. Using all the assembled evidence, the closing sections discuss implications for dehumanization, interventions to rehumanize its targets, open questions, and future research.

16.5 What psychology doesn’t know yet: A note on rival theories Having made much of warmth and competence, the SCM does acknowledge historic precedents for these two dimensions (see Fiske 2018), as well as current competitors (Abele et al. in press). Recurring parallel inventions can serve as validating precedents—but concurrent parallel inventions compete in the marketplace of ideas. Proponents of five related models negotiated an adversarial synthesis (Ellemers et al. 2020); five related theories negotiated a consensus, also iden­ tifying areas of intransigence (Abele et al. in press). For present purposes, coverage of the SCM’s rivals will be brief because none of them explicitly addresses dehumanization. But mentioning them here does serve to point out the SCM’s limits and gaps. Viewed with some perspective, the five models agree that social perception entails at least two dimensions. The “horizontal” includes Warmth and Communion (which breaks into facets of Morality and Sociality); this dimension describes shared or unshared goals and values (essentially, interdependence). The other dimension, “vertical,” includes Competence, Status, and Agency (which breaks into facets of Capability and Assertiveness); this dimension describes prestige, power, and resources.The models differ in the labels and numbers of the dimension (one empha­ sizing Morality mainly, another adding ideological Beliefs as a third dimension.They also range in levels of analysis—perception of self, dyads, own group, and many groups). The SCM is distinctive in describing a moderate number of societal groups and (relevant here) making specific predictions about varieties of dehumanization and their correlated stereo­ types, emotional prejudices, discriminatory tendencies, and structural predictors. The relevance to dehumanization lies not so much in the other models, which do not address issues related to dehumanization. Rather, this note aims to report openly the challenges to the details of the

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SCM dimensions. In the end, the two primary dimensions, vertical Competence and horizontal Warmth have considerable consensus.Viewed from a more distal perspective, this helps validate functions of the “Big Two” in driving societal dehumanization. (The SCM maps arbitrarily began twenty years ago with switched vertical and horizontal axes, but the consensus that Status/ Competence/Agency should be vertical and Interdependence/Warmth/Communion should be horizontal makes more sense; see Fiske, Nicolas, and Bai 2020.)

16.6 How verticality contributes to dehumanization: Smart people, not-so-smart people All the models agree that Competence is a relevant dimension. Status drives this most agreedupon dimension, differentiating groups, for example, by social class. Meritocracy confers com­ petence on high-status groups. People believe that groups get what they deserve. All over the world, the correlation between status and competence is ∼.8-.9 (Durante et al. 2017). Only in the former communist countries (former Soviet bloc, China) are people more cynical that highranked others earned it (Grigoryan et al. 2020). Status is prestige bestowed by society; closely related, power is control over resources (Fiske 2010). Power and status as correlated forms of verticality declare groups’ societal worth; society attends up the hierarchy in envious admiration, in deference to prestige, or in an effort to control one’s outcomes held by the powerful. Attention upward has a corollary: Downward neglect of the powerless and low status, who have nothing worth heeding.Verticality creates a dysfunctional dynamic of upward envy and downward scorn (Fiske 2011). Two of the three described types of dehumanization reflect scorn and neglect: the animalistic and the objectified. Being invisible (or having one’s mind be invisible) negates one’s very existence. Without hostility, such disrespect might seem harmless, but in fact being ignored is humiliating, by turns frustrating and infuriating (Leary 1990;Williams et al. 2000). People ignored for no reason feel like the social world is out of their control; they may at first try to gain acceptance, but at some point they either become passive and helpless or enraged and aggressive (Baumeister et al. 2005). As bad as being negated is being diminished. Because status confers competence, high-status people presume their own competence and assume others recognize it as well. They have nothing to prove but their warmth.When they talk down to a lower-status person in an affiliative way, they demonstrably dumb-down their speech and avoid achievement-related themes.To be liked, they play dumb (Swencionis and Fiske 2016), leveraging the Compensation Effect; namely, Warmth-Competence tradeoffs in comparative contexts (Judd et al. 2005;Yzerbyt et al. 2005). The problem is that this patronizes and diminishes the lower-status person who, in fact, is seeking what they stereotypically lack; namely, respect for their competence. (They may also be politely matching the competence expected of the higher-status person.) So the lower-status person is not only disrespected by being treated as less competent, but also disrespected by having their goal be ignored. Besides generic status, other more specific hierarchies also diminish the lower ranks. For example, race imitates status, with many people linking Whites with higher-status jobs and Blacks with low-status jobs (Dupree, Obioha,Torrez, and Fiske, in press).Well-meaning Whites talk down to a Black partner; this competence downshift occurs only for liberals (Dupree and Fiske 2019). Even White presidential candidates show the competence downshift in speeches to minority audiences but not majority ones, and only Democrats do this. (Republicans do not bother to show up.) Both neglecting and patronizing dehumanize the other as forms of down­ ward scorn.

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The third type of dehumanization looks up to the outgroups stereotyped as excessively com­ petent and machine-like. Instead, it views them both with envy for their competence and status, but with dislike and distance for their allegedly deficient warmth. Asian American stereotypes illustrate this combination of grudging respect and dislike (Lin et al. 2005). Hostile sexism toward career women, resented for competing with men, also illustrates this (Glick and Fiske 1996). World-wide stereotypes of rich people portray them as competent but cold (Durante and Fiske 2017; Wu et al. 2018). This form of dehumanization might be viewed as looking up the status hierarchy at groups with higher status. Envied outgroups have received less research attention, although their discomfort is real: Consider how often high-status people will hide their privileged identity.And they worry about being the targets of threatening upward comparison (Exline and Lobel 1999)—both because it interferes with affiliation, but it also has more serious potential. That is, envy can translate into individual sabotage (Rudman and Fairchild 2004) and even group violence. Status divides are serious in both directions.

16.7 How horizontality contributes to dehumanization: Good people, bad people The horizontal dimension, variously called warmth or communion, conveys being trustworthy and friendly.This dimension has several unexplored but potentially strong influences on dehu­ manization: moral judgments about deservingness, which reflect self-other distance, through cooperation/competition, resulting in (in)equality. Let’s take each issue in turn. Combining warmth and competence distinguishes the deserving from the undeserving, as noted. Although both low-status SCM quadrants are dehumanized (pity objectifies and dis­ gust animalizes), they differ on deservingness because they differ on apparent warmth of intent. The low-low groups are disgusting and undeserving because, allegedly, they do not even try to participate in society except by exploiting it (stereotypically, stealing, panhandling, depending on welfare). The low status but well-intentioned outgroups, in contrast, do deserve sympathy and help because at least they try to participate (e.g., older people who cooperate with orderly succession). As mentioned, if they cease to cooperate, they forfeit their protections. The terms deserving and undeserving poor capture the distinction, though both presume the observer’s right to judge them morally. At the far end of status, deserving (warm) and undeserving (cold) groups also appear.The dis­ tinction between deserving rich and undeserving rich is less familiar but fits nonetheless.They, too, are judged on their intentions for good (comfortably well-off citizens, who share mainstream values and cooperate with society), but also for ill (successful outsiders favor their own group; rich people are self-serving). The horizontal dimension could be viewed as cooperative/competitive interdependence, which reflects distance from self and ingroup. “Close” here means cooperative intent and therefore trust­ worthy;“far” means competitive/exploitative intent and therefore untrustworthy.

16.8 Combining the horizontal and the vertical creates a path to rehumanization At a societal level, aggregating across groups, embracing and distancing means that social harmony creates an undifferentiated clump of groups (“we’re all New-Yorkers”;“a nation of immigrants”), all assimilated.The single, inclusive, multicultural ingroup should appear in the high-high part of

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the space.The SCM data find this in US states with the most longstanding diversity (Bai, Ramos, and Fiske, 2020).Across nations, the more diverse ones show a similar pattern. In contrast, less diverse settings rate many groups with much intergroup distance—creating the typical SCM map that locates groups in all quadrants. Competitive interdependence ranks groups as more distinct; cooperative interdependence ranks them as more similar, and of equal value. This logic explains why societies with more equality should view their broadly defined, inclu­ sive ingroups as all together. Competition would be unnecessary, even dumb, and not nice.This is precisely what comparative data on nearly fifty nations show (Durante et al. 2013, 2017). In contrast, unequal nations accept competition and differentiate groups in more detail, as deserving and undeserving, by utilizing ambivalent stereotypes, spread out across SCM space.

16.9 Implications for dehumanization, open questions, future research, interventions Framing dehumanization in Stereotype Content terms has several useful implications. First, SCM systematically predicts differing kinds and degrees of dehumanizing perceptions. Animalizing dehumanization reduces the person to a more primitive life form, but at least it’s alive. Mechanizing dehumanization reduces the person to being a robot, but at least it can move. Both animalizing and mechanizing are less awful than the third: Objectifying dehumanization reduces the person to a passive thing. Each form is stigmatizing and humiliating in its own way, as reflected by the respective emotional prejudices of disgust, envy, and pity. These types follow from two fundamental dimensions, the consensus of several related theories, based on the groups’ perceived place in the social structure: up versus downward in status, and cooperative/close versus competitive/distant.The resulting narrative justifies unequal systems by separating the deserving and undeserving. Novel, testable ideas follow from these two dimensions.The objectifying form of dehumaniza­ tion has demonstrated its key features for sexualized women (Gervais 2013), but not, to current knowledge, for older or disabled people.All these groups forfeit their own agency and self-respect in exchange for being helped and protected. Exploring the similarities would break new ground. Likewise, considering the similarities among envied groups’ dehumanization might shed new light on their respective predicaments.Anti-Asian prejudice correlates with over-estimating their numbers (Lin et al. 2005); is this true of all outgroups or mainly envied ones? Rich people evoke schadenfreude (Cikara and Fiske 2012); is this also true for Asians? More work has separately examined dehumanized perceptions of immigrants, homeless people, and refugees (e.g., Esses et al., this volume). But rarely has that work drawn on their potential similarities to generate testable hypotheses. To close on a more upbeat note: All this horror is malleable. Rehumanizing outcasts is not hard, at least in the lab. Considering the other’s lunch preferences attributes a mind (Harris and Fiske 2009).Teaming up with the other also attributes a mind (Ames and Fiske 2013). Priming cosmopolitan values changes charitable intentions to people around the globe (Bai et al. under review).The assistant professor in “Smart People” got it wrong; dehumanization may be people’s first impulse, but it is not hard-wired.We can change it.

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Susan T. Fiske Haslam, N. 2020. The social psychology of dehumanization. In M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge hand­ book of dehumanization (this volume, pp. 125–144). London and New York: Routledge. Hund, W. D. 2020. Dehumanization and social death as fundamentals of racism. In M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge handbook of dehumanization (this volume, pp. 229–244). London and New York: Routledge. Jia, Q., Fiske, S. T., and Zhou, J. (under review). Generational stereotype change in mainland China: A product of declining social capital. Judd, C. M., James-Hawkins, L., Yzerbyt, V., and Kashima, Y. 2005. Fundamental dimensions of social judgment: Understanding the relations between judgments of competence and warmth. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89(6), 899–913. Katz, D., and Braly, K. 1933. Racial stereotypes of one hundred college students. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 28, 280–290. Kervyn, N., Fiske, S. T., and Yzerbyt, Y. 2013. Integrating the stereotype content model (warmth and competence) and the Osgood semantic differential (evaluation, potency, and activity). European Journal of Social Psychology, 43, 673–681. Kteily, N., Bruneau, E., Waytz, A., and Cotterill, S. 2015. The ascent of man: Theoretical and empirical evidence for blatant dehumanization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109(5), 901. Kurzban, R., Tooby, J., and Cosmides, L. 2001. Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(26), 15387–15392. Leary, M. R. 1990. Responses to social exclusion: Social anxiety, jealousy, loneliness, depression, and low self-esteem. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 9, 221–229. Lee, T. L. and Fiske, S. T. 2006. Not an outgroup, but not yet an ingroup: Immigrants in the stereotype content model. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 30, 751–768. Leyens, J. Ph., Cortes, B. P., Demoulin, S., Dovidio, J., Fiske, S. T., Gaunt, R., Paladino, M.-P., Rodriquez-Perez, A., Rodriquez-Torres, R., and Vaes, V. 2003. Emotional prejudice, essentialism, and nationalism. European Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 703–718. Lin, M. H., Kwan, V. S. Y., Cheung, A., and Fiske, S. T. 2005. Stereotype content model explains prejudice for an envied outgroup: Scale of Anti-Asian American Stereotypes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 34–47. Maitlin, C. 2019. Senior thesis, Princeton University. Neuberg, S. L., and Fiske, S. T. 1987. Motivational influences on impression formation: Outcome dependency, accuracy-driven attention, and individuating processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 431–444. Nicolas, G., Fiske, S. T., Koch, A., Imhoff, R., Unkelbach, C., Terache, J., Carrier, A., and Yzerbyt, V. (under review). Relational versus structural goals moderate social information-gathering priorities. North, M. S., and Fiske, S. T. 2012. An inconvenienced youth? Ageism and its potential intergenerational roots. Psychological Bulletin, 138(5), 982–997. North, M. S. and Fiske, S. T. 2013. Act your (old) age: Prescriptive, ageist biases over succession, identity, and consumption. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39 (6), 720–734. Paladino, M.-P., Vaes, J., and Jetten, J. 2020. Motivational and cognitive underpinnings of fear of social robots that become ‘too human for us’. In M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge handbook of dehuman­ ization (this volume, pp. 292–306). London and New York: Routledge. Rudman, L. A., and Fairchild, K. 2004. Reactions to counterstereotypic behavior: The role of backlash in cultural stereotype maintenance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 157–176. Russell, A. M., and Fiske, S. T. 2008. It’s all relative: Social position and interpersonal perception. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 1193–1201. Sevillano, V., and Fiske, S. T. 2016. Warmth and competence in animals. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 46(5), 276–293. Smith, R. H. 2000. Assimilative and contrastive emotional reactions to upward and downward social comparisons. In J. Suls and L. Wheeler (Eds.), Handbook of social comparison: Theory and research (pp. 173–200). Dordrecht: Kluwer. Swencionis, J. K., and Fiske, S. T. 2016. Promote up, ingratiate down: Status comparisons drive warmthcompetence tradeoffs in impression management. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 64, 27–34. Waxman, S. R., 2010. Names will never hurt me? Naming and the development of racial and gender cat­ egories in preschool‐aged children. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(4), 593–610. Williams, K. D., Cheung, C. K. T., and Choi, W. 2000. Cyber-ostracism: Effects of being ignored over the Internet. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 748–762.

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Different forms of dehumanization Wu, J., and Fiske, S. T. 2019. Disability’s incompetent-but-warm stereotype guides selective empathy: Distinctive cognitive, emotional, and neural signatures. In D. S. Dunn (Ed.), Understanding the experi­ ence of disability: Perspectives from social and rehabilitation psychology (pp. 39–51). New York: Oxford University Press. Wu, S. J., Bai, X., and Fiske, S. T. 2018. Admired rich or resented rich? How two cultures vary in envy. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 49(7), 1114–1143. Yzerbyt, V. Y., Provost, V., and Corneille, O. 2005. Not competent but warm… really? Compensatory stereotypes in the French-speaking world. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 8(3), 291–308.

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17

EXPLORING

METADEHUMANIZATION AND

SELF-DEHUMANIZATION FROM

A TARGET PERSPECTIVE

Stéphanie Demoulin, Pierre Maurage, and Florence Stinglhamber 17.1 Introduction

Dehumanization is a quite recent topic in social psychological research. It refers to the tendency to perceive others as not entirely human, depriving them of some uniquely human characteristics or from their human nature (Haslam, 2006). Current knowledge on dehumanization includes information regarding the different types of dehumanization, the categories of people that are most likely to be actors of dehumanization instances, and the antecedents (individual and situ­ ational) and consequences of its occurrence (Haslam & Loughnan, 2014). Scholars in this domain have focused their attention on the perpetrator side of the dehumaniza­ tion process.That is, paralleling traditional research trends on general prejudice and discrimination (Yzerbyt & Demoulin, 2010), most research efforts have been made at understanding what creates the perception that others (individuals or groups) are less human than oneself (or one’s ingroup) (Fiske, this volume), and at examining the influence that these perceptions have on the differential behaviors one displays toward dehumanized targets (Haslam, this volume). Much less is known regarding the psychological functioning of those who are the targets of dehumanization. Indeed, only a handful of studies have so far examined people’s cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and inter­ personal reactions when they are exposed to dehumanization instances, and we are still ignorant regarding whether and how dehumanizing experiences contaminate targets’ self-concept. This chapter proposes to explore dehumanization processes from a target perspective. Such an attention on targets will not only allow us appreciating targets’ singular experience of dehuman­ ization as well as its incorporation in targets’ self-concept. By attending “to targets not only as objects of dehumanization but also as subjects in dehumanization processes” (Moradi, 2013), it will also offer a dynamic, rather than static, understanding of the phenomenon and will inform us about the various ways in which dehumanization can develop in real-life interactive contexts (see also Abbattista, this volume).

17.2 Targeting the target’s perspective The target perspective on dehumanization can take multiple forms. In particular, one can dis­ tinguish, on the one hand, animalistic versus mechanistic experiences and, on the other hand, metadehumanization (MD) versus self-dehumanization (SD). First, the broad literature on 260

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dehumanization has put forward that the phenomenon is not unitary and that dehumanization targets can be approached along two human–nonhuman contrasts (Haslam et al., 2014). On the one hand, animalistic dehumanization (Haslam, 2006; see also the infra-humanization concept, Leyens, Rodriguez, Rodriguez, Gaunt, Paladino,Vaes, & Demoulin, 2001) refers to the treatment of targets as childlike, unevolved animals that lack refinement, civility, and higher cognitive and moral abilities. On the other hand, mechanistic dehumanization associates targets with robots or objects that are deprived of interpersonal warmth, depth, individuality, and emotionality (Haslam, 2006). In line with this conceptualization, a dual model of dehumanization at the perpetrator level might translate into a similar dual approach in the target perspective. Second, the target perspective on dehumanization also distinguishes itself in terms of MD and SD. Kteily, Hodson, and Bruneau (2016) defined MD as a target’s perception that his/her own group is perceived by another as less than fully human.We propose to extend this group-level definition to the individual level to also account for interpersonal dehumanizing interactions. That is, MD should correspond to the feeling of being treated as less than fully human, because of membership in a dehumanized group or because of one’s personal characteristics. In contrast, with SD, targets do not only experience being dehumanized by others, they further incorporate this dehuman­ izing view into their self-concept, temporarily or permanently (Bastian & Haslam, 2010; Loughnan, Baldissarri, Spaccatini, & Elder, 2017).This distinction between MD and SD is reminiscent of the literature on homosexual stigma which differentiates felt stigma (i.e., expectations about the prob­ ability that society’s collective, negative reactions to homosexuality will be enacted), from self-stigma (i.e., homosexuals’ acceptance of and agreement with society’s negative evaluation of homosexuality) (Herek, 2007).To the same extent that MD processes can be applied at both the interpersonal and the intergroup levels, SD can concern both the personal and the social identity of any given indi­ vidual.That is, when the social (vs. personal) identity is at play, the person comes to perceive and consider his/her own ingroup (vs. him/herself) as less human than other groups (vs. individuals). In the present chapter, we focus on the later distinction between MD and SD and will only allude to the former (animalistic/mechanistic distinction).We will review the current literature on the antecedents and consequences of MD and SD, propose a conceptual model (see Figure 17.1) in which MD is triggered when targets feel that their fundamental human needs have been thwarted (see also Frick, this volume), and suggest that SD can occur both as a consequence of MD and following one’s own immoral actions. Finally, we will open avenues for future research on these two phenomena. Immoral acts

Selfdehumanization

Antecedents Protecting and aggravating factors

Interpersonal variables Situational variables Environmental variables

Need thwarting

Consequences Cognitive variables

Meta­ dehumanization

Emotional variables

Behavioral variables

Cultural variables

Figure 17.1 A working conceptual model for metadehumanization and self-dehumanization

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17.3 Metadehumanization Growing up with narcissists in my family, I often felt like I didn’t matter or like I wasn’t really a “real” person. I was an object, something to be played with or thrown away on a whim.1 As stated earlier, MD occurs when people perceive that they are targets of dehumanizing treatments (Kteily et al., 2016). Research efforts on MD have recently emerged to isolate the concrete antecedents of MD and the various related consequences. For instance, Bastian and Haslam (2011) examined how interpersonal maltreatments triggered dehumanizing experiences. In two studies, they showed that interpersonal maltreatments can trigger either mechanistic or animalistic MD. Caesens, Nguyen, and Stinglhamber (2018) confirmed the important role of interpersonal maltreatments in triggering MD. These authors conducted three studies in an organizational context and showed that MD is increased for employees who report suffering from abusive supervision. In addition, their results indicate that the relation­ ship between abusive supervision and important organizational variables (i.e., job satisfaction, affective commitment, and turnover intention) is mediated by employees’ dehumanization experiences. MD is also a core experience among rape victims and, to a lesser extent, sexual harassment victims. Moor, Ben-Meir, Golan-Shapira, and Farchi (2013) examined MD among victims of different traumas (e.g., rape, sexual harassment, terror accident, combat stress, car accident, and sudden loss).They showed that, unlike what victims declare in relation to other kinds of trauma, rape and sexual harassment victims report high levels of peritraumatic MD. In other words, these victims had a strong feeling of having been “stripped from their humanity” during the event and felt “used like an object.” In organizational contexts, Caesens, Stinglhamber, Demoulin, and De Wilde (2017) investigated the effect of perceived organizational support on organizational MD. These authors found that the higher the employees perceive that their “organization values their contribution and cares for their well-being” (i.e., perceived organizational support; Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison, & Sowa, 1986), the lower their feeling that their organization treats them as a tool to reach its specific ends and, consequently, the higher their well-being.The same is also true for perceived procedural justice in organizations. Bell and Khoury (2016) found, for instance, that women who perceived high organizational justice reported lower organizational dehumanization feelings.The latter result, however, did not hold for male employees (for similar ideas, see also Bell & Khoury, 2011). Many common but dehumanizing practices should also be considered in the clinical and psy­ chiatric contexts: dressing patients with the same outfits, forcing them to share a standardized room with strangers, or favoring physical promiscuity are all common practices in hospitals. All of these have economic and practical roots but they might strongly favor the emergence of dehumanization feelings among patients. Indeed, these practices increase dehumanization-related factors such as deindividuation, patients’ fungibility, and dissimilarity perceptions between med­ ical staff and patients (Haque & Waytz, 2012). A main objective of the seminal studies in the domain of MD conducted so far has been to determine its link with fundamental needs’ satisfaction (Zadro,Williams, & Richardson, 2004). In one of the first papers on the topic, Bastian et al. (2010) showed that, when their fundamental human need of belonging is put at stake via social ostracism manipulation, targets felt that their interlocutor perceived them as dehumanized object-like entities. A similar dehumaniza­ tion experience is triggered when another fundamental human need is perceived as thwarted; namely, the need for control and autonomy. Yang and collaborators (Yang, Jin, He, Fan, & 262

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Zhu, 2015) showed, for instance, that people placed in situation of powerlessness believed they are viewed by both powerful interlocutors and external observers as lacking uniquely human traits, an animalistic form of MD. Finally, a qualitative study among patients in dental school settings showed that such patients report feeling dehumanized when they have the perception that caregivers consider their needs as secondary (Raja, Shah, Van Kanegan, Kupershmidt, & Kruthoff, 2015). All this literature suggests that a special link can be postulated between fundamental human needs’ thwarting and MD. This proposition is also in line with Self-Determination theory, which identified fundamental psychological needs as energizing states that contribute to human effect­ iveness and well-being (Ryan & Deci, 2000). In a series of studies, we tested and analyzed the respective contribution of three fundamental psychological needs’ thwarting (control, belonging, and self-esteem) in the emergence of MD (Demoulin, Nguyen, Chevallereau, Fontesse, Bastart, Stinglhamber, & Maurage, 2020). We explored MD in three different populations presenting a high risk of dehumanizing experiences: women, patients recently treated for severe alcohol use disorders, and employees in organizations. Across all samples, we showed that individ­ uals reported higher MD when they perceive that their fundamental psychological needs are endangered. Beyond the review of the specific antecedents of MD that we have just proposed, every con­ text in which dehumanization occurs might also constitute a fertile ground for the emergence of MD. The well-established antecedents of dehumanization should thus also be explored in MD studies, as they might offer complementary insights to obtain a comprehensive view of the antecedents of MD. MD experiences can have massive consequences on the targets. For instance, in our threepopulation study, MD experiences were shown to trigger important consequences for indi­ viduals, at cognitive (reduced self-esteem), emotional (increased negative emotions), and behavioral (diminished use of functional coping strategies) levels (Demoulin et al., 2020; see also Fontesse, Demoulin, Stinglhamber, & Maurage, 2019). At the cognitive level, research by Bastian et al. (2011) further found that animalistic and mechanistic MD produced aversive self-awareness and cognitive deconstructive states among lay individuals, respectively. At the emotional level, the same authors observed that animalistic MD triggered a rise in shame and guilt while experiences of mechanistic MD led to feelings of anger and sadness (for partial replication, see also Zhang, Chan, Xia, Tian, & Zhu, 2017). In addition, Caesens et al. (2017) found that, in the organizational domain, increased levels of MD were related to lower levels of employees’ well-being. Finally, in terms of behavioral tendencies, the study by Moor et al. (2013) on rape victims showed that MD feelings were related to an increase in freeze responses (i.e., behavioral inhibition during the event), higher levels of post-rape self-blame and of posttraumatic stress disorder. Consequences of MD at the intergroup (rather than interpersonal) level have also been explored. Kteily et al. (2016) explored the effects of MD among socially advantaged groups on outgroup perception and outgroup aggression. These authors convincingly showed that when advantaged group members perceive that a relevant minority outgroup dehumanizes them, they dehumanize this minority group in return, and such dehumanization increases group members’ aggressive attitudes, behaviors, and support for aggressive policies (e.g., torture).This mechanism of behavioral reciprocity is a quite standard reaction in human interactions as people often respond in kind to the way they are being treated by others (Klein & Snyder, 2003). Importantly, these effects of MD on aggression did hold over and above metaprejudice (i.e., the percep­ tion of outgroup members’ dislike). Not to be outdone, minorities and disadvantaged groups also tend to respond negatively to experiences of dehumanization coming from their relevant 263

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majority group. Kteily and Bruneau (2017) have, for instance, shown that, in the context of the 2016 US Republican Primaries, Latinos and Muslims who felt dehumanized by Americans increased their support for violent (vs. non-violent) collective actions and reduced their willingness to assist counterterrorism efforts. According to these authors, the combined reactions of advantaged and disadvantaged group members to dehumanizing experiences lead to a vicious circle of intergroup violence. As a whole, MD is thus a pervasive phenomenon at both intergroup and interindividual levels, leading to widespread consequences for the targets. Beyond the above-mentioned cognitive, emotional, and behavioral effects, MD can also end up in the integration of dehumanization experiences in the self-concept of the target; that is, SD.

17.4 Self-dehumanization I often have feelings or thoughts that I am something less than “human.” (That was the rationale for my username – pseudohuman – at the time I made this account). Somehow my experiences are less vivid and less valuable than those of other genuine “people.” And my uncertainties about well, a lot of things only confirm that I don’t have a real personality. Heck, I even doubt how I feel and what I truly think. All the time I’m second-guessing myself because I don’t have any concept of a real “me.” SD occurs when an individual integrates dehumanization feelings in his/her self; that is, when he/she perceives or treats him/herself in a less human way than do other people. Research efforts on SD are quite recent, which might be in part due to the fact that early studies, which have measured associations between the self and humanness, have shown that people usually see themselves as more human than others (Haslam, Bain, Douge, Lee, & Bastian, 2005). Yet, social psychology has long suggested that we often respond in line with the perception that other people hold toward us (see for instance the self-fulfilling prophecy phenomenon; Word, Zanna, & Cooper, 1974 or the concept of looking-glass self, Cooley, 1972), and recent research has evidenced that SD does occur and that one of its primary determinant might be MD. Several studies have initially shown MD and SD co-occurrences (see for instance, Bastian et al., 2010, 2011; Renger, Mommert, Renger, & Simon, 2016). More centrally, research findings have also shown direct evidence that MD triggers SD, and thus corroborate the idea that when targets are perceived and treated in a dehumanized way, they might come to see themselves in line with this derogatory and dehumanized image. At the theoretical level, scholars exploring sexual objectification have long postulated that women’s sexual self-objectification (i.e., women’s internalization of their status of passive, inert, sexual objects) results from the repeated exposure to other women’s representation as sexual objects (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). This proposition was validated by Loughnan et al. (2017). In one study, these authors showed that when women experience being the object of sexual attention, they start perceiving their self as lacking some important human characteristics, such as warmth, competence, morality, and humanity.The same is true in work contexts when people feel that they are being utilized as working tools. Such perceived instrumentalization decreases people’s propensity to assign important human characteristics to their self, such as human mental states (Baldissarri, Andrighetto, & Volpato, 2014; see also Loughnan et al., 2017). In the clinical domain, Griffiths, Mitchison, Murray, Mond, and Bastian (2018) found that patients suffering from eating disorders report increased feelings of “being a less than full member of society” when they experience instances of patronizing behaviors toward them or believe that 264

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they are treated as children because of their disorder. Finally, research conducted among elderly people has shown that the use of baby talk has potential harmful consequences on them. In par­ ticular, for those who hold negative perceptions on baby talk, higher perceived frequency of use was related to lower feelings that their self is a person of equal worth in comparison with other people (O’Connor & Rigby, 1996). Recent studies have refined the links between MD and SD by suggesting that they can be observed on different humanness traits. For instance, examining MD and SD in work contexts, Yang et al. (2015) found that powerless people believe that they receive animalistic MD treatments from their supervisor but see themselves in a mechanistically dehumanized way. In sum, considering the above presented literature, there is little doubt that SD potentially emerges as the consequence of perceiving a dehumanizing treatment from other; that is, MD. Although probably a primary determinant, MD is not the only antecedent of SD that has been considered in the literature. One important line of research has shown that SD can also increase when one’s actions are tainted negatively or judged as immoral. Indeed, people often consider perpetrators of harmful behaviors in a lesser human way (Bastian, Denson, & Haslam, 2013) and morality is intrinsically related to humanness (Haslam, Bastian, Laham, & Loughnan, 2011; see also Machery, this volume). The link between immorality and SD was recently evidenced in a series of eight studies conducted by Kouchaki, Dobson,Waytz, and Kteily (2018). Using several paradigms, these authors showed that people report SD tendencies when behaving unethically (i.e., cheating, lying). In the same line, Bastian, Jetten, Chen, Radke, Harding, and Fasoli (2013) focused their attention on ostracizing actions as immoral behaviors. They had participants recalling an event in which they had ostracized someone else or to play a Cyberball Game in the laboratory during which they were explicitly instructed to exclude a fellow participant. Both biographical recall and Cyberball playing were sufficient to trigger SD perceptions among participants.These perceptions were partly explained by participants’ acknowledgment that they had committed an immoral act. In other words, the more individuals perceived that they had acted immorally, the more they tended to self-dehumanize. The same argument is put forward by Tang and Harris (2015) who suggest that SD “may occur when it is difficult to rationalize away or justify one’s harmful behavior” (see also Bandura, 1999). The link between immorality and SD seems to materialize independently of whether the behavior is directed toward another person or not. Other studies that corroborate these findings are the ones reported in Bastian, Jetten, and Radke (2012). These authors examined player’s self-perceptions following their engagement in violent cyber games. In all their studies, violent game players self-perceived in a less human way than those who played non-violent competitive games.These results held whether the game was played by means of an avatar or not, and whether people were playing against other players or against the computer. Interestingly, the influence of violent video games on SD was not accounted for by potential changes in participants’ mood or self-esteem.There seems to be a unique relationship between immorality and SD, independent of how the individual feels about him/herself or the situation and from the interpersonal nature of the negative, unethical, or immoral act. Yet, SD following immoral acts is not a fatality. For instance,Tang et al. (2015) did not observe effects of moral or value violations on SD. In their studies, participants recalled instances of past moral or value violations and later reflected on both other- and self-dehumanization. While they did find an influence of their manipulation on other-dehumanization, the impact on SD was absent. As the authors suggest, these null results could be due to floor effects and a lack of power of their manipulation. Nevertheless, the possibility also exists that one’s perceived level of humanness following unethical acts is preserved when the possibility is offered to dehumanize 265

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the target of one’s behavior.This latter proposition is consistent with Castano and Giner-Sorolla’s (2006) findings, that reminders of one’s ingroup responsibility in outgroup atrocities (e.g., mass killing) leads people to further dehumanize the outgroup in order to reestablish psychological equanimity. The above reviewed literature clearly suggests that immoral acts performed by the self strongly influence people’s propensity to self-dehumanize. But other negatively tainted experiences can also relate to SD. In one study, Sakalaki, Richardson, and Fousiani (2017) showed, for instance, that SD positively correlates with people’s anxiety level, negative affects, and somatization ten­ dency. In contrast, individuals that report high levels of self-actualization, positive well-being, and high degrees of vitality tend to suffer less from SD tendencies. However, the correlational design prevents from drawing causal relationships between the variables at stake. People also experience SD in the face of intragroup disrespect (Renger et al., 2016).That is, when fellow ingroup members discount one’s opinion and treat one as less than an equal, one’s self-view in terms of humanness is negatively affected. Disrespect is quite a common experi­ ence for those who are powerless in society, and research that has examined the influence of power on SD confirms that powerless people view themselves as less human than their powerful counterparts (Yang et al., 2015). In addition, SD varies along with some personality variables. For instance, Sakalaki, Richardson, and Fousiani (2016) explored the links between SD and people’s levels of machiavellism (i.e., cold-blooded individuals, mainly motivated by the outcomes of their actions) and opportunism (i.e., individuals who attempt at promoting their personal economic interests by any means). They found that the attribution of human nature traits to the self decreased as a function of participants’ levels of machiavellism and opportunism. In addition, machiavellist and opportunist people associated themselves to machines more than people with low scores on these scales. In a similar vein, Ruttan and Lucas (2018) showed a bidir­ ectional relationship between money prioritization and SD. Specifically, when they experi­ mentally induced participants to prioritize money (vs. not), the latter tended to attribute less human traits to their self. Again, this tendency was especially clear on human nature traits, thereby confirming that SD was more mechanistic than animalistic in its form. Interestingly, when participants were led to humanize themselves by describing what it means to be human and recalling a time in which they experienced feeling human in that way, money prioritiza­ tion over other kinds of goals was reduced. Finally, research has pointed out the important role that situational variables play in triggering SD. For instance, Baldissarri, Andrighetto, Gabbiadini, and Volpato (2017) reasoned that job activities that request workers to perform repetitive, fragmented, and other-directed tasks, because of the workers’ instrumentalization that they convey (Andrighetto, Baldissarri, & Volpato, 2017), could lead workers to self-dehumanize.2 In their studies, they asked participants to use wooden pieces either to build, in a repetitive and well-controlled manner, windows that would subsequently be combined with other wooden pieces to form a house (instrumentalization condition), or to build a wooden house with no further instructions (con­ trol condition).Their results showed that repetitive, fragmented, and other-directed tasks lead performers to attribute less mental states to their selves and to perceive themselves as more similar to a tool or a machine and less similar to a human being or an individual than less­ controlled, less fragmented, and less repetitive actions. Importantly, the SD triggered by the task influenced participants’ beliefs in personal free will. Hereafter, we consider other consequences of SD evidenced in the literature. Most researchers who have investigated SD have focused on its interpersonal consequences. For instance, after having shown that people report SD tendencies when behaving unethically, 266

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Kouchaki et al. (2018) also established that SD increases the use of immoral and antisocial behaviors.That is, reciprocal causal relationships were found between immorality and SD, which led the authors to argue for a potential downward spiral of immorality in which unethical behaviors trigger SD, which, in turn, increases the probability of occurrence of subsequent unethical behaviors.Their findings are reminiscent of Bandura’s work on moral disengagement, which postulated that people justify immoral actions via the target of behavior’s dehumanization (Bandura, 1999; Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, & Pastorelli, 1996). Here, on top of the target’s dehumanization, it is the perpetrator’s self-perceived inhumanity that acts as a psychological mechanism facilitating the engagement in immoral behaviors. Similar findings were obtained by Renger et al. (2016), who showed that SD triggers the subsequent use of unethical behaviors among disrespected individuals, and by Ruttan et al. (2018) who showed that SD led participants to distance themselves from a coworker. While it appears that SD can translate in an increased use of negative or immoral interpersonal behaviors, it does not always need to be so. Bastian et al. (2013), in their work on social ostracism, actually found quite the opposite. In their third study, these authors found a positive correlation between SD tendencies and participants’ willingness to help another individual after the experi­ ment. More precisely, SD mediated the relationship between ostracism actions and subsequent prosocial behaviors. In order to account for these discrepant results on the consequences of SD, future research should explore the moderating factors of the relationship between SD and inter­ personal (mal)treatments.

17.5 The future of metadehumanization and self-dehumanization Research on MD and SD is progressing rapidly.Yet, scientific knowledge in this domain is still in its infancy and more research efforts are necessary for scholars to develop a better understanding of dehumanization processes from a target perspective. In the following sections, we will develop three directions that could be undertaken by scholars in their exploration of MD and SD, and further elaborate on our working model (see Figure 17.1). What strikes anyone who is interested in MD and SD is the high heterogeneity that research in this domain faces.This heterogeneity marks itself at three levels: in terms of naming, operationalization, and conceptualization. All these three elements are, in fact, intertwined as conceptualization problems often underlie naming and operationalization pitfalls.Yet, for clarity reasons we detail these in separate subsections. Toward more systematic naming. The literature on dehumanization from a target per­ spective has either used a plethora of terms to refer to a same phenomenon or, a contrario, has used similar names to refer to different kinds of phenomena. For instance, to refer to experiences and feelings of being dehumanized by others, different scholars have used different terms: MD (Kteily et al., 2016), peritraumatic dehumanization (Moor et al., 2013), or even SD in meta-perceptions (Yang et al., 2015). Inversely, SD has been interchangeably used to refer to experiences of dehu­ manization (e.g.,Yang et al., 2015) as well as to the internalization of the dehumanized image within one self-concept (e.g., Bastian et al., 2010). Dehumanization from the target’s perspective is also sometimes named after related concepts (e.g., self-objectification, Baldissarri et al., 2014, 2017). It sometimes refers to context-free broad perceptions (e.g., MD, Kteily et al., 2016) and sometimes points to the very specific situation at hand (e.g., organizational dehumanization, Caesens et al., 2017; peritraumatic dehumanization, Moor et al., 2013).All these naming problems can create confusions and misunderstandings among researchers. Future research establishing a clear typology of the many faces that dehumanization from the target perspective can take is, thus, a necessity in this growing literature. 267

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Toward more systematic operationalization. As is the case for the broad research on dehumanization from the perpetrator’s perspective (see Haslam, this volume), MD and SD measures strongly vary across studies. While some researchers have used trait attributions (e.g., Yang et al., 2015), other preferred self-reported scale responses (e.g., Bastian et al., 2011) or even figural associations with animal, objects, robots, or machines (e.g., Sakalaki et al., 2016). Although the latter variability speaks to the methodological generalization of these concepts, it is not always clear whether what is measured in one study—via, for instance, trait attribution— is, indeed, directly comparable to what is assessed in another study via another measure—for example, a self-reported scale. Moreover, more information is needed on the advantages and pitfalls related to each of these methodologies or of crossing methodologies within the same study. Say, for instance, that one scholar needs to explore within the same sample both MD and SD, would it be better to use different or similar measures to assess both concepts? Should one establish SD via trait attributions and MD via Likert-type scales, or conversely? Developing expertise on the methodologies and instruments related to MD and SD measuring is not just desirable, it is essential if one wants to precisely assess these concepts and ensure intra- and interstudies valid comparisons. Toward more systematic conceptualization. In the preceding sections, we have some­ times alluded to different possible forms of MD and SD. In line with the dehumanization litera­ ture, a first distinction that comes to mind is the one between animalistic and mechanistic MD and SD. Obviously, being perceived or seeing oneself close to an animal is different from being perceived or seeing oneself as an object.Yet, while some research findings clearly differentiate between these two forms of perceptions (e.g., Bastian et al., 2011;Yang et al., 2015), other studies had difficulties to empirically establish such a distinction (e.g., Bastian et al., 2012). In our own studies, we had similar inconclusive findings on the presupposed bidimensionality of MD (e.g., Chevallereau, Maurage, Stinglhamber, & Demoulin, 2019). Furthermore, mechanistic dehuman­ ization might actually encompass two different subdimensions: one associating the individual with an object (and thus focusing on the lack of self-will and agency) and the other relating him/her to a robot (and thus insisting on the lack of emotions). Research is, therefore, needed to develop an understanding on the conditions that lead to dimension-specific experience of dehumanization (as well as SD) and the conditions that produce undifferentiated dehumanizing treatment. One further conceptualization issue that should be considered in future research concerns the distinction between metadehumanizing and self-dehumanizing perceptions, on the one hand, and metadehumanizing and self-dehumanizing treatments, on the other hand. Thus far, researchers have mainly focused on the perceptive level.That is, they have explored the way people perceive others, perceive self, or are perceived by others as lesser human entities. Although dehumanized perceptions have proven to affect behavior in various ways (e.g., reducing prosociality or increasing aggression), a dehumanized perception does not necessarily entail a dehumanized treatment. A better consideration of behavioral aspects would then offer us a more complete picture of MD and SD. Broadly speaking, we have seen that MD often occurs as a consequence of the maltreatments one receives from other (individuals or groups).We have further argued that such maltreatments trigger MD because targets feel that some of their basic human needs were thwarted.The theor­ etical link between needs thwarting and MD has often been made in the literature and, indeed, research conducted in our laboratory confirms that need thwarting is an important mechanism of MD feelings (Demoulin et al., 2020).Yet, while our proposed model considers fundamental needs thwarting as an antecedent of MD, it cannot be excluded that some overlap and inverse causal relationships exist between the successive steps of our model (see Figure 17.1). This is 268

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particularly true for fundamental needs, which might not only constitute an antecedent of MD, but might also, reversely, be impacted by lowered MD, and/or correlate with it in view of their common antecedents. Longitudinal designs with repeated measures could clarify such causal relations across the model’s variables. Experimental studies proposing a direct manipulation of the model’s components, and particularly of fundamental needs, would also constitute promising way to test the model. Aside from maltreatments, other antecedents of MD should be considered in future research. That is, we argue that people can experience dehumanization as a consequence of situational (e.g., accomplishing fragmented, repetitive tasks; Baldissarri et al., 2014), environmental (e.g., living in an environment that restrains one’s control over one’s own life like in prisons or psy­ chiatric hospitals, Stinglhamber, Nguyen, Josse, & Demoulin, 2020), or broader cultural variables (materialist cultures or cultural climate that undermine people’s justice feelings; Sakalaki et al., 2016). In addition, attention should be drawn on the moderators that qualify the relationship between MD and its antecedents. While some moderators could act as protecting variables, others might aggravate dehumanization feelings. For instance, Caesens et al. (2018) showed that workers who suffer from abusive supervision report enhanced feelings of MD under high colleague support. With regards to SD, we have acknowledged that SD results broadly from two main antecedents: MD and immoral acts perpetrated by the self. Yet, the links between SD and its two main antecedents need to be further explored. In particular, we argue that it is unlikely that SD always emerge as a consequence of MD or immoral acts. Moderators of these relationships certainly exist and future research should aim at identifying them. For instance, MD should not lead to SD when dehumanization targets have the opportunity to discount the perpetrator’s behavior or to attribute this behavior to some (negative) attribute of the actor. Such discounting effect has been evidenced in the literature on victims’ reactions to discrimination (Crocker,Voelkl,Testa, & Major, 1991).To the extent that the perpetrator is perceived as a highly prejudiced person and that the discrimination experience is punctual rather than pervasive, research has shown that victim’s self-esteem is generally preserved. In contrast, when discrimination experience taints all aspects of a victim’s life, it tends to influence a victim’s self-esteem in dramatic negative ways. The same kind of pattern could be postulated in the relationship between MD and SD, with higher impact of MD on SD when the experience is multi-situational or when many perpet­ rating individuals are involved.The role played by the repetition and ubiquity of dehumanizing experience on MD and SD should thus be more thoroughly understood, as most previous studies either focused on specific dehumanizing situations or did not measure the intensity/frequency of such situations. Similarly, moderators should be explored that qualify the relationship between immoral acts and SD. Indeed, whereas some studies have clearly shown effects of unethical behavior per­ petration on one’s human self-perception (Kouchaki et al., 2018), others found no relation­ ship between the two variables (Tang et al., 2015). As suggested above, and consistent with the findings of Bastian et al. (2013), one such moderator could be the individual’s own recognition of having performed an immoral act. Again, if the immoral quality of the act can be discounted by the target, there might be no reason to expect the self to be contaminated by a dehumanizing attribute. In Figure 17.1, we propose a working model of dehumanization from a target perspective that links MD and SD processes.This model suggests that MD is likely to be triggered by interper­ sonal, situational, environmental, or cultural antecedents. These antecedents would lead to MD when a target’s fundamental needs have been thwarted. Conditions that prevent needs thwarting should also prevent MD to emerge. MD, in turn, can rise to SD to the extent that experiences of 269

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dehumanization are pervasive, both situationally and across social interlocutors.Yet, SD can also arise as a consequence of one’s immoral act at least to the extent that the target recognizes the immoral qualification of her behavior. Both MD and SD might have broad consequences on all aspects of human functioning. We have already acknowledged that MD and SD affect a target’s cognitive, emotional, behavioral, as well as physical (health) reactions. Predictions regarding MD’s and SD’s consequences should, however, vary considerably. Turning first to MD, some of the consequences of the experience of being treated in a dehumanized way could be similar whether one refers to animalistic or mechanistic MD. For instance, targets could report enhanced stress and anxiety levels. Dehumanized targets could also display aggression toward their perpetrators and such aggression could result from a dehumanized perception of the aggressor (Kteily et al., 2016, 2017). MD could also give rise to trickle down effects (Mayer, Kuenzi, Greenbaum, Bardes, & Salvador, 2009) or displaced aggression behaviors.That is, when dehumanization treatments come from a superior perpet­ rator who cannot be directly fought against, dehumanized targets could report their frustra­ tion on subordinates or clients/patients. We obtained preliminary evidence of such displaced aggression in a study conducted among correctional officers in prisons. Specifically, the more correctional officers felt that their organization treated them in a dehumanized way, the more they tended to act toward inmates in dehumanized ways and to depersonalize them (Stinglhamber et al., 2020). MD could, moreover, produce differential patterns of responses depending on the type of dehumanization at hand. For instance, Bastian et al. (2011) showed that whereas mechanistic MD triggers sadness, anger, and cognitive deconstructive states, animalistic MD leads to shame and guilt, and to aversive self-awareness (but see Zhang et al., 2017). Similarly, whereas mechanistic MD could lead to the activation of prosocial behaviors aiming at one’s social reconnection (e.g., Bastian et al., 2013), animalistic MD in which people are the target of perpetrators’ contempt could lead victims to engage in self-promotion behaviors or to increase their identification with relevant social groups (Bourguignon, Seron,Yzerbyt, & Herman, 2006). Animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization should also trigger quite different reactions to SD. Specifically, when one self-dehumanizes in an animalistic way, one tends to consider the self as an unevolved individual that is mainly driven by his/her instinct. As a consequence, emotions that should primarily arise are primary (unevolved) emotions (Demoulin, Leyens, Paladino, Rodriguez, Rodriguez, & Dovidio, 2004). Cognitive processes should be simple, the target should favor heuristic thinking, and SD should produce submissiveness behaviors in inter­ personal interactions as well as relationships development that are instinctive and emotional. In contrast, mechanistic SD, in which the self is considered as an object, robot, or machine, should be characterized by a lack of emotional reaction, a loss in agency, and a reduction in decon­ structive cognitive thinking.Targets’ experience should involve numbness, coldness, and inertia. This difference regarding the reactions to the two forms of SD are well-represented in the two following quotes: I always think I am subhuman, and every other living thing (yes including flies, spiders etc), as having worth, but I have none. I am less than subhuman, I am nothing. Every time I breathe I feel such deep shame for even being alive. For me, it feels like a numbness. Probably brought on by overthinking. How can I ever live in the moment and have genuine human experiences when I’m always detached, interrupted by the never ending thoughts?

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17.6 Conclusion The global picture offered by this chapter leads to the emergence of two major conclusions. First, while dehumanization research focusing on the perpetrator’s perspective has been blooming during the last decades, the exploration of the target’s perspective is still in its infancy. A reorientation of the research focus in this domain should thus urgently be initiated to explore how dehumanization impacts targets in various contexts, and to finally unveiling the other side of the “dehumaniza­ tion story.” Second, the development of the knowledge on MD and SD and on their interactions should constitute a priority for future research. Beyond the mere observation of dehumaniza­ tion occurrences, it is crucial to know how such dehumanization experiences are converted into feelings by the targets, and how they can even be integrated in their self.As underlined above, pre­ liminary data clearly show the ubiquitous presence of MD and SD in a wide range of dehumanized populations, but their antecedents, moderators, and consequences should be thoroughly characterized. Importantly though, this expansion of the field through the focus on targets should not be a mere transcription of the research already conducted among perpetrators, as the variables involved, as well as their relationships, are most likely not identical. A key challenge for upcoming studies will thus be to disentangle the commonalities and differences between perpetrator’s and target’s perspective in dehumanization. On the one hand, clarifying the homology of relationships across perspectives would contribute to the parsimony of dehumanization theory. On the other hand, differences of relationships across perspectives will lead to its refinement.

Notes 1 All citations in the Chapter were retrieved on June 2019 from http://www.psychforums.com/avoidant­ personality/topic102834.html 2 In their research program, Baldissarri, Andrighetto, and their colleagues preferred the term “self­ objectification” when referring to a person’s lesser attribution of mental states to the self. Yet, selfobjectification is a peculiar form of SD and, for reason of simplicity, we opted for consistently using SD in the present chapter.

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18

THE DEHUMANIZATION

AND REHUMANIZATION

OF REFUGEES

Victoria M. Esses, Stelian Medianu, and Alina Sutter

18.1 Introduction In 1939, the M.S. St. Louis carrying German Jews escaping Nazi Germany attempted to seek refuge in Canada after being turned away from Cuba and the United States. The refugees were refused sanctuary, with the Director of Canada’s Immigration Branch indicating that “no country could open its doors wide enough to take in the hundreds of thousands of Jewish people who want to leave Europe: the line must be drawn somewhere” (The Canadian Encyclopedia, 2019). Jewish refugees were seen as a threat to Canadian society; it was suggested that they would not assimilate nor conform to the laws of the land. In one letter, the Immigration Director explicitly dehumanized Jewish refugees, comparing them to hogs at feeding time: “The attempt of Jews to get into Canada reminds me a good deal of what I have seen on the farm at hog-feeding time when they are all trying to get their feet into the trough at the same time” (Abella & Troper, 2012). These dehumanizing views of Jewish refugees were reflected in their treatment. When a senior government official was asked how many Jewish refugees would be admitted to Canada at the end of the Second World War, he was quoted as saying, “None is too many” (Abella et al., 2012), and between 1939 and 1945, Canada admitted fewer than 5000 Jewish refugees, the lowest number among developed coun­ tries (The Canadian Encyclopedia, 2019). The dehumanization of refugees, and their consequent ill treatment and rejection, are prevalent phenomena, though not always so explicitly expressed. For example, in 2001, the “children overboard” incident in Australia was used to justify tough asylum legislation, including the detention of asylum seekers and their exclusion from Australia (Walters, 2014). It was claimed that Iraqi asylum seekers arriving by boat had thrown their children over­ board in an attempt to ensure rescue and passage to Australia.The “children overboard” affair became a controversial focus of the 2001 federal election campaign, with the Prime Minister accused of cynically exploiting voters’ fears of a wave of illegal immigrants by demonizing asylum seekers (Megalogenis, 2006). Though not explicitly compared to animals, the claim that asylum seekers would behave so immorally as to sacrifice their children to gain advantage may be seen as a form of dehumanization, suggesting that their value system is completely different from our own human values in terms of their disregard for the lives of their children (Leach, 2003). 275

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In this chapter, we discuss the refugee situation worldwide and the need for global involve­ ment in refugee protection.We link this focus on refugees to the concept of dehumanization and discuss how common media portrayals of refugees may serve to dehumanize these individuals. In particular, we describe research demonstrating how common media portrayals of refugees impact the dehumanization of refugees, which may in turn lead to their negative treatment and rejec­ tion.We then discuss the potential for the rehumanization of refugees, and the role of humaniza­ tion in promoting fair treatment and asylum for refugees.This discussion of the dehumanization and rehumanization of refugees mainly focuses on psychological research in this area, though other relevant perspectives are also incorporated.We conclude by discussing the implications of this work, and the need for further research in this area.

18.2 The refugee situation worldwide According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the total number of refugees has increased significantly over the past decade, more than doubling between 2008 and 2018, with an estimated 26.0 million refugees worldwide in 2019 (UNHCR, 2020). This is the highest number of refugees on record since the end of the Second World War. Of note, approximately 40 percent of the refugees worldwide are children under the age of 18, with a large number of these children unaccompanied or separated from their families (UNHCR, 2020). A convention refugee is “a person who is outside his or her country of nationality or habitual residence; has a well-founded fear of being persecuted because of his or her race, religion, nation­ ality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion; and is unable or unwilling to avail him- or herself of the protection of that country, or to return there, for fear of persecution” (UNHCR, 2011, p. 5). Over the years, the concept of a refugee has broadened, and a number of countries include as refugees people who have fled war or other forms of violence in their home country (e.g., Canada; see Government of Canada, 2014). Until they are recognized as conven­ tion refugees, these individuals are asylum seekers—individuals who have claimed refugee status and are waiting for that claim to be evaluated. This distinction between refugees and asylum seekers is often blurred, and at times they are viewed and treated similarly (Esses, Ertorer, & Fellin, 2017). The 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, signed by 148 countries, formalized the international community’s commitment to conven­ tion refugees. These documents define who is a refugee, specify the rights of refugees, and highlight the international community’s obligation to protect and assist in finding durable solutions for refugees (UNHCR, 2011). Despite their formal commitment to the protec­ tion of refugees and the millions of refugees in need of immediate protection and aid, how­ ever, citizens of Western countries do not always regard refugees with compassion and open their doors to provide assistance. Instead, at times they greet refugees with intolerance, dis­ trust, and contempt, with the perception that there is a trade-off between the well-being of refugees and the well-being of established members of potential receiving countries (Fakih & Marrouch, 2015; UN Secretary General, 2016). Resistance to the admittance of refugees is fuelled and sustained by negative representations of refugees in the public arena, and by the popular view that refugees threaten members of the receiving society. Indeed, refugee arrivals to Western countries are often followed by a national discourse that characterizes refugees as bogus queue-jumpers who are migrating purely for economic reasons or as terrorists who pose a realistic threat to the safety of members of the receiving nation (Ayed, 2015; Esses, Medianu, & Lawson, 2013; Medianu, Sutter, & Esses, 2015). For an interesting discussion of 276

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the politicization of the distinction between economic migrants and refugees, see Garelli, Sciurba, and Tazzioli (2018). These portrayals serve to reinforce the “refugee crisis,” providing a rationale for significantly limiting the admittance of refugees to many Western countries (Ayed, 2015; see also Hier & Greenberg, 2002; Leach, 2003). In what follows, we provide more detail on common media portrayals of refugees, and discuss how these portrayals lead to the dehumanization of refugees, which is then used to support and rationalize their mistreatment and exclusion.

18.3 Media portrayals of refugees Research on media portrayals of refugees has shown that these depictions are often negative and tend to problematize issues related to refugees. For example, Klocker and Dunn (2003) analyzed media representations of refugees in Australia between August 2001 and January 2002 and found that both federal government media releases and newspaper articles often used nega­ tive descriptive terms for asylum seekers, such as “illegitimate,” “threatening,” or “illegal” (see also Sulaiman-Hill,Thompson,Afsar, & Hodliffe, 2011). In a comparative analysis, Parker (2015) explored the way in which asylum seekers and refugees have been depicted in the print media in both the UK and Australia between 2001 and 2010. The results showed that the principal frame found to describe asylum seekers was that of the “unwanted invader.”This was achieved through the use of metaphors of criminals and water. However, this rhetoric was found to be used differently in the UK versus Australia; in Australia, the focus was on border protection and keeping “these people” out of the country, whereas in the UK the rhetoric was used predom­ inantly to convince the reader that refugees and asylum seekers needed to be removed from the country. Of note, in their analysis of visual portrayals of asylum seekers in Australia between August and December 2001 and between October 2009 and September 2011 (lead-ups to federal elections featuring controversial events), Bleiker, Campbell, Hutchison, and Nicholson (2013) found that leading national newspapers in Australia visually portrayed asylum seekers in very particular, highly political and highly dehumanized ways. Asylum seekers were portrayed in medium- to large-sized groups, as an anonymous mass, with few instances of photographs of individual refugees with clearly recognizable facial features. Boat arrivals of asylum seekers were demonized as illegal economic migrants who threatened Australia’s sovereignty and bordercontrol mechanisms. In the Canadian context, Henry and Tator (2002) examined the media discourse of Canadian immigration in the National Post, a Canadian national newspaper known for its anti-immigrant bias.The results demonstrated that between 1998 and 2000 “the overwhelming majority of the articles, features, and editorials were opposed to current immigration policies and practices and critical of the values and norms of immigrants and refugees” (Henry & Tator, 2002, p. 111). Furthermore, the researchers found several recurring themes. Refugees were described as bogus, and refugee policy was described as being lax and allowing terrorists to enter Canada. Similarly, in their analysis of Canadian print media coverage over a ten-year period from 2005 to 2014, Lawlor and Tolley (2017) found distinct differences between the framing of immigrants and refugees. Immigrants were framed in economic terms, whereas refugees were framed in terms of deservingness and the validity of their claims, and in relation to their potential to become a security threat and a burden to social programs. Furthermore, the framing of refugees was dispro­ portionately more negative than that of immigrants. Focusing on a specific refugee-related event, Mahtani and Mountz (2002) analyzed Canadian newspaper coverage of the arrival of four ships containing Chinese refugees to Canada in 1999. The researchers found that the arrival of the ships was framed as a crisis, despite the relatively 277

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small number of refugees arriving by sea compared to the total number of refugees accepted to Canada every year. Furthermore, the researchers proposed that the media portrayal of the refugees’ arrival aimed to create panic and anxiety among the public by describing them as bogus, as carriers of threatening diseases, and as potential terrorists. Greenberg (2000) analyzed opinion discourse surrounding the same event in five Canadian newspapers, and found that specific words were used to describe the migrants (e.g., “greedy,” “selfish,” or “illegal”) and their arrival (e.g.,“invasion” or “flood”). Moreover, Greenberg (2000) suggested that the use of these words helped create the impression that the immigration and refugee system in Canada was in crisis. In our own research, we investigated the media coverage of the arrival of a ship carrying Tamil refugees to the west coast of Canada in August of 2010 and the potential consequences of this coverage. This event is similar to several previous refugee ship arrivals to Canada, not only in the way the event was covered in the media and portrayed as a crisis, but also in its use to justify substantial changes to Canadian refugee policy. On August 13, 2010, the MV Sun Sea arrived on the shores of British Columbia carrying 492 Tamil refugees, who had fled Sri Lanka to escape the bloody aftermath of a civil war that had been going on for 20 years. Although the Sri Lankan civil war officially ended in May 2009,Tamils still faced the threat of violence. As a result, many Tamils had to flee for safety (Human Rights Watch, 2010). Despite this reality, the Tamil refugees arriving by ship received a cold welcome from the Canadian media and public (Bradimore & Bauder, 2011), and on October 21, 2010, the federal government introduced Bill C-49: Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act in Parliament (Bradimore & Bauder, 2011). Our research investigated how this event impacted the depiction of refugees in Canadian print media (Medianu et al., 2015). In particular, we examined how refugees were portrayed in English-language newspapers in Canada six months before and six months after the arrival of the Tamil refugees on August 13, 2010.The newspapers were selected according to their circu­ lation and location, including the most highly circulated newspapers in Canada and represen­ tation of major cities. Overall, the analyses showed that the newspapers depicted refugees in terms of four themes: victim, bogus, criminal/terrorist, and legal debate.Articles with the victim theme tended to focus on the hardships that refugees endured in their home countries and often also in the receiving country by reporting individual stories of refugees. For example, on December 23, 2010, the Vancouver Sun reported the story of a Tamil woman who was on board the Tamil refugee ship in question.The article described the dire circumstances that led the woman to flee with her children, the tough circumstances on the vessel, and their shocking arrival to Canada where they were held in custody for three months. Furthermore, many of the victim articles pointed out the need for Canada to continue accepting refugees. In contrast, the articles using the bogus theme focused on how refugee claimants are often illegitimately seeking refuge in Canada, and described the Canadian immigration system, for example, as “sluggish” or “broken,” in need of being “fixed” (Brennan, 2010; National Post, 2010).The articles using the criminal/terrorist theme described refugees as having entered Canada with the help of human smugglers, or associated them with terrorism. For example, on November 22, 2010, the National Post wrote “militants from war-torn Somalia are using refugee routes into Yemen as a cover for making contact with an al-Qaeda group responsible for a series of plots against the West” (Spencer, 2010). Finally, the articles using the legal debate theme discussed possible solutions to current problems within the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Interestingly, the arrival of the Tamil refugee ship seemed to have an impact on these depictions. Whereas before the event refugees were more likely to be portrayed as bogus, refugees were more likely to be portrayed as criminals/terrorists after the event, being blamed for entering Canada with 278

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the help of human smugglers and suspected of terrorist links. Following the event, the victim framing also increased somewhat. Hier et al. (2002) have suggested that negative media depictions often reflect the problematiza­ tion of refugees as a response to uncertainties about citizenship and national identity “stemming from globalization and ideological realignments associated with the rise of neoliberalism” (p. 139). Uncertainty may also be based on a lack of clarity as to the receiving nation’s level of obligation to provide protection for those seeking asylum, the types of assistance that should be provided to them, and whether refugees present a threat (Esses et al., 2013). Little direct infor­ mation is available to the public to answer these questions and, as a result, the media and political elites may take advantage of this uncertainty to create a crisis mentality in which refugees are portrayed as “enemies at the gate,” who are attempting to invade Western nations (El Refaie, 2001; Henry et al., 2002; Lynn & Lea, 2003). Such depictions grab the public’s attention, alerting them to potential physical, economic, and cultural threats. In this way, uncertainty can be used to media and political advantage, allowing the transformation of relatively mundane episodes into newsworthy events that can be sold to the public and can serve as support for relatively extreme political platforms. The resultant dehumanization of refugees may appeal to members of the public, serving to justify the status quo, strengthening ingroup–outgroup boundaries, and defending against threats to the ingroup’s position in society (see also Haslam, 2006; Leyens, Demoulin,Vaes, Gaunt, & Paladino, 2007). Dehumanization may provide the ultimate answer to the public’s uncertainty about refugees’ rights and our obligations to protect and assist them. After all, if refugees are not quite human, they are not necessarily worthy of the human rights and humane treatment to which all human beings should be entitled (see Frick, this volume for a discussion of the relation between dehumanization and human rights). As the journalist Sheridan (2001) stated in criti­ cizing the harsh treatment of refugees in Australia, “The government has consistently tried to dehumanize the refugees.This follows a familiar historical pattern. If you dehumanize a group of people in the public mind, it is much easier to deny them their human rights without generating a vast outcry.” This dehumanization of refugees is also described by Thorleifsson (2017) in analyzing responses to Middle Eastern asylum seekers seeking to travel through Hungary to other destinations in Europe in 2015, and the legitimization of their exclusion.Thorleifsson suggests that in this context, the asylum seekers were depicted by the radical right in Hungary as expendable and disposable “human waste,” of little value or worth. The asylum seekers were othered and portrayed as pollutants who were a threat to national culture, security, and welfare. Indeed, concepts of terrorism and economic and cultural threat were all directly associated with the asylum seekers.These depictions and the criminalization of the asylum seekers were used to justify the closing of borders in order to protect the nation from the threatening intruders (Thorleifsson, 2017). Similar dehumanization of asylum seekers has been described by Sajjad (2018) in discussing the justifications used by European countries for denying access to and deporting Afghani asylum seekers, while maintaining their own image as human rights champions.

18.4 Dehumanization What exactly do we mean by dehumanization in this context? Dehumanization involves the denial of full humanness to others, and their exclusion from the human species (e.g., Bar-Tal, 2000; Haslam, 2006). In integrative reviews of dehumanization, Haslam and colleagues (Haslam, this volume; Haslam & Loughnan, 2014) suggest that an important way in which others may be 279

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denied full humanness is in an animalistic sense in which they are seen as not having risen above their animal origins, that is, as less than human. Further, Haslam and colleagues suggest that those who are dehumanized are seen as lacking such characteristics as civility, morality, self-control, refinement, and cognitive sophistication. Dehumanization bears some similarity to Orientalism, in which non-Westerners—particularly those from Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East—are othered and seen as inferior to Westerners in terms of being irrational, child-like, backward, and potentially depraved (Said, 1978). As we will discuss in a later section, it is thus perhaps not sur­ prising that refugees, who are often seen as coming from non-Western regions of the world, are viewed in dehumanizing ways. Of importance, dehumanization is not the same as extreme dislike. Dehumanization can be empirically distinguished from dislike or negative evaluations in terms of its correlates and consequences (e.g., emotions, conscious, and unconscious behavior; Esses,Veenvliet, Hodson, & Mihic, 2008; Sutter, 2017), and dehumanization and dislike have been shown to activate different regions of the brain (Bruneau, Jacoby, Kteily, & Saxe, 2018). Despite the distinction between dehumanization and prejudice, however, both dehumanization and group-focused enmity (the tendency to hold prejudicial attitudes toward a variety of groups concurrently; Zick et al., 2008) have both been shown to be exacerbated by a desire for group-based inequality, as supported by such ideologies as Social Dominance Orientation (Esses et al., 2013; Zick et al., 2008). According to Loughnan, Haslam, and Kashima (2009), there are two main approaches that have been used to study and measure dehumanization within the field of psychology. The first approach is the attribute-based approach. This approach has focused on the human characteristics that are typically denied to those who are dehumanized, such as secondary emotions (Leyens et al., 2000; Leyens et al., 2001), personality traits (Haslam, Loughnan, Kashima, & Bain, 2008), prosocial values (Esses et al., 2008; Schwartz & Struch, 1989) and attributes such as competence and warmth (Fiske, this volume; Harris & Fiske, 2006). In this context, dehumanization has also been understood in terms of its association with the emotion of disgust (Fiske, this volume; Harris & Fiske, 2006). For example, in examining the dehuman­ ization of refugees, Esses et al. (2008) found that the dehumanization of refugees—assessed in terms of the extent to which refugees are perceived to lack prosocial values in comparison to Canadians (Schwartz et al., 1989) and to engage in barbarian/enemy acts (Alexander, Brewer, & Herrmann, 1999)—led to contempt (a factor of emotions that includes disgust), and a lack of admiration toward refugees. The second approach to the study of dehumanization in psychology is the metaphor-based approach.This approach has focused on the association of others with nonhuman entities, such as animals (e.g., Boccato, Capozza, Falvo, & Durante, 2008; Goff, Eberhardt,Williams, & Jackson, 2008; Saminaden, Loughnan, & Haslam, 2010;Viki et al., 2006) and robots (Loughnan & Haslam, 2007). For example, Saminaden et al. (2010) found that indigenous people were more likely to be associated with animal-related words than people from modern, industrialized societies. Following from these two approaches, we discuss next how common media portrayals of refugees lead to their dehumanization.

18.5 The role of the media in the dehumanization of refugees In order to examine the potential causal relation between negative media depictions of refugees and their dehumanization, we have conducted a number of experiments using both explicit and implicit measures of dehumanization, and using both attribute-based and metaphor-based measures of dehumanization. 280

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As discussed, one common portrayal of asylum seekers is that they are bogus queue-jumpers who are attempting to gain entry to Western countries through illicit means. That is, they are trying to cheat the system. What effect do these claims have on the dehumanization of refugees? To find out, we asked Canadian participants to read an editorial about current affairs in Canada and to answer some questions about it (Esses,Veenvliet, & Medianu, 2011).We ran­ domly assigned participants to read one of two newspaper editorials on refugees to Canada. In the experimental condition, participants read a real editorial that had appeared in a Canadian newspaper in 2001. This article described Canada’s costly refugee program, and depicted refugee claimants as immoral cheaters (e.g.,“Refugees are not people who have been displaced and are brought into Canada for humanitarian reasons. Only a few are in that category. Most are smuggled in or are queue-jumpers who lie their way into the country by pretending they cannot go home and get all the entitlements they need immediately … These people come here by plane, have passports when they board then flush them down the toilet and declare refugee status, even when they are from rich countries”; Francis, 2001). In the control condi­ tion, we adapted this editorial so that it described Canada’s costly refugee program but did not describe refugee claimants as immoral cheaters (e.g., “These people come here by plane, but have nowhere further to go once they arrive.They sign up for social assistance until they can get themselves settled and look for work.”) Following questions about the editorial to maintain the cover story, we asked participants to complete a set of additional items, including items assessing the dehumanization of refugees using the measure of barbarian/enemy image (Alexander et al., 1999), and emotions toward refugees (Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002). On these measures, we found that the editorial presented in the experimental condition (the real editorial) significantly increased the dehumanization of refugees, and contempt and lack of admiration toward them. Thus, dehumanization resulted from a presumed threat to the integrity of the refugee system, with a media claim that refugee claimants are often fakers leading to the dehumanization of refugees in general. One theory that explains the media’s influence on people’s attitudes is the implicit social cognition model of media priming (Arendt, 2013). The model argues that the media acts as an external stimulus which influences the associations between concepts in memory. For example, the repeated simultaneous presentation of the two concepts “refugee” and “terrorist” in the media may activate, strengthen, and increase the accessibility of the association between these two concepts and closely related concepts (e.g., animal).That is, terrorist may activate mental concepts that are closely related to the “animal” concept. Media depictions of refugees as bogus and terrorist may activate concepts associated with a lack of civility and morality which, in turn, may activate the animal concept and lead to automatic dehumanization.The media also shapes the pattern of associations by providing new information that is encoded in memory, which may again directly, or indirectly through spreading activation, re-activate pre-existing memory associations. Overall, the model argues that the media can elicit a priming effect by temporarily increasing the accessibility of concepts in people’s minds. Repeated media priming effects can then lead to the chronic accessibility of concepts in people’s minds. Our research tested this model further in the context of the effects of media portrayals of refugees on the automatic dehumanization of refugees (Medianu, 2014). In particular, in two studies conducted with Canadian participants, we examined the effects of common media portrayals of refugees on automatic mental associations between the concepts “refugee” and “Canadian,” on the one hand, and “animal” and “human” on the other hand. Participants were asked to read newspaper editorials that were specifically designed for these studies.The editorials all described the anticipated arrival of a fictitious refugee group by boat to 281

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Canada.The editorials were based on our analysis of the media depictions of the arrival of the Tamil refugees in 2010 (as described previously), but used a fictitious group in order to avoid bias based on preconceptions about the Tamil refugees. The refugee claimants were described as bogus, as terrorist, as victims, or in a neutral way. The “bogus” editorial highlighted that the refugee claimants were trying to take advantage of Canada’s lax refugee system to get into the country illegally. It argued that many refugee claimants seek protection even if they are clearly not at risk and try to jump the queue to gain refugee status.The “terrorist” editorial raised the serious concern that some people on board the boat were part of an outlawed terrorist group, and that terrorist leaders among the refugees on the boat may aim to set up a terror-based government-in-waiting in Canada and “even import their civil war into Canada.”The “victim” editorial told the story of a mother of two who was forced to leave her home country in order to protect her children.The editorial described the horrible conditions during their journey on the boat and the shock they experienced upon their arrival to Canada when they were held in custody by Canadian authorities.The “neutral” editorial provided a factual description of today’s refugees to Canada. Next, participants completed a sequential priming task to measure their automatic dehumanization of refugees. As expected, the results demonstrated that participants automatically dehumanized refugees more than Canadians after reading the editorials describing the refugees as bogus or as terrorists. Surprisingly, the editorial describing the refugees as victims also led to their automatic dehu­ manization, though the neutral editorial did not. A possible explanation for this effect is that participants may have sought to protect their ingroup identity, which may have been threatened by the claim of Canada’s mistreatment of the refugee claimants (Koval, Laham, Haslam, Bastian, & Whelan, 2012), and sought to protect their belief in a just world where people get what they deserve (DeVaul-Fetters, 2014).An alternative possibility for why refugees were dehumanized in the victim condition may be that people at times dehumanize other groups because they want to protect their privileged positions and keep other groups, such as refugees, in their place. By per­ ceiving refugees as not completely part of the human ingroup, individuals may justify the status quo and their socio-political systems, convincing themselves that refugees deserve their negative outcomes (Opotow, 1995; Schwartz et al., 1989). As a result, existing systems and the status quo are maintained and perpetuated, with blame deflected away from the failings of socio-political systems and placed solely onto victims (Foels & Pratto, 2015; Jost, Gaucher, & Stern, 2015). Indeed, Greenhalgh,Watt, and Schutte (2015) have demonstrated that, in the Australian context, moral disengagement from asylum seekers is used as a means of rationalizing behavior that would otherwise be avoided. In line with the earlier described work on the visual depiction of refugees in Australian newspapers (Bleiker et al., 2013), a recent set of studies examined the potentially dehu­ manizing consequences of the dominant visual framing of refugees as large groups without recognizable facial features (Tsakiris, Azevedo, De Beukelaer, Jones, & Safra, 2019). It was suggested that these images evoke feelings of threat and concerns about security risks, rather than focusing on the perceived vulnerability of the refugees, potentially leading to their dehumanization. Across nine studies conducted with EU nationals and residents, results demonstrated that when participants were presented with visual depictions of refugees in large groups without recognizable facial features, they were especially likely to be dehumanized, as assessed in terms of the attribution of primary versus secondary emotions to them. This effect was particularly strong when the refugees were depicted in a sea context. Thus, even without textual content, media depictions of refugees can be framed in ways that lead to their dehumanization.

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18.6 Consequences of refugee dehumanization While a significant amount of research in psychology has focused on understanding and con­ ceptualizing dehumanization, research on the consequences of dehumanization has been limited. According to Haslam et al. (2014), the consequences of dehumanization can be divided into several categories. First, dehumanizing perceptions of individuals or groups may reduce the tendency to respond to them prosocially (Andrighetto, Baldissarri, Lattanzio, Loughnan, & Volpato, 2014; Costello & Hodson, 2011; Cuddy, Rock, & Norton, 2007;Vaes, Paladino, Castelli, Leyens, & Giovanazzi, 2003; Zebel, Zimmermann,Viki, & Doosje, 2008). For example, Costello et al. (2011) found that participants who showed a strong preference for inequality among social groups and perceived immigrants as a threat to Canadian values and traditions were more likely to deny uniquely human emotions to immigrants, which, in turn, was associated with a lower willingness to offer aid to both fictitious and real immigrant groups. Furthermore, Zebel et al. (2008) found that Dutch participants who perceived Muslims as subtly animal-like were less supportive of reparations being made to the Bosnian Muslim families of victims of an atrocity that Dutch peacekeepers had failed to prevent. In addition, dehumanizing perceptions may increase antisocial behavior toward their targets (Bandura, Underwood, & Fromson, 1975; Bastian, Denson, & Haslam, 2013; Goff et al., 2008; Goff, Jackson, Di Leone, Culotta, & DiTomasso, 2014; Jackson & Gaertner, 2010; Kteily & Bruneau, 2017; Kteily, Bruneau, Waytz, & Cotterill, 2015; Rudman & Mescher, 2012; Viki, Fullerton, Raggett,Tait, & Wiltshire, 2012;Viki, Osgood, & Phillips, 2013). For example, research conducted in the context of the 2016 U.S. Republican Primaries found that Americans who blatantly dehumanized Mexican immigrants and Muslims were more likely to support aggressive policies proposed by Republican nominees (Kteily et al., 2017). Similarly, Bruneau, Kteily, and Laustsen (2018) found that blatant dehumanization of refugees was associated with resistance to refugee settlement, support for anti-refugee policies, and a greater tendency to sign petitions opposing aid to refugees. Finally, dehumanizing perceptions may have a variety of implications for the moral evaluation of targets. Research shows that a perceived lack of human nature is associated with reduced moral worth. People are willing to harm and exclude dehumanized persons and see them as less worthy of help, forgiveness, and empathy.When refugees are dehumanized, are seen as not mor­ ally worthy, and are seen as outside of the scope of justice that applies to humans (see Opotow, 2012), people may feel justified in not applying to refugees the moral rules, values, and concerns about fairness that apply to humans. Overall, past research provides support for the negative consequences of dehumanization (see Demoulin, Maurage, & Stinglhamber, this volume for a review of the related consequences of metadehumanization—the perception that one is a target of dehumanization). However, with a few exceptions (e.g., Bandura et al., 1975; Bruneau, Kteily, & Laustsen, 2018; Goff et al., 2008, 2014), most of this research has not focused on the actual behavioral consequences of dehumanization. In our research, we addressed this gap in the literature by investigating the causal link between people’s tendency to automatically dehumanize refugees and their nonverbal and verbal behavior during a social interaction with a refugee (Sutter, 2017). Past research suggests that attitudes measured on an implicit versus an explicit level are predictive of different aspects of behavior. In particular, Dovidio, Kawakami, Johnson, Johnson, and Howard (1997) found that implicit preju­ dice toward Blacks was associated with increased negative nonverbal behavior, but was unrelated

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to verbal behavior during an interracial interaction.According to Strack and Deutsch (2004) this pattern of findings can be explained by the fact that implicit measures are more likely to predict behaviors that are not easily controlled (i.e., nonverbal behaviors), whereas explicit measures are more likely to predict behaviors that are easily controlled (i.e., verbal behaviors). For this reason, we expected that people’s tendency to automatically dehumanize refugees would predict their nonverbal behaviors but not their verbal behaviors during a social interaction with a refugee. Participants were invited to participate in two allegedly “separate” studies. The first was introduced to participants as a study about personality and assessed their tendency to automat­ ically dehumanize refugees.The measure for automatic dehumanization was the same sequential priming procedure used in our earlier research.The second was introduced to participants as a study about social relationships with the aim to investigate the acquaintance process among uni­ versity students. Before the social interaction, participants were told that they would be talking to a Canadian student from another city or a refugee who came to study at the university through the student refugee program from the World University Service of Canada. However, in reality, participants talked to the same person, a confederate. To stimulate the conversation, participants and the confederate were asked to talk about four easy-to-talk-about issues that had been successfully employed in previous research (Aron, Melinat, Aron,Vallone, & Bator, 1997). Importantly, the confederate was blind to the experimental conditions and to participants’ levels of dehumanization of refugees, and followed a script when providing answers. All interactions were videotaped using a split screen method for later coding. For each interaction, two inde­ pendent coders were asked to rate how positive participants’ behavior was during the inter­ action and also how positive the quality of the interaction was. In order to differentiate between participants’ nonverbal and verbal behavior, coders viewed the video material without audio (to rate participants’ nonverbal behavior), and without the image but with audio (to rate participants’ verbal behavior). The results showed that participants who automatically dehumanized refugees demonstrated less positive nonverbal behavior toward the refugee than the Canadian student and the interaction was rated as less positive in this case. In contrast, participants who automatically dehumanized refugees did not differ in their verbal behavior toward the refugee compared to the Canadian student.That is, participants’ tendency to automatically associate refugees with the animal con­ cept as opposed to the human concept found its expression only in their nonverbal behavior but not in their verbal behavior. This suggests that automatic refugee dehumanization is more likely to be reflected in behaviors that are not easily controlled. Due to a possible desire to appear unprejudiced, participants may have been motivated to monitor and control their verbal behavior to appear in a friendly way. At the same time, they may not have been able to control their less friendly nonverbal behavior. Paired with the findings on common media depictions of refugees and the dehumanizing consequences of these depictions, these results point to the importance of media portrayals in the poor treatment of refugees and in possible support for harsh national refugee policies. As mentioned, there are millions of refugees in the world today in need of protection and aid, but Western countries seldom welcome them with open arms. Would the rehumanization of refugees change this narrative?

18.7 The rehumanization of refugees The views publicly expressed by political leaders have the potential to significantly influence those held by citizens exposed to these messages. A case in point is the changing views of refugees in Canada with the election of a new Liberal government in October 2015. As part 284

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of his election campaign, Justin Trudeau, leader of the Liberal Party, promised to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by the end of 2015. Following his election as Prime Minister, this target was extended to the end of February 2016, which was successfully met (Seidle, 2016). A flurry of activity was required to meet this target, much of which was publicly described on an ongoing basis by the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship. The language used to describe this activity was uniformly positive and served to humanize the refugees, depicting them as similar to Canadians. For example, in tweeting about the arrival of the first planeload of Syrian refugees in December 2015, Prime Minister Trudeau used the hashtag #WelcomeRefugees (Rolan, 2015) and publicly greeted the refugees at the airport with the statement, “you’re safe at home now” (Austen, 2015). Images of the Prime Minister and his team at the airport showed them enthusiastically greeting and hugging the refugees, and pro­ viding them with warm coats for the winter.The government also set up a website on which Canadians could track the arrival of Syrian refugees in communities across the country, receive information on how they could help welcome the refugees, and view photos and stories of refugees and their resettlement under the heading “Open Hearts and Welcoming Communities: It’s the Canadian Way” (Government of Canada, 2017). Similarly, the media adopted this posi­ tive frame and the use of humanizing language and images. For example, in honor of the arrival of the first planeload of Syrian refugees, the front page of the Toronto Star declared, “As 150 refugees land at Pearson today—among the first of the 25,000—on behalf of the Star and our readers, we say: Welcome to Canada [appearing in English and Arabic].You’re with family now. And your presence among us makes our Christmas season of peace and joy just that much brighter” (Toronto Star, 2015). These humanizing, welcoming messages and images stood in stark contrast to those expressed by political leaders and the media in Canada just a year earlier under the Conservative govern­ ment. For example, in describing why the federal government had reduced health-care benefits for refugees and refugee claimants, then Prime Minister Stephen Harper suggested that these changes only applied to “bogus refugees” (which was not the case; Gulli, 2015). In addition, in 2014, the Conservative Government of Canada proposed the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act as an amendment to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, designed to pre­ vent polygamy, forced marriage, and honor killings among new arrivals (Open Parliament, 2015). Not only did the title of this Act utilize dehumanizing language, but its content was based on the assumption that immigrants and refugees engaged to a sufficient degree in barbaric practices that the Act was required. In contrast to these negative views, the system-sanctioned positive views of refugees and new status quo put into place by the Liberal government in late 2015 seem to have influenced a significant number of Canadians. For example, between November 2015 and February 2016, support for the government’s refugee resettlement plan rose from 42 percent to 52 percent (Angus Reid Institute, 2016). Gaucher, Friesen, Neufeld, and Esses (2018) specifically examined whether receiving community members’ perceptions of refugees changed as humanizing portrayals and a warm welcome for refugees became system-sanctioned and part of the status quo. They assessed Canadians’ perceptions of refugees in three waves of national surveys occurring before (Time 1: four months pre-election) and after (Time 2: three months post-election; Time 3: eight months post-election) the change in government, asking respondents to rate the warmth and competence of refugees (and several other groups).This provided an index of dehumaniza­ tion and rehumanization, with low competence and low warmth associated with dehumaniza­ tion, and high competence and high warmth associated with rehumanization (Harris & Fiske, 2011). Consistent with a system justification account of system-sanctioned humanization of refugees, results showed positive increases in perceptions of refugees’ warmth and competence 285

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from June 2015 to January 2016, which was maintained in June 2016, mirroring official changes in the Canadian government and its more welcoming stance on refugees. Despite these increases in the public’s humanization of refugees, however, these views were not universal; some indi­ viduals were more likely to adopt the humanizing views expressed by their leaders than others. Supporting the system justification explanation of these findings, the relation between justifica­ tion of the Canadian system, as measured using an adapted version of Kay and Jost’s (2003) system justification scale, and humanizing views of refugees increased over time; that is, over time, the association between system justification and humanization of refugees became stronger.Thus, it seems that individuals who were prone to justifying the Canadian system were especially likely to adopt the system-sanctioned humanized views of refugees. These results suggest that the psychological motivation that leads people to defend and support their socio-political systems can be used toward the positive goal of humanizing refugees and garnering support for their resettlement. By taking advantage of system justification motivations, governments can choose to facilitate the humanization of refugees and live up to their humani­ tarian commitment to refugee protection. Alternative strategies of refugee rehumanization may also be available. For example, Fiske (2009) has suggested that individuation and the attribution of a fully experiencing mind to others (that includes intents, thoughts, and feelings) helps to humanize them. Empathy plays an important role in this regard, promoting the ability to understand and share the feelings of the humanized other.Thus, if the public is encouraged to individuate refugees and to be cognizant of their thoughts, feelings, and intentions, the humanity of refugees is more likely to be recognized and acted on. Of note, the humanizing portrayals of Syrian refugees in Canada in 2015–2016 led to a surge in the private sponsorship of Syrian refugees by Canadians across the country, involving direct responsibility for sponsored individuals and families for one full year. Indeed, between November 2015 and January 2017, 14,274 Syrian refugees were privately sponsored to Canada, and an additional 3,931 arrived under the Blended Visa Office-Referred program, in which responsibility for the refugees is shared by the government and private sponsors (Government of Canada, 2017).The personal contact and provision of direct assistance to the refugees on a regular basis surely served to individuate them and promote an understanding of their thoughts, feelings, and intentions, with consequent further humanization.This suggests that once rehumanization is initiated, it may have a burgeoning effect.

18.8 Implications and conclusion Research to date on dehumanization and rehumanization, and specifically on the impact on refugees and on receiving nations, suggests the critical importance of these phenomena today and for the foreseeable future.The “refugee crisis” is unlikely to abate, assuming the current tra­ jectory of a steady increase in numbers continues, with millions more being added each year. The number of refugees worldwide is staggering, and the fact that millions of people are living in precarious situations may be difficult to truly grasp, which in itself may promote dehumaniza­ tion.After all, can one truly individuate and be aware of the thoughts and feelings of the millions of human beings in distress? Isn’t it easier to assume either that they are not suffering as much as we might expect because they don’t have human feelings like we do, or that they deserve their situation because of something that they have done, making them morally less human than us? Do we really want to empathize with the scale of refugee suffering? The prevalence of the dehumanization of refugees suggests that if the international com­ munity is to live up to its commitment to protect and aid refugees, rehumanization must be purposely promoted. Just as political leaders and the media can support the dehumanization of 286

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refugees, our research suggests that they can impact the rehumanization of refugees. Researchers have made considerable progress in understanding the determinants and consequences of the dehumanization of refugees. Our next challenge must be to conduct research to support the rehumanization of these human beings in need.

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Dehumanization and rehumanization United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR, 2020). Global trends: forced displacement in 2019. Retrieved from https://www.unhcr.org/5ee200e37.pdf United Nations Secretary General. (2016). In safety and dignity: Addressing large movements of refugees and migrants. Retrieved September 4, 2019, from http://www.un.org/pga/70/wp-content/uploads/ sites/10/2015/08/21-Apr_Refugees-and-Migrants-21-April-2016.pdf Vaes, J., Paladino, M. P., Castelli, L., Leyens, J. P., & Giovanazzi, A. (2003). On the behavioral consequences of infrahumanization: the implicit role of uniquely human emotions in intergroup relations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(6), 1016–1034. Viki, G. T., Fullerton, I., Raggett, H., Tait, F., & Wiltshire, S. (2012). The role of dehumanization in attitudes toward the social exclusion and rehabilitation of sex offenders. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 42(10), 2349–2367. Viki, G. T., Osgood, D., & Phillips, S. (2013). Dehumanization and self-reported proclivity to torture prisoners of war. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(3), 325–328. Viki, G. T., Winchester, L., Titshall, L., Chisango, T., Pina, A., & Russell, R. (2006). Beyond secondary emotions: The infrahumanization of outgroups using human-related and animal-related words. Social Cognition, 24(6), 753–775. doi:10.1521/soco.2006.24.6.753 Walters, P. (2014). Aug 16, 2014: Revealed—the missing link in the children overboard affair—Howard was told the truth. The Australian. Retrieved September 4, 2019 from https://www.theaustralian. com.au/50th-birthday-collectors-edition/aug-16-2004-revealed-the-missing-link-in­ the-children-overboard-affair-howard-was-told-the-truth/story-fnnxxigd-1226985670009 Zebel, S., Zimmermann, A., Viki, G. T., & Doosje, B. (2008). Dehumanization and guilt as distinct but related predictors of support for reparation policies. Political Psychology, 29(2), 193–219. Zick, A., Wolf, C., Kupper, B., Davidov, E., Schmidt, P., & Heitmeyer, W. (2008). The syndrome of group-focused enmity: The interrelation of prejudices tested with multiple cross-sectional and panel data. Journal of Social Issues, 64, 363–383.

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19

MOTIVATIONAL AND

COGNITIVE UNDERPINNINGS

OF FEAR OF SOCIAL ROBOTS

THAT BECOME “TOO HUMAN

FOR US”

Maria Paola Paladino, Jeroen Vaes, and Jolanda Jetten 19.1 Introduction In 2017, for the first time in history, a robot was invited to join a meeting organized by the UN.The robot in question was Sophia, a highly sophisticated android. Its appearance is that of a young woman who can talk and respond to questions, and it seems able to display appropriate emotional responses. Sophia is a social robot: a mechanical and autonomous agent designed to interact with humans in a socially appropriate way (for a review of the definitions of social robots in the scientific community, see Sarrica, Brondi, and Fortunati, 2019). Sophia can only act in contexts for which it is programmed. Nevertheless, its performance appears impressive in these social interactions. Social robots, such as Sophia, often elicit contrasting responses among humans. High hopes about the problems that they may solve and pride about the technological advances that we as humans have achieved go hand in hand with fears and concerns that these mechanical agents—looking and behaving as humans—will soon be part of our everyday interactions. This chapter focuses particularly on those fears and concerns, and explores the role that the resemblance of robots to humans—that is,“robot humanization “(Giger, Piçarra, Alves‐Oliveira, Oliveira, and Arriaga, 2019)—might play in triggering those fears.This issue is of growing sig­ nificance because humanization is an inherent element in robot design. Indeed, endowing mech­ anical agents with humanlike aspects, or skills and reactions similar to humans, is supposed to facilitate and improve human–robot interaction (HRI), especially when they are designed to fulfill social or cooperative tasks (e.g., care; Duffy, 2003). Nevertheless, it is also increasingly recognized that the humanization of robots, and the realization of an autonomous mechanical replica of the human body and of its capacities, can also represent a challenge in itself in robot development. It is, therefore, important to understand humans’ emotional reactions when per­ sonally interacting with this technology and the specific worries and resistance humans may have to robots entering society at large. The present chapter aims to answer a number of questions. Are people really afraid of this technology? And if so, what are they afraid of? After dealing with these questions, we turn our attention to analyzing the reasons why people might fear social robots. Delving 292

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into non-psychological as well as psychological literature, we highlight a paradox; we are intrigued by robots that are designed to resemble human beings in appearance, or capacities and behaviors. However, such humanization of this technology also blurs the boundaries between humans and machines, and this is problematic for the way we psychologically con­ strue and defend our unique human identity. Therefore, social robots may trigger concerns and fears to the extent that they pose a symbolic threat for our human identity. At the same time, humanizing robots is at odds with our cognitive system: our brain is not hard-wired to deal with high-humanlike mechanical agents, especially when we imagine interacting with robots.

19.2 Living with social robots: Hopes and fears Over the past twenty years there has been considerable investment in social robotics. Many research labs around the world have developed prototypes of social robots, each with their own qualities designed for specific tasks (e.g., providing information, interacting with children, etc.). The current panorama of social robots, therefore, encompasses a multitude of models and forms and has created a variety of ways in which they embody humanlike features. Some robots look more humanlike than others for their appearance (e.g., androids compared to other humanoids or animal-like robots) and some for their behavior, as they are endowed with certain humanlike capacities (e.g., walking, speech recognition, eye gaze, etc.); rarely, they incorporate both. Social robots are now not a mere lab phenomenon anymore as some made it to the front page (e.g., Sophia) and others are already on the market (e.g., Nao) or have found an application in specific social settings (e.g., at the reception of the Henn na Hotels in Japan). Although their presence in everyday life is increasing, our experience with this technology is limited. Moreover, the development of social robotics is still in its infancy and an empirical and quantitative answer to whether and what people fear when interacting with social robots is, therefore, somewhat speculative at this stage, or limited to specific social robot prototypes (e.g., de Graaf and Allouch, 2013). Nevertheless, this state of affairs is quickly changing because new and more sophisticated robots are likely to be developed in the near future and enter society at large. National and international polls typically try to bypass the limited experience with social robots, investigating people’s attitudes and reactions with hypothetical scenarios.This approach is not without limitations, as people’s reactions might change after a real interaction (e.g., de Graaf et al., 2013). Nevertheless, they offer a glimpse on people’s hopes and fears toward this tech­ nology. For instance, in a recent survey (Pew Research Center, 2017), a representative sample of US citizens were presented with a robot caregiver described “as an assistive technology for older adults available 24 hours a day that would help with the household, test vital signs and dispense medication, call for assistance in an emergency, and provide some companion as the robot would have conversational skills.” Although seen as a “realistic prospect,” the majority (59%) reported not to be interested in this technology for themselves or their family members.The proportion of those who expressed interest was lower, but still represented a consistent minority (41%). A similar pattern of reactions emerged in the last EU survey (2014) on autonomous systems.About 51% reported to be “totally uncomfortable” with the idea of a robot providing services and com­ panionship to the elderly or frail, whereas only 29% of the sample was totally comfortable with it. In purely quantitative terms, social robotics—at least one of its possible applications—appears to be received with some enthusiasm, but also worries. What motivates these reactions? In the US survey (Pew Research Center, 2017), people’s motivations for expressing interest or disinterest toward robot caregivers were collected in openended responses. The most frequently mentioned reasons, among those who were willing to 293

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employ this technology, were the possibility of “assuring better care” and of “lowering the burden for the family.”The main motivation for not using the robot caregiver was “the lack of human touch and relations.” Interestingly, both of these positive and negative expectations were largely shared in the response sample. In fact, when asking about the potential broader impact of robot caregivers in society, the responses, “Young people would worry less about caring for aging relatives” and “Older adults would feel more isolated,” were both chosen by two-thirds of the sample. Thus, rather than having different expectations, those who were in favor or against the use of robot caregivers, presumably, simply gave different weights to the potential positive and negative societal impacts of this technology. Another possible answer to the question of what we fear about social robots involves the analysis of historically relevant literary and cultural production. Social robots had existed in the imaginary before they appeared in reality (e.g., Cave and Dihal, 2018). The first prototypes of social robots date to the end of the 1980s, when Honda launched a research program to develop machines able to interact with humans. Furthermore, humanlike and intelligent machines were already present in science fiction books in the 1950s (e.g., Asimov) and in cinematographic productions at the beginning of the last century (e.g., Metropolis). Self-operating artifacts and automata, precursors of the actual robots, were also common in literary works throughout his­ tory, including ancient history (e.g., Cave et al., 2018; LaGrandeur, 2013). The analysis of the narratives emerging in cultural and literary works, those of the past (LaGrandeur, 2013) as much as of the present (Cave and Dihal, 2019), can thus offer a glimpse on the hopes we pin on this technology and the fears that it potentially elicits. Two conceptions of robots—the “artificial servant/slave” and the “prosthetic enhancement”— are especially relevant in the context of social robotics, and these themes appear in both hopeful and fearful narratives throughout the centuries (LaGrandeur, 2013).The “artificial servant/slave” is a recurring image that dates back to Aristotle. This notion encompasses the idea that, being a mechanical agent, this creation can do the work for the “master” without human mediation. Across history, the type of “job” the artificial servant/slave is expected to do has expanded from only physical labor to include cognitive activities, and more recently in social robotics, it contains also social and recreational elements. Nevertheless, the hopes and expectations related to this con­ ception are relatively unchanged: fulfilling human obligations and desires without the ethical and psychological complexities that human relationships generally imply. A motivation mentioned by a US respondent in support for his/her interest in using a robot caregiver exemplifies these positive expectations: “It would give dedicated, reliable care—whereas family members often have jobs and other obligations that keep them from being able to serve as around-the-clock caregivers. It also takes away the uncertainty of a stranger coming in and you not knowing what kind of care your family member may get” (Pew Research Center, 2017). Uncertainty is not the only complexity of human relationships that robots are thought to minimize. Public debate has proposed social robots as a possible resolution to many dark sides of our social exchanges. Whenever there is a risk of exploitation, instrumentality, and object­ ification—that is, treating other human beings as objects (Kaufmann, 2011; Timmermans and Almeling, 2009;Vaes, Loughnan, and Puvia, 2014)—a robot could replace humans with a clear advantage: mitigating the ethical concern without giving up the satisfaction of one’s own desire. The public discussion on the potential impact of sex-bots in limiting human prostitution and human trafficking offers an interesting example of this type of positive expectation. This conception, however, also creates new ethical dilemmas. Allowing these artificial mech­ anical servants/slaves a place in everyday life would happen at the expense of our social capacities and relations with other humans. If a machine can become a caregiver that satisfies relational and social needs, humans would likely become redundant; obsolete not only in the work domain, 294

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but even in our relationships (Cave et al., 2019). Furthermore, even though robot contact may still be socially and relationally inferior to human contact, the risk is that prolonged interactions with robots would alienate humans from real social, two-way experiences, directly affecting our capacities to socialize.This scenario would become even more pressing if the artificial servant/ slave were to outperform humans in social tasks. It would further decrease the need for human presence and further eliminate the distinctiveness of human sociality.That such a scenario is not beyond imagination becomes evident in the discussion of another recurring image, intertwined with the previous one, in which a robot becomes a “prosthetic enhancement” of human capaci­ ties (LaGrandeur, 2013). The idea of enhancement has obviously changed across time. Nowadays, many applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics in industrial settings provide good examples of how relying on these devices speed up and boost human physical and cognitive capacity Even though productive, this process of enhancement has its downsides. If successful, it sets new and higher standards for the competences it replaces.The benchmark to attain is no longer human, although it ends up being applied to humans too. Expanding and overcoming human limits, robots under­ mine or even denigrate what we as humans are “naturally” able to do (i.e., without them). In the case of social robotics, this process extends to include also assistive, caring, and relational capaci­ ties. If applied to the hypothetical caregiver robot described in the Pew Research Center scenario available 24 hours a day, this would imply that people would start doubting that humans are really able of taking care of family members as machines do a better job. Currently, these narratives emerging from the literature are a distant reality. However, their analysis offers important insights into people’s concerns about social robots entering our society.These concerns go beyond fears that robots take human jobs and pose a realistic threat to employees. It suggests that what we fear is the potential impact such a technology, if used on an everyday basis, might have on the quality of our social relations and on our ability to entertain social interpersonal exchanges. These abilities are generally considered fundamental aspects of human identity (Haslam, 2006). Social robots, therefore, appear to pose some sym­ bolic threat—that of altering, undermining, or even taking away that what makes us human. In particular, robots—and especially social robots—threaten to dehumanize humans. Paradoxically, the dehumanizing potential appears to be the result of the attempt of the “humanization” of this technology. As we will discuss below, social robots, when too similar to human beings, blur the boundaries and provoke an elision, a point of contact, between humans and machines. This, as we will see, is problematic for how we psychologically construe and defend human identity and also for our cognitive system.

19.3 Motivational underpinnings: The threat to human distinctiveness accounts for the fear of social robots To understand some of these dynamics, it is worthwhile to engage with the recently proposed human distinctiveness hypothesis (Ferrari, Paladino, and Jetten, 2016). Accounting for people’s fear of social robots, this hypothesis posits that too much perceived similarity between social robots and humans triggers concerns, because similarity blurs the boundaries between humans and machines and this is perceived as damaging humans, as a group, and as altering the human identity.This hypothesis is based on social psychological work on dehumanization and intergroup relations, and complements the analysis of narratives surrounding social robots by providing an explanation about why social robots might be perceived as a symbolic threat. According to the threat to distinctiveness hypothesis, processes and motivations involved in how we construe and defend our identity play a pivotal role. Identity is not defined in a vacuum, 295

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but in comparison with relevant others.This occurs at both the individual and group levels (e.g., Brewer, 1991), but also at the human level, making nonhuman entities the relevant category of comparison. Empirical social psychological work on humanness and dehumanization has shown that we make comparisons with animals (Leyens et al., 2000;Vaes, Leyens, Paladino, and Miranda, 2012) and (sophisticated) machines to identify what makes us human (Haslam, 2006; Haslam and Loughnan, 2014; see Haslam, this volume).The contrast with animals defines human uniqueness that compromises traits and abilities related to culture, refinement, intelligence, and moral responsibility; comparisons with machines delineates human nature and includes traits and characteristics involved in emotionality, interpersonal warmth, depth, and individuality (Haslam, 2006). The differential roles of these two conceptualizations of humanness has been shown in research on individual and group dehumanization, demonstrating that when people are denied human uniqueness they are likened to animals, and when the denial involves human nature, people become to be seen as more similar to robots (Loughnan and Haslam, 2007; Martinez, Rodriguez-Bailon, and Moya, 2012). With robots as one of the comparison groups, one can explain why endowing these mechanical agents with sophisticated human skills inevitably affects our conception of what it means to be human. If a robot can be a lovely companion, with whom we can hold an interesting and exciting conversation and which shows comprehension of our emotions, can we still think of friendship, emotional comprehension, and so on, as typical or uniquely human characteristics? In addition, robots’ similarities with humans can also undermine the human identity, especially if robots possess central aspects of that which is considered typical of human beings. Research on intergroup relations inspired by Social Identity Theory (Ellemers and Haslam, 2012; Tajfel, 1981) has shown that people are motivated to perceive the groups they belong to as distinct and different from other groups (Jetten, Spears, and Manstead, 1996; 1997). Knowing how our group is different from other groups helps to define what makes one’s own group, and as conse­ quence one’s own group’s identity, unique.Too much intergroup similarity is thus perceived as threatening, because it weakens the clarity of intergroup boundaries and challenges that which makes our own group distinct. In addition, because part of our identity—that is, the social iden­ tity—derives from the group we belong to; group boundaries are important for group members as they contribute to self-definition. One way to cope with intergroup similarities is by pre­ serving or establishing positive intergroup differentiation (Jetten et al., 1996; 1997). Although these processes have been traditionally thought of and studied to explain relations between human groups, they can also be applied in describing our relation with social robots.As was suggested, and similarly to what emerged in the analysis of the cultural and literary work, this line of research proposes that robots’ humanization potentially raises concern about their nega­ tive impact on the human identity. Making social robots and humans more alike in appearance, skills, or behaviors threatens the distinctiveness and, thus, the uniqueness of the human identity. Therefore, a major concern with the entering of social robots into our daily lives lies in them altering and undermining our human identity. Although the development of social robotics is still in its infancy, and new and more sophisticated robots are likely to be developed in the near future, it is reasonable to expect that only some robots will manage to closely mimic human appearance and socially appropriate behavior. This consideration brings us to another line of work in social psychology—that of group impostorism—which promises to be especially relevant to understanding reactions to highly humanlike robots (e.g., androids). In line with Hornsey and Jetten (2003), an impostor is an individual who tries to pass as a member of a group although s/he does not possess the criteria for membership. For instance, people who publicly claim to be vegetarians but who eat meat once in a while are likely to be considered impostors by vegetarians. Interestingly, 296

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impostors receive harsher judgments by members of the group they pretend to belong to than by the group to which they actually belong (Warner, Hornsey, and Jetten, 2007). This is because, by passing into another group, they blur the distinction between member and non­ members, thereby damaging the identity of the group in which they trespassed. Although high-humanlike robots do not decide autonomously to pass as a human being, they could elicit reactions similar to those observed for impostors: the impression that boundaries of the categories “human beings” and “machines” are being blurred, signaling that human distinct­ iveness is at risk. Quantitative empirical research provides support to the fear of threat to human distinctiveness hypothesis in explaining people’s fear of social robots. Indirect evidence is coming from studies showing that the humanization of robots is related to negative attitudes toward this technology. For instance, Enz, Diruf, Spielhagen, Zoll, and Vargas (2011) found negative judgments toward hypothetical scenarios were robots were described in social roles typically occupied by humans (e.g., teaching, love, and sexual partner). In a large Dutch sample investigating attitudes toward social robots, researchers found that the more this technology was seen as sociable (i.e., possessing a typical human characteristic), the less people expressed an intention to use it (de Graaf, Ben Allouch, and van Dijk, 2019). More direct evidence stems from studies in which the similarity of robots to humans was manipulated and the threat to human distinctiveness directly assessed. In another study (Złotowski,Yogeeswaran, and Bartneck, 2017), robots of the new generation were described in a video as either humanlike—capable of making autonomous decisions, including accepting or rejecting human commands—or as not autonomous and dependent on external orders, making them more machine-like. These descriptions elicited different reactions and concerns. The entering into society of the more humanlike robots was perceived as posing a greater symbolic threat for the human identity as well as a realistic threat (e.g., losing jobs, etc.) than the machine-like robots. Ferrari et al. (2016) relied on the robot’s humanlike appearance to manipulate similarities with humans and to directly test the threat to human distinctiveness hypothesis. A robot’s appearance is the first, and likely the most successful, attempt to make robots mimic humans and simulate human interactions with a mechanical agent (Giger et al., 2019). Several prototypes of highhumanlike robots, such as androids, exist, as well as exemplars of more mechanical humanoids. Androids look as full replicas of human biological bodies, whereas humanoids have an anthropo­ morphic appearance (e.g., face, arms, legs, etc.) but are clearly mechanical agents (e.g., made of steel or aluminum). In addition, the focus on robots’ humanlike appearance has also another advantage as it allows us to make a connection between our perspective and that raised by the uncanny valley, a phenomenon we will turn to later on in this chapter. Participants were then presented with photos of existing exemplars of androids, humanoids, and industrial robots and asked to respond to a questionnaire. In accordance with the threat to human distinctiveness hypothesis, imagining androids entering in everyday life elicited more worries (e.g., “I get the feeling that the robot could damage relations between people”) and was thought to impact the human identity more negatively (e.g.,“The robot seems to lessen the value of human existence”), compared to humanoids, while industrial robots raised the least concern.A similar trend emerged also for the perceived blurring of human and machine boundaries (e.g., “Looking at this kind of robot I ask myself what are the differences between robots and humans”), which was highest for androids and lowest for industrial robots. Importantly, mediational analyses confirmed the fully hypothesized process proposed by the threat of human distinctiveness account. Androids (vs. humanoids vs. mechanical robots) were perceived as damaging to humans and human iden­ tity because their appearance is too humanlike, and this undermines the distinction between machines and human beings. 297

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According to the threat to distinctiveness hypothesis, the critical element lies in the blurring of the human–machine divide. Therefore, endowing robots with human behavior, in addition to human appearance, might exacerbate the negative reactions toward this technology. In line with this idea, Kim, Schmitt, and Thalmann (2019; Study 3) found that an android that could be employed as a personal assistant at home was less liked when described as sociable (i.e., loves being around people and talking with you and your family) rather than competent (e.g., capable of tasks such as cleaning, laundry, and ironing), whereas a mechanical humanoid or a human helper was liked equally, independent of whether it was competent or warm. Sociability is a typical human characteristic that differentiates humans from machines, and this finding suggests, thus, that it is not the mere amount of resemblance that matters, but it is especially those characteristics which blur the distinction between humans and machines that elicit a fear of the threat to the distinctiveness in humans. Yogeeswaran et al. (2016) investigated reactions to robots that are not only similar to but that also outperform humans on some uniquely human abilities. In their study, several types of robots were shown, including an android (G2) or a humanoid (Nao), and information was provided on the mental and physical capacities of this new generation of machines. After watching the video of the android, robots were perceived as a greater threat to human identity, especially when they were also described as better than humans (vs. when no comparative information was given). Importantly, the same information did not affect reactions to the humanoid robot, which was generally perceived as less threatening. The threat to distinctiveness hypothesis offers, thus, a plausible account as to why we fear the entering of social robots into society at large, and it underlines the critical role of robots’ humanization in shaping these concerns. Robots that look too human are the most threatening. The majority of the studies focused on the robots’ appearance showing that androids—robots designed as a replica of the human biological body—are the most threatening especially when they are also presented as behaving humanlike. Next, we will continue to explore the fears of androids, focusing on the uncanny valley phenomenon and on the role played by the limits of our cognitive system.

19.4 Cognitive underpinnings of our fear of androids: The uncanny valley We started this chapter presenting robot humanization as an intrinsic aspect of designing social robots. However, the suspicion that the resemblance of robots to the human body could pre­ sent some drawbacks was known already in the 70s in the field of robotics. In 1970, Mori, a Japanese roboticist, proposed the uncanny valley (UV) phenomenon to describe the relation between robots’ humanlike appearance and the acceptance of this technology. According to the UV, increments in the humanlike appearance of robots increases their familiarity up to a cer­ tain point after which further increases in human-likeness provokes uneasiness and repulsion in people (i.e., the uncanny valley). This phenomenon has inspired an abundance of research (especially since 2005). However, the empirical support for the UV has for a long time been inconclusive. Several reasons have been advanced, among which are the lack of a common def­ inition and operationalization of the emotional reactions characterizing the UV and the diffi­ culty of systematically manipulating a complex concept such as “humanlike” appearance (Wang, Lilienfeld, and Rochat, 2015), and the role played by individual differences (Rosenthal-von der Pütten and Weiss, 2015). Recent studies have bypassed the difficulty in manipulating a humanlike appearance by relying on large samples of existing robots. For instance, Rosenthal-von der Pütten and Krämer (2014) presented participants with forty robots. Based on participants’ ratings of human-likeness, they 298

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identified several clusters among which androids were generally judged as the most threatening, and even eerie when they were compared with humanoids with a mechanical appearance. Mathur and Reichling (2016) ranked eighty robot faces based on participants’ ratings on how human they looked. In a follow-up experiment, these faces’ friendliness and enjoyability (vs. creepiness) was judged by participants imagining interacting with these robots in an everyday situation. Consistent with the UV, a potential interaction was judged to be more positive to the extent that the mechanical robot was judged as somewhat humanlike; further increases in a robot’s face human-likeness, however, was associated with an increase in perceived negativity of the interaction. Another promising approach to studying the UV and to understanding whether robots’ human appearance elicits discomfort and fear involves testing its psychological mechanisms rather than the phenomenon per se. Uncanny feelings toward androids have been put on par with exist­ ential concerns (e.g., MacDorman, 2005), disgust sensitivity (MacDorman and Entezari, 2015), biological-evolutionary explanation (i.e., avoiding infections and inadequate mating partners, MacDorman and Ishiguro, 2006), and social and motivational mechanisms, like the threat to human distinctiveness (see above) and cognitive processes (for a review, see, e.g., Kätsyri, Förger, Mäkäräinen, and Takala, 2015). Regarding the role of cognitive processes, even though several hypotheses have been put forward, what all these approaches have in common is the idea that uncanny feelings are the result of our cognitive system that is not hard-wired to deal with highhumanlike mechanical agents, like androids that are somehow more complex to elaborate than persons or mechanical robots.What follows is an overview of these hypotheses. The categorization ambiguity hypothesis suggests that the uncanny feeling toward highly humanized robots is caused by the uncertainty associated with categorizing these robots as real humans or mechanical agents (e.g., Yamada, Kawabe, and Ihaya, 2013). Androids then pose a problem because they are ambiguous category exemplars that fall on the boundaries of the human–robot divide, requiring more effortful processing to correctly categorize them. The negative emotional reactions they elicit would be the result of a more general phenomenon regarding category exemplars that are difficult to identify. Several studies have tested this hypoth­ esis, (for a review, see Kätsyri et al., 2015) showing longer reaction times (a proxy of more effortful processing) and the expression of less liking towards androids (Strait et al., 2017) or stimuli that were difficult to categorize (e.g., morphing of a human with a robot or an animated human image). However, it remains unclear whether it is the increase in effortful processing when categorizing androids that is responsible for the uncanny feelings. Mathur et al. (2016), for instance, found longer reaction times when participants rated the human-likeness of robot faces that were closer to the human (vs. mechanical) end of the spectrum. However, these slower responses were not correlated with the expectation that a potential interaction with such robots would be more negative. The perceptual mismatch hypothesis (also called “feature atypicality” and “realism inconsist­ ency” hypothesis) points to inconsistencies between the human-likeness or realism of specific sen­ sory cues in an anthropomorphic entity as a source of the UV (MacDorman and Chattopadhyay, 2016; MacDorman, Green, Ho, and Koch, 2009). As the brain generates predictions about the stimuli in the environment, an error is generated that manifests itself in an increase in brain activity whenever the features and behaviors of the stimulus are not well-predicted by the brain (Friston, 2010).According to this reasoning, androids pose a problem because not all features that are supposed to resemble the human body are equally realistic.These inconsistencies violate the expectations we have regarding a humanlike entity like an android and therefore elicits negative feelings. In line with this hypothesis, studies have shown that atypical features on an otherwise humanlike entity were associated with negative emotional reactions (e.g., MacDorman et al., 2009; 299

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for a review, see Kätsyri et al., 2015). Such negative emotional reactions were registered when a robot face was paired with a human voice and a human face paired with a synthetic voice (vs. their canonical pairings), showing that a mismatch in the level of humanization of auditory and visual cues can lead to uncanny feelings (Mitchell et al., 2011; for a mismatch in appearance and behavior in androids, see Saygin, Chaminade, Ishiguro, Driver, and Frith, 2012). Other studies have tried to contrast the categorization ambiguity and the perceptual mismatch hypothesis revealing conflicting results. Using a complex set of face stimuli, MacDorman et al. (2016) only found support for the perceptual mismatch hypothesis. Faces that fell in the middle of the real versus computer animated face continuum were harder to categorize (longer reaction times). Nevertheless, they were not judged as the eeriest; the eeriest ratings were given to faces whose features were inconsistent in terms of realism. Note, however, that in this study, stimuli did not include robots. Strait et al. (2017) manipulated both ambiguity and feature atypicality in their stimuli that consisted of humans and robots. In their research, support for both hypotheses was found. Compared to persons and prototypical social robots (i.e., humanoids), both atypical (i.e., a person with a robotic arm, or a robot with a human face) and ambiguous exemplars (i.e., an android or a person with black sclera) of each category (i.e., humans and robots) were judged as the eeriest. Here, however, androids were considered ambiguous and not atypical robots, as they were more difficult to categorize correctly (longer reaction times and greater errors) compared to atypical exemplars (e.g., a robot with a human face).Therefore, although providing support for both hypotheses, this study suggests that the discomfort toward androids is due to their ambiguity rather than to the inconsistency in the realism due to the presence of atypical features, a finding consistent with the categorization ambiguity hypothesis. An additional perspective is provided by the cognitive conflict hypothesis, which suggests that a combination of two cognitive processes is responsible for the UV feeling (Burleigh, Schoenherr, and Lacroix, 2013; Ferrey, Burleigh, and Fenske, 2015).The reasoning is that androids are somehow ambiguous stimuli, as they are mechanical agents with the appearance of a bio­ logical human body. In the initial process of perceiving androids, a cognitive conflict is expected to arise due to the parallel activation of competing interpretations/categories (human vs. robot). This conflict is then solved by prioritizing one interpretation over the other. The extent to which this selection requires the inhibition of the other interpretation is responsible for cre­ ating the uncanny feeling. According to this reasoning, the UV would be the result of a more general form of stimulus devaluation that occurs whenever inhibition processes are triggered to resolve the conflict between competing stimulus representations (Fenske and Raymond, 2006). Studies showing that ambiguous stimuli receive negative judgments are seen as consistent with this hypothesis (e.g., Ferrey et al., 2015). To the best of our knowledge, no study has directly examined this hypothesized link between inhibition and devaluation for robots. However, there is evidence that androids elicit, at least initially, a parallel activation of the human and the robot category. To investigate this process, Paladino, Ferrari, Jetten, and Figliouc (in preparation) relied on a human versus robot categorization task, and a mouse-tracker technique was used to register participants’ hand movements while the responses were given (Freeman, 2018).The stimuli were images of persons (existing) and of humanoid and android robots. They appeared, one at time, at the bottom of the screen and were categorized by mouse-clicking the category labels that were displayed at the opposing top corners of the screen. The mouse-tracker allows observa­ tion of the of the categorization process as it unfolds, from the initial stage (when the stimulus appears and starts to be processed) to the final outcome (when the decision to categorize the stimuli is made), and it is able to register eventual conflict in the early phases of the categoriza­ tion process due to the parallel activation of the human and robot category (Freeman, 2018). 300

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Categorization is, in fact, a dynamic process, initially driven by sensory inputs of the stimulus, but later, top-down processes (e.g., beliefs, knowledge, etc.) intervene to constrain the early stimulus representation. If the perceptual cues of the stimulus activate the same category (i.e., robot), fluctuations over time in the categorization process are minimal.When, as is the case of androids, its cues activate contrasting categories (i.e., robot and human), oscillation and conflict in people’s responses is observed before stabilizing in the final decision (i.e., “this is a robot”). The hand trajectory registered with the mouse-tracker allowed us to gauge whether and to what extent the hand was initially attracted by the other category, providing a proxy of the parallel activation of the human–robot categories that leads to a conflict in categorization. Confirming previous studies (e.g., Strait et al., 2017), longer reaction times were found when categorizing androids (vs. humanoids) as robots. Importantly, the mouse trajectory revealed differences in the online categorization of humanoids and androids. No significant oscillations over time occurred in the processing of humanoids, presumably because their mechanical appearance activated the “robot” category from the start. In contrast, androids initially activated both the human and robot categories, although later in the process this conflict was resolved and participants correctly categorized them as robots. Importantly, these results suggest that the point of contact between human and machine triggered by androids is not just metaphorical but also a cognitive problem, as they also activate the “human” category. An additional study (Paladino et al., in preparation) replicated this finding and provided add­ itional insights into how to reduce this conflict and its role in triggering uncanny feelings. Specifically, altering a human feature—making the skin color blue—in androids resulted in a significant reduction of the activation of the conflicting categories. Interestingly, adding a sign (a colored marker) on the face and the hands of the androids did not decrease this conflict, even though it helped speeding up the categorization process (e.g., faster reaction times). It is likely that the marker acted as additional information that, like other top-down processes, intervened late in the categorization process, having little or no effect on the activation of the conflicting categories. Altering a fundamental human feature (i.e., the color of the skin) that is likely to impact bottom-up perceptual processes, instead, reduced the activation of the human category on the one hand, and potentially also activated artificial elements that converge with our representation of robots (on the role dehumanization as perceptual phenomenon, see Varga, this volume). Importantly, subsequent questionnaire responses suggested that this activation of conflicting categories contributed to the expression of uncanny feelings typically triggered by androids. In fact, altering the skin color (but not adding a marker) not only reduced the conflict but also reduced the creepiness and aversion in imagining an interaction with this technology. The three hypotheses discussed above share the idea that the fear of androids is connected with the cognitive processing of these robots; being high in human-likeness, androids pose some challenges to our cognitive system. Importantly, these hypotheses differ in defining the specific features that trigger these challenges (e.g., lack of information to disambiguate and differen­ tiate androids, inconsistencies in the level of human-likeness of the androids characteristics, the presence of both humanlike and machine-like features or knowledge), as well as the specific cognitive processes that are involved (e.g., more effortful processing, errors in the prediction of the neural model, inhibition of an alternative and incompatible category activation). As we have seen, the empirical research that has tested these hypotheses using androids as stimuli is limited and only offers clear support for the idea that our cognitive system is not hard-wired to deal with robots with a human appearance. However, whether these processes are directly responsible for the uncanny feeling toward androids is less clear.The studies we reviewed suggest that more effortful processing of androids (i.e., longer reaction times) is not always linked with aversion and fears in interacting with this technology, while the parallel activation of incompatible categories 301

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seems to underlie such feelings more consistently. More studies using robots as stimuli are needed to corroborate this idea. As a final note, these hypotheses—and the relative processes—should not be seen as alternative accounts; their relevance could, in fact, depend on context, too. For instance, the cognitive conflict hypothesis appears more important in explaining what occurs in situations/tasks where the android has a clear robot status, whereas the perceptual mismatch hypothesis seems more relevant to understanding the processing and reactions toward androids that act as social companions.

19.5 Conclusion Designed to interact with humans in socially appropriate ways, social robots represent a peculiar and recent development in robotics.The aim of this chapter was to explore fears and concerns toward this new technology. We focused on the role of robot humanization, a central aspect that characterizes the design of social robots and a key element in understanding the paradox underlying our relation with this technology. On the one hand, we have the desire to create a mechanical and autonomous agent that is “human” enough (in terms of appearance, capacities, or behaviors) to fulfill our social and relational needs and enhance our social capacities; on the other hand, these same agents elicit fear when they become “too human” blurring the differences between humans and machines. In other words, that what turns our hope for this technology into concern is its humanization—the level of similarity of robots with humans. We discussed both motivational and cognitive mechanisms in an attempt to explain why too much similarity triggers such fears. The motivational account builds on the idea that the dis­ tinctiveness from machines contributes to the definition of our human identity. It follows, then, that high-humanlike robots (whichever the basis of resemblance to humans, appearance, skills, or behaviors) pose a symbolic threat, altering, undermining, or even loosing what makes us human. According to this threat to human distinctiveness account, motivational processes that underlie how we protect our human identity are responsible for the societal resistance toward the entering of this technology in our everyday life. A second explanation focuses on cognitive processes that account for the uncanny feelings people report when imagining interactions with robots that are high in humanlike appearance, like androids.Too much similarity challenges our cognitive system that, based on previous experi­ ence, treats humans and machines as mutually exclusive categories.The perception of mechanical agents that look too humanlike, therefore, challenges the routine of our cognitive system that only by using more complex processing manages to deal with such entities, often triggering uncanny feelings as a result. The motivational and the cognitive mechanisms we have discussed in this chapter provide complementary perspectives to explain the fears and concerns that accompany the introduc­ tion of humanlike social robots in our daily lives—complementary not only in terms of the psychological mechanisms (motivational and higher order vs. merely cognitive and low-level processes), but also for the contexts in which they can be applied.The cognitive account appears better suited to explain emotional negative reactions in human–robot interaction, whereas the motivational explanation also highlights some mechanisms that foster societal concerns for the entering of such technology in everyday life (and, therefore, independent of its direct use). Despite these differences, these two perspectives converge in suggesting that technologies that do not look too humanlike have better chances of being socially accepted. From this perspective, the relatively smoother acceptance of devices that use AI (e.g., Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa) compared to the more visceral reactions that robots generally receive can be understood (Pew Research Center, 2018). Indeed, most of the time these AI devices are disembodied agents that 302

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do not have a humanlike resemblance.Through the use of algorithms, these devices help us to get around—recommending social events or potential friends, helping us find our way (e.g., Google maps) or giving us unlimited access to the vast knowledge of the internet. Still, AI devices, even when not embodied, have the potential to affect our conception of humanness and our human identity.While social robots provide the possibility of a prosthetic self-enhancement, AI devices offer that of direct self-enhancement.The consequences are similar, in that they set new standards for human capacities and might trigger processes of self-dehumanization. Indeed, artificial intel­ ligence algorithms have shown to be more accurate in making personality judgments than our partner or best friends (Youyou, Kosinski, and Stillwell, 2015), raising doubts on our own human capacities. To conclude, social robots and AI devices teach us something about who we are.The declared goal of the permanent exhibition on androids at the Miraikan museum (Tokyo) is that of reflecting on what is human. In order to make a robot that perfectly blends in with humans, we need to know everything, from the almost imperceptible motor responses when we mimic emotions to the full complexity of human communication.Therefore, the study of social robotics is as much about them as it is about us, and it might help us to further understand what makes us human and what conditions deprive us of that unique quality.

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M. P. Paladino, J. Vaes, and J. Jetten Friston, K. (2010) “The free-energy principle: A unified brain theory?”, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11, pp. 127–138. Giger, J. C., Piçarra, N., Alves‐Oliveira, P., Oliveira, R., and Arriaga, P. (2019) “Humanization of robots: Is it really such a good idea?”, Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies, 1, pp. 111–123. Haslam, N. (2006) “Dehumanization: An integrative review”, Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, pp. 252–264. Haslam, N. (2020) “The social psychology of dehumanization”, in: M. Kronfeldner, Ed., The Routledge handbook of dehumanization. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 125–144. (this volume). Haslam, N., and Loughnan, S. (2014) “Dehumanization and infrahumanization”, Annual Review of Psychology, 65, pp. 399–423. Hornsey, M. J., and Jetten, J. (2003) “Not being what you claim to be: Impostors as sources of group threat”, European Journal of Social Psychology, 33, pp. 639–657. Jetten, J., Spears, R., and Manstead, A. S. (1996) “Intergroup norms and intergroup discrimination: Distinctive self-categorization and social identity effects”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, pp. 1222–1233. Jetten, J., Spears, R., and Manstead, A. S. (1997) “Distinctiveness threat and prototypicality: Combined effects on intergroup discrimination and collective self-esteem”, European Journal of Social Psychology, 27, pp. 635–657. Kätsyri, J., Förger, K., Mäkäräinen, M., and Takala, T. (2015) “A review of empirical evidence on different uncanny valley hypotheses: Support for perceptual mismatch as one road to the valley of eeriness”, Frontiers in Psychology, 6, p. 390. Kaufmann, P. (2011) “Instrumentalization: What does it mean to use a person?”, in: P. Kaufmann, H. Kuch, C. Neuhauser, and E. Webster, Eds., Humiliation, degradation, dehumanization: Human dignity violated. New York, NY: Springer, pp. 57–65. Kim, S. Y., Schmitt, B. H., and Thalmann, N. M. (2019) “Eliza in the uncanny valley: Anthropomorphizing consumer robots increases their perceived warmth but decreases liking”, Marketing Letters, 30, pp. 1–12. LaGrandeur, K. (2013) Androids and intelligent networks in early modern literature and culture: Artificial slaves. New York, NY: Routledge. Leyens, J., Paladino, P. M., Rodriguez-Torres, R., Vaes, J., Demoulin, S., Rodriguez-Perez, A., and Gaunt, R. (2000) “The emotional side of prejudice: The attribution of secondary emotions to ingroups and outgroups”, Personality and Social Psychology Review, 4, pp. 186–197. Loughnan, S., and Haslam, N. (2007) “Animals and androids: Implicit associations between social cat­ egories and nonhumans”, Psychological Science, 18, pp. 116–121. MacDorman, K., and Ishiguro, H. (2006) “The uncanny advantage of using androids in cognitive and social science research”, Interaction Studies, 7(3), pp. 297–337. MacDorman, K. F. (2005, December) “Mortality salience and the uncanny valley”, Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE- RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, 5, pp. 339–405. MacDorman, K. F., and Chattopadhyay, D. (2016) “Reducing consistency in human realism increases the uncanny valley effect; increasing category uncertainty does not”, Cognition, 146, pp. 190–205. MacDorman, K. F., and Entezari, S. O. (2015) “Individual differences predict sensitivity to the uncanny valley”, Interaction Studies, 16, pp. 141–172. MacDorman, K. F., Green, R. D., Ho, C.-C., and Koch, C. T. (2009) “Too real for comfort? Uncanny responses to computer generated faces”, Computers in Human Behavior, 25, pp. 695–710. Martinez, R., Rodriguez-Bailon, R., and Moya, M. (2012) “Are they animals or machines? Measuring dehumanization”, The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 15, pp. 1110–1122. Mathur, M. B., and Reichling, D. B. (2016) “Navigating a social world with robot partners: A quantitative cartography of the Uncanny Valley”, Cognition, 146, pp. 22–32. Mitchell, W. J., Szerszen Sr, K. A., Lu, A. S., Schermerhorn, P. W., Scheutz, M., and MacDorman, K. F. (2011) “A mismatch in the human realism of face and voice produces an uncanny valley”, i-Perception, 2, pp. 10–12. Paladino, Ferrari, Jetten, and Figliouc (in preparation) Too human: Cognitive conflict in categorization of androids. Mori, M. (1970) “The uncanny valley”, Energy, 7, pp. 33–35. Pew Research Center: Internet, Science and Tech. (2018) Attitudes toward algorithms used on social media. [online] Available at: https://www.pewinternet.org/2018/11/16/algorithms-in-action-the­ content-people-see-on-social-media/ [Accessed 31 Jan. 2020].

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Fear of social robots Pew Research Center (October 2017) Automatation in Everyday Life. [online] Available at: http://assets. pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2017/10/03151500/PI_2017.10.04_Automation_ FINAL.pdf [Accessed 31 Jan. 2020]. Rosenthal-von der Pütten, A., and Weiss, A. (2015) “The uncanny valley phenomenon does it affect all of us”, Interaction Studies, 16, pp. 206–214. Rosenthal-von der Pütten, A. M., and Krämer, N. C. (2014) “How design characteristics of robots determine evaluation and uncanny valley related responses”, Computers in Human Behavior, 36, pp. 422–439. Sarrica, M., Brondi, S., and Fortunati, L. (2019) “How many facets does a “social robot” have? A review of scientific and popular definitions online”, Information Technology & People, 33(1), pp. 1–21. Saygin, A. P., Chaminade, T., Ishiguro, H., Driver, J., and Frith, C. (2012) “The thing that should not be: Predictive coding and the uncanny valley in perceiving human and humanoid robot actions”, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 7, pp. 413–422. Strait, M. K., Floerke, V. A., Ju, W., Maddox, K., Remedios, J. D., Jung, M. F., and Urry, H. L. (2017) “Understanding the uncanny: Both atypical features and category ambiguity provoke aversion toward humanlike robots”, Frontiers in Psychology, 8, p. 1366. Tajfel, H. (1981) Human groups and social categories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Timmermans, S., and Almeling, R. (2009) “Objectification, standardization, and commodification in health care: A conceptual readjustment”, Social Science & Medicine, 69, pp. 21–27. Vaes, J., Leyens, J.-P., Paladino, M., and Miranda, M. (2012) “We are human, they are not: Driving forces behind outgroup dehumanisation and the humanisation of the ingroup”, European Review of Social Psychology, 23, pp. 64–106. Vaes, J., Loughnan, S., and Puvia, E. (2014) “The inhuman body: When sexual objectification becomes dehumanizing”, in: P. G. Bain, J. Vaes, and J-Ph. Leyens, Eds., Humanness and dehumanization. London: Psychology Press, pp. 186–204. Varga, S. (2020) “Could dehumanization be perceptual?”, in: M. Kronfeldner, Ed., The Routledge handbook of dehumanization. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 378–392. (this volume). Wang, S., Lilienfeld, S. O., and Rochat, P. (2015) “The uncanny valley: Existence and explanations”, Review of General Psychology, 19, pp. 393–407. Warner, R, Hornsey, M. J., and Jetten, J. (2007) “Why minority group members resent impostors”, European Journal of Social Psychology, 37, pp. 1–17. Yamada, Y., Kawabe, T., and Ihaya, K. (2013) “Categorization difficulty is associated with negative evalu­ ation in the “uncanny valley” phenomenon”, Japanese Psychological Research, 55, pp. 20–32. Yogeeswaran, K., Złotowski, J., Livingstone, M., Bartneck, C., Sumioka, H., and Ishiguro, H. (2016) “The interactive effects of robot anthropomorphism and robot ability on perceived threat and support for robotics research”, Journal of Human-Robot Interaction, 5, pp. 29–47. Youyou, W., Kosinski, M., and Stillwell, D. (2015) “Computer-based personality judgments are more accurate than those made by humans”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112, pp. 1036–1040. Złotowski, J., Yogeeswaran, K., and Bartneck, C. (2017) “Can we control it? Autonomous robots threaten human identity, uniqueness, safety, and resources”, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 100, pp. 48–54.

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PART IV

Conceptual and epistemological

questions regarding dehumanization

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20

OBJECTIFICATION,

INFERIORIZATION,

AND PROJECTION IN

PHENOMENOLOGICAL

RESEARCH ON

DEHUMANIZATION

Sara Heinämaa and James Jardine 20.1 Introduction It would be an exaggeration to claim that dehumanization is a central concept in phenom­ enological philosophy.This notwithstanding, our aim in the present chapter is to demonstrate that both classical and existential phenomenologists developed concepts that are of crucial pertinence and value to contemporary dehumanization research.We begin with some prelim­ inary reflections on the relationship between dehumanization, objectification, and subjectivity, arguing that in light of phenomenological analyses, dehumanization must not be identified with objectification tout court, nor simply with actions that compromise the autonomy or well-being of human beings (Section 20.2). Frantz Fanon’s highly influential work on colonial racism is then considered.We show that Fanon’s investigation of racial inferiorization draws a crucial distinction between extreme forms of dehumanization and a more general, everyday form, that is pervasive within racist societies and makes possible the former (Section 20.3). We then explicate Simone de Beauvoir’s discussion of the male dehumanization of women as “subhuman” beings and show that it operates, in her analysis, by emotive projections in which undesired qualities of oneself are attributed to others.We compare de Beauvoir’s phenomeno­ logical analysis with Martha Nussbaum’s more recent theory of projection (Section 20.4) and, on the basis of the comparison, clarify the dehumanizing character of projective intentionality (Section 20.5). Husserl, Fanon, and de Beauvoir are by no means the only phenomenologists whose work offers tools for contemporary dehumanization research.The tradition entails many other valuable resources. Powerful critical tools are found, most prominently, in Emmanuel Levinas’ discussion of the irreducibility of the other subject ([1947] 1987, [1961] 1969), Jean-Paul Sartre’s analysis of the shame-inflicting gaze and its operation in group formation and anonymous seriality ([1943] 2018, [1960] 2004), and Hannah Arendt’s discourse on spontaneity and natality (1951, 1958). Levinasian, Sartrean, and Arendtian concepts have effectively been used in contemporary studies of different forms of violence and injustice.1 309

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All these concepts stem from the methodological framework of 20th-century phenomen­ ology.2 They were developed for the purpose of accounting for new technological and institu­ tional forms of violence, experienced and witnessed on the battle fields in the two world wars and in the political and ethnic persecutions of totalitarian regimes, in prison camps, gulags, and death camps. In addition to mere descriptive aims, these concepts were devised for the pur­ pose of countering the authoritarian ideologies that molded Europe during the first half of the 20th century. We will not cover the whole, or even the most, of this theoretical-critical inheritance but will focus our account on the contributions of Husserl, Fanon, and Beauvoir. The reasons for this are both methodological and thematic: Husserl provided the basic methods and concep­ tual tools that allow phenomenologists to study different variations of human sociality and embodiment. Fanon and Beauvoir conducted original analyses of two concrete cases of dehu­ manizing practices; namely, racism and sexism in postwar Europe. Moreover, the concepts and arguments they developed for this purpose continue to inform studies of race and gender as well as discussions of specific historical cases of dehumanizing violence.3

20.2 Thingly objectification and human subjectivity While discussing the nature of human life, Edmund Husserl, the founder of 20th-century phe­ nomenology, distinguishes in passing between three different ways in which human beings can be said to be treated as mere things. He then points out that these three manners of disregard all have a common intentional core. First, we can intend other human beings as mere things in the moral-practical sense; second, we can also treat them as such in the jur­ idical sphere; and third, we can conceive of them similarly in the theoretical contexts of the sciences (Husserl [1952] 1989, 200–201).4 In Husserl’s view, we treat others as mere things in the moral sense when we fail to acknowledge them as fellow participants in the ethical community, and thus as intrinsically worthy of non-instrumental treatment, respect, and ben­ evolence (cf. Husserl 2004, 10). Disregarding subjectivity in the juridical sphere, on the other hand, occurs when individuals or institutions neglect a human being’s membership of a legal community or participation in juridical practices. Finally, taking other human beings as mere things in the theoretical context entails that their actions are studied as instances of general natural laws that uniformly govern all human behavior.The other is not addressed as a unique person, with an individual style of relating and comporting, but studied as a psychophysical object causally and functionally connected to other things (Husserl [1952] 1989, 192–201). The common core that unites these three cases of treating human beings as mere things, Husserl suggests, is that they each, in different ways, disregard a subject’s active participation in a human community, and hence their membership in a human world that coalesces around human communities. Husserl’s distinction suggests that dehumanization, understood as the treatment of human beings as mere things, always happens with respect to specific human practices, not in isola­ tion from practices. Thus, rather than facing one unified phenomenon of dehumanization, we encounter several different forms of dehumanization, operative in various practical and valueladen contexts—for example, juridical, religious, and scientific. This highlights the fact that phenomenologists do not analyze dehumanization merely in terms of the discrete cognitive attitudes that may be operative in certain kinds of violent acts. To this extent, the phenomenological conceptualization of dehumanization differs from the one that is central to contemporary discussions of the topic and that frames dehumanization essentially as a cognitive process—a belief or perception—which construes the other as sub- or 310

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inhuman. Many theorists proceed in this way by first identifying a cognitive apprehension and then assessing the extent to which it serves to motivate humanity-denigrating actions (see, e.g., Livingstone Smith 2011, 2016; Manne 2016).5 In contrast, for phenomenologists dehuman­ ization is a broader phenomenon and not restricted to cognitive or even individual-subjective processes.While there are cases where cognitive attitudes serve as the primary means of dehu­ manization, cognition can acquire a humanity-denigrating character only when embedded in specific practical and emotive contexts. And in other cases, the dehumanizing enactment is not merely cognitive but also involves deeds and/or emotions. Moreover, as we will see, phenomenologists study and conceptualize dehumanization as an intersubjective process that is not limited to the mental life of the agent (the dehumanizer), but also essentially incorporates the manner in which the activity is experienced, interpreted, and taken up by the target(s) (the dehumanized). In order to further illuminate the phenomenon of dehumanization—and to emphasize its irre­ ducibility to cognition—a helpful contrast can be drawn with objectification. In everyday language, the term “objectification” refers to attitudes in which human beings are considered, treated, or described as things, instruments, or animals. Since antiquity, philosophers have discussed morally and politically problematic cases of such objectification; for example, the treatment of human beings as possessions in slavery and the framing of human bodies as disposable tools in erotic life. In his Lectures on Ethics, Kant already used the term “object” (Objekt) to criticize the instrumentalization of human persons (Kant [1762–1794] 1963, 27:384.3–5/163; cf. Rinne 2018, 71–73; Papadaki 2019). Phenomenology, however, operates with a non-normative concept of objectification (e.g., Husserl [1913] 2014, 64ff.; [1952] 1989, 15ff.). The phenomenological concept of objectifica­ tion merely entails that whatever is objectified is intended in some mode of being or other.The experience of noticing a mechanical doll moving in the shop window is called an “objectifying” experience in the sense that it presents the doll as being there behind the glass, among the other displays. On the other hand, the experience of imagining a person hiding herself among the dolls, presents the person as a fictional being without reality. This, too, is an objectifying experi­ ence in the phenomenological sense but different in kind from perception, since it provides the human being with mere imaginary existence.To study different manners in which things can be intended by us as being, phenomenologists distinguish between different modes, orders, and levels of objectification. As these last remarks make clear, the phenomenological concept of objectification does not merely apply to the sphere of interpersonal relations but characterizes our conscious experience of worldly matters and situations in general. Since our aim here is to employ this concept so as to analyze severe distortions in our attitudes toward other human beings, it will be neces­ sary to identify a specific mode of objectification, in which others are considered in a way that disregards their subjectivity.We will term this specific mode of objectifying consciousness thingly objectification. Thingly objectification, in this sense, is a technical concept encompassing all processes of attention and speech in which human beings are taken, in one or another practical context, as mere things or physical objects. Crucially, most phenomenologists maintain that this is not the normal manner of intending and experiencing others, but is a secondary and dependent formation, established in processes of thematic suspension, isolation, and abstraction and for specific purposes. Despite significant differences in their accounts of intersubjectivity, Husserl, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas all argued that, in its most fundamental form, our experi­ ence of other human beings frames them, not as physical or psychophysical objects, but pre­ cisely as other subjects of conscious life, intentional activity, and volitional and emotional 311

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agency (Sartre [1943] 2018, 347f.; Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012, 363–373; Husserl [1952] 1989, 147–149; Levinas [1961] 1969, 197ff.).Thingly objectification is thus not our primary experi­ ence of others. But this does not imply or entail that it falls outside our experiential possibil­ ities entirely or that it is, in all cases, dehumanizing. Let us illustrate this with some everyday examples. I am late from a meeting and have to run on a busy street. In order to avoid colliding with the people who stand by the traffic lights on the street side, I do not need to attend to them as fellow human persons, perceptually conscious of the human world in its fullness, emotionally motivated to operate in it, and practically engaged in unique projects. In order to efficiently and safely pass them by, I may simply notice them in the very same manner as I notice traffic posts and street lights—merely perceptually, as material things with locations and positions in the environing space. I can, of course, attend to each one of them as a subjects of a distinctive personal life, endowed with human skills and capabilities, and as such different from traffic posts and streetlights and all other merely material things, but for the brief moment in which I need to pass the crowd, it is necessary that I merely estimate the dimensions, locations, and momenta of their bodies in relation to other environing things and simply coordinate myself so as to move around them. Our behavior toward anonymous others is, of course, predominantly framed by our familiarity with numerous social practices, our commitment to various norms that give shape and stability to human coexistence, and our desire to live together with others in a civil manner.And yet the example introduced above suggests that perceptual attention is not thoroughly determined by its social framing but is also able to operate independently of strictly human norms.6 What is significant for the present purposes is that, as the example illustrates, thingly objectifi­ cation is a possible, and perhaps even relatively common, occurrence in human life, and that it is not in itself morally reprehensible or politically suspect. Indeed, attending to other human beings as mere material things may be required for successfully carrying out various harmless activities, and even for furthering others’ well-being in some contexts (cf. Strawson 1974; Nussbaum 1999, 223; Manne 2018, 140; Papadaki 2019). Another type of thingly objectification has an explicit professional setting: When a medical surgeon works to remove an opaque lens in the eye of a patient with cataract, she needs to regard her patient as a physiological organism composed of purely material elements and manipulable by the very same means as other material things.This is necessary for the medical operation that aims at the well-being of the patient. However, a similar attitude can also serve destructive ends. This happens in organ procurement, or “organ harvesting,” for example, which is the practice of subjecting powerless or desperate people, such as prisoners, the destitute, or members of minority groups, to an operation in which one or several of their organs or tissues are removed for reuse, typically transplantation. In some cases, people sell their body parts for payment while in other cases they are subjected to such operations by force. In neither case does the procedure serve the health of the person. This suggests that thingly objectification, as a broad class of intentional attitudes and acts, can serve dehumanizing ends but is not essentially dehumanizing. If this holds, then we need to ask what distinguishes dehumanizing applications of thingly objectification from less pernicious and harmless cases. It is relatively clear that this is not simply a matter of whether the activity is of benefit to the person acted upon. The history of patient–doctor interaction provides several examples in which treatments are performed in the interests of the patients, but still in ways that dehumanize the subjects (e.g., Foucault [1961] 1965; Showalter 1980; Martin [1987] 2001; Butler 2004).These cases draw attention to the fact that many of our intuitions about dehuman­ ization concern personal autonomy: we tend to experience and conceive of an action or practice 312

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as fundamentally inappropriate if it compromises the autonomy of the persons in question, their capacities of self-awareness or self-regulation (cf. Korsgaard 1996; Drummond 2006).The violation of autonomy in this sense seems to be both a necessary and sufficient condition of dehumanization. However, consideration of certain non-artificial examples suggests that even if the violation of personal autonomy is integral to many cases of dehumanization, it is not a necessary feature of dehumanization. One group of such cases involves human persons who by definition lack the type of autonomy at issue, most importantly perhaps, reflective self-awareness or self-regulation. Examples of such groups are young infants and dementia patients. Both cases are crucial for the task of theorizing dehumanization since it seems that both can be treated in dehumanizing ways even without actually harming any aspect of human autonomy. Some philosophers argue that such treatments are dehumanizing in so far as they target indi­ viduals who, despite their lack of full human autonomy, are potentially autonomous subjects (e.g., Stone 1987). However, several phenomenologists have suggested that the core of dehumanizing treatment is not the violation of human autonomy. Even if dehumanization often involves such violation, these authors contend, it harms our capacities more thoroughly and our humanity more fundamentally. Rather than compromising the freedom and self-governance of the human will, dehumanizing acts would undermine the axiological character of the human person—that is, question her as a valuing subject with unique and unprecedented value-attachments. The main point here is not that dehumanizing acts and practices would overlook the unparalleled value of human beings—even if they often do so—but rather that the specific harmfulness of such acts and practices lies in their fundamental disregard for the uniqueness and singularity of human lives. In this conception, humanity or the humankind is not composed of a set of replaceable or substitutable members but forms an open and developing system in which each member and each part is integral and contributes to the maintenance of the whole. Thus, crippling and humiliating treatments of human persons would not just violate the targeted individuals but would also risk humankind as such. This intuition is shared by several phenomenologists. It is explicitly defended by classical authors, including Husserl, Max Scheler, and Edith Stein, but we find similar intuitions also in the work of Hannah Arendt. In The Human Condition, Arendt argues that each human individual adds a new set of possibilities to those of the humankind and is invited to do so by the sheer fact of her birth as a speaking and acting subject (Arendt 1958, 176–177). Arendt argues that all humans come to the world as strangers; that is, as unique beings, whose arrival cannot be expected or anticipated on the basis of what is or what has been.This holds equally for each individual human being as well as for the whole of the humankind. Our arrival and our actions cannot be predicted on the basis of the lives of our ancestors; they can only be motivated and prompted by earlier activities. Thus, unexpectedness is a constant state in human existence, and violence against human individuals and groups of human indi­ viduals always entails violence against new beginnings (Arendt 1958, 178, cf. 144, 257; see also Schott 2010). In this section, we have argued for a number of general claims regarding the phenomenon of dehumanization.We first showed that dehumanization is a transgression that occurs relative to a particular practical framework, before highlighting the difference between the phenomenological conceptualization of dehumanization and more cognitivist accounts.We then argued that a phe­ nomenologically grounded account of dehumanization cannot simply identify it with thingly objectification, or with actions that compromise the autonomy of the victim’s will. Rather, at its core, dehumanization is a violation of the very subjectivity of the person, of their capacity to 313

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participate in the human world and singularly enrich the broader human community. Our task in the remainder of the chapter will be to demonstrate that phenomenology also offers resources to analyze concrete forms of dehumanization, and to explicate the structural components and relational dynamics they involve.

20.3 Frantz Fanon on dehumanization, inferiorization, and epidermalization Perhaps the best-known phenomenological contribution to contemporary discourse on dehumanization is Frantz Fanon’s analysis of racialized embodiment, dating from the 1950s and early 1960s. Fanon was a psychiatrist, anticolonial revolutionary, political theorist, and philosopher, whose highly influential writings examined the experiences of the racialized and colonized in postwar Europe and Africa. In this section, we will present several insights from his work that are especially pertinent to dehumanization research. As we shall see, Fanon draws an important distinction between extreme cases of dehumanization and social dynamics that are dehumanizing in a more subtle and everyday manner. Fanon conceptualizes the latter as inferiorization and introduces the further concept of epidermalization to capture the specific manner in which inferiorization intersects with demeaning social understandings of the racialized person’s embodiment. A further merit of Fanon’s work is his attentive­ ness, not only to the mental life of the dehumanizer, but also, and indeed primarily, to how the dehumanizing behavior is taken up by and affects the dehumanized. In addition, Fanon addresses the manner in which processes of inferiorization undermine the dehumanized person’s ability to subjectively inhabit their body and thus violate the fundamental inter­ personal scaffoldings required for autonomous agency. Finally, his phenomenological account of epidermalization clarifies the role that deformations of emotion play within dehumanization. Given Fanon’s investment in an existentialist, socialist, and antiracist variant of radical humanism, it is perhaps unsurprising that the central critical concept of his investigations of life under colonial subordination is alienation, rather than dehumanization. But while Fanon employed the concept of dehumanization (déshumanisation) somewhat selectively, it occupied a crucial role in his account of colonial subjugation and racism, and it informed his advocation of specific anticolonial and antiracist political strategies. For Fanon, the alienation of colonized and racially inferiorized persons typically involves both exposure to specific and explicit experiences of dehumanization, and a more ubiquitous and subtle situation of generalized dehumanization. It is clear, for instance, from the letter announcing his resignation from a psychiatric post in Algeria that Fanon regarded the situation in the country as involving a multifaceted and politically instrumental dehumanization, and that he believed this ought to be acknowledged as the source of severe psychological disturbances amongst the colonized population (Fanon [2015] 2018, 434). His pointed usage of the term “dehumanization” in this letter, written in the aftermath of the Battle of Algiers, partially refers to the summary executions, sexual assault, and torture that had been increasingly perpetrated by French forces during this period. However, it is clear that Fanon regarded these particularly extreme instances of dehumanization as manifestations of a broader dehumanizing process inherent within the colonial project (Fanon [1964] 1967, 64). Indeed, he suggests that the constant threat of overtly dehumanizing actions was necessary for maintaining colonial subordination, and that this is one crucial respect in which colonization has remained historically continuous with the legacy of the slave trade (Fanon [1964] 1967, 66, 33–35; [1952] 2008, 205).

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Notably, Fanon’s discussion of such brutal colonial atrocities and practices suggests that they are dehumanizing precisely because they involve a way of acting upon others that resembles the instrumental treatment of tools or animals, and that exhibits a total absence of concern or respect for the person acted upon (Fanon [1952] 2008, 194; [1964] 1967, 35). In this respect, Fanon’s understanding of dehumanization converges significantly with the non-cognitivist account outlined in the previous section. Crucially, however, Fanon also offers a phenomeno­ logically grounded investigation of a more pervasive and less overt variety of dehumanization and suggests that this foundational mode of dehumanization sets the stage for more radical denigrations of humanity. In his account, this “everyday” mode of dehumanization becomes manifest in the dynamics of racializing interpersonal encounters.To appreciate Fanon’s contribu­ tion here, it will first be necessary to spell out his key concepts of inferiorization, epidermalization, and the white gaze. Fanon argues that a prerequisite for the extreme form of dehumanization effected by colonial atrocities was the cultivation of a certain mindset within the colonial forces in particular and colonial society more generally, through the circulation of myths, pseudoscientific racial the­ ories, and images that motivated and putatively justified dehumanizing modes of action (Fanon [1952] 2008, 89–154; [1961] 2004, 7–8; [1964] 1967, 31–32, 36). These cultural portrayals of the subordinated group are at times explicitly dehumanizing in the sense that the colonized are depicted as nonhuman animals. In other cases, matters are less simple, in that the oppressed are rather crudely portrayed through demeaning caricatures of human psychology. The common feature of such depictions is their role in disseminating an interpretation of the colonized persons as essentially inferior. Fanon argued that this understanding of the oppressed group as essentially inferior, culturally formed and collectively accepted, served to make the structurally ingrained subordination of the group seem legitimate and inevitable. A habituated sense of the oppressed group’s disvalue also made possible the perpetuation of dehumanizing atrocities, whose constant threat was instrumental in effectively imposing and upholding the colonial order. Moreover, in societies where racism becomes regarded as an intellectual or moral flaw, the sociocultural inter­ pretations of racialized groups as inferior can nevertheless remain tacitly operative at the level of implicit associations, nonreflective emotional reactions, and bodily habits, even if not reflect­ ively endorsed in explicit judgments or speech acts (cf. Al-Saji 2014; Ngo 2016; Yancy 2017, 17–44). Fanon introduces the concept of inferiorization to encapsulate the overall process through which such a lower social status is culturally construed, imposed and reproduced through social structures and interpersonal interactions, and ultimately internalized, to a certain extent, by the target group: “It is not possible to enslave men without logically making them inferior through and through. And racism is only the emotional, affective, sometimes intellectual explanation of this inferiorization” (Fanon [1964] 1967, 40). In Black Skin,White Masks, Fanon offered a detailed investigation of the psychosocial dynamics of inferiorization, focusing especially on how such dynamics have affected and been responded to by black people born in the French colonies. For Fanon, the inferiorization of black people in European colonialism is a process involving two distinct dimensions. Its dismantling therefore requires the waging of “a struggle on two levels.” Not only has colonialism involved extreme forms of economic exploitation, political subordination, and cultural homogenization that must be overcome, it has also involved an “internalization or rather epidermalization of this inferiority” from which the colonized people must equally liberate themselves (Fanon [1952] 2008, xv). In Fanon’s work,“epidermalization” refers to the widespread association of black skin with inferiority, as well as the profound experiential and existential challenges that this associ­ ation generates for the racialized group.

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Fanon introduces the technical concept of epidermalization to encapsulate a process that is both deeply embodied and essentially intersubjective. On the one hand, the concept refers to specific distortions of perception and affect that first emerge within the dominant group and are vividly manifest in their engagement with the racialized group.What is at issue here are ways of looking at and reacting to the racialized other that betray an affective perception of their bodily features as ugly or repulsive, or as outward indicators of immaturity, aggressiveness, or evil. Fanon refers to this process as initiating an “epidermalization” of inferiority, because it involves such imaginary negative qualities becoming habitually entangled with perceptions of skin color, amongst other bodily cues. On the other hand, epidermalization also refers to the violent transformations that such bodily perceptions inflict upon the embodied self-awareness of the racialized subject, and their damaging existential implications (Fanon [1952] 2008, 89ff.). Being repeatedly exposed to others’ inferiorizing and racializing reactions to one’s bodily presence leads to the terrifying and alienating realization that one’s visibility to others is unrecognizably deformed. This has the effect of “tying him to an image, snaring him as the eternal victim of his own essence, of a visible appearance for which he is not responsible” (Fanon [1952] 2008: 18). Moreover, Fanon claims argues that epidermalization is essentially dehumanizing, in as much it is intertwined with an evaluative hierarchy that sets up whiteness as the norm of humanity and classifies individuals who deviate from that norm as less than fully human (Fanon [1952] 2008, 2, 9–10, xii, 63). Fanon’s phenomenological analysis of the epidermalization of inferiority focuses primarily on his own experiences of becoming the target of racially motivated collective fear in a train carriage in France and the existential crisis that this event subsequently initiated. More spe­ cifically, he recalls an encounter in which a young French boy repeatedly pointed at him and cried,“Look! A Negro!” and then “Maman, look, a Negro; I’m scared!”—expressing a fear that Fanon suggests was palpably shared by others in the train carriage (Fanon [1952] 2008, 91). Fanon takes this event to illuminate the deeply unsettling power of “the white gaze,” by which he means not only a visual regard but a dominating source of perceptual meaning that is articulated by the affectively charged gestures and attitudes accompanying it (Fanon [1952] 2008, 90, 89). Fanon emphasizes that the white gaze is haunted by “historicity” (Fanon [1952] 2008, 92), such that it is not merely a passive registration of reality, but rather configures the black person’s bodily appearance via its association with racist narratives and preconceptions drawn from the white social imaginary. Accordingly, the white gaze imposes a vision of the black body that is “woven (…) out of a thousand details, anecdotes, and stories” (Fanon [1952] 2008, 91).Through the styles of bodily and verbal expression that accompany it, the white gaze radiates an emotive understanding of the racialized person’s embodiment, one that associates the racialized person—in body and psyche—with backwardness, wickedness, and animality (Fanon [1952] 2008, 92–4). Fanon describes the process, enacted by the white gaze, of “draping” the racialized person’s body with essentializing, othering, and animalizing meanings as the construction of a “historical-racial schema.”The essential point for Fanon is not only that such construction takes place, but also that that the racialized person unavoidably experiences this imposed schema as contaminating and overlaying their body schema (Fanon [1952] 2008, 92).That is, Fanon argues that living under the white gaze often generates a pronounced disturbance in the bodily experience of the racialized subject.This disruption occurs through the intrusion of an external image of one’s own body as threatening and repulsive, an intrusion that can afflict deep and intimate levels of one’s bodily self-awareness and even interrupt the ability to bodily engage with the world in a confident and uninhibited fashion (Fanon [1952] 2008, 91–92). More generally, Fanon claims that to live as a black person in a world structured 316

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by the colonial white gaze is to be imprisoned within an existentially stifling social iden­ tity from which no individual liberation is possible without profound societal transform­ ation (Fanon [1952] 2008, 92–119, 198–206). Accordingly, he suggests that experiences of epidermalization reveal as well as contribute to broader processes of colonial inferiorization, and that experiences of the white gaze can ultimately serve to fuel emancipatory social and political struggles, to the extent that they disclose to the epidermalized person the impos­ sibility of realizing their full humanity under the current order (Fanon [1952] 2008, 92, 118–119, 63; [1961] 2004, 7–8). While Fanon’s analysis of epidermalization is perhaps his main contribution to dehuman­ ization research, there are a number of further facets of his account that are of enduring relevance and value. Fanon’s work demonstrates the necessity of an intersubjective analysis of dehumanization, one that does not only take into account the dehumanizer’s attitudes and acts, but also investigates the dehumanized person’s experiences of their humanity being violated. It is only through such an approach that the demeaning and fundamentally under­ mining character of dehumanizing activity can be highlighted. Moreover, we have seen that Fanon draws on phenomenological philosophy—as well as on his own psychiatric experi­ ence—to argue that the epidermalization of inferiority leaves those it afflicts unable to form an unimpaired social identity in which they can recognize themselves. Indeed, Fanon claims that this can even interrupt the racialized person’s sense of their own body as a locus of spontaneous movement and practical potentiality.This claim challenges exclusively autonomy-based accounts of dehumanization, since it suggests that what dehumanization violates is certain capacities that function as preconditions for full-blown autonomy; namely, the person’s basic bodily integrity and a positive identity supported by social recognition (cf. Kauppinen 2011). A further merit of Fanon’s analysis is that it illuminates the role played by emotion in dehu­ manizing forms of social engagement (cf. Heinämaa 2020; Jardine 2020; Brudholm and Lang, this volume). Fanon demonstrates that it is emotions such as disgust, fear, and hatred—as well as certain varieties of erotic attraction—that often serve as the primary medium through which another person’s essential inferiority is conveyed (Fanon [1952] 2008, 91–92, 133, 143–144). In this regard, his account of dehumanization significantly converges with the one developed by Simone de Beauvoir, a phenomenologist who greatly influenced Fanon, and whose work will be considered in the remainder of the chapter. As we shall see, one of the great merits of de Beauvoir’s account is that she employs phenomenological analyses and arguments, not only to analyze concrete experiences of dehumanization, but also to uncover the existential motivations that underlie and compel male dehumanization of women.7

20.4 Simone de Beauvoir on woman’s otherness In Hiding from Humanity (2006) and Political Emotions (2013), Martha Nussbaum argues that dehumanization, in various forms, operates by the psychological mechanisms of projection. In short, human beings tend to project their own unwanted qualities onto one another, and thus end up abhorring, detesting, and despising their fellow-men and -women as the carriers of their own emotively rejected aspects. The motivational basis of such projections is in our common condition as bodily beings, Nussbaum argues. Our bodies serve us in numerous activities and undertakings. They operate in our perceptions and movements and also allow us to establish emotive and communicative relations, and thus further our personal and common endeavors. However, at the very same time our bodies also inflict on us multiple problems: weariness and weakness, injury and sickness, 317

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uncontrollable bodily needs, desires and urges, deterioration and degeneration, and ultimately death.Thus, our bodies present themselves to us as indispensable means of having the world, but at the same time as highly unreliable and dangerously exposed companions, due to their vulner­ ability, finitude, and mortality. Some individuals, more so than others, cannot accept this basic condition of being human, and develop various psychological mechanisms to distance from it. Projection, in Nussbaum’s ana­ lysis, is a common mechanism that serves this purpose by abstractively splitting us into two: the capable self who barely notices its operative body, and the disabled self who suffers the ills that the body necessarily undergoes.When the latter mode of embodiment is imaginatively imputed to others, one can phantasmically identify with the competent and potent one and thus idealize one’s own existence (e.g., Nussbaum 2006, 137, cf. 186). In Nussbaum’s analysis, such psychosocial projections operate by the emotions of disgust and shame.The destructive consequences of these projective emotions to human communities are considerable. Both victims and conductors are dehumanized in being deprived of their full potential.The victims suffer from being represented as the “lowest” or “weakest” members of humanity, who eventually will side with the type of vitality that humanity is taken to conquer: animality, brutality, irrationality, sensibility, and flesh. The agents of projective identifications themselves are able to uphold positive and idealized images of themselves and use them for their own benefit, but they operate on the basis of an escalating self-deception that will even­ tually backfire. In Hiding from Humanity, Nussbaum’s main examples of people who suffer from such pro­ jective attributions are women, homosexuals, people of color, and Jews. Her other works add discussions of the dehumanization of other marginalized groups; most importantly, immigrants, the disabled and the elderly. In all these cases, Nussbaum argues, members of dominant social groups project their own finitude onto those others who, due to their weak social, economic, and/or political position, are unable to reject such projections and defend themselves against them. Further, stigmatization is used to justify processes of segregation and exclusion and to block criticism against unjust, prejudiced, and discriminatory social practices. Nussbaum’s influential argument from projection builds on psychoanalytic, cognitivepsychological, and anthropological sources. However, the argument also has philosophical roots. These we find in Simone de Beauvoir’s existential-phenomenological treatise on women’s subjec­ tion, The Second Sex (1949).The advantage of de Beauvoir’s phenomenological analysis of dehu­ manizing projections is that it allows us to inquire philosophically into the concrete conditions under which projections operate. Indeed, de Beauvoir argues that projective mechanisms have two different variants, one functioning in interactions between men and women and another operative in exchanges between social groups that include both genders.The other advantage is that the phenomenological concept of embodiment allows Beauvoir to specify what in particular is troubling in our bodily existence. The Second Sex is an existential-phenomenological attempt to solve the problem of sexual hierarchization and the cross-cultural inferiorization of women. Beauvoir builds on her earlier work in existential ethics ([1947] 1994) and on Sartre’s analyses of the constitution of social roles ([1943] 2018; [1946] 1948). The work includes ontological, epistemological, and political arguments, but its core inquiry concerns the otherness of women as a structure that cuts across the whole of humanity, through different historical epochs and cultural and social settings. By numerous examples, Beauvoir draws attention to the fact that women are not just characterized as alien or other with respect to some particular group of people but are also characterized as other to themselves and human communities at large.They are not just pictured as locally or relatively alien or other with respect to one or another cultural 318

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setting or social practice but are represented as absolutely other and fundamentally alien to humanity as such. De Beauvoir introduces a quote from Levinas’ Time and Other ([1947] 1987) as an extreme example of this alienating conceptualization of women and femininity: “[O]therness reaches its full flowering in the feminine, a term of the same rank as conscious­ ness but of opposite meaning” (quoted in de Beauvoir [1949] 1987, 16, cf. 175; cf. Levinas [1947] 1987, 88). In the third part of the first volume of The Second Sex, entitled “Myths,” de Beauvoir takes an explicitly critical stance toward the question why woman is Other: the task is not to answer the question, but to problematize it. De Beauvoir argues that the whole idea of an absolute other is self-refuting.This is because the self-other relation is essentially reciprocal: I experi­ ence another person, another human being, only if I experience a being who conversely is able to experience me and, moreover, experience me as experiencing (de Beauvoir [1949] 1987, 171). On the basis of this consideration, de Beauvoir argues that we must rephrase the question. Instead of trying to explain why women are alien or other to human consciousness or humanity, we should rather try to understand why women are conceptualized and categorized as Other.The answer to this latter question is that the reciprocity of the self–other relationship is somehow compromised in the case of men experiencing women. In man’s experience, “woman appears as the inessential which never returns to the essential, as the absolute Other without reci­ procity” (de Beauvoir [1949] 1987, 173, cf. 727). Man fails to experience woman as a fully conscious being in a reciprocity of experiences, as a subject for whom he himself is given as an experienced object. How is this possible, de Beauvoir asks, and how can such a mode of experi­ encing be motivated? We have seen that the possibility of reducing the other person to a mere material thing is involved in all self-other relations. So, the scandalous situation disclosed by de Beauvoir’s analysis is not that human beings can experience other living beings as things, or that they often do so.This is a possibility involved in the materiality of our living bodies. Rather, the scandal is that such a reifying attitude is dominant in man–woman relations: in the case of a man experiencing a woman, the possibility of abstraction is not just realized in particular occasions and for particular purposes; it has become an intentional habit and a mental inher­ itance (de Beauvoir [1949] 1987, 171). It is not just operative when a male medical doctor studies a female patient, but also when a male scholar negotiates with his female colleagues, when a male manager commands his female staff, and when a brother talks to his sisters and a father to his daughters (de Beauvoir [1949] 1987, 186).The man, de Beauvoir argues, does not experience the words or gestures of female bodies as expressions of full subject­ ivity or consciousness, but treats them as resources or hindrances, and does so even in the most intimate encounters (de Beauvoir [1949] 1987, 189). For man, the personalistic stance is reserved for man–man relations. This is the core of de Beauvoir’s argument (de Beauvoir [1949] 1987, 102). It is of course possible to reject de Beauvoir’s claims and argue that men do relate to women as alter egos. And this counter argument is undeniably both tempting and plausible, since men seldom challenge the subjectivity of women explicitly (de Beauvoir [1949] 1987, 25)—at least not today, seventy years after de Beauvoir’s publication. De Beauvoir’s argument responds to such criticism by offering substantial evidence from litera­ ture. Her material is not just in the literary and religious texts analyzed in the chapter on “myths” but also the bioscientific, psychological, anthropological, and philosophical texts discussed in the introduction and in the chapters on history. By scanning through numerous materials—poetical and theoretical—de Beauvoir demonstrates that women have been represented as half-persons by 319

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men not just in religious texts and poetry but also in empirical and philosophical sciences, which claim to describe reality or its metaphysical structures. One can contest de Beauvoir’s argument by claiming that the evidence she introduces to jus­ tify her general statements about men’s experiences of women are insufficient; they do not in fact give the right picture of the situation. In effect, one would then claim that even if women are described as half-persons—sensible but not self-conscious—they still appear to men as fullfledged alter egos. But if we take this line of arguing, then we must offer some explanation for the obvious gap between experiences and the descriptions given of them. If the literature written by men on women is not faithful to their experiences of women, then why is this so and what is the purpose of these descriptions? Is it all about fictitious constructs? Or is it rather about a peculiar division of reality, as de Beauvoir suggests ([1949] 1987, 218, 282–283)? And what is the nature of and motivation for this division?

20.5 Emotive projections Beauvoir answers these questions by introducing a version of the projection-theoretical account that we saw Nussbaum using in her explanation of misogynous but also homophobic, antiSemitic, and racist dehumanization.The core thesis of de Beauvoir’s version of projectionism is the claim that men cannot accept the finitude of their own existence and thus project it onto women. By “finitude,” de Beauvoir means two different aspects of human embodiment: her argument is about the temporal finitude of human life—that is, our mortality—and about the finitude of our powers—that is, our passivity and vulnerability (de Beauvoir [1949] 1987, 197). The claim is not just that men project their mortality onto women, but more generally that they tend to project everything that they cannot accept as fundamentally limiting their selfgoverned actions and volitions (de Beauvoir [1949] 1987, 213). Thus, women’s bodies become for them locations of passivity, animality, carnality, and death. De Beauvoir characterizes this form of experiencing in literary and philosophical terms, drawing from a millennial history (de Beauvoir [1949] 1987, 177). The point is not that all such projective identifications would represent women as lesser forms of existence. On the contrary, de Beauvoir demonstrates that dehumanizing projections can operate both in the negative and positive registers. On the one hand, women are despised and rejected as oversensitive and driven creatures lacking in higher capacities of human intel­ ligence and reason; on the other hand, they are praised and adored as creators and supporters of life and assimilated, in their powers, with the vital forces of water and earth that nourish the proliferation of animals and plants. Some such projections uplift women, while other degrade them.The main problem is not in these evaluative dimensions, negative or positive, but in the imaginative-emotional mechanism that splits human beings into two aspects, idealizes both aspects, and then attributes the idealizations to separate groups of individuals: rationality versus animality, intelligence versus emotion, reason versus sensation—man versus woman. Both the targets of such projections and their agents are dehumanized; the former are pictured as sub­ human, while the latter present themselves as superhuman (de Beauvoir [1947] 1994, 35–38, 42–51). In putting forward her theory of projection, de Beauvoir is inspired by Kierkegaard’s phil­ osophy of faith ([1843] 2006; [1849] 1989) and Nietzsche’s critique of ideology ([1882] 2012; [1889] 1990). What she finds in these sources is an account of our persistent association of women with death.With the help of analytical tools taken from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, she demonstrates the roots of this association in man’s inability to deal with his own finitude and mortality. 320

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From Kierkegaard, she takes the basic notion of human existence as essentially paradoxical. Thus, she interprets individual lives as different ways of wrestling with the dualities of existence: finitude and infinitude, materiality and spirituality, solitude and bonding. Most people try to undo the tension between these opposites by identifying with one aspect and rejecting the other. De Beauvoir accepts Kierkegaard’s diagnosis: men typically associate their existence with infinity, women identify with finitude. Such identifications require that the side of existence denied is objectified and projected onto others. But it is also possible to accept the tensions between these opposites. Then, instead of seeking to resolve the paradoxes of human existence, one works to endure them (de Beauvoir [1947], 7–9). Thus, in de Beauvoir’s understanding, it is possible to undo the sexual hierarchy but only if both sexes truly accept and acknowledge the ambiguities of their own existence. From Nietzsche, de Beauvoir adopts the concepts of horror and fear. Her argument is that finitude is basically an emotional problem for men, not a cognitive or intellectual one (de Beauvoir [1949] 1987, 174, 193). So, it is not that men fail to understand their mortality but more primarily that they are horrified by the loss of potency and power (de Beauvoir [1949] 1987, 180). To specify her claim, de Beauvoir introduces the phenomenological distinction between the active body, “I can,” and the passive body, “I suffer,” for it is clearly not just any mode of the living body that is horrific (de Beauvoir [1949] 1987, 189). Her analysis shows, however, that the distinction between activity and passivity is not sufficient to account for the horror of carnality: it is not the active body, the body as the instrument of will that is associated with death or decay, but neither is it the body that patiently suffers from the activity of external forces.The object of horror and disgust is the body that is internally divided, a living body of a person dominated by involuntary movements and non-controlled processes.This is the body that displays an alien teleology and upsets human plans and decisions (de Beauvoir [1949] 1987, 193–195, cf. 189; cf. Heinämaa 2020). In the horrifying mode, the body is still perceived as a living body of a person, but it is perceived as undergoing an internal division. It is my body, or your body, but it is now possessed by alien forces: hands shaking, face twisting, stomach swelling, flesh bursting… Beauvoir’s analysis thus shows that in addition to the active-passive distinction we must distin­ guish between two different modes of passivity: the affective body that receives external influences and suffers from outside impacts, and the vital body that is guided by unknown internal processes (cf. Heinämaa 2003).The internal processes of the body are not experienced as mechanical; they appear as goal-directed and teleological.Their teleology is alien, however, in the sense that it nei­ ther supports our personal aims nor our common human projects. Rather, the processes of the body appear as goal-driven but independent of human agency and even contrary to it. So, de Beauvoir tracks the idealization of woman down to the horror man feels for the dualities of his own body. Her analysis and solution is Kierkegaardian more than Nietzschean. Nietzsche proposes that we should reject the Christian notion of the suffering body and val­ orize the dynamic body. In de Beauvoir’s account this is not a solution, but a further mani­ festation of the problem. The core of the problem is exactly in the decision to identify with the active dynamic body and reject other experiences of embodiment—that is, suffering, passivity, division, disintegration. In principle, such an identification is impossible, since full activity would cancel the materiality of the body (de Beauvoir [1949] 1987, 197–198). So, the impossible rejection is compensated for by splitting and projection, a kind of self-deception in which one continues enjoying the vitality of one’s embodiment whenever it happens to contribute to one’s projects, and attributes its basic vital processes and uncontrollable forces to others. 321

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Such an attribution is possible on two conditions: the people on whom passivity is projected are either consenting to and collaborating with the projector, or else are in a subordinate power position in which they do not have the physical means, emotive strength, institutional resources, or collective force to reject the projection. In Beauvoir’s analysis, both conditions hold in the case of woman–man dialectics. At the same time, she points out that similar dehumanizing projections work also in the cases of Jews, black people, and proletarians.8 The case of women is specific, however, in that the targeted subjects more regularly live in close and intimate relations of partnership with their perpetrators, and actively participate in the complicated dialectics of projections and counterprojections. Even if the basic mechanism of projection is similar and may be even identical in all these cases, the forms of intersubjectivity and the stakes of coexistence differ.

20.6 Conclusion We have argued that phenomenology offers three important resources for contemporary phil­ osophy of dehumanization. First, by developing a robust analysis of objectification and subjectivity, classical phenomenology allows us to distinguish dehumanizing applications of objectification from other forms of objectification, and to specify what it is that dehumanization violates. Second, existential phenomenology offers the concepts of inferiorization and epidermalization, which allow us to explicate the preconditions of extreme practical dehumanization and to iden­ tify the link between systemic and societal racism and more subtle, habitual, and affective forms of dehumanization.Third, existential phenomenology also involves a powerful concept of pro­ jection that allows us to investigate the motivational emotional relations between idealized selfimages and dehumanizing conceptions of others and study their operations in intersubjective exchanges.

Notes 1 See, e.g., Guenther 2006; Schott 2010; Butler 2012; Staudigl 2012; Dolezal 2015; Schott 2015; Lang 2017. 2 Here we find also the critical contributions of the early first generation phenomenologists, such as Edith Stein, Max Scheler, Eugen Fink, and Alfred Schütz. 3 For discussions of race and gender, see, e.g., Gordon 1995; Heinämaa 2003;Alcoff 2006; Deutscher 2008; Kruks 2012;Yancy 2017; for analyses of specific historical cases, see, e.g., Bergoffen 2013. 4 In the second volume of Ideas, Husserl makes a wide-reaching distinction between two attitudes that we can take to humans: on the one hand, the naturalistic attitude in which we intend such beings as indi­ viduals of the zoological species homo sapiens and, on the other hand, the personalistic attitude in which we intend them as persons with unique styles of relating, comporting, and being motivated (Husserl [1952] 1989, 183ff.). In the former stance, human bodies are given to us as causally-functionally unified psychophysical systems and, in the latter, they are given as unified expressive wholes. The former can be said to be “depersonalizing” in the sense that it neglects the uniqueness of the human person and everything that depends on this uniqueness. Husserl’s distinction between the naturalistic attitude and the personalistic attitudes is analogous to but not identical with Peter Strawson’s highly influential dis­ tinction between the objective stance and the participant stances (Strawson 1974; cf. Brudholm 2010; Brudholm and Lang, this volume). 5 An important exception to this dominant approach is Mari Mikkola’s conceptualization (see 2016, 145ff.). Mikkola (this volume) offers a more extensive argument for the necessity of distinguishing dehumanization from objectification, although the concept of objectification she discusses is not iden­ tical to the phenomenological concept of thingly objectification employed in this chapter. Like Mikkola, Brudholm and Lang (this volume) develop an account of dehumanization that converges with our approach, in that it is significantly informed by the perspective of the dehumanized person.

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Phenomenological research on dehumanization 6 Our claim is simply that the objectifying subject consciously attends to the other person’s bodily materi­ ality alone, leaving open the possibility that an unthematic/tacit awareness of the other’s subjectivity may sometimes remain in play. 7 Fanon also offers an account of the psychological origins of white dehumanization of black people (Fanon [1952] 2008, 120–184), although it less informed by phenomenological methods than de Beauvoir’s parallel account. 8 See de Beauvoir ([1948] 1999; [1949] 1987, 18–20, 23–24, 159–160, 240, 324–325, 706–707; cf. Myrdal 1944; Sartre [1946] 1948). For the parallel that Beauvoir draws between sexism and racism and for her indebtedness to critical analyses of racism, see Simons 1999, 23–39, 150, 169–183.

References Alcoff, L. M. 2006. Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Al-Saji, A. 2014. “A Phenomenology of Hesitation: Interrupting Racializing Habits of Seeing,” in Living

Alterities: Phenomenology, Embodiment, and Race, ed. Emily, Lee, Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Arendt, H. 1951. The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co. Arendt, H. 1958. The Human Condition, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Bergoffen, D. 2013. Contesting the Politics of Genocidal Rape: Affirming the Dignity of the Vulnerable Body, London: Routledge. Brudholm, T. 2010. “Hatred as an Attitude,” Philosophical Papers, vo. 39, no. 3, 289–313. Brudholm, T. and Lang, J. 2020. “On Hatred and Dehumanization,” in The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, ed. M. Kronfeldner, London and New York: Routledge. 341–354. (this volume). Butler, J. 2004. Undoing Gender, London and New York: Routledge. Butler, J. 2012. “Precarious Life, Vulnerability and the Ethics of Cohabitation,” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vo. 26, no. 2, 134–151. de Beauvoir, S. [1947] 1994. The Ethics of Ambiguity, transl. B. Frechtman, New York: Carol Publishing Group Editions. de Beauvoir, S. [1948] 1999. America Day by Day, transl. C. Cosman, Berkeley: University of California Press. de Beauvoir, S. [1949] 1987. The Second Sex, transl. and ed. H. M. Parshley, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Deutscher, P. 2008. The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dolezal, L. 2015. The Body and Shame: Phenomenology, Feminism, and the Socially Shaped Body, London: Lexington. Drummond, J. J. 2006. “Respect as a Moral Emotion: A Phenomenological Approach,” Husserl Studies, Volume 22, 1–27. Fanon, F. [1964] 1967. Toward the African Revolution, transl. H. Chevalier, New York: Grove Press. Fanon, F. [1961] 2004. The Wretched of the Earth, transl. R. Philcox, New York: Grove Press. Fanon, F. [1952] 2008. Black Skin, White Masks, transl. R. Philcox, New York: Grove Press. Fanon, F. [2015] 2018. Alienation and Freedom, transl. S. Corcoran, London: Bloosmbury Academic. Foucault, M. [1961] 1965. Madness and Civilization, transl. Richard Howard, New York: Random House. Gordon, L. R. 1995. Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences, New York and London: Routledge. Guenther, L. 2006. The Gift of the Other: Levinas and the Politics of Reproduction, New York: SUNY Press. Heinämaa, S. 2003. Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, Lanham, Boulder, New York, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. Heinämaa, S. 2020. “Disgust,” in The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Emotions, eds. Szanto, Thomas and Landweer, Hilge, London: Routledge, forthcoming. Husserl, E. [1913] 2014. Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, transl. D. O. Dahlstrom, Indianapolis: Hackett. Husserl, E. [1952] 1989. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution, transl. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer, Dordrecht: Kluwer. Husserl, E. 2004. Einleitung in die Ethik, Vorlesungen Sommersemmester 1920 und 1924, Husserliana XXXVII, ed. H. Peucker, Dordrecht: Springer.

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Sara Heinämaa and James Jardine Jardine, J. 2020. “Social Invisibility and Emotional Blindness,” in Perception and the Inhuman Gaze: Perspectives from Philosophy, Phenomenology and the Sciences, eds. A. Daly, F. Cummins, J. Jardine, D. Moran, London, New York: Routledge. Kant, I. [1762–1794] 1963. Lectures on Ethics, New York: Harper and Row. Kauppinen, A. 2011. “The Social Dimension of Autonomy,” in Axel Honneth: Critical Essays, ed. D. Petherbridge, Leiden: Brill, 255–302. Kierkegaard, S. [1843] 2006. Fear and Trembling, transl. S. Walsh, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kierkegaard, S. [1849] 1989. Sickness unto Death, transl. A. Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Korsgaard, C. 1996. The Sources of Normativity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kruks, S. 2012. Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Ambiguity, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lang, J. 2017. “Explaining Genocide: Hannah Arendt and the Social-Scientific Concept of Dehumanization,” in The Anthem Companion to Hannah Arendt, London: Anthem Press, 175–196. Levinas, E. [1961] 1969. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, transl. A. Lingis, Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Levinas, E. [1947] 1987. Le temps et l’autre, Paris: Quadrige/PUF. In English: Time and Other, transl. R.A. Cohen, Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Livingstone Smith, D. 2011. Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, New York, NY: St Martin’s Press. Livingston Smith, D. 2016. “Paradoxes of Dehumanization,” Social Theory and Practice, vo. 42, no. 2, 416–443. Manne, K. 2016. “Humanism: A Critique,” Social Theory and Practice, vo. 42, no. 2, 389–415. Manne, K. 2018. Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Martin, E. [1987] 2001. The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction, Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. [1945] 2012. Phenomenology of Perception, transl. D. A. Landes, London, New York: Routledge. Mikkola, M. 2016. The Wrong of Injustice: Dehumanization and its Role in Feminist Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mikkola, M. 2020. “Why Dehumanization is Distinct from Objectification” in The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, ed. M. Kronfeldner, London and New York: Routledge. 326–340. (this volume). Myrdal, G. 1944. An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, London, New York: Harper Brothers. Ngo, H. 2016. “Racist Habits: A Phenomenological Analysis of Racism and the Habitual Body,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, vo. 42, no. 9, 847–872. Nietzsche, F. [1882] 2012. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, transl. Josefine Nauckhoff, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, F. [1889] 1990. The Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ: or How to Philosophize with a Hammer, transl. R. J. Hollingdale, London: Penguin Books. Nussbaum, M. C. 1999. Sex and Social Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nussbaum, M. C. 2006. Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Nussbaum, M. C. 2013. Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice, Cambridge, MA, London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Papadaki, L. 2019. “Feminist Perspectives on Objectification,” The Stanford Encyclopedia for Philosophy (Winter 2019 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, URL = . Rinne, P. 2018. Kant on Love, Berlin, Boston: Walter de Gruyter. Sartre, J.-P. [1946] 1948. Anti-Semite and Jew, transl. George J. Becker, New York, NY: Schocken Books. Sartre, J.-P. [1960] 2004. Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume One: Theory of Practical Ensembles, transl. A. Sheridan-Smith, London, New York: Verso. Sartre, J.-P. [1943] 2018. Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology, transl. S. Richmond, London, New York: Routledge. Schott, R. M. 2010. “Arendtian Reflections on War Rape,” in Birth, Death, and Femininity: Philosophies of Embodiment, ed. R. M. Schott, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. Schott, R. M. 2015. “Gendering genocide,” European Journal of Woman’s Studies, vo. 25, no. 5, 397–411. Showalter, E. 1980. The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830–1980, London: Virago.

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Phenomenological research on dehumanization Simons, M. A. 1999. Beauvoir and The Second Sex: Feminism, Race, and the Origins of Existentialism, Boston: Rowman & Littleford. Staudigl, M. 2012. “On the Phenomenology of Embodied Desocialization,” Continental Philosophy Review, vo. 45, no. 1, 23–39. Stone, J. 1987. “Why Potentiality Matters,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vo. 17, no. 4, 815–830. Strawson, P. F. 1974. “Freedom and Resentment,” in Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays, London: Methuen. Yancy, G. 2017. Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race in America. Second Edition, Lanham, London: Rowman & Littlefield.

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21

WHY DEHUMANIZATION

IS DISTINCT FROM

OBJECTIFICATION

Mari Mikkola

21.1 Introduction Dehumanization seemingly involves a complex of the following: an assault on ‘our’ human dignity or value as ends-in-ourselves (being treated as a mere means to others’ ends); treating someone as something, or reducing someone to something; comparison of human beings to animals or inanimate objects, thereby committing a sort of category mistake; denial of agency or distinctly human capabilities; and a psychological attitude of conceiving others as subhuman. Specifically feminist philosophical discussions often treat dehumanization and objectification as being closely related, if not equivalent. For instance,Ann Cudd talks about ‘dehumanizing objectification’ that involves treating “persons as mere objects, ignoring their full and equal status as persons” (Cudd 2006, 165). For her, humans are special due to our sense of the good and the right; our capacity to desire, to value, and to plan for future lives that express our desires and values. Dehumanizing objectification, however, robs someone of their “right to express these unique qualities” (166); in other words, objectification hinders the realization of our full humanity. In this chapter, I will consider how dehumanization and objectification are typically taken to be closely connected, and challenge this putative connectedness. As I see it, objectification is one thing and dehumanization another. I will consider two prominent accounts that can be termed ‘reductive’ and ‘non-reductive’ objectification. The former holds that objectification makes people into things and so seemingly involves a category mistake: human beings are lit­ erally and falsely categorized as things, which is morally troubling. The latter view, however, holds that objectification involves something else: persons are treated as if they are less than fully human—objectification involves x somehow reducing y’s humanity. Proponents of these views take objectification (in either sense) to be equivalent to dehumanization; I disagree and argue here that neither should be equated with dehumanization. I will first outline prominent feminist accounts of objectification (Section 21.2). I will then consider why dehumanization should not be considered equivalent to reductive objectification (Section 21.3). On this view, even though objectification centrally involves treating someone literally as something, proponents of the view also hold that objectification involves treating someone as if they are something. But now reduc­ tive objectification-views end up being incoherent since one cannot simultaneously commit a category mistake (treat someone literally as something) and perform a reduction (treat someone as if they are something).We are dealing with two distinct phenomena since the latter presupposes 326

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a prior recognition of another’s humanity to be reduced while the former does not.We should not then treat dehumanization as equivalent to reductive objectification because this would make dehumanization an incoherent notion, too. Next, I will discuss why non-reductive objectification isn’t equivalent to dehumanization either (Section 21.4). In short: the way non-reductive objectification supposedly works does not offer a compelling analysis of dehumanization because some apparent instances of dehumaniza­ tion would not count as being such even though they intuitively strike us as dehumanizing.This discussion shows that there is an odd ‘paradox’ of dehumanization, which ill fits well-known feminist accounts of objectification: for dehumanization to involve denying or disrespecting important person-defining capacities, one must first attribute those capacities to others in order to deny or disrespect them—one must acknowledge the humanity of another in order to dehu­ manize them.This further demonstrates (I hold) that objectification as commonly understood by feminist philosophers is not equivalent to dehumanization. I discuss the ‘paradox’ of dehuman­ ization in Section 21.5. I should add a content warning from the outset. Much of the relevant feminist literature makes use of examples from the sexual realm. My discussion does so as well and especially focuses on sexualized violence against women. Some readers may find the examples used harrowing and disturbing. They are not gratuitous descriptions of violence though, but serve important argu­ mentative purposes: they enable our analysis of dehumanization to stay grounded in actual (albeit disturbing) real life circumstances. Moreover, the examples demonstrate something important about philosophical methodology: that armchair-philosophical discussions of sexualized violence are insufficient and fail to pass muster once we take actual cases seriously.

21.2 Objectification What is objectification? Feminist discussions most basically take objectification to involve seeing and/or treating a person as a thing.There are, however, a number of ways to spell out what this means. Rae Langton outlines various attitudes the phenomenon of objectification may involve. All intentional attitudes directed toward persons make them ‘objects’ of those attitudes. Someone can be an object of another’s thoughts, love, loathing, respect, or desire (Langton 2009, 325). There is nothing morally exigent about this though, and it expresses a rather innocuous sense of making another an ‘object’ (see also Heinämaa and Jardine in this volume). Moreover, one might make another an object by taking an objective attitude toward them.This idea draws on P.F. Strawson’s discussion of attitudes like resentment. It involves viewing someone “as if she were a natural phenomenon … lacking in responsibility, not (or not fully) free, autonomous, or respon­ sible for what she does” (Langton 2009, 330). It may be inappropriate for us to resent someone who cannot be held responsible for their actions, though we may not be able to genuinely respect that person. It is the attitude of “the impartial social scientist, the kind teacher, the concerned psychiatrist” who treats a person as a thing, but nonetheless in a rather benevolent manner qua an experimental subject, pupil, or patient (Langton 2009, 331). However, a more morally worrisome attitude is the objectifying one, where someone views another as thing-like: lacking in responsibility, and as if there were nothing more to her than an appearance … nothing more than a con­ veniently packaged bundle of eyes, lips, face, breasts, buttocks, legs. Someone might view a person as if she were a mere tool, a mere instrument to serve his own purposes, or property that belonged to him. (Langton 2009, 331) 327

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The objective and objectifying attitudes may have in common that the ‘object’ is viewed without respect. But in taking the former, one sees another in terms of certain “well-meaning relational gerundives: he sees him as to be handled, to be managed, to be cured, to be trained”; in taking an objectifying attitude, however, one sees another as “something to be looked at, to be pursued, to be consumed, to be used, to be possessed” (Langton 2009, 331). Importantly, although she has identified various attitudes, Langton holds that we are not dealing with mere harmless states of mind. For her, “a person is injured when she is viewed as if she were a thing—unfree, mere appearance, body, tool, or property” (2009, 332). Nonetheless, both objective and objectifying attitudes involve not merely seeing but also doing something. In the former case, if I see you as someone to be managed, I will aim to manage you thereby acting in a certain way.The same goes for objectification: it is “a stance, a way of looking at the world, and a social practice” (Langton 2009, 332). Hence, it too involves both seeing and doing. With these attitudes in mind, consider two prominent feminist accounts of objectification. Catharine MacKinnon understands objectification to be dehumanizing because the former involves a kind of reduction, whereby “the objectified individual’s humanity is reduced … as she ends up acquiring the status of a thing (a being that no longer is a person)” (Papadaki 2015b, 96). This draws on a familiar Kantian idea that objectification involves diminishing, reducing, or lowering a person’s humanity to the status of an object (for detailed discussions of this view, see Herman 2002; Papadaki 2007, 2015a). MacKinnon (1987) holds that, specif­ ically in pornography, women are made into sex objects and as objects they lack autonomy, subjectivity, agency, and self-determination. Her view famously takes there to be an objecti­ fying attitude that reduces women to mere ‘unfree’ tools and objects for the satisfaction of men’s sexual needs. Martha Nussbaum, by contrast, advances a non-reductive conception of objectification: it involves ignoring or not properly acknowledging someone’s humanity, rather than a downright destruction of humanity (contra MacKinnon). In a well-known article, Nussbaum examines ‘objectification’ as a loose cluster-term. Or more specifically, objectification seemingly involves treating a person as an object, and such treatment involves seven possible features: • • • • • • •

instrumentality: treating a person as a tool for the objectifier’s purposes; denial of autonomy: treating a person as lacking in autonomy and self-determination; inertness: treating a person as lacking in agency; fungibility: treating a person as interchangeable with other objects; violability: treating a person as lacking in boundary-integrity;

ownership: treating a person as something that can be bought or sold;

denial of subjectivity: treating a person as something whose experiences and feelings need not be taken into account. (Nussbaum 1995, 257)1

For Nussbaum, objectification can take place even if only one of the seven features is present, though in most cases objectification involves more than just one feature (1995, 258). Still, she takes the denial of autonomy and instrumentalization to be the most morally exigent features. They are also connected in that non-instrumental treatment of a person seemingly entails that their autonomy is recognized (Nussbaum 1995, 264). It seems that on Nussbaum’s account objectification always involves an objective attitude, but only sometimes does it involve an objectifying attitude. In order to make sense of this further and to see how objectification is putatively tied to dehumanization, consider what makes objectification morally problematic on MacKinnon and Nussbaum’s views.

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For MacKinnon, objectification is always morally objectionable: since it is dehuman­ izing and dehumanization is always morally wrong, so is objectification. Contra MacKinnon, Nussbaum does not hold that every instance of objectification is morally problematic. For her, “context is everything … in many if not all cases, the difference between an objectionable and a benign use of objectification will be made by the overall context of the human relationship” in which objectification takes place (Nussbaum 1995, 271). Features of benign objectifica­ tion for Nussbaum encompass the absence of instrumentalization and that objectification is “symmetrical and mutual—and in both cases undertaken in a context of mutual respect and rough social equality” (Nussbaum 1995, 275). Furthermore, “there is no malign or destruc­ tive intent” on the part of the objectifier (Nussbaum 1995, 281), and a person’s humanity is still acknowledged and respected (Papadaki 2010, 31).This phenomenon conceivably involves either Langton’s innocuous sense of taking another as an intentional object of one’s attitudes and feelings, or a benevolent sense of taking an objective attitude toward someone. Negative or objectionable objectification, however, takes place when equality, respect, and consent are absent. And this sort of objectification is dehumanizing: “What is made sexy … is precisely the act of turning a creature whom in one dim corner of one’s mind one knows to be human into a thing, a something rather than a someone” (1995, 281). That is, even though object­ ification for Nussbaum involves merely ignoring or not properly acknowledging someone’s humanity—it is about disrespecting, rather than destroying, the objectified individual’s humanity (Papadaki 2015b)—some instances of objectification involve such grave disrespect that they end up being dehumanizing. Nussbaum’s conception then is weaker than MacKinnon’s: objectification does not have absolute power to destroy women’s humanity or reduce them to objects.2 But, for Nussbaum, objectification is always morally problematic under some conditions; whether these conditions hold depends on the overall context in which objectification takes place. In Langton’s termin­ ology, only in some contexts is an objectifying attitude morally problematic in being dehu­ manizing.To explicate this, Nussbaum unfortunately and confusingly writes: “the instrumental treatment of human beings as tools of the purposes of another is always morally problematic; if it does not take place in a larger context of regard for humanity, it is a central form of the morally objectionable” (1995, 289). So, Nussbaum identifies instrumentalization as the most worrisome feature of objectification in being always morally problematic, while other features of object­ ification can be morally mitigated. Nonetheless, Nussbaum holds that even instrumentalization can be morally mitigated if it takes place “in a larger context of regard for humanity.” How can we make sense of this? In short, Nussbaum is drawing a distinction between instrumental use and mere instrumental use.The former is not problematic in all contexts. Consider Nussbaum’s example to illustrate: If I am lying around with my lover on the bed, and use his stomach as a pillow there seems to be nothing at all baneful about this, provided that I do so with his consent… and without causing him pain, provided, as well, that I do so in the context of a rela­ tionship in which he is generally treated as more than a pillow. (1995, 265) And so, we can make sense of the above claim: instrumentalization in a strong sense involves treating someone as a mere instrument for one’s ends, which is always morally wrong as this ends up being dehumanizing. Instrumentalization in a weaker sense, where the objectified person’s humanity has not been negated, is not. Settling whether instrumentalization involves the strong or the weak sense depends on the context, and whether the context is characterized

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by mutual respect and rough social equality (as Nussbaum puts it). In other words, MacKinnon and Nussbaum offer reductive and non-reductive understandings of objectification, respect­ ively, and both understandings are equated with dehumanization. However, I contend it is a mistake to think that either is equivalent to dehumanization—or so I will argue in following two sections.

21.3 Reductive objectification and dehumanization As mentioned, MacKinnon equates objectification and dehumanization. She is not alone in doing so.Andrea Dworkin also writes: Objectification occurs when a human being, through social means, is made less than human, turned into a thing or commodity, bought and sold. When objectification occurs, a person is depersonalized, so that no individuality or integrity is available … Objectification is an injury right at the heart of discrimination: those who can be used as if they are not fully human are no longer fully human in social terms; their humanity is hurt by being diminished. (2000, 30–31) Linda LeMoncheck (1985), too, takes objectification to involve dehumanization: sexual objectifi­ cation constructs women as lesser human beings.The wrong of objectification then is grounded in a failure to treat women as moral equals. However, I am unconvinced that this equation is helpful and fitting: it ends up putting forward an incoherent view. To see this, consider Dworkin’s claim above. On the one hand, she claims that persons are made into things; on the other, persons are treated as if they are ‘less’ than fully human. In the former case, the problem with objectification boils down to a sort of category mistake: human beings are literally and falsely categorized as things, which is morally troubling. However, in the latter case something else is going on: if objectification involves x reducing y’s humanity, then x must have attributed humanity to y to begin with. But, reducing another’s humanity and literally treating someone as something are two distinct phenomena: the former presupposes another’s humanity to be reduced while the latter does not. Subsequently, reductive objectification accounts like those of MacKinnon and Dworkin are incoherent: one cannot commit a category mistake where one views and treats someone literally as something, and simultaneously views and treats them as a lesser person. In the latter case, one treats another as a person to begin with, which shows that one has not committed a category mistake.3 Or in committing a category mistake, one cannot simultaneously reduce the other’s humanity or personhood for the simple reason that the other is not viewed as a human person to begin with. One might challenge this by appealing to Langton’s different attitudes above: perhaps in cases of reductive objectification that are dehumanizing, one takes an objective attitude toward someone, which grounds the putative category mistake, and an objectifying attitude, which explains how one can view someone as a lesser person. If possible, the incoherence I have alluded to would disappear. It certainly seems that one can take either an objective or an objectifying attitude toward the same person at different times; but can one entertain these two attitudes toward the same person simultaneously? As a physician, I can clearly take an objective attitude toward a female patient qua patient and at the same time take an objectifying attitude toward her qua woman. But this does not well befit the idea of reductive dehumanizing objectification. On the Dworkin-MacKinnon view, women qua women are simultaneously made into things and treated as

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if they are ‘less’ than fully human. Even though it seems that I can take different attitudes to the same person on the basis of that person’s divergent social roles or identity facets, it does not seem conceivable that I can take these differing attitudes toward the same person on the basis of one and the same role or identity facet. Ann Cahill holds that objectification or objectifying imagery does not represent or portray women as “utterly object-like, as lacking in the traits and abilities usually associated with persons” (2011, 27). She too holds that simply equating dehumanization and objectification is problematic, but for a different reason. MacKinnon, Dworkin, LeMoncheck, and Nussbaum all on Cahill’s view accept “autonomy as a hallmark of the person, and objectification as a means of limiting or encroaching upon a person’s autonomy” (Cahill 2011, 24). However, Cahill rejects this picture of personhood because it does not take seriously the embodiment of persons.That is, accounts that take objectification to be autonomy violating, risk defining personhood in atomistic terms removed from and prior to relationships, and in an overly individualistic manner. For Cahill, these positions do not sufficiently theorize the body as being contained in the notion of sub­ jectivity, and personhood becomes just about the mind or intellect (2011, 26). As an alternative, she proposes the concept of derivatization: “To derivatize is to portray, render, understand, or approach a being solely or primarily as the reflection, projection, or expression of another being’s identity, desires, fears” (2011, 32). For instance, in the realm of sex this is problematic from a fem­ inist perspective insofar as women are constructed “as reducible to the desires or beings of men” (Cahill 2011, 42). The moral problem then isn’t that one is viewed or treated as a thing rather than a person—instead, the problem is that qua person one is a projection of others’ desires. (I will return to this idea shortly.)

21.4 Non-reductive objectification and dehumanization Nussbaum’s notion of objectification is meant to be non-reductive: it involves disrespecting rather than absolutely destroying someone’s humanity. Nonetheless, Nussbaum holds that object­ ification in the sense of instrumentalization is always morally exigent in seemingly involving dehumanization. That is, even though Nussbaum thinks objectification is non-reductive in that it does not involve destroying someone’s humanity, there are instances of disrespecting someone’s humanity that are so grave as to involve dehumanization. These instances involve objectification in the sense of instrumentalization. However, I hold that this does not provide a good analysis of dehumanization. To see this, I will consider an application of Nussbaum’s view, and John Gardner and Stephen Shute’s (2000) analysis of the wrongfulness of rape: what makes it wrongful is that the perpetrator objectifies the victim by treating the latter as a mere thing or instrument to be used. Qua persons we have a certain worth due to which “[t]o use people without at the same time respecting this [worth] involves treating them as something other than people. It means treating them as things” (Gardner and Shute 2000, 203–4).This is a familiar Kantian picture: one should treat others, not as mere means to one’s ends, but as ends in themselves. Rape violates this by objectifying (i.e., instrumentalizing) the victim: the rapist is treating another person as a mere tool or instrument for their own end. In being the “sheer use” of a subject, rape denies someone personhood and this makes it “literally dehumanizing” (Gardner and Shute 2000, 205). However, as I argue next, many sexualized attacks fail to fit this model of dehumanization, and yet we think of them pre-theoretically as dehumanizing. Moreover, I am unconvinced that rape necessarily involves instrumentalization as understood by Gardner and Shute. Hence, we should not equate Nussbaum’s non-reductive objectification with dehumanization.

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Start with my former point. Gardner and Shute take rape to be dehumanizing because it is the sheer instrumental use of a person.They do not clearly say that it involves the sheer instrumental use of a person for some sexual ends. But, they must hold this view—otherwise, they cannot dis­ tinguish the wrongfulness of rape from the wrongfulness of other merely instrumental uses of persons, which is something Gardner and Shute aim to do.They hold that although rape usually involves some physical, psychological, and/or emotional harm, it need not—these are merely epiphenomenal to rape. So, Gardner and Shute present the following example: It is possible, although unusual, for a rapist to do no harm. A victim may be forever oblivious to the fact that she was raped, if, say, she was drugged or drunk to the point of unconsciousness when the rape was committed, and the rapist wore a condom… we have a victim of rape whose life is not changed for the worse, or at all, by the rape. She does not…’feel violated.’ She has no feelings about the incident, since she knows nothing of it [and]…the incident never comes to light at all. (2000, 196) This example supposedly homes in on the core wrong of rape: objectification understood as instrumentalization. Following Gardner and Shute, rape’s wrongfulness consists in the perpetrator treating another as a mere instrument for their end. Now, compare the above example to the following case.4 Imagine an identical situation where the perpetrator makes sheer use of another for some other end; for instance, one is drugged and mouth swabbed so that one’s DNA can be extracted for scientific research, when (for some reason) the person would not have consented to its extraction.This is done in a way that leaves no physical markers, and the person is forever oblivious to what has happened to them. They have been used as a sheer instrument. So, in this respect the mouth swab case is on a par with the above example of rape, and the two are morally indistinguishable. But Gardner and Shute should not want this result: they are explicitly aiming to cash out what is specifically wrongful about rape that sets it morally apart from other heinous crimes.The way to distinguish the two cases is in terms of their ends: in the mouth swab, the end is to extract DNA; in the rape case, it is “sexual pleasure” (Gardner & Shute 2000, 204). So, Gardner and Shute must say that the wrongfulness of rape consists in it being a sheer use of a person for some sexual ends. With this qualification, their picture of the rapist becomes that of Langton’s sexual solipsist. The sheer sexual use of a person dehumanizes them; it turns human beings into things. For Langton, this kind of sexual solipsist fails to see that in sexual contexts women are not things: they treat women as “mere bodies, as merely sensory appearances, as not free, as items that can be possessed, as items whose value is merely instrumental” (2009, 316). What instrumentalizes women in this way is the solipsist’s sexual desire toward the object of their desire due to which they display the objectifying attitude—namely, they view a person as thing-like. For the rapist, the other is a sex object to be used merely as a tool for their sexual ends and gratification. However, the objectification argument subsequently fails to capture the wrong of rape: the cri­ terion of wrongfulness will leave out some important cases, which we pre-theoretically think of as dehumanizing. In order to see this, consider the practice of rape used as a weapon of war or martial rape. Aid agencies and human rights organizations have identified the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to be the epicenter of recent wartime sexual violence against women. In the DRC, the rape of civilians by combatants is a systematic practice and used as part of fighting a war “for a variety of purposes, including intimidation, humiliation, pol­ itical terror, extracting information, rewarding soldiers, and ‘ethnic cleansing’” (Amnesty International 2005, 1). Sexualized violence is part and parcel of general attacks on communities where combatants/soldiers also kill or injure civilians, and destroy their property.5 Rape is used 332

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“to terrorize communities into accepting [the combatants’/soldiers’] control or to punish them for real or supposed aid to opposing forces” (Human Rights Watch 2002). It aims to “win and maintain control over civilians and [their] territory” particularly by terrorizing and humili­ ating women, who in this cultural context are seen as the representatives of their communities (Human Rights Watch 2002). For instance, women and children are often attacked in public in front of their husbands and parents. Relative to the DRC context, perpetrators do not appear primarily to use their victims for sexual ends but for fighting a war. The independent web-initiative Women Under Siege Blog (http://www.womenundersiegeproject.org/) documents the use of rape and sexualized violence as weapons of war. It provides a detailed and comprehensive account of the recent situation in DRC as well as of the apparent ends to which women and children are subject to sexualized violence.These include the already mentioned ends: humiliation, control of people and natural resources, retaliation (women whose husbands are community figureheads or supporters of rival militia are often raped in retaliation).The Women Under Siege Blog lists other ends too: • Soldiers’ protection: some combatants believe that raping a woman fortifies them for battle, which is needed to “beat the enemy.” • Termination of pregnancies: some evidence suggests that pregnant women are targeted for rape in order to induce miscarriages. • Avoidance of violence from superiors: combatants are reported to suffer severe beatings from their superiors if they refuse to attack women. Some combatants admit perpetrating sexualized violence in order to avoid violence themselves. These perpetrators use other persons as means to their ends for sure; but given the purposes for which the practice of martial rape is used, their ends do not appear to be primarily sexual. So, the perpetrators do not fit Langton’s picture of the sexual solipsist, to which Gardner and Shute’s account is wedded.The objectification argument holds that rape dehumanizes (and is, hence, morally wrongful) because the perpetrator uses another for sheer sexual ends. But, this does not capture what is dehumanizing about martial rape: the martial rapist instrumentalizes another, not for sexual ends, but for ends that have to do with warfare.The distinction between sexual and sexualized ends clarifies this point further. The former include ends that are dir­ ectly to do with sex, like sexual gratification. However, the latter involves instrumentalization for some (non-sexual) ends by sexual means.To a large extent, this seems to be the case in the DRC: violent sexual means are used to achieve ends that are to do with warfare. However, in relying on the view that rape is about instrumentalization for sexual ends, the objectifi­ cation argument fails to account for the wrong of martial rape. So, even if the sheer use of persons for sexual ends is dehumanizing, this is not what makes martial rape dehumanizing when surely it is.6 Moreover, rape does not necessarily involve instrumentalization as understood by Gardner and Shute: the kind of instrumentalization involved does not obviously involve treating per­ sons literally as things. So, if treating people literally as things is meant to make the treatment dehumanizing, some instances of sexualized violence end up not being dehumanizing, contra pre-theoretical intuitions. Again, looking at the harrowing situation in the DRC is instructive. Women in the conflict areas are sexually violated (among other reasons) because they are seen as the representatives of their communities and the facilitators of the communities’ continu­ ation. Given this, and the broader goals of the practice, martial rapists do not appear to view the affected women as thing-like.They are genuinely and literally viewed as persons with goals, life plans, and a desire for wellbeing; wartime rape as a practice is aimed at precisely thwarting these 333

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aspects of women’s lives, thereby destroying whole communities, and making it extremely hard for people to rebuild them.The victims of the practice are not treated as inert things simply to be destroyed, like dwellings. Actually, martial rapists are more akin to sadistic rapists, who want their victims to fight back, and thereby affirm that they are subjects rather than inert things. A kind of autonomy affirmation is a necessary feature of sadistic attitudes this type of sexualized violence accompanies.As Langton puts it, sadistic desire seeks that a person will turn themselves into a thing, “abjure” herself, and come to identify with a “broken and enslaved freedom.” It aims for a person to make themselves as thing-like as “it is possible for a person to be” (Langton 2009, 336). In the above examples, women’s personhood is affirmed insofar as their social roles as community representatives are recognized; and this is a necessary prerequisite for violating their personhood. Otherwise the practice of wartime rape would not be such an effective weapon. The situation is akin to David Sussman’s discussion of Abu Ghraib-like torture. A person becomes an accomplice in their own violation in that the torture “involves not just the insults and injuries to be found in other kinds of violence, but a wrong that, by exploiting the victim’s own participation, might best be called humiliation” (Sussman 2005, 30). Inert objects cannot partake in their own violation, only persons or subjects with agency can. So, the kind of mere use in martial rape that violates others presupposes that the affected subjects are persons with life plans and particular social roles. And the wrong committed by the rapist is precisely aimed at exploiting that in order to violate the affected persons (for more, see Mikkola 2016). This demonstrates a prima facie odd ‘paradox’ of dehumanization: to dehumanize seemingly involves an affirmation of humanity and personhood. I will turn to examining this phenom­ enon next in order to further bolster the view that dehumanization and objectification are not equivalent.

21.5 The paradox of dehumanization Smith (2016) considers this “strangeness of dehumanization,” where dehumanization is under­ stood to be about conceiving others as subhuman creatures.7 It seems that as a phenomenon dehumanization in this sense involves conceiving of other human beings “as not really human at all, but as organisms that are more akin to rats, lice, snakes, or cockroaches” (Smith 2016, 416–7; see also Smith 2014 and Smith, this volume). Nonetheless, simultaneously “those who characterize their victims as nonhuman animals also describe them in ways that are uniquely applicable to human beings … Furthermore, dehumanizers often behave toward their victims in a manner that implicitly acknowledges their humanity” (Smith 2016, 417). One explanation for this strangeness would be that dehumanization does not in the end involve viewing others as subhuman, and dehumanizing language merely serves a rhetorical purpose of making violence against others easier. Nonetheless, Smith holds that we can explain how humanity can both be denied and implicitly affirmed in a way that makes sense of dehumanization: “in dehumanizing others, we categorize them simultaneously as human and subhuman … this gives dehumaniza­ tion its distinctive character and differentiates it from the purely rhetorical use of animalistic language to characterize others” (Smith 2016, 418). Smith understands dehumanization as a psychological phenomenon and a certain pattern of thinking that is often politically formed and determined. In short: “When we dehumanize others, we assign them a peculiar status. We typically think of them as beings that appear human and behave in human-like ways, but that are really subhuman on the ‘inside.’” (Smith 2016, 420) Bluntly put, the idea is that a creature can ‘appear’ human and this gives the surface appearance of them being like us; but such a creature can fail to possess a human essence thus being a member of a subhuman kind that isn’t part of our moral community. 334

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This phenomenon is (Smith holds) tied to our emotional responses and to the notion of ‘uncanny’: something being “frightening in a distinctive, difficult-to-describe way” (Smith 2016, 431). In other words, A being that is both human and subhuman transgresses culturally sanctioned metaphys­ ical categories. … such beings are regarded as unclean, impure, defiled, and consequently defiling, and pose a threat to any social order founded on metaphysical presumptions about the natural order of things (that is, every social order). (Smith 2016, 430) For instance, a rat in rat form is just a rat that might frighten or disgust us, but a rat in human form is deeply unsettling in a different way: it is “intrinsically repellent and horrifying” (Smith 2016, 430).And so, the dehumanized person’s appearance grounds our classification of them as a human being, but “the nonperceptual belief that she is a subhuman creature—normally acquired by political propaganda or entrenched ideological biases” grounds a contrary reaction (Smith 2016, 434). Hence, the dehumanized person is “felt to be both human and subhuman—and therefore as an uncanny entity. Paradoxically, then, part of what makes such dehumanized people so loathsome and menacing is their seeming humanity” (Smith 2016, 435). This explanation of the paradox of dehumanization is deeply interesting and insightful. It seems to fit certain pre-theoretically paradigm cases of dehumanization, such as events that took place in Rwanda or that resulted from Nazi propaganda. But I am unconvinced that this explanation fits the case of wartime sexualized violence I discussed above. The case of DRC above certainly suggests that women were seen as threatening to the social order; but the explanation for this does not seem to be that they were seen as threatening because of their ‘uncanniness,’ or because perpetrators viewed their victims simultaneously as human and subhuman in the sense that Smith holds. Rather, women were viewed as human through and through—or as Kate Manne (2017) puts it, women who are subject to misogyny are seen as human, all too human. Whether this point actually counts against Smith’s view though, isn’t entirely clear. In his (2011), Smith readily admits that the particular form of dehumanization directed at women is different from the idea that dehumanization involves seeing someone as subhuman (2011, 5). He is concerned with dehumanization associated with war and geno­ cide, while women’s dehumanization typically takes the form of sexual objectification as discussed above. However, since I hold that the cases of wartime rape are not dehumanizing by virtue of involving objectification in either of the two senses discussed above, we are seemingly analyzing the same piece of reality. And, hence, one would expect that wartime dehumanization of women via sexualized violence should be explainable through the idea that one sees another as subhuman—something I disagree with.That said, we do both agree that objectification isn’t equivalent to dehumanization. Smith writes: “treating someone as only a means to a sexual end is not the same as regarding them as subhuman, for one can fail to acknowledge a person’s subjectivity without denying the existence of that subjectivity” (2011, 27). On his view then, it seems that when women are objectified, their humanity is recognized but disregarded. In the case of genocidal dehumanization though, it seems that one’s humanity isn’t (fully) recognized insofar as one is thought to have a subhuman essence or to be subhuman ‘inside.’ I agree with Smith that we are dealing with two distinct phenomena, though my reasons for resisting the equation of objectification and dehumanization are different. Nonetheless, I think that the example of wartime rape puts pressure on Smith’s explanation of the ‘paradox’ of dehu­ manization. Consider Manne’s alternative explanation, which she offers in her discussion of misogyny’s logic and mechanism. Manne holds that misogyny isn’t best understood as being 335

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about the hatred of women, which she terms as the “naïve conception.” Instead, it is primarily “a property of social environments in which women are liable to encounter hostility due to the enforcement and policing of patriarchal norms and expectations—often … insofar as they violate patriarchal law and order” (Manne 2017, 19). Misogyny is patriarchy’s police force, so to speak, correcting women who breach its laws– it functions to put women back in ‘their place.’ The naïve conception of misogyny makes it a property of individuals who universally or gen­ erally hate women qua women, which makes it a psychological matter. For Manne, misogyny is better understood as a sociopolitical phenomenon with psychological, structural, and institu­ tional manifestations. Misogyny’s essence resides in its social function and involves various ‘down girl’ moves that target women selectively when they are ‘out of line,’ rather than some general psychological state of hatred toward women. In other words, misogyny involves the ‘paradox of dehumanization’ insofar as it takes women to be all too human: “Her humanity is precisely the problem, when it’s directed to the wrong people, in the wrong way, or in the wrong spirit, by his lights.” (Manne 2017, 22) Manne, hence, rejects the view that misogyny involves viewing women as less than human or not human at all, and the idea that misogyny crucially involves some form of dehumanization. This “humanist” view in moral psychology, Manne claims, holds that dehumanization is the best explanation for inhumane conduct, where such behavior often stems from people’s failure to recognize some of their fellows as fellow human beings.The former may instead see the latter as subhuman creatures, non­ human animals, supernatural beings (e.g., demons, witches), or even as mere things (i.e., mindless objects). If people could only appreciate their shared or common humanity, then they would have a hard time mistreating other members of the species. (Manne 2017, 135) A problem with humanism though is that “[m]any of the nastiest things that people do to each other seem to proceed in full view of, and are in fact plausibly triggered by, these others’ manifestations of their shared or common humanity” (Manne 2017, 150). In other words, we treat others as “potentially dangerous and threatening in ways only a human being can be” (Manne 2017, 149). Only other human beings can be viewed and treated as enemies, rivals, usurpers, insubordinates, and traitors (Manne 2017, 154). By way of example, Manne notes the terms ‘thug,’‘welfare queen,’ and ‘urban youth’ that are used in the US political discourse dispara­ gingly to refer to black Americans. She admits that these terms reflect a type of “us” and “them” mentality. But Manne holds, and I think rightly so, “the ‘us’ in question need not be human beings writ large; it may be human beings in a particular social position or who occupy a certain rank in one of many potential intra-human hierarchies” (Manne 2017, 153). In a manner similar to my discussion above about wartime rape, this type of thinking and putting down of fellow humans only succeeds by assuming that they are social position occupants with life plans and desires.The put down works by utilizing the subjects’ human agency, rather than by holding that the recipients are ‘uncanny’ in the sense discussed by Smith. One might argue in defense of Smith though holding that perhaps the objectifying attitude can make one view women as ‘uncanny.’ Langton writes (without having Smith’s sense of dehu­ manization in mind): Someone who views women reductively, as brutish creatures whose purpose is the satisfaction of men’s lusts, may also manifest resentment towards women. Misogyny

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may sometimes present just this combination. And perhaps the connection between the resentment and the objectifying attitude is not coincidental. Perhaps it is caused by a horror that one’s desires put one in the power of such contemptible creatures. (2009, 332) Perhaps it is this horror that can make women subhuman ‘inside.’ For instance, Langton recounts a story told by Margaret Atwood, asking a group of men what is it that they fear most about women. The men replied: We’re afraid that they’ll laugh at us. Maybe there is a way to see how women can be ‘uncanny,’ too, in the sense Smith’s notion of dehumanization presupposes: women’s sexuality is somehow a mysterious beast beyond understanding and comprehension; hence, it is seen as something dangerous. In other words, there is a surface similarity in ‘female’ and ‘male’ sexuality, but a deep mystery and fear about the former, which seemingly could render women uncanny. Just think back to the example of a rat that looks like human: there is a sur­ face similarity of humanity, but a difference on a deeper level of having a “rodent-essence” that generates fear and renders the creature subhuman and uncanny. Now, even though this plausibly describes and explains some men’s sexual psychologies and egos, it would surely be too essen­ tialist and essentializing to explain “the male sexual psyche” generally in this way. For a start, no such singular psyche exists in my view. To explain complex practices of human sexuality and especially those of wartime rape in terms of men viewing women as uncanny due to their sexual mysteriousness ignores many conceivably important structural concerns and renders our explanations too psychologistic. Some instances of dehumanization may involve this type of uncanniness, but it strikes me as an overstatement that the phenomenon of gendered dehuman­ ization is grounded in it. (For a detailed discussion of psychological essentialism and dehuman­ ization, see Kronfeldner in this volume.) By contrast, I hold, dehumanization works and is paradoxical precisely because it involves a sort of co-opting of the agent and their humanity in the violations involved (think back to the example of Abu Ghraib-type torture). Cahill’s notion of derivatization may insightfully shed more light into this type of phenomenon. For her, the derivatized subject is degraded not by being mistakenly treated as an object, but by being mistakenly treated as a subject whose subjectivity (actions, speech, appearance, and so on) can be wholly determined by the subjective needs or desires of another. (2014, 845) In other words, one’s subjectivity and identity are projections of others’ desires and needs. Perhaps this underpins some aspects of dehumanization’s psychology: for instance, misogynistic dehu­ manization works by men derivatizing women’s subjectivity through various ‘down girl’ moves so that women are ‘put back in their place,’ and come to conform to men’s needs and desires. If something like this is going on, we can see again that dehumanization does not (and need not) involve objectification in the sense of viewing or treating women as literally object-like or as if they were objects. Women are treated as subjects all right, just not self-determining ones— dehumanization turns on precisely aiming to hamper and frustrate women’s self-set goals, aims, and life plans. Still, one might challenge my view that dehumanization and objectification are distinct phe­ nomena by considering self-objectification. Langton describes this as being a kind of object­ ification, where an agent views themselves as (naturally) determined in some manner and as having value only to the extent that they can be used or possessed by another. This type of

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self-objectifying attitude involves both doing and seeing. Someone may turn themselves into an object in having such an attitude.They may bring it about that they are more thing-like and less free by becoming passive, submissive, and enslaved (Langton 2009, 334–5). If one can selfobjectify to the extent that one enslaves oneself, the situation starts to look intuitively more like self-dehumanization. Perhaps this speaks for dehumanization and objectification being closer than I hold. Given the paradox of dehumanization it seems implausible though that one could selfdehumanize. Take Smith’s view: for the dehumanized person to self-dehumanize they would have to take their human appearance as grounds for thinking of themselves as a human being, but at the same time entertain a nonperceptual belief that they are a subhuman creature. In other words, they would have to feel both human and subhuman, and therefore an uncanny entity. Having these sorts of attitudes toward oneself simultaneously looks pre-theoretically wedded to a rather odd psychology. People can certainly feel self-loathing in various ways, but to view oneself uncanny in the above sense seems intuitively different from more ordinary forms of self-loathing. Or at the very least, self-dehumanization in this sense is probably not a widespread phenomenon. Hence, even though it may be that some people can have both self-objectifying and self-dehumanizing attitudes toward themselves, the apparent rarity of this coextension does not speak for objectification and dehumanization being closely connected—and it certainly does not suffice to make the two equivalent.

21.6 Final remarks For Manne, putting down of fellow humans only succeeds by assuming that they are social position occupants with life plans and desires. Dehumanization works by utilizing the subjects’ human agency, so that they are put back to their place should they venture to rebel and challenge their lot. Relative to misogyny, some of this conceivably involves objectification, both other and self-directed. After all, women conceiving of themselves as unfree and naturally determined is what patriarchy and sexism aim to accomplish with misogyny’s various ‘down girl’ moves coming into play should women act to the contrary. It seems then that misogyny is closely related to both dehumanization and objectification. Still, we ought not to treat objectifica­ tion and dehumanization as being equivalent, even though they are causally connected. Selfobjectification is a mechanism by which dehumanization can be brought about. Nevertheless, I maintain, the two are not constitutively connected in the strong sense as some feminist discussions presuppose.

Notes 1 Langton has added three more features to Nussbaum’s list: reduction to body (a person is identified with their body parts), reduction to appearance (treating a person in terms of how they look), and silencing (treating a person as lacking the capacity to speak) (2009, 228–229). 2 See also McLeod (2002) for a critique of the view that objectification must be ‘absolute’ in order to be morally problematic. 3 Another worry with accounts of dehumanizing sexual objectification is that such accounts come close to accepting a highly implausible and dim view about the nature of sex.This view is found in Kant: for him, sexual activity per se seriously damages and debases humanity as such, although this damage can be morally mitigated if one enters a monogamous marriage relationship (for a discussion, see Herman 2002). The view that every act of sex debases humanity, unless it takes place within the confines of patriarchal marriage relations, is surely to be rejected. In advancing conceptions of dehumanizing sexual objectification, some feminists come close to such Kantian-sounding regressive views.

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Dehumanization distinct from objectification 4 The example is my variant of David Archard’s (2008) non-consensual mouth swab example. 5 I will talk of ‘combatants’ and ‘soldiers’ without distinguishing which soldiers/combatants I have in mind.This is because the political situation in the DRC is hugely complex with many different factions fighting one another. Actually, this makes no difference since all sides have been reported to practice martial rape. 6 The so-called ‘corrective rapes’ also ill fit the objectification argument. In such cases, non-heterosexual females are raped in order to ‘cure’ them sexually.Again, the end is not sexual gratification, but to induce heterosexuality by using sexual means. 7 In the discussion to follow, I will argue that Smith’s view (that dehumanization involves conceiving of others as subhuman) fails to explain the paradox of dehumanization sufficiently. Of course, this leaves open the option that some other account of dehumanization may do so. Due to considerations of space, however, I will be focusing on Smith as his discussion of the paradox is one the most prominent ones found in current literature.

References Amnesty International (2005) “Rape as a Tool of War: A Fact Sheet.” http://www.amnestyusa.org/get­ activist-toolkit/about-amnesty/fact-sheet/page.do?id=1101301 Archard, D. (2008) “Informed Consent: Autonomy and Self-Ownership.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 25 (1): 19–34. Cahill, A. J. (2011) Overcoming Objectification: A Carnal Ethics. New York, NY: Routledge. ———. (2014) “The Difference Sameness Makes: Objectification, Sex Work, and Queerness.” Hypatia 29 (4): 840–856. Cudd, A. (2006) Analyzing Oppression. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Dworkin, A. (2000) “Against the Male Flood: Censorship, Pornography, and Equality.” In Feminism and Pornography, edited by D. Cornell, 19–38. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Gardner, J. and Shute, S. (2000) “The Wrongness of Rape.” In Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence, edited by J. Horder, 193–219. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heinämaa, S. and Jardine, J. (2020) “Objectification, Inferiorization, and Projection in Phenomenological Research on Dehumanization.” In The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, edited by M. Kronfeldner, 307–325. London and New York: Routledge, (this volume). Herman, B. (2002) “Could It Be Worth Thinking about Kant on Sex and Marriage?” In A Mind of One’s Own, edited by L. M. Antony and C. Witt, 53–72. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Human Rights Watch (2002) “The War Within the War.” http://www.hrw.org/node/78573 Kronfeldner, M. (2020) “Psychological Essentialism and Dehumanization.” In The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, edited by M. Kronfeldner, 307–325. London and New York: Routledge, (this volume). Langton, R. (2009) Sexual Solipsism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. LeMoncheck, L. (1985) Dehumanizing Women: Treating Persons as Sex Objects. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. MacKinnon, C. (1987) Feminism Unmodified. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Manne, K. (2017) Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. McLeod, C. (2002) “Mere and Partial Means: The Full Range of the Objectification of Women.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 32 (sup1): 219–244. Mikkola, M. (2016) The Wrong of Injustice: Dehumanization and Its Role in Feminist Philosophy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Nussbaum, M. (1995) “Objectification.” In Philosophy and Public Affairs 24: 249–291. Papadaki, L. (2007) “Sexual Objectification: From Kant to Contemporary Feminism.” Contemporary Political Theory 6 (3): 330–348. ———. (2010) “What Is Objectification?” Journal of Moral Philosophy 7 (1): 16–36. ———. (2015a) “Feminist Perspectives on Objectification.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2015 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2015/entries/ feminism-objectification. ———. (2015b) “What Is Wrong about Objectification?” In Current Controversies in Political Philosophy, edited by Thom Brooks, 87–99. London: Routledge.

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Mari Mikkola Smith, D. L. (2011) Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. ———. (2014) “Dehumanization, Essentialism, and Moral Psychology.” Philosophy Compass 9, (11): 814–824. ———. (2016) “Paradoxes of Dehumanization.” Social Theory and Practice 42, (2): 416–443. ———. (2020) “Dehumanization, the Problem of Humanity, and the Problem of Monstrosity.” In The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, edited by M. Kronfeldner, 355–361. London and New York: Routledge, (this volume). Sussman, D. (2005) “What Is Wrong with Torture?” Philosophy and Public Affairs 33: 1–33.

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22

ON HATRED AND

DEHUMANIZATION1

Thomas Brudholm and Johannes Lang

When persons or groups are objects of hatred, they are often perceived to be lesser humans, less than human, or even categorically nonhuman. (Haslam and Murphy 2020: 27)

22.1 Introduction This chapter explores the relationship between hatred and dehumanization.What are the hateful aspects of dehumanization and the dehumanizing elements of hate? Is it conceivable that one can exist without the other? In the following, we explore three possible constellations: dehu­ manizing hatred, dehumanization devoid of hatred, and hatred without dehumanization. Our analysis draws on a diverse and interdisciplinary range of sources, from the psychology of mass violence and the philosophy of emotion to victim testimony and interviews with perpetrators of genocide. But while our philosophical investigation stays close to concrete examples, our main purpose is conceptual: to engage with different ways of thinking about hatred, dehumanization, and how the two might relate. The current interest in dehumanization originated in the study of war and genocide in the middle of the 20th century, and partly for this reason genocide will loom large in our discus­ sion. But our intention here is not to explain or describe the psychology of genocide, which often involves neither hatred nor dehumanization (see Brudholm 2010; Lang 2010; Brudholm and Lang 2018). Our attention in this chapter is fully on hatred and dehumanization, and so we explore only cases in which either one or the other or both appear to be present.We focus pri­ marily on collective hate (which targets people in terms of their group identities), but we also reflect on examples of personal hatred and the victim’s hatred in response to dehumanization.And while many of our examples come from writings on the Holocaust, we hope that what we have to say about hatred and dehumanization will be more broadly relevant to how we think about all kinds of harassment and violence commonly associated with these phenomena today. We will argue against a number of positions that in problematic ways seem to reduce the com­ plexity of hatred and dehumanization. We object to claims that hatred is inherently dehuman­ izing as well as to arguments which imply that dehumanization and hatred are mutually exclusive. This critical engagement with the literature ultimately leads us beyond a strictly phenomeno­ logical and conceptual discussion, and the chapter ends with some normative reflections on the 341

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moral character of hate with or without dehumanization. For, can hatred, despite its dangerous and dehumanizing potentials, ever be part of a morally permissible or even virtuous response to dehumanization?

22.2 Dehumanizing hatred The assumption that hatred either spurs or expresses itself in dehumanization lies at the heart of many approaches to hate today. “Hate studies” at both Bard College and Gonzaga University, for instance, are described as “inquiries into the human capacity to define, and then dehumanize or demonize, an ‘other.’” Similarly, in a paper focused on the genocide in Rwanda, the legal scholar Irwin Cotler argues that official incitement to hate renders “the victims’ dehumanization and demonization so natural to the general population that overt incitement to genocide can follow without much notice” (Cotler 2012: 435).We disagree with the assumption that hatred is always or inherently dehumanizing.We agree, however, that hatred can be dehumanizing— even if the connection between hate and dehumanization is more complex than one might initially expect. The notion of a dehumanizing hatred is also operative in contexts of criminal justice.According to the Danish Prosecution Service’s survey of hate speech cases in Denmark, derogatory assertions that members of a group lack value as human beings generally suffice as evidence of the gravity of the offence required for a conviction of hate speech. Notice that what matters legally is the content of the expression and the intent with which it was uttered or presented.What defendants actually felt—whether or not their utterances were motivated by emotions of hate, for instance— is irrelevant to the legal judgment. Here are two examples of dehumanizing hate speech from the survey, one from 2003, the other from 2012. One should gas ALL the goddamn dirty contaminating subhumans in Europe, i.e. Muslims, gypsies. THAT we have to feed such criminal ungrateful damned animals shocks me. (Danish Prosecution Service 2014: 16, our translation) Jews ought to be combated almost like ordinary eradication of vermin … in my opinion, the Jews are like a tumor causing unrest and atrocities around the world. (Ibid.: 5) These statements are reminiscent of Nazi propaganda during the Holocaust, when posters, films, and even children’s books conveyed caricatures of the odious “Jew.”An exceptionally clear example of the amalgam of hatred and dehumanization can be found in a speech by the leader of the Nazi Labor Front, Robert Ley, delivered in Amsterdam in 1942 and broadcast on German radio.“The Jew,” he said,“is the great danger to humanity.” If we don’t succeed in exterminating him, then we will lose the war. It is not enough to take him someplace.That would be as if one wanted to lock up a louse somewhere in a cage [laughter]. It would find a way out, and again it come out from underneath and make you itch again [laughter].You have to annihilate them, you have to exterminate [them for what] they have done to humanity … [interrupted by ongoing applause]. (Cited in Herf 2006: 155) Let us take a closer look, both at the element of hate and the element of dehumanization in such examples of dehumanizing hatred. What does this form of hatred involve? “It involves,” as the philosophers Antony Duff and Sandra Marshall argue,“a radical kind of alienation or exclusion.” 342

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To hate is to exclude the hated from fellowship and recognition.What I hate is what I would like to destroy, or to push right away from me; it is something unworthy of my respect, concern, or even attention; it has no place in my life. Similarly, what we hate (if the hate is collective) is something we wish to exclude from our shared life.We might feel loathing or contempt for those whom we hate; we cannot accord them respect or concern. (Duff and Marshall 2018: 120) The language of dehumanization offers one way—perhaps the most radical way—of verbally expressing such hatred. Both Ley and the Danish rabble-rousers convicted of hate speech were using dehumanizing language in order to verbally exclude the victims from fellowship, deprive them of respect, and call for their destruction.There is, however, a certain tension at stake in this kind of dehumanizing hatred.As argued by the philosopher Arne Johan Vetlesen, I can only dehumanize what I originally, however reluctantly, concede as partaking in a shared humanity. Hence, the anti-Semite whose project is to deprive the Jew of all human traits, to present him as “vermin” so as to exclude him from the category of possible addressees of empathy, contradicts himself; the hatred that spurs him to dehu­ manize is fed by what can only be an exclusively human source. (Vetlesen 1994: 258–9) Vetlesen writes that “the objective of hate is to dehumanize” and that “dehumanization is a work of negation” (ibid.: 258).The question we would like to raise is whether the objective of all hate is to dehumanize, and whether dehumanization is always a work of negation. In our view, the idea of dehumanization as a “work of negation” succinctly captures the tension or contradiction at stake in dehumanizing forms of hate. It explains why the “subhumans” or “animals” in the Danish case of hate speech are at the same time “criminals” and “ungrateful”—and why “the Jew” in Ley’s speech is not like a louse in all respects. For, unlike lice,“the Jew” is allegedly at war with the Germans, and the Nazis’ dream of complete annihilation is not just about destroying an annoying insect; it is also a matter of revenge. Thinking about dehumanizing hatred as a kind of self-contradiction, involving both the denial and attribution of human characteristics to its targets, brings to mind Erving Goffman’s socio­ logical concept of stigma.The stigmatized individual, Goffman pointed out,“is not quite human” (Goffman 1963: 5). He or she must be perceived to possess attributes that are, in the eyes of the stigmatizer, deeply discrediting or incompatible with the norms of membership in a particular social category. Nevertheless, the individual remains categorized as a (bad, tainted, dangerous) member of the given category—a lesser human, yet nevertheless a human being. The social reality of stigma requires the unresolved discrepancy: if the perception of incompatibility with given stereotypes of what it means to be a member of a certain category leads to a reclassification of the target, the stigma disappears (ibid.: 3). But dehumanization does not always imply this kind of ambiguity. Hatred and dehumaniza­ tion, as the psychologists Nick Haslam and Sean Murphy have also recently argued, sometimes part ways. We shall return to the possibility of hatred without dehumanization. For now, let us consider dehumanization without hatred.

22.3 Dehumanization without hatred Dehumanizing hatred is often explicit and blatantly hostile. Over the past twenty years, how­ ever, research on dehumanization has expanded to include a focus on “infrahumanization”—the subtle, indirect, everyday ways in which people attribute fewer human characteristics to members 343

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of some groups compared to others (e.g., Leyens et al. 2000). As Haslam points out, the work on “infrahumanization” suggests that people might, more or less unconsciously, attribute less humanness to members of other groups without feeling any animosity or dislike toward them (see Haslam, this volume). An example of this kind of mindset was described by George Orwell in his depiction of how visiting Europeans might perceive the inhabitants of Marrakech in the late 1930s. When you walk through a town like this—two hundred thousand inhabitants, of whom at least twenty thousand own literally nothing except the rags they stand up in—when you see how the people live, and still more, how easily they die, it is always difficult to believe that you are walking among human beings. All colonial empires are in reality founded upon that fact. The people have brown faces—besides they have so many of them! Are they really the same flesh as yourself? Do they even have names? Or are they merely a kind of undifferentiated brown stuff, about as individual as bees or coral insects? They arise out of the earth, they sweat and starve for a few years, and then they sink back into the nameless mounds of the graveyard and nobody notices that they are gone. (Orwell 1939: 29–30) As the philosopher Margaret Walker remarks in her comments to this passage, the people in Marrakech obviously do have names, they are born of women, and are most likely mourned and missed when they die.To see them as “brown stuff,” she writes, is “not to see their humanness or, at any rate, their individual humanity” (Walker 2007: 197). In this case, however, the people of Marrakech are not portrayed as essentially bad or vicious, and there is no expressed desire that they should cease to exist.The perspective described by Orwell is dehumanizing, but not hateful. Yet, does it make sense to think of dehumanization without hatred in the extreme contexts of genocide and mass atrocity? The answer is yes. In fact, the conceptual distinction between hatred and dehumanization has played an important role in Holocaust and genocide studies ever since research on dehumanization began in the early 1970s. At Harvard University, the renowned social psychologist Herbert Kelman developed a theory of “sanctioned massacres” (Kelman 1973) that relied on a concept of dehumanization as something distinct from, and often devoid of, hatred. Kelman’s theory is an early and paradigmatic example of how social psychologists, sociologists, and “functionalist” historians have explained the Holocaust as well as other cases of genocide and mass atrocity (e.g., Bauman 1989; Browning 1992; Bandura 1999). Influenced by Hannah Arendt’s (1963) philosophical work on the “banality of evil” and Stanley Milgram’s (1963) socialpsychological experiments on obedience to authority, Kelman emphasized the “passionless and businesslike atmosphere” in which the Holocaust had been planned and organized. He did not deny that hatred played a role in the Holocaust and other cases of state-sanctioned mass killing; nor did he deny that hatred could be dehumanizing. Indeed, the primary function of hatred, in Kelman’s view, was to dehumanize the victims. But the importance of hatred in dehumanization and genocide should not be exaggerated, as most of the men who participated in the Holocaust “did not feel any passionate hatred against Jews” (Kelman 1973: 36).They often had “consider­ able contempt for their victims, but the desire to injure and annihilate them was not uniformly high” (ibid.: 37). Kelman was so struck by the perpetrators’ apparent lack of animosity toward their victims that he initially conceptualized state-sanctioned atrocities as “violence without hostility.” The perpetrators, he observed, were simply implementing the policies of their government. From this perspective, it does not really matter whether the perpetrators subscribed to Nazi ideology or 344

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not, or whether they hated their victims or not. If we want to understand “why so many people are willing to formulate, participate in, and condone policies that call for the mass killings of defenseless victims,” Kelman argued,“we can learn more by looking, not at the motives for vio­ lence, but at the conditions under which the usual moral inhibitions against violence become weakened” (ibid.: 38). According to Kelman, dehumanization, not hatred, was a necessary precondition for mass atro­ city, and its crucial function was not to motivate but to enable the violence. Kelman conceptualized dehumanization as a dual process of deindividualization and exclusion, divesting the victim of both identity and community.When we accord someone “identity,” he wrote, we perceive of this person “as an individual, independent and distinguishable from others, capable of making choices, and entitled to live his [or her] own life on the basis of his [or her] own goals and values.”When we accord someone “community,” we perceive this person—along with ourselves—to be “part of an interconnected network of individuals who care for each other, who recognize each other’s individuality, and who respect each other’s rights” (ibid.: 48). State-sanctioned mass murder, Kelman concluded, becomes “possible to the extent that we deprive fellow human beings of identity and community” (ibid.: 49). Around the time when Kelman was formulating these ideas, the former commandant of Sobibor and Treblinka, Franz Stangl, sat down to speak with Gitta Sereny. Sereny was a journalist who had recently attended Stangl’s trial, where he had been sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in the murder of 900,000 Jews in Treblinka during World War II. As we shall see in a moment, her detailed interview with Stangl vividly illustrates Kelman’s notion of dehumaniza­ tion without hatred (Sereny 1974: 200–1, 232–3).“What did you think at the time was the reason for the exterminations?” Sereny asked the former death-camp commander. “They wanted the Jews’ money,” Stangl answered immediately. “That racial business […] was just secondary.” Sereny expressed surprise. “If the racial business was so secondary, then why all that hate propaganda?” she wondered. “To condition those who actually had to carry out these policies,” Stangl explained, “to make it possible for them to do what they did.”“Well, you were part of this,” Sereny pointed out, “did you hate?”“Never,” Stangl replied,“I wouldn’t let anybody dictate to me who to hate.” “Would it be true to say that you finally felt they weren’t really human beings?” Sereny asked, refer­ ring to the victims. In response, Stangl mentioned a postwar memory of a train journey. At one point the train had stopped near a slaughterhouse; the cattle waiting outside had approached the train and looked at Stangl, without the slightest idea that soon they would all be dead.The scene had reminded him of the death camps. “So you didn’t feel they were human beings?” Sereny repeated. “Cargo,” he said, “they were cargo. […] I rarely saw them as individuals. It was always a huge mass.” “What is the difference between hate,” Sereny asked, “and a contempt which results in considering people as ‘cargo’?” “It has nothing to do with hate,” Stangl insisted. “They were so weak; they allowed everything to happen—to be done to them. They were people with whom there was no common ground, no possibility of communication—that is how contempt is born. I could never understand how they could just give in as they did.” Once again, Stangl relied on an animal metaphor to describe his perception of the victims: “Quite recently,” he told Sereny, “I read a book about lemmings, who every five or six years just wander into the sea and die; that made me think of Treblinka.” Sereny concluded that the commandant of Treblinka had dehumanized his victims.This con­ clusion seems warranted if we subscribe to Kelman’s definition of dehumanization. By his own account, Stangl rarely saw his victims as individuals; it was “always a huge mass.”And he perceived them as “people with whom there was no common ground, no possibility of communication”— no sense of community.“It is difficult to have compassion for those who lack identity and who 345

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are excluded from our community,” Kelman wrote;“their death does not move us in a personal way” (Kelman 1973: 49). Rather than hatred, he concluded, it is this lack of moral and personal concern for the victims that makes mass atrocities possible. Primo Levi describes how this lack of concern for the victims permeated the atmosphere in Auschwitz. Levi, who had been a chemist before the war, was selected to work in the chemical laboratories at the camp. One day, a man named Alex, a non-Jewish Kapo—a prisoner supervising other prisoners—had gotten some oil on one of his hands. He wiped it on Levi’s back, appar­ ently without animosity or any intention to degrade him.Wiping the oily hand on Levi’s jacket “was not a vengeful act,” Judith Kelly notes in a comment to this passage (Kelly 2000: 35); Levi writes that it was done “without hatred and without contempt” (Levi 1947: 102).Yet, “it is the very lack of emotion, the objectification of another human being, which arouses Levi’s anger,” Kelly argues; the Kapo appears to have internalized a view of the Jews as unworthy of dignity and respect. His act, as Levi experienced it, could be interpreted as a form of dehumanization without hatred. Not an “act of negation,” where the victim’s humanity is implicitly recognized by the perpetrator, but an act of utter indifference.A total failure to acknowledge the victim as a fellow human being with a right to be treated with a minimum of respect and consideration. If Levi is right, the Kapo’s intention was not to humiliate or degrade another prisoner, but simply to wipe the oil off his hand. Levi’s humanity was irrelevant to the situation; he was, at least for the moment, reduced to an object on which to wipe one’s hands (see also Heinämaa and Jardine, this volume, for a phenomenological analysis of dehumanization that is not limited to the psych­ ology of the dehumanizer, but also essentially incorporates the ways in which dehumanization is experienced or interpreted by its target).

22.4 Hatred without dehumanization Over the past decade, a growing number of scholars have problematized the claim that perpetrators of mass violence actually perceive their victims as less than human (e.g., Lang 2010; Rai et al. 2017; Enock et al. 2020; Lang 2020; Over 2020). These scholars reject the so-called “dehumanization thesis,” which holds that dehumanization of the victims is a necessary pre­ condition for killing them.The hateful aspects of violence—often defined as a desire to harm or humiliate the victim—have played a central role in the critique of the dehumanization thesis. In one example of this critique, focusing on the hatred and violence against women, philosopher Kate Manne contests the idea that “misogyny typically consists in dehumanizing women” (Manne 2017: 146). In a chapter titled “Humanizing Hatred,” Manne analyzes several examples, including the case of Elliot Rodger, who killed six people and injured fourteen others in a shooting and stabbing spree in California. Rodger ascribed to the women “subjectivity, preferences, and a capacity to form deep emotional attachments,” Manne writes; he attributed to them “agency, autonomy, and the capacity to be addressed by him” (ibid.: 150; emphasis in original). None of this impeded Rodger’s misogyny from escalating into murderous violence. His misogyny was a retributive desire to “punish” the women “for evincing these [human] cap­ acities in ways that frustrated him, given his sense of entitlement to their benefit” (ibid.: 150). What we need to explain hate violence is not a concept of dehumanization, Manne suggests. What we need is a realistic notion of what it means to recognize another—and to be recognized by others—as a human being. Human beings can elicit your sympathy and respect, but this is not the whole story. They are also an intelligible rival, enemy, usurper, insubordinate, betrayer, etc. Moreover, in being capable of rationality, agency, autonomy, and judgment, they are also someone 346

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who could coerce, manipulate, humiliate, or shame you. In being capable of abstract relational thought and congruent moral emotions, they are capable of thinking ill of you and regarding you contemptuously. In being capable of forming complex desires and intentions, they are capable of harboring malice and plotting against you. In being capable of valuing, they may value what you abhor and abhor what you value. They may hence be a threat to all that you cherish. And you may be a threat to all that they cherish in turn—as you may realize.This provides all the more reason to worry about others’ capacity for cruelty, contempt, malice, and so forth. (Manne 2017: 147) Recent studies in social psychology similarly suggest that we should view hatred as something separate from dehumanization. Based on a series of five experiments, Tage Rai and colleagues argue that dehumanization is relevant only when people perpetrate violence for instrumental reasons—that is, when they do not desire to harm their victims but do so nonetheless, in order to achieve some other goal. When perpetrators believe that harming certain others is morally righteous, these researchers claim, dehumanization is insignificant. Many perpetrators feel their violence is righteous and that their victims deserve what is coming to them. The husband who avenges the murder of his wife, the vigilante who cripples criminals, the soldier who kills the enemy, the public that votes for cap­ ital punishment, and even the suicide terrorist who detonates a bomb—all may see violence as morally justified, obligatory, and even praiseworthy […] morally motivated perpetrators wish to harm victims who deserve it, can experience it fully, and under­ stand its meaning. To do so, their victims must be capable of thinking and having intentions, feeling pain and other sensations, and experiencing moral emotions—they must be human. (Rai et al. 2017: 8511) Now, it is of course possible to believe that harming certain others is morally righteous without hating them. Conversely, perpetrators of hate violence are not always “morally motivated,” not even in the descriptive or non-prescriptive sense in which Rai et al. speak about “moral motiv­ ation.” Perpetrators of hate violence might feel that what they do is morally dubious or they simply might not care.Yet some haters surely feel and see their violence and victims in the moral and non-dehumanizing sense emphasized by Rai and his colleagues. Unlike Rai et al., we grant the possibility of a dehumanizing hatred—dehumanization as what Vetlesen called a “work of negation.” Rai et al. conclude that dehumanization plays no role in “morally motivated” violence because morally motivated perpetrators require human targets. Dehumanization, they write, “removes the very qualities that make moral violence meaningful” (ibid.: 8514). For this reason, “moral” hatred should always or generally appear without dehumanization. Such a conclusion appears to create a false binary between hatred and dehumanization. It seems possible that hate-mongers and perpetrators can recognize the humanity of their victims and dehumanize them at the same time (see also Steizinger, this volume, who reaches a similar conclusion through an analysis of Nazi ideology). In Mein Kampf, Hitler presents the hated Jews both as subhumans (as germs, parasites, disease, and the like) and as beings with traits and intentions that can only be ascribed to humans (such as being cold-hearted, perpetual liars, shameless and calculating, and, most importantly, consumed by hate). Despite Hitler’s dehumanization of the Jews, the hatred that suffuses Mein Kampf is deeply (self-)righteous and there is no doubt that “the Jews,” in Hitler’s opinion, deserve what is coming to them. In this case, dehumanization does not remove the qualities that make the defamation meaningful. 347

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Rai et al. are right when they argue that a “morally” motivated desire to harm or kill others is logically inconsistent with dehumanizing them (in the narrow sense of perceiving the targets as non-human or less than human). “There is,” as the psychologist Harriet Over has recently observed, “no sense in consistently reminding a rat that it is, in fact, a rat” (Over 2020: 10). Dehumanizing hatred is logically inconsistent.Yet it seems to work. For there is some sense in reminding humans that they are rats. Indeed, the implicit recognition that the targets are, in fact, not rats, helps explain what Over describes as the “power of the metaphor” (ibid.).The power of the metaphor is to negate, in the act of dehumanization, the humanity of the victims.“They” are human, but “we” refuse to see and treat them as such. While we think Manne and Rai et al. go too far in separating hatred and dehumanization, they certainly offer interesting and important accounts of what hatred without dehumaniza­ tion might look like. We agree with Rai et al. that hate can take the form of a wish to harm perceived evildoers—and that this form of hatred requires human targets who, in the eyes of the hateful perpetrator, deserve to be destroyed. As Jonathan Haidt—another social psychologist— has argued, “people don’t hate others just because they have darker skin or differently shaped noses; they hate people whom they perceive as having values that are incompatible with their own, or who (they believe) engage in behaviors they find abhorrent, or whom they perceive to be a threat to something they hold dear” (Haidt 2016: 50).We acknowledge that hatred without dehumanization can, in this purely descriptive sense, be a “morally motivated” animus, directed against beings who must or will be perceived (at least in part) as human beings with capacities for thought, intention, feeling, emotion. Like Manne, we recognize that so-called “inhuman” and hateful conduct can be “human, all-too-human,” and better explained with reference to antagonistic social or interpersonal relations and struggles. We wonder, however, whether there are ways of hating that deserve to be “humanized” because they are more humane—exhibiting less vice, more virtue—than the misogynist and racist cases considered by Manne. In other words, we wonder whether we—as ethicists thinking about the nature and value of various human responses to evil and injustice— should grant the possibility that someone who hates can not only feel but actually be justified in doing so? This is a normative and ethical rather than a descriptive and psychological question. Should we, in our understanding of how a virtuous or righteous person can feel and act, leave a small space for hatred?

22.5 Virtuous hatred: An impossibility? In an early essay, philosopher Martha Nussbaum argued that in the face of cruelty and injustice, expressions of anger and outrage can help restore a sense of “moral order and humane concern” (Nussbaum 1994: 404). By way of example, Nussbaum recounted a story told by Elie Wiesel. Wiesel was a child in one of the Nazi death camps. On the day the Allied forces arrived, the first member of the liberating army he saw was a very large black officer. Walking into the camp and seeing what was there to be seen, this man began to curse, shouting at the top of his voice. As the child Wiesel watched, he went on shouting and cursing for a very long time. And the child Wiesel thought, watching him, now humanity has come back. Now with that anger, humanity has come back. (Nussbaum 1994: 403) The question is whether such a positive appraisal of anger can and should ever be extended also to hatred. In If This Is a Man (1947), Primo Levi reflects on an episode where he and many other 348

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exhausted inmates of Auschwitz-Birkenau were forced to watch the hanging of a man who had taken part in a revolt in October 1944. Nearly 250 prisoners died during the fighting and approximately 200 were executed afterward. As Levi describes the scene, the doomed rebel had, just before his execution, cried out,“Comrades, I am the last!”This cry, as Levi recalls it,“struck the living core of the man in each of us” (ibid.: 142). Levi wishes he could say that some of the inmates had uttered signs of protest or solidarity. But nothing happened. We remained standing. Bent and gray, heads bowed, and we did not uncover them until the German ordered us to do so.The trapdoor opened, the body writhed horribly; the band began playing again, and we, once again in our line, filed past the final tremors of the dying man. […] To destroy a man is difficult, almost as difficult as to create one: it wasn’t easy, it wasn’t quick, but you Germans have succeeded. Here we are, docile under your gaze. From our side you have nothing more to fear: no acts of revolt, no words of defiance, not even a look of judgment. (Levi 1947: 143) The rebel lost his life. The exhausted witnesses to his death remained alive, at least a little longer. But for Levi the absence of opposition to the injustice they had witnessed testifies to the fact that they had been destroyed as men or, more to the point, as human beings. Levi contrasts his own and his fellow prisoners’ numbness and apparent lack of moral outrage with the “few hundred men, helpless and exhausted slaves like us, [who] found in themselves the strength to act, to bring to maturity the fruits of their hatred” (Levi 1947: 142).This reference to hatred (odio in the original Italian) stands out in Levi’s writings; elsewhere, he considers it a “crude and brutish feeling” (Levi 1976: 168). Nazi hatred, Levi writes, is “outside of man, a poisonous fruit” (ibid.: 190).Yet here, reflecting on those prisoners who found the courage to resist, he seems to concede that hatred can be a form of strength or “weapon,” as the 18th­ century theologian Joseph Butler once said about resentment, “against injury, injustice, and cruelty” (Butler 1726: 121). We cannot know to what extent the uprising in Birkenau was motivated by hate; it seems likely that the prisoners were also acting on the knowledge that their days were numbered. In any case, what matters here is Levi’s positive appraisal of hatred. It invites the question whether hatred can sometimes be as fitting and virtuous as a display of anger in response to grave injustice. Aristotle famously observed that we, if we are virtuous, will “get angry with the people we should and about the things we should and as we should” (Aristotle 2006: 1126b5). Aristotle knew that it is not always “easy to determine how and with whom and about what and how long one should be angry” (ibid.: 1109b15), but he assumed that anger is not always bad or inappro­ priate in itself, and that not to get angry (when one should and as one should) reveals a lack of self-respect. Indeed, the cultivation of a disposition to experience and express anger appropriately is an important aspect of our moral life. This is precisely what we, today, cannot assume with regard to hate—and the reason we cannot do so brings us back to the question of the relation between hatred and dehumanization. The excerpt from Duff and Marshall that we cited earlier might lead us to think that hatred, in itself, involves a fundamental moral wrong; namely, seeing the odious other as a human being who has forfeited his or her dignity, rights, or moral status. In this view, hatred implies a denial of basic respect that can never be acceptable, not even in relation to people who are responsible for genocide or crimes against humanity.As Duff and Marshall put it, Many attitudes, although in some way aversive, are still consistent with recognizing the other as a fellow. I might dislike someone, find him boring, disapprove of his morals 349

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or his taste in art, be irritated with him or jealous of him. Such reactions may stand in the way of being his friend (though not necessarily), or make me less inclined to spend time with him or to accept his social invitations, but they need not undermine my recognition or treatment of him as a fellow citizen […] Hatred itself, however, is inconsistent with respect, concern, or recognized fellowship; it must be overcome if we are to behave as we should. (Duff and Marshall 2018: 120–1) The philosopher Linda Radzik makes a similar argument with regard to hating oneself: Self-hatred and self-contempt […] seem to mark out the self as either a legitimate target for destruction (in the case of self-hatred) or a withdrawal of recognition respect (in the case of self-contempt).They represent the self not as having made bad choices or developed a bad character but as falling into a moral class altogether different from that of other people. Such emotions are impermissible (if frequently excusable or even pitiable). (Radzik 2009: 144) The reasoning behind such exclusions of hatred from the company of morally legitimate emotions or attitudes stands on the shoulders of philosopher Peter F. Strawson’s famous essay on the meaning and role of what he called participant reactive attitudes. Focusing in particular on resentment, Strawson argued that although it tends to “inhibit or at least to limit our goodwill” toward the culpable other, it does not involve viewing its “object other than as a member of the moral community” (Strawson 1974: 22). On the contrary, resentment, including “the pre­ paredness to acquiesce in that infliction of suffering on the offender which is an essential part of punishment[,] is all of a piece” with recognizing the other as a fellow inhabitant of our moral universe (ibid.). Strawson did not compare resentment and hatred (for that, see Brudholm 2010), but Duff and Marshall offer a reasonable view on how the two might differ: whereas resentment is con­ sistent with respect, concern, or recognized fellowship, hatred is not.This view is congenial with several other philosophical conceptions of hate. According to Robert Roberts, for example, the defining proposition for hatred is that “X is evil and worthy of damage, suffering, and destruction; may X be damaged, hurt, or destroyed” (Roberts 2003: 251).We should add that Duff and Marshall do not exclude the possibility that hatred could be construed otherwise.They remind their readers that “scholars disagree about how hatred should be understood,” and that they themselves are interested in the topic of hatred only insofar as they “can identify a kind of hatred […] that should be of concern to the citizens of a liberal republic, as being inconsistent with their civic duty” (Duff and Marshall 2018: 10). Now, our interest here, contrary to that of Duff and Marshall, is whether hating someone can be consistent with the civic duty to recognize the other human being as a fellow member of one’s own moral community. Before we get to that, however, we need to briefly consider a much more radical possibility; namely, whether the very norms of inalienable dignity or recognition respect themselves have certain limits. “You do not,” wrote Jean Améry in his reflections on Auschwitz, “observe dehumanized man committing his deeds and misdeeds without having all of your notions of inherent human dignity placed in doubt” (Améry 1966: 20). Reflecting on the meaning of torture, Améry explains that the experience of “one’s fellow man […] as the antiman remains in the tortured person as accumulated horror” (ibid.: 40). It is not difficult to imagine that survivors of tor­ ture, rape, and other inhumane acts might see the remorseless perpetrator as an evil man who deserves to be killed or to spend the rest of his life in prison.This is not a matter of denying that the torturer is a human being, but that he or she is, morally speaking, beyond the pale. 350

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As Arendt put it, imagining what the court in Jerusalem should have told Adolf Eichmann, “We find that no one, that is, no member of the human race, can be expected to want to share the earth with you.This is the reason, and the only reason, you must hang” (Arendt 1963: 279). We do not have space to pursue this line of though any further, but the discussion of whether hating others can be morally permissible acquires a new dimension if one recognizes certain limits to the principles of inaliable dignity or universal respect (for further discussions of this and related issues about the limits of respect, punishment, and forgiveness, see Gaita 2004; Duff 2009; and Murphy 2009). Now, back to the question whether hatred can be consistent with recognition respect and a refusal to exclude the odious other categorically or terminally from one’s “moral community.” In our view, hatred itself is, as Duff and Marshall put it, inconsistent with the required kind of respect. In other words, although hatred can be reactive (rather than projective), it is not a partici­ pant attitude.“Hatred,” writes the philosopher Jon Elster in a formulaic passage,“is the emotion that A feels toward B if he believes that B has an evil character.The action-tendency is to cause B to cease to exist or otherwise be rendered harmless, for instance by permanent expulsion” (Elster 2004: 230). But—and this is very important—persons who feel hate are not necessarily, and perhaps rarely, consumed by it. It is true that several classical philosophical conceptions of hatred present it as a passion that takes over and makes the hater impervious to other values. According to Aristotle, an angry person can come to feel pity, but the one who hates can “in no case” do so: “for the one [who is angry] wishes that the person with whom he is angry should suffer in return, but the other [the one who hates] wishes that he [the hated one] should cease to exist” (Aristotle, Rhetoric 1382a12–14, transl. David Konstan). Again, in Kant, the peculiar danger of hate (as a passion), in comparison with anger (as an affect), is that it slowly but more determinedly takes the place of reason. In our view, however, the classical sources are best read as reflections on what might distinguish hatred (in contrast to anger) insofar as it is allowed to determine someone’s entire outlook. We think this conception of hatred is too narrow and decontextualized. As the philosopher Jeffrie Murphy has argued in “A word on behalf of good haters” (Murphy 2016), “a person whose whole life is driven by nothing but hatred is indeed pathological, but this will surely not be true of all or even most of those who hate” (ibid.: 95).Thus, instead of probing the moral nature and value of hatred in itself, or as if it fully determined the outlook of the person who hates, let us ask whether hatred can be part of a broader outlook that remains consistent with the principles of recognition respect. If we return to Arne Johan Vetlesen, we find the view that hatred implies an “unwillingness to recognize the person I hate as a cosubject deserving the same recognition as a human and moral being that I demand for myself from others. In this sense, hate dehumanizes: it undermines such recognition” (Vetlesen 1994: 258; our emphasis). In this view, hate remains morally dubious and dangerous. If there is any such thing as a virtuous form of hating, it will involve a struggle against one’s own unwillingness (as opposed to inability) to recognize the hated other as a “cosubject” deserving of recognition as a fellow human being. But if this conception of hatred is tenable, then hating can be consistent with treating those we hate with respect for their human dignity or their rights as members of our moral community. Whether hatred will be dehumanizing or not, or whether it will be morally dangerous or potentially virtuous—this depends on whether hatred has taken control of the person who hates, or whether his or her hatred is restrained or held in check by a simultaneous commitment to other attitudes, principles, and values. Ultimately, the moral value of hatred depends not just on the qualities that can be ascribed to it when analyzed in isolation, but also on the vices and virtues of the person who feels hate. Here are two examples of what we have in mind: 351

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Studying the place of love and hate in war, the theologian Nigel Biggar finds evidence that hatred can be pushed back by compassion, and this makes him question “the assumption that hatred is always morally unfitting and ungovernable” (Biggar 2013: 91): For sure, even morally justified rage and hatred are dangerous emotions, not easily governed; but the empirical evidence is that they can be governed. If it is love of justice that grounds and inspires them, then perhaps that same love is well placed to restrain them. (Ibid.: 88) The psychologist Niza Yanay studied hatred among Jewish and Arab teenage girls in Israel, and although she found many disturbing examples of totalizing hatred, she also talked with girls who had experienced hate but who did not allow it to determine their outlook as a whole.As one girl put it, Inside me, I wish the Arabs were expelled from here, so we can end all this trouble. But then I think that such feelings show insensitivity. Even if I don’t want them here, I can’t do whatever I feel like doing. […] Because they are people like me.And they have feelings as I do. Suppose I live here for a long time and suddenly someone tells me to leave because I have no rights to the land. I think that this is insensitive. By no means can I act in such a way. (Yanay 1996: 26)

22.6 Conclusion We have asked, how do hatred and dehumanization relate? The question can and should be studied empirically. But it is not a question that can be answered on empirical grounds alone.What scholars and laypeople mean when they talk about hatred or dehumanization (or their mutual relations) differs significantly, and the empirical study of these phenomena must be complemented with conceptual analysis. Proceeding as if hatred is inherently dehumanizing, or as if hate and dehumanization are mutually exclusive, leads to truncated views of these phenomena that either exaggerate or obscure their importance in the history of violence.We argue against several reduc­ tive conceptions: against restricting dehumanization to a complete denial of the victim’s humanity, against seeing dehumanization as always a work of negation, against separating dehumanization entirely from moral emotions and motivations, and against limiting dehumanization to psycho­ logical processes in the minds of the perpetrators. We prefer to think of dehumanization not as one distinct phenomenon, but as a plurality of different phenomena sharing certain family resemblances. Scholars of hatred and dehumanization should also take care not to proceed as if all haters are mad, bad, or dangerous dehumanizers. For hatred can, despite its dangerous and dehu­ manizing potentials, be part of a morally permissible or even virtuous response to dehumanization.

Note 1 We are grateful to Maria Kronfeldner for inviting us to write this chapter and for her excellent edi­ torial work along the way. Iben Damgaard, Sara Heinämaa, James Jardine, Birgitte S. Johansen, Tone Roald, Alessandro Salice, Alba Montes Sánchez,Thomas Szanto, and Dan Zahavi also provided incisive comments that greatly improved the manuscript.Thank you.

References Améry, J. (1966/1980) At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Arendt, H. (1963) Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, New York, NY: Penguin. Aristotle (2006) Nicomachean Ethics, Books II–IV, transl. C. C. W. Taylor, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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On hatred and dehumanization Bandura, A. (1999) “Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 3: 193–209. Bauman, Z. (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Biggar, N. (2013) In Defense of War, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Browning, C. (1992) Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York, NY: HarperCollins. Brudholm, T. (2010) “Hatred as an Attitude,” Philosophical Papers 39: 289–313. Brudholm, T. and J. Lang, eds. (2018) Emotions and Mass Atrocity: Philosophical and Theoretical Explorations, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Butler, J. (1726/1897) Sermons by Joseph Butler, D.C.L. Sometime Lord Bishop of Furham, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Cotler, I. (2012) “State-Sanctioned Incitement to Genocide: The Responsibility to Prevent,” in M. Herz and P. Molnar (eds.), The Content and Context of Hate Speech: Rethinking Regulations and Responses, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Danish Prosecution Service (2014) “Racediskrimination—praksisoversigt” [Race Discrimination—Survey of Practice], Copenhagen: Rigsadvokaten. Duff, A. (2009) “Can We Punish the Perpetrators of Atrocities?” in T. Brudholm and T. Cushman (eds.), The Religious in Responses to Mass Atrocity, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Duff, A. and S. Marshall (2018) “Punishing Hate,” in T. Brudholm and B. S. Johansen (eds.), Hate, Politics, Law: Critical Perspectives on Combating Hate, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Elster, J. (2004) Closing the Books: Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Enock, F., S. P. Tipper, and H. Over (2020) “No convincing evidence that outgroup members are dehumanized: Revisiting trait and emotion attribution in intergroup bias,” retrieved from PsyArXiv (in press). Gaita, R. (2004) Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception, New York, NY: Routledge. Goffman, E. (1963/1986) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Haidt, J. (2016) “When and Why Nationalism Beats Globalism,” Policy 32: 46–53. Haslam, N. (2020) “The Social Psychology of Dehumanization,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, 125–144. (this volume). Haslam, N. and S. C. Murphy (2020) “Hate, Dehumanization, and ‘Hate’,” in R. S. Sternberg (ed.), Perspectives on Hate: How It Originates, Develops, Manifests, and Spreads, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Heinämaa, S. and J. Jardine (2020) “Objectification, Inferiorization, and Projection in Phenomenological Research on Dehumanization,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, 307–325. (this volume). Herf, J. (2006) The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Kelman, H. G. (1973) “Violence without Moral Restraint: Reflections on the Dehumanization of Victims and Victimizers,” Journal of Social Issues 29: 25–61. Kelly, J. (2000) Primo Levi: Recording and Reconstruction in the Testimonial Literature, Leicester: Troubador Publishing. Lang, J. (2010) “Questioning Dehumanization: Intersubjective Dimensions of Violence in the Nazi Concentration and Death Camps,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 24: 225–246. —– (2020) “The Limited Importance of Dehumanization in Collective Violence,” Current Opinion in Psychology 35: 17–20. Levi, P. (1947/2015) If This Is a Man, transl. S. Woolf, in A. Goldstein (ed.), The Complete Works of Primo Levi, New York, NY: Liveright Publishing. —– (1976/2015) “Appendix” (to school edition of If This Is a Man, transl. S. Woolf), in A. Goldstein (ed.), The Complete Works of Primo Levi, New York, NY: Liveright Publishing. Leyens, J. P., P. M. Paladino, R. Rodriguez-Torres, J. Vaes, S. Demoulin, A. Rodriguez-Perez and R. Gaunt (2000) “The Emotional Side of Prejudice: The Attribution of Secondary Emotions to Ingroups and Outgroups,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 4: 186–197. Manne, K. (2017) Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Milgram, S. (1963) “Behavioral Study of Obedience,” The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67: 371–378.

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Thomas Brudholm and Johannes Lang Murphy, J. (2009) “The Case of Dostoevsky’s General: Some Ruminations on Forgiving the Unforgivable,” The Monist 92(4): 556–582. —– (2016) “A Word on Behalf of Good Haters,” Hedgehog Review. Nussbaum, M. (1994) The Therapy of Desire, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Orwell, G. (1939/2000) Essays, London: Penguin. Over, H. (2020) “Seven Challenges for the Dehumanization Hypothesis,” Perspectives on Psychological Science (in press). Radzik, L. (2009) Making Amends: Atonement in Morality, Law, and Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rai, T. S., P. Valdesolo, and J. Graham (2017) “Dehumanization Increases Instrumental Violence, but not Moral Violence,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114: 8511–8516. Robert, R. (2003) Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sereny, G. (1974) Into That Darkness, New York, NY: Vintage. Steizinger, J. (2020) “Dehumanizing Strategies in Nazi Ideology and their Anthropological Context,” in M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, 98–111. (this volume). Strawson, P. F. (1974) “Freedom and Resentment,” in Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays, London: Methuen. Vetlesen, A. J. (1994) Perception, Empathy, and Judgement, University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Walker, M. U. (2007) Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Yanay, N. (1996) “National Hatred, Female Subjectivity, and the Boundaries of Cultural Discourse,” Symbolic Interaction 19: 21–36.

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23

DEHUMANIZATION, THE

PROBLEM OF HUMANITY

AND THE PROBLEM OF

MONSTROSITY

David Livingstone Smith 23.1 Introduction After many decades of neglect, the study of dehumanization is beginning to receive the philo­ sophical attention that it deserves. In this chapter, I will explain and address two important objections to the theory of dehumanization, understood as the attitude of regarding others as subhuman creatures (Smith 2011).The first of these concerns the fact that when people dehu­ manize others, they also implicitly or explicitly acknowledge the dehumanized person’s humanity. The second concerns the fact that dehumanized people are very often conceived of not merely as subhuman animals, like rats or lice, but as monstrous beings.

23.2 Essentialism and humanness My first task is to explain how it is possible for human beings to think that other human beings are not really human.We usually classify things on the basis of their manifest properties. If a thing has sufficiently many of the observable properties that we regard as typical of a kind, or if it possesses at least one property that we regard as unique to a kind, then we are prone to assign it to that kind. Normally, we classify an entity as a human being if that being appears human—that is, if our senses tell us that the entity has traits that we associate with humanness. But this is not what happens when we dehumanize others. Dehumanizers grant that those whom they dehumanize appear to be human. But they deny that these human-seeming beings are really human beings. To understand how this occurs, we must turn to what is known as “psychological essen­ tialism” (Gelman 2005). Psychological essentialism is the disposition to divide the natural world into natural kinds and to suppose that there is a “deep,” unobservable property that all and only members of each of these kinds possess, which makes them members of that kind.These essences are supposed to be responsible for the observable characteristics that are typically possessed by members of the kind. Psychological essentialism leaves room for the possibility that an individual’s appearance can mislead about its essence, thus allowing that a being that is indistinguishable from a human in all observable respects might not have a subhuman essence.This explains how it is psychologically possible for human beings to conceive of other human beings as nonhuman (for a different per­ spective, see Kronfeldner in this volume). 355

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23.3 The function of dehumanization Homo sapiens are by far the most social of mammals, and we are consequently endowed with immensely powerful inhibitions against acts of violence against our own kind. Consequently, despite fictional representations of homicide, it is psychologically difficult for most of us to per­ form acts of extreme violence against other human beings (Collins 2009, Smith and Panaitiu 2016). But we are also able to recognize that it is often advantageous for “us” to do violence to “them”—to secure lebensraum, to steal their resources, or to exploit their labor, and so on. So, over the millennia, human beings found ways to selectively disable these inhibitions. Dehumanization is one of them.

23.4 The problem of humanity This account of dehumanization ignores two important explanatory problems. The problem of humanity concerns the fact that those who dehumanize others also acknowledge their humanity. This can be explicit or implicit. As Appiah (2008) points out, dehumanizers generally say that their victims deserve punishment, but the notion that one deserves punishment applies only to human beings.And he observes that, The persecutors may liken the objects of their enmity to cockroaches or germs, but they acknowledge their victims’ humanity in the very act of humiliating, stigmatizing, reviling, and torturing them. Such treatments—and the voluble justifications the persecutors invariably offer for such treatment—is reserved for creatures we recognize to have intentions, and desires, and projects. (Appiah 2008: 144) In a similar spirit, Manne refers to “a resentful and punitive mentality behind the aggression, which are classic examples of what the English philosopher P. F. Strawson famously called the interpersonal ‘reactive attitudes.’” She continues: These attitudes are held to be both distinctive and central to our dealings with other human beings—that is, with people who we recognize as such, or as fully paid-up members in this club we call humanity. When it comes to animals and children and people we regard as (temporarily or permanently) not in control of their actions, we may try to correct, manage, deter or restrain their behavior. But, ordinarily and ideally, we do not resent it.They are not moral agents.We can’t really blame them. Members of dehumanized groups are to be considered as evil, especially in genocidal contexts. Evil is the extreme of moral badness, and applies to human beings but not to nonhuman animals. And although some people enjoy torturing animals, this is rarely motivated by a desire to punish them for their moral failings.

23.5 The problem of monstrosity The problem of monstrosity is posed by the fact that dehumanized people are often represented as monsters.To think of others as monsters is quite different from thinking of them as animals. An animal may be frightening or repugnant, but monsters are far more frightening and repug­ nant, and they are frightening and repugnant in a different way than animals are. Monsters are uncanny, and they’re felt to be extremely dangerous because they have superhuman powers.When 356

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groups of people are dehumanized, it is often the case that they are thought of as monstrous or demonic—for example, Black superpredators and diabolical Jews. And the notion of monsters is closely associated with that of evil, thereby linking the problem of monstrousness with the problem of humanity.

23.6 Example Sam Hose, a 21-year-old Georgia man, was accused of murder and rape. He was dragged to the lynching site by a crowd that at first numbered in the hundreds, and eventually swelled to over a thousand as excursion trains arrived packed with eager spectators fresh out of church services that Sunday morning.According to one newspaper report, The torture of the victim lasted almost half an hour. It began when a man stepped for­ ward and very matter-of-factly sliced off Hose’s ears.Then several men grabbed Hose’s arms and held them forward so his fingers could be severed one by one and shown to the crowd. Finally, a blade was passed between his thighs, Hose cried out in agony, and a moment later his genitals were held aloft. After he was mutilated, and his penis, fingers, and toes were carried away, Hose was burned to death. And once the flames subsided, the relic seekers moved in for more trophies such as small pieces of bone and charred bits of his liver. Hose was certainly thought of as a human being.The categories “murderer” and “rapist” are reserved for members of our own species, and are inapplicable to nonhuman animals. Nonhuman animals are not punished for criminal offenses. Only human beings are. There is no record of what the men who dismembered Sam Hose’s body thought about him, and no record of what went on in the spectators’ minds as they watched him suffer and die. But we do have records of how Hose was described in the Southern press. He was called a “fiend incarnate,” a “monster in human form,” a “black brute whose carnival of blood and lust has brought death and desolation,” and a “fiendish beast.” And there is no doubt that the removal of Black men’s body parts as trophies, and the practice of referring to their ceremonial burning as “barbecues” (Patterson 1999) comports with an image of them as subhuman animals. As these facts attest, the Black male image in the White mind oscillated between the human, the animal, and the monstrous.

23.7 Skepticism The two problems that I have noted might seem fatal to the theory of dehumanization. Ostensible dehumanizers describe those whom they (seemingly) dehumanize as subhuman creatures and they also refer to them as, or view them as, human beings. But it is impossible (so the story goes) for an entity to be both human and subhuman, so it must be that dehumanizers regard their victims either as human or as subhuman, but not both. It is more plausible that ostensible dehumanizers regard their targets as human than it is to think that they regard them as sub­ human, because there are good alternative explanations for the use of animalistic slurs. Given that no entity can be wholly human and wholly subhuman, and given that there are other explanations—ones that are closer to commonsense views—for derogatory characterizations of others as animals, we should conclude that those who characterize others in this manner do not really regard them as less than human. And the fact so-called dehumanized people are often described as monsters does not fit into theory of dehumanization that I have described, but it is 357

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consistent with the alternative view that the rhetoric of subhumanity is nothing more than the attempt to derogate and marginalize people who are recognized as human beings. The flaw in this argument lies in the claim that no single entity can be both human and sub­ human. It is not that the premise is false. It expresses a logical truth, but we are concerned with psychology rather than logic. It’s a psychological fact that we are all able to entertain contra­ dictory beliefs. So, the claim that dehumanizers regard those whom they dehumanize as either human or subhuman, but not both, does not follow. Additionally, the skeptical conclusion of the argument is hard to reconcile with other evidence.There are many instances—for example, in 19th century race science literature—of people who have claimed that others are really subhumans and who clearly intend their words to be taken literally. And there are examples of perpetrators of atrocity who have stated that they did not conceive of their victims as human beings when they were performing these hideous acts. I don’t see why we should not take these people at their word. The problem of humanity need not lead to skepticism about dehumanization. Rather, it helps to deepen the analysis of dehumanization by suggesting that when people dehumanize others, they are in an incoherent state of mind. Dehumanizers do not simply think of those whom they dehumanize as really subhuman. Instead, they think of them as human and subhuman simultaneously.

23.8 Epistemic deference To see how this happens, it helps to reflect upon how we normally come to categorize things. We most often place things in categories on the basis of what our senses tell us about them. But we grant that these judgments can be overridden by the testimony of those whom we regard as experts.There is no necessary connection between having the status of expert and having or dis­ seminating genuine knowledge. Often, those occupying the role do not have a grasp of what is true, or conceal what they know to be true to achieve nefarious political ends. But what matters is the fact that they are granted the authority to overturn our naïve categorizations. Scientists, academics, clergy, and public figures such as celebrities, politicians, religious leaders, self-help gurus, and radio talk-show hosts may all be accorded the status of expert. Sometimes, this reality-defining authority is lodged in pervasive, taken-for-granted ideological beliefs—in these cases, the experts are those who originated the ideology in a mythical past or those appointed representatives of tradition who transmit the ideology from one generation to the next. We are especially prone to trust expert testimony in circumstances where we are led to believe that relying on our own untutored perceptions might be dangerous or even catastrophic. That is why when politicians and other powerful elites seek to get us to believe that some group of people is less than human, they often produce propaganda to frighten us into believing that these people present a serious physical threat to ourselves and all that we hold dear—that they are diseased, violent, destructive, or depraved. Once we have come to fear the marginalized group, we are likely to be more receptive to the seemingly authoritative claim that these people are not really people at all. Under such circumstances, it is tempting to reject what our senses tell us and to trust the experts’ claim that these others are dangerous, subhuman beings that need to be repelled, incarcerated, or exterminated. But there is a complication. Expert testimony does not always cause us to abandon our prior beliefs. Sometimes we are unable to abandon them. In such cases, we adopt the picture of reality offered by the expert without being able to let go of the earlier beliefs that contradict it.We defer to the authority of the expert—the one who is supposed to know—but are unable to reject the evidence provided by our senses.There are plenty of innocuous examples of this. Physicists tell 358

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us that solid objects mainly consist of empty space, and we take this on board, even though we can’t help seeing solid objects as gapless. I believe that this kind of tension drives dehumanization and is responsible for its distinctive phenomenology.When we encounter other human beings, it is very hard not to perceive them as human beings. Seeing others as human is automatic and mostly inescapable. It is not something that we can switch off when it suits us to do so. So, when experts tell us that some others are less than human, and we accept this on their epistemic authority, the perception of their humanness does not thereby dissipate. Consequently, when people dehumanize others, they are saddled with two contradictory mental representations of them. And because these are starkly contradictory, they cannot both be salient simultaneously. The mind of the dehumanizer foregrounds the humanity of the other and backgrounds their subhumanity at some moments, and foregrounds their subhumanity and backgrounds their humanity at others. Here is an example. In 1993, in the village of Hadereni, Romania, there was a pogrom against the Roma people living there.Thirteen homes were burned, two men were burned to death, and two more were clubbed to death while trying to flee. A reporter interviewed a woman named Maria, who confessed being proud of having participated in the violence. She said, On reflection…it would have been better if we had burnt more of the people, not just the houses….We did not commit murder - how could you call killing Gypsies murder? Gypsies are not really people, you see. They are always killing each other. They are criminals, sub-human, vermin.And they are certainly not wanted here. (Bridge 1993) Notice how Maria alternates between characterizing Roma as human and characterizing them as subhuman. She regrets not having killed more of the people, but then says that Roma are not people. She asserts that they are criminals, which are by definition human beings, and then states that they are subhuman vermin. Recognizing that a representation of the dehumanized other as human persists in the mind of the dehumanizer in parallel with a representation of them as sub­ human provides a solution the problem of humanity.

23.9 Solving the problem of monstrosity The solution to the problem of humanity is also a solution to the problem of monstrosity, for it is the act of seeing others as both human and subhuman that transforms them into monsters. To explain this, I will need to provide some theoretical background. The story begins with an essay written by Ernst Jentsch entitled “On the psychology of the uncanny” (Jentsch 1906/1997). Jentsch argues that the feeling of uncanniness occurs in response to things that seem to belong to two mutually exclusive categories. For example, figures in a wax museum are disturbing because we respond to them as human beings but know that they are sculpted lumps of wax. Automata that simulate the appearance and behavior of human beings are especially Unheimlich. Sixty years later, the anthropologist Mary Douglas published an influential book entitled Purity and Danger (Douglas 1966).The gist of Douglas’ argument is that every culture has a conception of the natural order of things, consisting of a set of conceptual categories and the relations that obtain between them. But inevitably, when people attempt to impose a categorical grid upon nature, there will be anomalous things that do not fit into the framework.These are experienced as an affront to the natural order.They are felt to be abominable, a locus of danger, and require special handling.They are, so to speak, metaphysically radioactive. The philosopher Noël Carroll uses Douglas’ theory of category transgression to offer a com­ pelling analysis of monstrosity (Carroll 1990). He argues that to be a monster (or what he calls 359

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a “horrific monster”), an entity must satisfy two conditions. One is that it must be physically threatening—dangerous in the ordinary sense of the word. But what differentiates monster from other dangerous beings is that they also pose what he calls a “cognitive” threat—which I prefer to call metaphysical threat.To be metaphysically threatening, a being must violate what are thought to natural categorical boundaries. As Carroll puts it, a monster is metaphysically threatening in virtue of being “a composite that unites attributes held to be categorically distinct and/or at odds with the cultural scheme of things in unambiguously one, spatio-temporally discrete entity” (Carroll 1990: 51). Dehumanization breeds monsters if the dehumanizers represent the dehumanized as physically threatening—as murderous, as destructive, or as sexually predatory. If the dehumanized group is seen as physically threatening, then the compresence of contradictory human/subhuman representations of them in the minds of their dehumanizers transforms them into monsters.This is why, although dehumanized groups are typically among the most vulnerable members of a population, they are often regarded as overwhelmingly dangerous.

23.10 Future challenges The study of dehumanization is still in its infancy and there are major methodological and con­ ceptual challenges that have yet to be consistently addressed, much less overcome. Of these, I will flag three.The first concerns the conceptual disarray of the field of dehumanization studies, where the term “dehumanization” is given logically independent meanings.This semantic con­ fusion substantially impedes theoretical progress, and needs to be rectified. A second challenge concerns the ground for inferences about dehumanizing states of mind.Those who, like myself, conceive of dehumanization as a kind of mental state need some way of reliably inferring it on the basis human behavior.This is normally done by making inferences from the person’s use of animalistic slurs. However, the use of such language does not invariably indicate dehumanizing attitudes. Animalistic slurs are mostly used to hurt or humiliate others, and are not the result of dehumanizing beliefs, and we need to find ways to reliably differentiate the two. Conversely, we need ways to detect dehumanizing beliefs that are not expressed in animalistic language— presumably, through indirect psychological means. Finally, the phenomenon of dehumanization lies at the interface between the psychological, cultural, and political realms, and a viable theory of dehumanization must address all three. For example, it would be absurd to pretend to give a satisfactory account of the dehumanization of Jews during the Third Reich ignoring the long history of German anti-Semitism or the particular economic and political forces at work in the Weimar Republic. It would be equally unsatisfactory to neglect the psychological dimension, as we need the science of psychology to explain how ideological forces of Nazism (see Steizinger, this volume) impacted on the beliefs and behavior of German citizens. However, most existing accounts emphasize only one of these explanatory dimensions and either minimize or entirely ignore the others, giving only an impoverished explanation of what dehumanization is and how it works.

References Appiah, K. A. (2008) Experiments in Ethics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bridge, A. (1993) “Romanians vent old hatreds against Gypsies: the villagers of Hadereni are defiant about

their murder of vermin.” The Independent, October 19, 1993. Carroll, N. (1990) The Philosophy of Horror, or, Paradoxes of the Heart. New York, NY: Routledge. Collins, R. (2009) Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Problems of humanity and monstrosity Douglas, M. (1966) Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Conceptes of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge and Keegan Paul. Gelman, S. A. (2005) The Essential Child: Origins of Essentialism in Everyday Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jentsch, E. (1906/1997) “On the Psychology of the Uncanny,” trans. Roy Sellars, Angelaki: A New Journal in Philosophy, Literature, and the Social Sciences 2(1), pp. 7–16. Kronfeldner M. (2020) “Psychological Essentialism and Dehumanization,” In M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, 362–377. (this volume). Patterson, O. (1999) Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries. New York, NY: Basic Civitas Smith, D. L. (2011) Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Smith, D. L. and Panaitiu, I. (2016) “Horror Sanguinis,” Common Knowledge 22(1), pp. 69–80. Steizinger, J. (2020) “Dehumanizing Strategies in Nazi Ideology and their Anthropological Context,” In M. Kronfeldner (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, London and New York: Routledge, 98–111. (this volume).

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24

PSYCHOLOGICAL ESSENTIALISM AND DEHUMANIZATION1 Maria Kronfeldner

24.1 Introduction This chapter discusses how psychological essentialism relates to dehumanization. It will focus on two dimensions of essentialism: entitativity and natural kind thinking, which include different elements of essentialism. Dehumanization as understood in this chapter can be cognitive and/ or behavioral and can involve categorical or graded denials of humanness (see Kronfeldner, Introduction to this volume). It will be assumed (rather than discussed) that beliefs in a human essence can catalyze dehumanization: they can strengthen or even immunize the claims made about the differences among people that ground dehumanization. Defending such a catalyzing role of psychological essentialism is a rather weak and uncontroversial claim, even though it is often unclear how exactly the catalyzing works, and even though it is limited to certain cases (see Section 24.6 on that limitation).That is why the focus in this chapter is on a much stronger and more controversial claim – namely, the claim that essentialism is necessary for dehumanization. This chapter will present historical and psychological evidence that shows why such a necessityclaim is contestable and how it can be revised in light of that evidence.The resulting revision of the necessity-claim will also help in explaining how essentialism catalyzes dehumanization. After reviewing examples of authors who claimed a tight connection between essentialism and dehumanization (Section 24.2), certain assumptions will be laid out (Section 24.3). These assumptions are important to situate the analysis of whether and in which sense beliefs in essences are necessary for dehumanization to occur (Sections 24.4 and 24.5).

24.2 Examples of connecting psychological essentialism and dehumanization Scholars differ not only with respect to the strength of the connection between essentialism and dehumanization (catalyzing or necessary) but also with respect to which elements of psycho­ logical essentialism are used, and which concept of dehumanization is assumed. In his famous philosophical critique of the concept of human nature, David Hull (1986: 7), for instance, stressed that unfortunately many people still believe that [t]he normal state for human beings is to be white, male heterosexuals.All others do not participate fully in human nature. (emph. added) 362

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To dehumanize people, for Hull, is to regard some human beings as not normal (deficient) and as not participating fully in human nature, the alleged essence.This entails not only a reference to humans as a biologically delineated group (Homo sapiens), but also a reference to a certain kind of naturalness of the essence of this group. Gordon Allport (1954) provides a connection between dehumanization and essentialism via the more general claim that essentialism is involved in prejudices (be they dehumanizing or not). He claimed that humans use a “principle of least effort” when they build their categories regarding humans.They simplify by essentializing: To consider every member of a group as endowed with the same traits saves us the pains of dealing with them as individuals. One consequence of least effort in group categorizing is that a belief in essence develops.There is an inherent ‘Jewishness’ in every Jew. The ‘soul of the Oriental,’ ‘Negro blood,’ Hitler’s ‘Aryanism,’ ‘the peculiar genius of America,’ ‘the logical Frenchman,’ ‘the passionate Latin’—all represent a belief in essence. A mysterious mana (for good or ill) resides in a group, all of its members par­ taking thereof. (Allport 1954: 173; emph. added) According to Allport, categorizing people into groups involves a belief in essence, which entails a belief in the homogeneity of group members with respect to shared traits, and a belief in the inher­ ence of these traits. Whether Allport or Hull assumed that essentializing in the respective sense is necessary for dehumanization would require an in-depth textual interpretation of their work that has to wait for another occasion; and it can wait, since there are contemporary scholars who clearly make such strong necessity-claims. Jacques-Philippe Leyens and colleagues, in a paper that is widely taken as the beginning of a remarkable amount of social psychological work on dehumanization, used the term “infrahumanization” for the form of dehumanization they studied (graded attribution of sec­ ondary emotions), and claimed [f]or infrahumanization to occur, the members of the outgroup have to be considered radically different from the discriminators and to be attributed a different essence. (Leyens et al. 2000: 194) Given what they say in the rest of their paper, I take this to mean that an infrahumanizer assumes that all members of a specific group share something in common, and what they share makes them distinctive from members of other groups. (ibid.: 184; emph. added). As a consequence, infrahumanization of out-group members means “denying them one or sev­ eral of the typically human characteristics” (ibid.). Essentializing the human category, in their account, boils down to a combination of attributing homogeneity to being human and distinctness of membership in the respective human kind. It involves building a stereotype regarding salient properties of human beings (in the case of Leyens et al., secondary emotions). As a result, vari­ ation within the group is discounted, which allows drawing of decisive group boundaries. David Livingstone Smith (2011, 2014, this volume) similarly argues that for dehumanization to occur there needs to be a denial of the human essence. He writes: I do not think that it is possible to understand the dynamics of unambiguous episodes of dehumanization unless one views them through the lens of psychological essen­ tialism. (Smith 2014: 821) 363

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For him, psychological essentialism involves taking an essence as an inalterable given that is hidden from appearances and inherent to the individuals (see, for instance, Smith 2011: 32–34, 275). This is an account of psychological essentialism that is closely modeled after standard natural kind thinking, which takes natural kinds as having essences in the specified sense, in contrast to artifi­ cial kinds (ibid.: 95–102; cf. Smith 2020, 63–70). Smith goes so far to define dehumanization with reference to natural kind thinking: Dehumanization is the belief that some beings only appear human, but beneath the surface, where it really counts, they aren’t human at all. (Smith 2011: 5; emph. added) This contrast between appearance and a ‘beneath the surface’ essence will concern us in Section 24.4, in order to clarify whether belief in such ‘heavy-metal’ essences—unchangeable, hidden, and inherent—is necessary for dehumanization to occur. It is important that this involves a claim that we observe (rather than infer) humanity. Historical examples will help us in giving nuance to that claim.2 It should also be noted that Smith (e.g., 2014: 821) excludes graded forms of dehumanization from being proper forms of dehumanization.

24.3 An error theory of essentializing the human category and the diversity of elements of essentialism In the following section, an error theory of psychological essentialism regarding the human cat­ egory will be assumed. If we essentialize what it means to fall within the human category, we make an error, since, scientifically viewed, there is no such essence of what it means to be human. Within philosophy of science, Hull (1986) is considered as the starting point for the by-now broad consensus on such an error theory of essentializing the human category (see Kronfeldner 2018, for review and a contemporary defense of it). This also means that some humans (e.g., scientists) are cognitively able to categorize humans without using essences. This is compatible with experimental studies, which have been interpreted to show that many children and some adults are unable to reach a post-essentialist style of reasoning (see, for a canonical summary of that body of research, Gelman 2003).The respective studies thus neither show that essentializing is a necessary part of how humans categorize (since it applies to some adults but clearly not all since at least scientists have moved beyond it), nor is the essentialist interpretation of the respective studies uncontested. Strevens (2000), for instance, defends an alternative explanation of the accumulated data, an interpretation that does not attribute essentialist thinking to the study participants. Worse even, there is no agreement on the definition of psychological essentialism, at least not if one takes into account the relevant literature across developmental psychology, cognitive science, social psychology, philosophy, history, and gender studies. Given this situation, I decided to specify and analyze the connection to dehumanization with respect to specific elements and dimensions of psychological essentialism rather than use one definition of essentialism (i.e., one combination of the elements only). We met some such elements already above (Section 24.2). Rothbart and Taylor (1992), in a paper that is widely acknowledged as an anchor for discussions about psychological essentialism regarding social categories, mention a further element – namely, informativeness (inductive potential), which is well known from natural kind thinking and reminds us that knowledge of group membership often comes with a potpourri of information that grounds inductive projection (inferences about further properties of the individual). For instance, learning that a piece of shining stuff in one’s hand is a piece of gold is quite informative. One can 364

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reliably infer from that alone some interesting additional facts about the very stuff in one’s hand: the weight of it, the hardness of it, when it melts, the value of it on the market, and so on. With this, we have the following list of elements of essentialized thinking: • Homogeneity of group members with respect to salient properties; • Informativeness of group membership for inductive inferences about properties typical of the kind; • Inherence of essential properties; • Naturalness of essential properties, either via the concept of human nature as referring to the biological species Homo sapiens, or via the concept of natural kind; • Inalterability of essential properties, either developmentally and/or evolutionarily; • Non-observability of essential properties; • Distinctness of group boundary (i.e., group boundaries and membership are mutually exclusive); • Normality of properties and members, with a reference to normativity and thus to deficiency. There are similar lists in the relevant literature that all differ slightly in the definition and number of elements.3 These differences do not matter for the purposes of this chapter.What does matter is that, according to Rothbart and Taylor (1992) and Haslam et al. (2000, 2002), these elements can be aligned along two dimensions. In the following, I take it that only homogeneity and inform­ ativeness are necessarily part of the first dimension of essentializing social categories.This dimen­ sion is called entitativity since it gives these groups an entity-like coherence (an idea that goes back to Campbell 1958).4 The rest—in particular naturalness, inalterability, non-observability, and distinctness—belong to a second dimension of essentialism. It entails natural kind thinking, since it fits how 20th-century philosophy has characterized the latter (see Ereshefsky 2010, for review). Normality can attach to both dimensions. Since Smith and Leyens et al., who have made explicit claims about essentialism being necessary for dehumanization, used either natural kind thinking or entitativity, we will scrutinize these two kinds of essentialisms separately. I will start with the more demanding natural kind thinking.

24.4 Is reference to a hidden and inherent essence necessary? Smith assumes that in dehumanization a human appearance is first observed and then cognitively discounted. Therefore, difference with respect to humanness (dehumanization) is located in a hidden and inherent essence.That natural kind essences are often also perceived as fixed does not play such a big role in his necessity-claim; it will thus be ignored here too (see Section 24.5, for one specific issue regarding it).5 We need an example. When the Spaniards dehumanized the Amerindians, then, according to Smith (2014: 815), the Spaniards literally saw that these individuals were humans (percep­ tion of sameness), but they attributed a different essence. The story goes that after Columbus’ landfall in 1492, Spaniards hacked off natives’ limbs, burned them alive, and fed their babies to the Spaniards’ dogs, and so on. Some complained, including the Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos who asked, famously, in 1511, “Are these not men? Have they not rational souls?” This question was not rhetorical since, in addition to the colonizers treating the ‘natives’ as less than human, there were scholars, such as Giordano Bruno or the alchemist Paracelsus, among others, who denied a shared human group membership of their people with those Amerindians. They did so by regarding the Amerindians as, for instance, homunculi—beings with a human body but no soul—which explains Montesinos’ question about the soul. Regarding Amerindians 365

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as beings without a proper soul exemplifies the sort of natural kind thinking that Smith has in mind with his necessity-claim: the ‘other’ was understood as human-looking but as devoid of the hidden and inherent property of having a (proper) soul, which was, in the ontology of the time, the essence of being human. (For a short review of this case and context, see Smith 2011: 77ff; for details see, for instance, Pagden 1986, Abulafia 2008, and Kontler, this volume). Hence, this example confirms Smith’s claim. Yet, there are cases of dehumanization that happen in a different manner. Already, the colo­ nial context of Spaniards dehumanizing Amerindians provides us with such cases. Sometimes, the behavioral dehumanization of Amerindians happened with reference to their non-Adamic origin.They were dehumanized because they were taken to not descend from Adam, the common denominator of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic androcentrism. This form of dehumanizing the Amerindians violates Smith’s claim that denial of a hidden and inherent essence is necessary for dehumanization. After all, a specific genealogy is not an inherent property; it is (if at all a prop­ erty) a relational property. Such a relational dehumanization, as Kronfeldner (2018) calls it, was also still in use when Charles Darwin wrote his On the Origin of Species, in which he developed a theory of evolution that opposed such polygenic accounts, and with it slavery. His theory, fam­ ously, relied on the claim of a common descent of all humans (and ultimately of all other living beings), thereby showing that a polygenic justification of slavery is already scientifically wrong. Desmond and Moore (2009: xiii-xix), who write about Darwin’s opposition to slavery, regard it therefore as historically “paradoxical” that Darwin’s theories “have been used to justify racial conflict and ethnic cleansing.” From the perspective of dehumanization studies, and in particular with respect to the question about how essentialism and dehumanization connect, it is simply evidence that dehumanization is quite persistent—so persistent that it is not eradicated by a change in ontology. Having every human included into one species was, at Darwin’s time, a step toward less dehumanization.Yet, it still allowed to regard some of the included to be less human – namely, in the sense of less evolved (see Kontler, and Sebastiani, this volume). And even nowadays evolutionary hierarchies are in use, as psychological studies about so-called blatant dehumanization confirm. In these studies, participants are shown the conventional picture of an evolutionary ascent (from ‘lower’ creatures, via apes, to humans) and asked to position the respective out-groups. It turned out that Hungarians believe that Roma people are less evolved, and (similarly) that North Americans believe that Hispanics are less evolved, to take two results as examples (see Kteily et al. 2015; see also Haslam, this volume). I take the available historical and psychological evidence to show that relational dehuman­ ization of the sort described, where an individual or a group is regarded as less human simply because of a certain assumed genealogical distance to the individual (or group) that dehumanizes, can involve but does not require that the dehumanized ‘other’ is also believed to lack in inherent essence. As long as genealogy can be used to create distance, it can be used in a dehumanizing manner. ‘The more closely related, the more human’ would be the logic within that variant of post-essentialist relational dehumanization. Whether non-relational dehumanization necessarily involves attribution of differences in unobservable (and in that sense hidden) essence is a slightly more difficult case, but it points in the same direction. I will use the history of dehumanization of women as a case in point that will show that we actually have to distinguish three different interpretations of Smith’s necessityclaim if it is applied to non-relational dehumanization. Dehumanization of women, dating as far back as the beginning of Western philosophy (not to speak of other, non-Western androcentric contexts), standardly involves claims about women’s intellectual inferiority. Certain intellectual abilities, taken as mental and thus as not directly 366

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observable, are not or are less attributed to women.The decisive point in two of the three inter­ pretations of the non-relational necessity-claim will be how these unobservable mental abilities are connected to observable physiological or behavioral differences: are they correlated with the latter or not? If the non-relational necessity-claim is interpreted as not applying to the case of dehumaniza­ tion of women since women have never been regarded as less than human, then the necessityclaim becomes trivially true since it becomes true by definition. It is made to be true by applying a very narrow concept of dehumanization. Smith’s claim is actually intended that way since the dehumanization of women usually follows a graded form of dehumanization, which he, as mentioned, excludes from his account of dehumanization. Attribution of different essence and dehumanization then both boil down to nothing but claiming that the dehumanized belongs categorically to a different kind, utilizing the distinctness element of essentialized thinking. But even though Smith has his reasons for narrowing the concept that way (see Smith, this volume), I take this narrowing to be a price too high to pay, given that there are so many similarities (if not intersectionalities) between the dehumanization of women and other kinds of dehumanization. A too narrow stipulated definition ignores these similarities (see Jeshion 2018 for a similar point against Smith’s definition of dehumanization). In addition, it trivializes natural kind thinking (the intended kind of psychological essentialism) since the claim can mobilize for it only one element – namely, the distinctness element. If the necessity-claim is interpreted as claiming that dehumanization of women as intel­ lectually inferior involves, necessarily, the attribution of differences in mental properties, contrasted to observable physiological or behavioral characteristics, then the necessity-claim is again trivially true for the respective cases, even though for different reasons. It is true simply because one will have difficulties finding a historical or contemporary case where the assumed concept of being human completely lacks reference to mental properties. And again, it also trivializes the assumed psychological essentialism. It would involve nothing but reference to mental properties understood as not directly observable. In other words, this interpretation can again mobilize for its defense one element only: in this case, the non-observability element of essentialized thinking.What we would end up with, given that interpretation of the necessityclaim, is again a far cry from natural kind thinking as is usually constructed and as introduced by Smith. Hence, if not trivially true, the claim can only amount to the assertion that dehumanization (whether graded or categorical) requires that the respective ‘other’ is taken to be observably the same but different in essence. I take this to be closest to what Smith intended with his necessityclaim (taken to also apply more broadly to cases of graded dehumanization and to ignore, for the moment, relational dehumanization).The problem with this version of the necessity-claim is that already Aristotle’s justification of why slaves and women are by nature mentally inferior violates it. For the sake of the argument, I will again focus on the case of women’s inferiority and take Aristotelian essentialism to be close to what is, above, called natural kind thinking. I thus ignore that Aristotelian essentialism is actually quite difficult to classify historically.6 I assume the following: Aristotle’s essentialism implied that variations in a species are deviations from a type. The essence of the human species consists in the human life form, which is not only the form (contrasted with matter) but also the end (telos) of human flourishing.The end (and, thus, function) of humans is to be rational. Deviations are members of the same kind who have not fully realized the form of the kind and are thus inferior. Form is norm in Aristotelian essentialism. Women were for Aristotle such inferior deviations—deviations from human nature and inferior to the free men who represented the kind (see,Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, 1252a-1260b).Women’s 367

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inferiority is naturalistically explained with reference to observable differences stemming from the way women are physiologically generated. These observable differences have to do with the movements of the particles involved in embryonic development and the ancient distinction of hot versus cold matter (see Schiebinger [1989: 161–165] and Tuana [1993: 18–52] for how the ancient cosmology and ontology of four elements relates to the history of dehumanizing women). Thus, according to Aristotle, a concrete observable difference (lack of heat) explains why women end up being less developed, including less developed in terms of their intellectual capacities. In terms of elements of psychological essentialism, one can summarize the case as follows: the explanatory schema is essentialist in the entitativity sense, since a trait (rationality) is picked out as group defining and informative when contrasted with other traits that were deemed to be negligible for what it means to be human. It is also essentialist in the natural kind sense since it refers to an inherent and fixed form that can materially be realized in a more or less ideal manner. With respect to dehumanization, it follows that Aristotle’s dehumanization of women is a case of attributing less humanness to a particular group in an overgeneralized and thus homogenized manner on the basis of observable differences, which is then taken to be correlated with and explanatory for mental differences. This cognitive dehumanization definitely had some behav­ ioral consequences. After all, in ancient Greek society, men were supposed to be the masters of women and women had quite restricted rights. With respect to the focus of this chapter, it follows that Aristotelian dehumanization of women is not a case of regarding women as observ­ ably the same but essentially different.Women were for Aristotle already observably different and these differences were salient for issues of equality. That they were salient is important since, after all, there are plenty of observable differences, some of which might not actually be observed or, if observed, they might not be taken as salient. Over historical time, observation of anatomical and physiological differences even gained in importance as a way to justify the oppression of women, for various reasons which go beyond the scope of this chapter. Over time, different anatomical or physiological measures of mental differences were tried (e.g., as part of craniology) and taken to confirm what was so ‘evident’ to those men doing science at the time.Take Gustave LeBon (1881: 155–159), founding figure of social psychology and part of the craniologist movement. He famously speaks about the “intel­ lectual inferiority” of women as “quite evident” (trop évidente). For him, women “represent the most inferior form of human evolution and are much closer to children and savages than to civilized adult man.” He added: It is beyond doubt that there are very distinguished women, far superior to the average men, but these are cases as exceptional as the birth of any monstrosity, such as, for example, a gorilla with two heads, and therefore negligible entirely. (ibid.: 158, my translation)7 In the 19th century, quite generally, the Aristotelian metaphysics of telos, form versus matter, and ‘to-be-realizedness’ was gone and a materialist ontology dominated the study of human diversity. What remained is that a specific property was utilized to regard women as less human (intel­ ligence), and—most importantly for this chapter—mind was either reduced to the brain or so linked with the brain that one could infer mental differences from differences in anatomical or physiological properties.That means that the crucial element of natural kind thinking, the belief in a hidden (rather than an observable) essential property, plays either no role (in cases where mind was equated with brain), or at least a different role (in cases where the exact correspondence of

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differences in brain and mind was assumed). In both cases, women were clearly taken as already observably different in their humanity. That observable differences were gaining in significance over time is particularly interesting given an important earlier historical shift during the age of Columbus (see Kontler, this volume, for a general take on that time).The ‘Columbian shift’ (as I would like to call it) was one from expectations of ‘otherness’ that involved quite some observable differences to actual encounters with Atlantic people, who looked (at the time, given historical evidence) shockingly similar. In medieval times, pictures of monstrous people circulated, often with reference to Plini the Elder (see Friedman 1981).These monstrous people, often called ‘Plinian races,’ had one eye only, faces on the thorax, heads of animals, etc. (see Figure 24.1). Distant people, believed to live at the edge of the perceiver’s world, were depicted that way. Friedman (1981: 25) explains the imaginative power of Plinian races as ethnocentric “errors in perception” that “were willful, poetic and imaginative.” Through actual encounters with Atlantic people, their imaginative power changed to a considerable degree during the age of Columbus. As the historian Abulafia (2008: 4) reports, “experience” with Atlantic people “did not quite match the stories of dog-headed people found in medieval literature. They looked fully human.” The imaginary of monsters, as other historians have shown, clearly persisted in travelogues, maps, natural history, and elsewhere well into the 18th century and beyond, and for various reasons (see Daston and Park 1997: 173–314, Krämer 2014, Davies 2017, Sebastiani forthc). But whenever the perception of significant similarity replaced the expectation that the encountered were physiologically extreme (i.e., monstrous), something had to step in to justify the dominion of those encountered. Not surprisingly, stories about these others as

Figure 24.1 Plinian races in Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia (1544: DCCLII). (Public domain)

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exhibiting different kinds of conduct (most prominently the cannibalism attributed to them) and assumptions about unobservable properties such as ‘not having a soul’ circulated, either replacing stories of physical monstrosity or in parallel to them.They stepped in or were added, in order to have something sufficiently credible to justify the often pre-existing dehumanizing prejudice against those encountered. With this in mind, we can finally distinguish between four strategies that can facilitate dehu­ manization, taking relational and non-relational dehumanization together. Dehumanizing practices can point to • • • •

physiological or anatomical differences, relational differences, behavioral differences, or unobservable differences.

These strategies can be (and have been) combined (and in various ways), but they can fall apart too. For instance, all four ways of combining physiological differences and mental differences can be observed in the history of thought (see Table 24.1). Only (3), the lower-left corner of the four-partite classification of cases, can exemplify Smith’s picture. The top-left and top-right corners (1 and 2) provide counterexamples since they do not involve regarding humans as observably the same but essentially different. The lower-right corner (4) does not involve any claims about significant differences and thus fails to exemplify dehumanization. For summary, I would like to highlight four points: First, cases of relational dehumanization and cases of dehumanization on the basis of claims about observable differences show that not all cases of dehumanization involve an observation-based attribution of sameness and consequent cogni­ tive discounting of essence.There are other ways, other forms, to arrive at a justification for dehu­ manizing attitudes.With respect to relational dehumanization, it needs to be mentioned that it is certainly possible (and maybe even likely) that historical cases of dehumanization that are at first glance based only on genealogical distance ultimately turn out to also involve a belief in different essences. But it need not be so; it is equally possible that they do not. It is that second possibility which shows that a belief in a natural kind essence is not necessary for dehumanization to occur. Table 24.1 Four different ways of establishing (non-)difference by combining physiological and mental differences

Significant physiological or anatomical differences

No significant physiological or anatomical difference

Significant mental differences

No significant mental differences

1.A belief in significant physiological or anatomical differences corresponding to significant mental differences (e.g.,Aristotle; Plinian races; 19th-century dehumanization of women; contemporary cases of neurological reductionism of gender differences) 3.A belief in physiological and anatomical sameness combined with a belief in significant mental differences (e.g., mentioned cases of Atlantic encounter)

2.A belief in significant physiological or anatomical differences without a belief in mental differences (e.g., more or less conservative theories of biological differences between sexes)

4.A belief that there are no significant differences what so ever (e.g.; more radical cases of contemporary theories of sexual difference; contemporary non-racist theories)

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Second, at the meta-level of writing the history of dehumanization, the following holds: as scholars studying cases of dehumanization, we do not need to and should not, at least not without necessity, assume an essentialist belief in the mind of the dehumanizer in order to make sense of a historical case. As a researcher, one always runs the risk of wrongly (i.e., anachronis­ tically) attributing to historical actors an assumed timeless ontology of the human.With respect to essentialism, this is a danger in parts of the literature on dehumanization that stems, in my opinion, from the above-mentioned recent general debates on psychological essentialism, espe­ cially as these grew out of developmental psychology. These debates have a tendency to treat psychological essentialism itself (at the meta-level) as inherent and innate, and thus as a histor­ ically invariant and inalterable feature of our cognition.This is a meta-essentialist move (essen­ tialism about psychological essentialism, so to say) that lacks sufficient justification for the reasons mentioned in Sections 24.3 and 24.4. Third, the historical cases mentioned suffice to illustrate a pattern: when no observable differences are available to establish a clear-cut difference justifying dehumanization, then ref­ erence to a difference in unobservable essence can still be used (as it happened during the Columbian encounters); but when observable differences were available, these were used and the epistemic role of unobservable essences changed. This is how a dehumanizer can have it both ways: if one has observable differences, one can dehumanize people on the basis of these; if that ‘light solution’ does not suffice (for whatever reason), one can still invoke the ontologically more ‘heavy-metal’ machinery of unobservable natural kind essences. As so often in history of science and philosophy, reference to non-observables helps as an epistemologically immunized step-in to justify believing or doing what one wants to believe or do anyway – in our case, to dehu­ manize certain people. For those cases where observable differences are available, reference to hidden essences can certainly still be used as a catalyzer to boost the dehumanization possible on the basis of observable differences alone.Yet, and that is the decisive point, reference to a diffe­ rence in essence (or, if categorically minded, a different essence) is not necessary in such cases of dehumanization. Fourth, the above shows that in analyzing the history of dehumanization, a distinction should be made between essentialism being necessary (by stepping in for missing observable differences) and essentialism being merely catalytic.This distinction helps to derive a revised version of the natural kind necessity-claim—a version that is more precise, weaker but not too weak, and less conjectural in face of historical and contemporary evidence about dehumanization. In and of themselves, beliefs in hidden essences are not necessary for dehumanization; if at all, then they become necessary for dehumanization if and only if the search for (or assumption of) salient observable differences cannot be ‘cashed in’ in an intent to dehumanize. In such a case, reference to unobservables is a last-resort strategy for the dehumanizer. If everything fails, this is how the dehumanizer can do it: deny something unobservable!

24.5 Is entitativity necessary? So far, we have only seen that natural kind thinking is not necessary for dehumanization to occur.When Leyens et al. claimed that essentialism is necessary for dehumanization, they obvi­ ously used a different, very broad sense of essentializing – namely, entitativity attributions. Is psychological essentialism, in the sense of assuming high entitativity of a group, necessary for dehumanization? It seems so, at least at first glance, since dehumanization often involves group stereotypes. Such stereotypes can lead to dehumanization, even if no natural kind thinking is involved. One can even hypothesize that the more informativeness there is in the concept of the human, the more 371

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potential there is to use it for dehumanization.A richer concept of the human makes dehuman­ ization deeper. Sometimes the dehumanization of women is based on physiological differences only – for example, when the limitations regarding their social roles or rights are justified simply by reference to their biological ability to bear a child. Keeping them in their traditional and confined social roles is then justified by pointing to the fact that it makes it more likely that women actually use their unique biological capacities. Yet, sometimes such a biologistic con­ finement strategy is combined with claims about mental differences regarding rationality and morality, further deepening the dehumanization (see Tuana 1993 on this multi-dimensionality). The more properties (linked to being human) involved, the richer the stereotype; the richer the stereotype, the harder the spell. In the entitativity sense, the stereotype of ‘being human’ refers to what Kronfeldner (2018) calls a minimal descriptive concept of human nature: contingent generalizations about humans at a certain time, without assuming a narrow-sense,‘heavy-metal’ concept of a natural kind essence. Yet, reasoning with such contingent generalizations about humans still has dehumanizing poten­ tial since individuals who do not conform to the generalizations forming the stereotype can still be dehumanized. Any case of ableism or contemporary eugenics is a case in point for such non-natural-kind dehumanization (see Crary, this volume; see Wilson, this volume).Thus, dehu­ manization can and often will take place solely on the basis of a minimal concept of a descriptive nature – that is, on the basis of a stereotype of being human. Having that clarified, we can return to what is at issue here: whether dehumanization can happen even without such an already quite ‘minimal’ variation-discounting stereotype. There are at least two cases that show that it indeed can. There can be dehumanization without entitativity­ based essentialism involved – that is, without any reference to a variation-discounting postulation of group homogeneity (stereotype). The first case continues the earlier discussion of the dehumanization of women. In Le Bon’s picture (see the quote discussed earlier) everything is graded, consistent with the spread of stat­ istical thinking in the 19th century. In his view, it is a ‘large’ number of women that are ‘closer’ to gorillas than to ‘most’ developed men. This, and in particular the additional claim that women that are evidently superior to the ‘average man’ are ‘exceptional’ and therefore comparable to a monstrous being, is best interpreted as a case of statistical dehumanization—a dehumanization based on partly overlapping so-called normal distributions (a.k.a. bell curves) (see Figure 24.2 for illustration). Such a statistical dehumanization allows for a few apes being more intelligent than some women and some women being more intelligent than some men, even though not more intel­ ligent than the ‘average man.’ It is clear from the historical scholarship of 19th-century sciences that most of the thinking at the time was still typologist – that is, still discounting the observed

X

Figure 24.2 A graphic representation of a statistical dehumanization of women modeled after LeBon’s account.The first bell curve represents the distribution of intelligence for apes, the second for women, and the third for men.The single cross sign represents the to-be-discounted ‘monster women’ in LeBon’s account.

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variation and packaging things into (stereo-) types. In addition, normal distributions are the result of idealizations, via curve fitting of the actual data obtained. As LeBon wrote and as represented in Figure 24.2, the “monstrous” women are still regarded as “negligible entirely”; they are crossed out of the generalizations. Both the discounting of variation and the curve fitting are not sur­ prising. From a contemporary vantage point, the “problem of stereotypes is” precisely, as Tajfel (1969: 177), wrote “that of the relation between a set of attributes which vary on continuous dimensions and classifications which are discontinuous.” Yet, it still holds that there can be cases from the past (and the future) where dehumanization is based on statistical distributions with variation being fully acknowledged (i.e., statistical thinking showing up in full) and without dehumanization becoming impossible. A variation-discounting entitativity essentialism is thus not necessary for dehumanization to occur. As before, it is important to mention that such a statistical form of dehumanization can, and often will, connect to stereotyping and even to natural kind thinking, but it does not have to. One such way to connect statistical thinking to natural kind thinking has been entirely ignored in this paper: it might well be that the statistical distributions themselves, those grounding the dehumanization of women, are taken to be fixed and explainable as the result of heredity.8 Russett (1989), for instance, mentions this tendency toward hereditarian thinking in the case of 19th-century sexual science. Hence, beliefs in fixity of the statistical distributions can connect to post-essentialist, variation-acknowledging styles of reasoning about the ‘other.’ But that alone does not make the dehumanizing beliefs about women essentialist, at least not with respect to the other elements of psychological essentialism. In addition, it does not make the beliefs in fixity necessary for dehumanization of (groups of) individuals. (For how fixity—i.e., beliefs in bio­ logical determinism, or generally, the naturalization of being human—connect to dehumaniza­ tion of the human species as a whole, see Milam, this volume). The best case, though, that is available for showing that dehumanization does not neces­ sarily involve entitativity claims stems from the data on what Haslam et al. (2005) call selfdehumanization (see also Demoulin et al., this volume) or from what is called the “lesser mind problem” (for review, see Waytz et al., 2014). Both are pointing to an individual-to-individual form of dehumanization since sometimes one attributes to other individuals (or even to one’s own future self) lesser mind, with mind standardly taken to be realized as agency (cognitive abil­ ities) or experience (emotional abilities). Since ‘mind means human’ in most contemporary ontologies of the human,‘lesser mind’ means ‘lesser human’ (see also, Machery, this volume and Varga, this volume). While stereotypes can facilitate mind attribution, such attribution is not necessarily based on stereotypes. This is simply because the relationship between two human individuals is not necessarily based on stereotypes, nor is the relationship between me and my future self. A graded attribution of a specific property (or set of properties) is all that is needed for attributing lesser mind. I thus take the literature on self-dehumanization and the ‘lesser mind’ problem to confirm that homogenized stereotypes can but do not have to be involved in these forms of dehumanization.

24.6 Conclusion and outlook This chapter illustrates how one can dehumanize people without using essentialized thinking. Dehumanization most abstractly viewed is about navigating the responsiveness that we show to each other, either as individuals or as members of groups. Dehumanization is a pernicious and unfortunately quite easy-to-use cognitive tool. We use it to structure the kinds of social interactions that result in discriminations, hierarchies, and exclusions. It is a cognitive mech­ anism for managing difference and similarity, closeness and distance. It is not necessarily one of 373

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discounting or negating variation so that distinct boundaries between groups can be utilized. Shades of being human are enough to dehumanize. Furthermore, it is expectable that the next years of studying dehumanization will uncover even more complexity with respect to psychological essentialism and dehumanization. For instance, there are empirical hints that psychological essentialism can have positive effects in fighting discrimination and exclusion: Haslam et al. (2002) report, for instance, that in their studies “some anti-essentialist beliefs were associated with anti-gay attitudes,” meaning, in spe­ cific contexts and with respect to specific elements, it holds that essentialist beliefs can be less dehumanizing (compared to their anti-essentialist counterpart).This happens, for instance, when homosexuality is presented as given and fixed rather than chosen.9 This conundrum fits the back-and-forth in discussions about gender and essentialism, as part of which the postcolonial theorist Spivak (1988: 13) recommended to use essentialism strategically, in the form of claims about shared properties.This utilizes the homogeneity element in order to improve the social, political, and material conditions of oppressed people.10 The direction of connecting essen­ tialism and dehumanization matters too. Haslam et al. (2006: 68) show that some heterosexual men maintain an identity for themselves by utilizing distinctness beliefs, given their prejudice against homosexual men. In such a case, the pre-existing dehumanizing prejudice would explain and catalyze essentialist thinking, rather than the other way around (this refers back to the limitation of the catalyzing claim mentioned in Section 24.1). If, as discussed in this chapter, the catalyzing works from essentialism to dehumanization, then the connection is conditional only: if no significant differences in observation (of behavior and body) are discernible, then essentialist thinking can still ground the dehumanization of (groups of) individuals. Essentialist thinking can involve homogenized group stereotypes, assumptions about heritage or other relational properties, or ontologically ‘heavier’ machinery, such as elements from natural kind thinking, in particular claims about hidden differences in unobservable properties inhering in individuals, such as ‘having a soul.’ But it does not have to. None of the elements of psycho­ logical essentialism is in and of itself necessary. Using hidden differences, I reckoned, has a special advantage for the dehumanizer and that elucidates, finally, how the catalyzing can work: beliefs in hidden essences are usually immune to revision in the face of stereotype-inconsistent information. Believing in unobservable essences is thus very likely a more ‘efficient’ and ‘secure’ way to uphold stereotypes (negative and positive ones). Elaborating on this special ‘power’ of non-observables in the context of dehumanization is something that remains to be done in the future.

Notes 1 I want to thank Nick Haslam, Fabian Krämer, Michele Luchetti,Alexander Reutlinger, Silvia Sebastiani, David Livingstone Smith, Somogy Varga, and two anonymous referees for feedback or recommendations. Thanks also to Justin Leuba, student assistant in 2019/20, for his help in the picture and reference search and copy editing. I would also like to acknowledge the support I received for this paper from Central European University as part of the Research Excellence Support Fund. 2 See also Varga, this volume, for a systematic take on how perception and dehumanization relate, inde­ pendent of the issues dealt with in this chapter and oriented toward psychological literature on mind perception; see Mikkola, this volume, on how this relates to the so-called ‘paradox’ of dehumanization and the notion of the uncanny. 3 There are six in Gelman (2003), nine in Haslam et al. (2000), eight in Haslam et al. (2002), seven in Haslam and Levy (2006), four in Bain (2014), and five in Rhodes et al. (2017). 4 See Phillips (draft) on different kinds of entitativity: one “dynamical“ and related to group agency only, the other related to similarity (as utilized in this chapter).According to Phillips, dynamical entitativity is attributed to a group “when it is seen as an agentic coalition.”

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Psychological essentialism and dehumanization 5 Part of what follows in the rest of this section is based on Kronfeldner (2018: 19–23, 26, 234–237). 6 See Roughley (draft) for review of how not to interpret Aristotle; see also Winsor (2006), McOuat (2009), or Müller-Wille (2011) for the historically shifting contours of essentialism. 7 The original says,“…représentent les formes les plus inférieures de l’évolution humaine et sont beauceup [sic!] plus près des enfants et des sauvages que de l’homme adulte civilisé.”(157); “On ne saurait nier, sans doute, qu’il existe des femmes fort distinguées, très-supérieures à la moyenne des hommes, mais ce sont là des cas aussi exceptionnels que la naissance d’une monstruosité quelconque, telle, par exemple, qu’un gorille à deux tètes, et par conséquent négligeables entièrement.” (158) 8 Thanks to Christina Brandt, who reminded me about this. 9 See Haslam and Levy (2006), Rhodes et al. (2017, 2018), Agadullina and Lovakov (2018), and Ryazanov and Christenfeld (2018) for more from social psychology on the complexity with which psychological essentialism and prejudice generally connect. 10 See, for a brief summary of the debate on strategic essentialism in gender and sexuality studies, Eide (2016); for a systematic take on the argumentative structure of anti-essentialism in feminist literature, see Witt (1995, 2011) or Phillips (2010).

References Abulafia, D. (2008) The Discovery of Mankind: Atlantic Encounters in the Age of Columbus. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Agadullina, E. R., and Lovakov, A. V. (2018) “Are People More Prejudiced towards Groups That Are Perceived as Coherent? A Meta-Analysis of the Relationship between Out-Group Entitativity and Prejudice.” British Journal of Social Psychology 57 (4): 703–31. Allport, G. W. (1954) The Nature of Prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co. Bain, P. G. (2014) “The Human Category: Its Structure, Its Content, and Its Implications,” In Humanness and Dehumanization, edited by P. G. Bain, J. Vaes, and J. P. Leyens, 227–55. New York, NY: Routledge. Campbell, D. T. (1958) “Common Fate, Similarity, and Other Indices of the Status of Aggregates of Persons as Social Entities.” Behavioral Science 3 (1): 14–25. Crary, A. (2020) “Dehumanization and the Question of Animals.” In The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, edited by M. Kronfeldner, 159–72. London and New York: Routledge. (this volume). Daston, L. and Park, K. (1997) Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750. Cambridge, MA: Zone Books. Davies, S. (2017) Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human. New Worlds, Maps and Monsters. Demoulin, S., Maurage, P., and Stinglhamber, F. (2020) “Exploring Metadehumanization and SelfDehumanization from a Target Perspective.” In The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, edited by M. Kronfeldner, 260–74. London and New York: Routledge. (this volume). Desmond, A. J. and Moore, J. R. (2009) “Darwin’s Sacred Cause: Race,” In Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins. London: Penguin. Eide, E. (2016) “Strategic Essentialism.” In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, edited by Nancy Naples, online 1–2 at https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118663219.wbegss554. American Cancer Society. Ereshefsky, M. (2010) “Species” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Spring 2010. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2010/entries/species/. Friedman, J. B. (1981) The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press (quoted after 2000 ed.). Gelman, S. A. (2003) The Essential Child: Origins of Essentialism in Everyday Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Haslam, N. (2020) “The Social Psychology of Dehumanization.” In The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, edited by M. Kronfeldner, 125–44. London and New York: Routledge. (this volume). Haslam, N., Bastian, B., Bain, P. and Kashima, Y. (2006) “Psychological Essentialism, Implicit Theories, and Intergroup Relations.” Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 9 (1): 63–76. Haslam, N., and Levy, S. R. (2006) “Essentialist Beliefs about Homosexuality: Structure and Implications for Prejudice.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 32 (4): 471–485. Haslam, N., Rothschild, L. and Ernst, D. (2000) “Essentialist Beliefs about Social Categories.” British Journal of Social Psychology 39 (1): 113–127. ———. (2002) “Are Essentialist Beliefs Associated with Prejudice?” British Journal of Social Psychology 41 (1): 87–100.

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Maria Kronfeldner Haslam, N., Bain, P., Douge, L., Lee, M. and Bastian, B. (2005) “More Human than You: Attributing Humanness to Self and Others.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 89 (6): 937–950. Hull, D. L. (1986) “On Human Nature.” Philosophy of Science, Proceedings of the Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association 2 (Symposia and Papers): 3–13. Jeshion, R. (2018) “Slurs, Dehumanization, and the Expression of Contempt.” In Bad Words: Philosophical Perspectives on Slurs, edited by D. Sosa, 77–107. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kontler, L. (2020) “‘Humanity’ and Its Limits in Early Modern European Thought.” In The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, edited by M. Kronfeldner, 52–63. London and New York: Routledge. (this volume). Krämer, F. (2014) Ein Zentaur in London: Lektüre und Beobachtung in der frühneuzeitlichen Naturforschung. Affalterbach: Didymos-Verlag (forthc in English version with Johns Hopkins UP). Kronfeldner, M. (2018) What’s Left of Human Nature? A Post-Essentialist, Pluralist, and Interactive Account of a Contested Concept. Cambrige, MA: MIT Press. ———. (2020) “Introduction: Mapping Dehumanization Studies,” In The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, edited by M. Kronfeldner, 1–36. London and New York: Routledge. (this volume). Kteily, N., Bruneau, E., Waytz, A. and Cotterill, S. (2015) “The Ascent of Man: Theoretical and Empirical Evidence for Blatant Dehumanization.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 109 (5): 901–931. LeBon, G. (1881) L’homme et les sociétés: leurs origines et leur histoire. Paris: J. Rothschild. Leyens, J.-P., Paladino, P. M., Rodriguez-Torres, R., Vaes, J., Demoulin, S., Rodriguez-Perez, A. and Gaunt, R. (2000) “The Emotional Side of Prejudice: The Attribution of Secondary Emotions to Ingroups and Outgroups.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 4 (2): 186–197. Machery, E. (2020) “Dehumanization and the Loss of Moral Standing.” In The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, edited by M. Kronfeldner, 145–58. London and New York: Routledge. (this volume). McOuat, G. (2009) “The Origins of ‘Natural Kinds’: Keeping ‘Essentialism’ at Bay in the Age of Reform.” Intellectual History Review 19 (2): 211–230. Mikkola, M. (2020) “Why Dehumanization is Distinct from Objectification?” In The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, edited by M. Kronfeldner, 326–40. London and New York: Routledge. (this volume). Müller-Wille, S. (2011) “Making Sense of Essentialism.” Critical Quarterly 53 (4): 61–67. Münster, S. (1548) Cosmographia: Beschreibu[n]g aller Lender Durch Sebastianum Munsterum, in wölcher begriffen Aller völcker, Herrschafften, Stetten … härko[m]men: Sitten, gebreüch … fürnemlich Teütscher nation … Alles mit figuren vnd schönen landt taflen erklert, vn[d] für augen gestelt … Basel: Petri. Pagden, A. (1986) The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Phillips, A. (2010) “What’s Wrong with Essentialism?” Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory 11 (1): 47–60. Phillips, B. (draft) “Dehumanization and the Varieties of Group Perception.” Rhodes, M. and Mandalaywala, T. M. (2017) “The Development and Developmental Consequences of Social Essentialism.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science 8 (4): e1437. Rhodes, M., Leslie, S.-J., Saunders, K., Dunham, Y. and Cimpian, A. (2018) “How Does Social Essentialism Affect the Development of Inter-Group Relations?” Developmental Science 21 (1): e12509. Rothbart, M. and Taylor, M. (1992) “Category Labels and Social Reality: Do We View Social Categories as Natural Kinds?” In Language, Interaction and Social Cognition, edited by G. R. Semin and K. Fiedler, 11–36. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. Roughley, N. (draft) “Human Nature.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Russett, Cynthia Eagle. (1989) Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ryazanov, A. A., and Christenfeld, N. J. S. (2018) “The Strategic Value of Essentialism.” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 12 (1): e12370. Schiebinger, L. L. (1989) The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sebastiani, S. (2020) “Enlightenment Humanization and Dehumanization, and the Orangutan.” In The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, edited by M. Kronfeldner, 64–82. London and New York: Routledge. (this volume). ———. (forthc.) “Lord Monboddo’s ‘Ugly Tail’: Orangutans in Enlightenment Sciences of Man.” History of European Ideas.

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Psychological essentialism and dehumanization Smith, D. L. (2011) Less than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. ———. (2014) “Dehumanization, Essentialism, and Moral Psychology.” Philosophy Compass 9 (11): 814–824. ———. (2020) On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. (2020) “Dehumanization, the Problem of Humanity, and the Problem of Monstrosity.” In The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, edited by M. Kronfeldner, 355–61. London and New York: Routledge. (this volume). Spivak, G. C. (1988) “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography,” In Selected Subaltern Studies, edited by R. Guha and G.C. Spivak, 3–34. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Strevens, M. (2000) “The Essentialist Aspect of Naive Theories.” Cognition 74 (2): 149–175. Tajfel, H. (1969) “Cognitive Aspects of Prejudice.” Journal of Social Issues 25 (4): 79–97. Tuana, N. (1993) The Less Noble Sex: Scientific, Religious, and Philosophical Conceptions of Woman’s Nature. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Varga, S. (2020) “Could Dehumanization Be Perceptual?” In The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, edited by M. Kronfeldner, 378–92. London and New York: Routledge. (this volume). Waytz, A., Schroeder, J. and Epley. N. (2014) “The Lesser Mind Problem,” In Humanness and Dehumanization, edited by Paul G. Bain, Jeroen Vaes and Jacques Philippe Leyens, 49–67. New York, NY: Routledge. Wilson, R. A. (2020) “Dehumanization, Disability, and Eugenics.” In The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, edited by M. Kronfeldner, 173–86. London and New York: Routledge. (this volume). Winsor, M. P. (2006) “The Creation of the Essentialism Story: An Exercise in Metahistory.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 28 (2): 149–174. Witt, C. (1995) “Anti-Essentialism in Feminist Theory.” Philosophical Topics 23 (2): 321–344. ———. (2011) The Metaphysics of Gender. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

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25

COULD DEHUMANIZATION

BE PERCEPTUAL?

Somogy Varga

25.1 Introduction It is perhaps unsurprising that the first systematic investigations of dehumanization approached the phenomenon as linked to contexts of war, genocide, extreme hatred, and violence. One guiding hypothesis was that dehumanizers exclude the dehumanized from a moral community of human beings, implicitly conceptualized as displaying distinct individualities and being embedded in caring interpersonal relations. By comprehending the dehumanized as deindividuated entities to which moral norms and considerations of fairness do not apply (Opotow 1990), dehumanizers are able to disengage from moral restrictions and self-sanctions (Bandura 1999). Subsequent research contributions deployed a broader focus, shifting emphasis from extreme cases of dehumanization to more subtle forms that occur under ordinary circumstances without intergroup conflict or even explicit negative assessment (Leyens et al. 2001; 2003; 2007). This broadened focus has advanced attentiveness to dehumanization among psychologists, propel­ ling the emergence of new theoretical perspectives and interdisciplinary interest to which this volume also attests. Nevertheless, dehumanization is still a relatively recent area of study, and the successful imple­ mentation of novel approaches and methodologies is accompanied by a number of conceptual questions that remain open. The first part of the chapter will shed light on three assumptions to which much of the contemporary research is committed: (a) dehumanization involves some degree of denial of humanness, (b) such denial is to be comprehended in mental terms, and (c) whatever the exact mechanisms that underlie the denial of humanness, they belong in the realm of post-perceptual processing. Accordingly, whether one thinks that the attribution of lesser­ than-human minds is rooted in stereotypes, negative beliefs, or emotions directed at the outgroup, the process that leads to dehumanization occurs after the visual experience. This chapter aims to contribute to current discussions by critically engaging assumption (c). Could dehumanization be, at least in part, a perceptual phenomenon, such that dehumanizers visu­ ally perceive members of certain outgroups as exhibiting lesser-than-human minds? This pos­ sibility has not received systematic consideration, perhaps due to a shared commitment in the dehumanization literature to the idea that there is no direct perceptual access to mentality. For example, Bain et al. (2014, 386) maintain that “(p)eople can only infer the existence and the inside of other minds from their own mind,” while Waytz et al. (2014, 20) hold that “because a 378

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person can only experience his or her own mental states directly, a person cannot be confident that any other mind exists besides one’s own.” In contrast, the hypothesis that guides this chapter is that (c) is flawed. But if it is possible to visually perceive human beings as minded creatures, then dehumanization might at least in part turn out to be a perceptual phenomenon.

25.2 Three assumptions a. Both subtle and more severe forms of dehumanization involve some form of denial of humanness (Bain et al. 2014). Subtle forms often referred to as “infrahumanization” (Leyens et al. 2003) are continuous with more extreme cases of dehumanization, as both involve an understanding other people “as less than fully human” (Murrow and Murrow 2015). Whether members of other groups are referred to as “vermin” or “rats” to be exterminated, or are merely comprehended as less capable of higher-order cognition or uniquely human emotions, the process involves denying the attribution of full humanness to others. Comprehending others as “less mindful” (Waytz et al. 2014) means understanding their minds as lacking depth, causal impact, and the ability to attain an objective perspective of the world. As Haslam (2013) puts it, “all such phenomena, however mild or extreme, involve at a bare minimum a denial of humanness.” Crucially, subtle forms of dehumaniza­ tion occur without stereotype activation or intergroup conflict, such that merely assigning subjects to particular groups changes their mind awareness thresholds (Hackel et al. 2014).1 In the following, I will operate with a broad and inclusive sense of dehumanization, which encompasses both subtle and blatant forms, and refers to comprehending other human beings as somehow less than fully human.2 b. The denial of humanness is understood in mental terms, such that it may be warranted to speak of “mind denial.” Leyens et al. (2001; 2003; 2007) have linked the relevant sense of human­ ness that is being denied in dehumanization to the capacity for having the kind of com­ plex emotions (e.g., guilt, love, and shame) that are taken to distinguish human beings from other animals. So when individuals understand members of an outgroup as less human than those from the ingroup (“infrahumanization”), the denial of humanness occurs via the denial of particular mental capacities (secondary emotions). Others have extended this perspective, arguing that “humaneness” has two distinct senses, each tied to a particular human–nonhuman contrast comprehended in mental terms. Human uniqueness contrasts humans with animals, which lack secondary emotions, civility, refinement, and cogni­ tive skills, while human nature contrasts with objects (e.g., machines and robots) that lack emotionality, vitality, and warmth (Haslam 2006; Haslam and Loughnan 2014). Offering some support for these two senses of humanness, research on the attributions of minds under the label “mind perception” (Gray et al. 2007; Epley et al. 2007),3 suggest that the ascription of mindedness proceeds along the psychological capacities of conscious experience (e.g., awareness of the environment, fear, hunger, and pain, and complex emotions like sympathy, regret, and pride) and intentional agency (e.g., planning, goal-directed behavior informed by knowledge and preferences) (Gray et al. 2007; Grey et al. 2012; Epley and Waytz 2010; see Machery, this volume, for historical examples that involve the denial of one of these).While these mental capacities can diverge independently and are attributed to different degrees along a continuum, this research comprehends dehumanization as related to mind attribution in general (to fellow humans, beloved pets, divinities, complex computer systems, etc.).4 Finally, also comprehending the denial of humanness in mental terms, other researchers link dehumanization to stereotypes that are associated with 379

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different degrees of warmth and competence (see e.g., Harris and Fiske 2006; 2011; see also Machery, this volume; Kronfeldner, this volume). Respected groups figure as high on both dimensions, while pitied groups (e.g., elderly people) are seen as warm but incompetent, envied groups (e.g., wealthy people) as cold but competent, and disgust-evoking groups (e.g., homeless people, people with drug addiction) as low on both dimensions.The main finding is that dehumanization targets those who are seen as low on both dimensions: low-low groups activate disgust-related neural structures instead of the neural network responsible for social cognition.When participants perceive individuals belonging to lowlow groups, the neural structures associated with social perception do not exhibit normal activation. c. Mind denial is post-perceptual.Whether one thinks that the attribution of lesser-than-human minds is rooted in stereotypes, negative beliefs about the outgroup, emotions felt toward member of the outgroup, or simply holding the belief that an individual belongs to a neu­ trally evaluated outgroup, the process that leads to dehumanization occurs after the visual experience. Dehumanizers visually perceive others as minded creatures like themselves, but the perceptual input is somehow distorted by post-perceptual mechanisms. Although the overall framework of the studies is called “mind perception”—suggesting that the awareness of the mindedness of human beings is genuinely perceptual—the authors hold that an inference from observable behavior is necessary, because mentality is unobservable (Morewedge et al. 2007; Epley and Waytz 2010). Accordingly, these studies use numer­ ical ratings and ask participants to report on their judgments (“Does this entity have a mind? Does it have the ability to think?”). Due to the nature of this method, it is probably more accurate to say that the studies primarily explore “mind judgments.” As Scholl and Gao (2013, 228) note, “referring to such data in terms of mind perception (rather than “mind judgments” or “mind ratings”) sounds exciting, but visual processing is never actu­ ally invoked.”

25.3 The mind perception thesis In order to critically engage (c)—that is, that mind denial is post-perceptual—we may start by exploring the particular mindreading skills that human beings have developed and that enable complex coordination and communication. The dominant view is that when we decipher the behavior of others in light of the causal powers of their minds, we utilize post-perceptual inferences about mentality. We can do this based on a quasi-scientific theory about the how mental states and types of behavior are connected (Gopnik and Meltzoff 1997; Carruthers 2009) or by using our own minds in an “offline” pretense mode (Goldman 2006; 2013). In both cases, the underlying assumption is that because mentality cannot be perceived, our per­ ception does not offer much more than a “bag of skin” (Gopnik and Meltzoff 1994), such that our awareness of mentality requires an inferential “leap” from observable behavior (Epley and Waytz 2010). However, this assumption is facing challenges. There has been resurgence of the idea that it is sometimes possible to perceive mentality (e.g., Green 2007; Gallagher 2008; Smith 2010; McNeill 2012; Varga 2018). While much of the literature concentrates on the visual percep­ tion of relatively basic intentions and emotions, it is possible to distinguish between two types of perceptual access to mentality (see Varga 2017b). About a century ago, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Nathalie Duddington put forward a distinction between the perception of others as minded creatures and the perception of mental states instantiated in human beings. The former occurs in the same direct and immediate fashion as in the case of human bodies and characterizes cases 380

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in which we immediately perceive “the presence of a mind,” but cannot determine what mental states they are undergoing (Duddington 1919). Building on and further developing these pioneering ideas, I have proposed that there are two forms of perceiving mentality (Varga 2017b; 2018). According to the Mind Perception Thesis, appropriately endowed observers sometimes consciously visually perceive other human beings as minded. According to the Perceptual Mindreading Thesis, appropriately endowed observers sometimes consciously visually perceive others as angry, delighted, or afraid. Both forms of per­ ceiving mentality play a vital role in social cognition, and the distinction between perceiving minds and mental states is implicit in the relevant literature of dehumanization. For example, Epley and Waytz (2010, 498) argue that “before an ordinary perceiver can decide which mental states are responsible for a given action, an ordinary perceiver needs to at least implicitly deter­ mine if another agent has a mind in the first place.” In the context of this chapter, the focus will be on the Mind Perception Thesis, which might be stimulating for the contemporary debate on dehumanization.Those who hold that only low-level observational properties exist (e.g., size, shape, color, etc.) will object that the Mind Perception Thesis requires too much of our perceptional apparatus. While a detailed counterargument is beyond the aims here, the chapter will review studies on the perception of animacy that support the view held by a number of philosophers that high-level properties (e.g., causal properties and properties like “being a mailbox”) can be presented in perceptual experience (e.g., Siegel 2006; 2010; Block 2014). Subsequently, the chapter will review research on visual adaptation and visual aftereffects to support the thesis that not only high-level properties in general but high-level mental properties can be presented in perception. Throughout the chapter, the emphasis is not on whether the empirical results reviewed uniquely point to the Mind Perception Thesis as the correct account, but whether they offer enough support to undermine hypothesis (c) in dehu­ manization research.

25.4 The perception of animacy Being able to identify animate beings and to distinguish them from inanimate objects carries a fitness-enhancing advantage and is important for complex social coordination. Some main­ tain that general learning mechanisms fail to account for the findings and maintain that there is a specialized machinery designed for this purpose, which explains the performance of typical observers and observers with autism on relevant tasks (Rutherford 2013).5 Research on the identification of animacy tends to either focus on particular features of the object giving rise to the perception of animacy (e.g., face or eyes) or motion cues. Numerous studies on the perception of animacy make use of simple geometric shapes (e.g., two squares or triangles) that are automatically perceived as not only animate but also as behaving in a goaldirected manner. For example, a square starts moving toward a second square and when arriving in its close proximity, the second square begins to rapidly move away in a random direction until it stops at a certain distance from the first square. Intriguingly, experiments involving rather simple animations of this kind have powerful effects. Subjects typically report that they cannot help but see the squares as animate, as having intentional states (“is afraid of the attacking square”) and pursuing goals (“wanting to catch the other square”).The effect is strong and can be shown in young children (Rochat et al. 1997; Csibra 1999) and in a broad variety of cultural settings (Hashimoto 1966; Morris and Peng 1994). Why think that animacy is perceived instead of inferred? The answer is, in a nutshell, that the awareness of animacy is automatic, irresistible, and highly stimulus-driven, which indicate per­ ceptual processing. Let us consider two types of studies. 381

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The first type typically employs point-light walker displays to study the perception of animacy. For example, a study comparing controls of adults with autism spectrum disorders concludes that general purpose perceptual processes fail to explain the findings. Instead, they are best explained by the existence of a specialized social perceptual processing.The idea is that much like the type of visual processing that specializes in depth, there is a particular type of visual processing that is specialized in the extraction of animacy from visual motion. As (Rutherford 2013, 135) puts it, “animacy perception seems to be accomplished using perceptual processes designed for this purpose.” The second type of study uses simple geometric shapes that move around on a computer display. In a study by Gao et al. (2009), participants were asked to observe a shape (the “wolf ”) chasing a different shape (the “sheep”).The participants were in control of the movements of the “sheep” and were asked to move it such that the “wolf ” is unable to “catch” it.Among identicallooking distractors, the “wolf ” could only be distinguished on the basis of its behavior, while the “sheep” was highlighted. Looking at the “wolf ” led to robust percepts of animacy and goal­ directedness.When these shapes are designed as “darts” rather than discs, the orientation of the moving darts toward a target causes perception of animacy, although their motions are actually random.The darts are perceived as constituting a “wolfpack” (Figure 25.1) (Gao et al. 2010). Importantly, when the darts were angled to “threaten” the “sheep,” the performance of the participants suffered a significant decline, most likely because their attention from the “wolf ” dart was distracted by the “wolfpack” effect.“Wolfpack” members behaved identically throughout the trials; the participants were aware of its effects, and they were incentivized to disregard them. Still the participants were not able to treat the “wolfpack” as inanimate. Because the findings rely on visuomotor activity instead of explicit reports, they are less vul­ nerable to misapprehensions than earlier studies exploring animacy.There are several reasons for thinking that there is perceptual processing at stake. Like in the case of many visual illusions, the perception is mandatory, and there is an apparent encapsulation from higher-order cognition. Participants cannot prevent seeing the movements as animated and goal-driven, just like it is not a

b

Sheep

Sheep

Real Wolf

Real Wolf

Figure 25.1 In Gao et al. (2010) the aim is to use the mouse to move the green disc (“sheep”) across the display in order to avoid touching the display border, the darts, or a red wolf disc. In (a) the darts continually pointed to the “sheep,” whereas in (b) they targeted the “wolf,” thus changing the social significance of the “wolfpack” while keeping other visual factors constant (Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner)

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possible to prevent the perception of low-level properties like shape and color. Moreover, the process is characterized by features such as close online control over attention, and strict depend­ ence on refined details, which are typically understood as hallmark features of perception. Given the presence of all these features, an explanation by appeal to post-perceptual judgments based on visual input will be unsuccessful (see also Gao and Scholl 2011; Scholl and Gao 2013; van Buren et al. 2016). We should add that while the percepts are irresistible for most observers, some individuals with neuropsychological disorders that affect social perception (Abell et al. 2000; Rutherford et al. 2006) constitute exceptions. Due to the cross-cultural robustness of the phenomenon, and because it occurs even in very young infants, it is reasonable to assume that animacy perception is mediated by specialized processes (McAleer and Love 2013; Rutherford 2013). It seems reasonable to conclude that the awareness of animacy does not always require postperceptual inferences and that the work on animacy delivers some indirect support for the view we sometimes consciously perceive others as minded human beings. Animacy and mentality are entangled in several ways, such that perceiving animacy can involve perceiving intentions (Gelman et al. 1995; Tremoulet and Feldman 2006).6 More modestly, the findings undermine the view that perception is incapable of presenting high-level kind properties. Because animacy and mentality belong to the kind of high-level properties that are ordinarily conceived as unob­ servable (Santos et al. 2008;Yao and Sloutsky 2010), showing that animacy can be presented in perception removes a barrier for the claim that mentality can be as well.

25.5 Visual adaptation The visual system is highly plastic, and investigating its malleable nature offers valuable informa­ tion about how visual processing occurs. Philosophical examinations of perception have made use of empirical studies on the short-term plasticity of the visual system (Block 2014; Chudnoff 2018). Sustained exposure to a stimulus is typically followed by the visual system’s adapting to the stimulus (Clifford et al. 2007), a process that can result in visual aftereffects—biased perceptions resulting from the adaptation (Webster et al. 2005; Rhodes et al. 2010). Such aftereffects can take on the form of perceptual shifts or detection threshold modification.The former occurs when perception is influenced by features of the preceding stimulus (e.g., a vertical stimulus will appear tilted clockwise upon adaptation to a counter-clockwise tilt) while the latter occurs when the chances of identifying a feature decrease upon previous adaptation to that particular feature. These effects arise between properties that are presented in perception, which means that their study can help determine what properties are presented in perception. While it is well-known that aftereffects occur during the perception of low-level features (e.g., motion, color, surface, brightness, orientation, size, and shape), it is less known that there is some evidence for adaptation to high-level properties (e.g., ethnicity, gender, age, and attractiveness) resulting in corresponding aftereffects (for reviews, see Nieman et al. 2005; Webster 2011; Webster 2015; Palumbo et al. 2017). For example, adaptation to a male face will bias toward perceiving an androgynous face as female, while adaptation to a female face will bias toward perceiving an androgynous face as male (Webster et al. 2005; Fox and Barton 2007; for similar results with average Caucasian or Asian faces, see Rhodes et al. 2010) (Figure 25.2). Retinal adaptation cannot explain these aftereffects, and the authors conclude that “adaptation has a functional role in high-level, as well as low-level, visual processing” (Rhodes et al. 2010, 963). While these studies support the idea that that high-level properties in general can be presented in perception, particularly relevant for our purposes here are adaptation aftereffects for the percep­ tion of animacy in human faces, which indicate that high-level mental properties can be presented 383

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Figure 25.2 Rhodes et al. (2010) used both male and female Asian and Caucasian faces as adapting stimuli (Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner)

in perception.After adaptation to the face of an inanimate doll or a person, the perceived animacy of subsequently presented faces changes away from the adapting stimulus (Koldewyn et al. 2014). These do not transfer across species boundaries, which suggest perceptual processing instead of broader cognitive processes. Importantly, with regard to faces (but not to gender and race), animacy perception is distinctive in that the categorization of a face as animate entails that it belongs to an agent with a mind capable of having thoughts and emotions. In this sense, categorizing a face as animate means categorizing it as belonging to a minded human being. There are very few studies on adaptation effects in this category, but some studies further indi­ cate that high-level mental properties can be presented in perception. For instance, studies show that exposure to the facial expression of one emotion biases the judgment of the following face stimulus toward the opposite emotion (see e.g.,Webster et al. 2005;Yamashita et al. 2005; Afraz and Cavanagh 2008). As an example, adaptation to a face expressing fear raises the threshold for perceiving the successively presented ambiguous face as fearful, while adaptation to an angry face raises the threshold for perceiving a successively presented ambiguous face as angry (Butler et al. 2008). Moreover, adaptation to sad face biases toward perceiving a subsequently presented neutral face as happy (Hsu and Young 2004; Rutherford et al. 2008).Very brief face presentations (50 ms adapting duration for happy face adaptation and 17 ms for angry face adaptation) are sufficient for emotion aftereffects (Lon et al. 2019). These high-level aftereffects are easily inducible across diverse populations, and they appear to be genuinely perceptual, exhibiting the same characteristics as aftereffects provoked by lowlevel features.The aftereffects cannot be triggered in an alternative way (e.g., by viewing emo­ tional words; see Fox and Barton 2007) and conscious attention does not seem to play a role (Davidenko et al. 2016). One might grant that aftereffects linked to emotional expressions are perceptual, but resist the inference to high-level mental properties being presented in perceptual experience. Instead, one might argue that the aftereffects reflect adaptation to low-level facial configurations. On this view, adaptation to low-level features of the angry face changes how the same features are processed in the ambiguous face, explaining the aftereffect. However, even if low-level proper­ ties like size, lumination, retinal location, and viewpoint are varied, the aftereffects persist if the expressions are kept constant (Leopold et al. 2001; Zhao and Chubb 2001; Fang and He 2005; Butler et al. 2008).This can be taken as indication that such aftereffects cannot be fully explained as resulting from adaptation to lower-level properties (Rhodes et al. 2010). One could object that the expression of some emotion being perceptually presented does not allow one to conclude that the relevant mental property is presented in visual experience. 384

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Perhaps there is only adaptation to structural configurations that constitute facial expressions. However, this line of reasoning would face challenges in explaining why adaptation to a sad facial expression leads to biases that raise the likelihood of perceiving a neutral face as happier. An explanation along these lines would require positing that one facial configur­ ation (e.g., expressing sadness) is somehow the “opposite” of the other facial configuration (e.g., expressing happiness). But it is difficult to see how this could be the case. Rather, it is much more plausible to think that the explanation must involve recourse to the emotion itself, because opposite relationship can only be said to hold between the relevant emotion categories (i.e., between happiness and sadness). The view that participants adapt to the cat­ egory of emotion (and not merely low-level configurations) is supported by findings showing that aftereffects do not occur to the same degree in all emotions. For example, adaptation to emotions related to threat is less robust than adaptation to emotions that are not (Gerlicher et al. 2014).

25.6 Cognitive penetration and configural processing Having reviewed findings from the perception of animacy and studies that investigate the shortterm plasticity of visual perception, we are now in a position to cast doubt about assumption (c). If it is indeed possible to sometimes visually perceive human beings as minded creatures, then dehumanization might turn out to be at least in part perceptual. Dehumanizers visually perceive others as exhibiting lesser-than-human minds. Before going further, we need to confront a challenge. If one assumes that the awareness of others as minded creatures results from post-perceptual inferences, then one can easily accom­ modate the fact that attributions of mind are modulated by beliefs, associations, and emotional attitudes toward certain racial or cultural groups. However, this seems to pose a difficulty for the thesis under consideration here, at least if one subscribes to the view that cognition cannot penetrate perception: when perceiving the same distal stimuli under identical conditions, postperceptual (cognitive) states do not cause changes in the contents of perceptual experience. Many have argued that the early visual system is cognitively impenetrable such that top-down influences only ensue before and after early visual processes, for example, resulting from changed attention and recognition of memorized patterns (Fodor 1990a; 1990b; Pylyshyn 1999). These authors acknowledge that training might enable the perceptual system to gain some access to background knowledge (diachronic penetration of perception due to learning), but maintain that way individuals perceive the world is largely independent of their cognitive attitudes. In order to deal with this objection, it is helpful to emphasize that it is increasingly accepted that the cognitive system exerts synchronic and diachronic top-down influences on perception (MacLin and Malpass 2003; Hansen et al. 2006; Levin and Banaji 2006; Hugenberg and Sacco 2008; Olkkonen et al. 2008; Witzel et al. 2011; Macpherson 2012; Collins and Olson 2014; Lupyan 2015). In addition, there is some evidence that perception can be penetrated by desires, moods, and character traits (Lyons 2011; Siegel 2011; Stokes 2012;Vance 2013). With respect to visual social perception, research has traditionally assumed a linear approach, according to which perceptual cues activate a single social category and prior knowledge (e.g., attitudes and stereotypes) that influence judgments and behavior. More recently, dynamic models have gained terrain according to which social perception is characterized by the dynamic inte­ gration of facial cues and top-down information. Freeman and Johnson (2016) have used neural computational models of social perception to delineate how bottom-up visual features are integrated with a variety of top-down processes to form perceptions. Going beyond usual twochoice paradigms, some studies use a mouse-tracking task that records the trajectory of the hand. 385

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Because motor dynamics and cognitive dynamics are taken to be coextensive, the trajectory of the hand is taken to reveal real-time unfolding of cognitive processes and offer insight into participants’ provisional commitments to alternative choices. Using such tasks reveals activations across a number of social categories that impact perception but are not reflected in explicit perceptual judgments. Moreover, top-down knowledge binds seemingly unrelated categories together, such that the perception of gender, race, or emotion is biased toward how the face is expected to appear based on stereotypical knowledge of other category memberships (Stolier and Freeman 2016). For an example in which the impact on explicit perceptual judgments is manifest, consider a well-known study by Levin and Banaji (2006). Participants were solicited to fine-tune the lightness of a square area.They were able to change the area from light to dark gray, and the task was to match the lightness of a face located beside the area. Some of the faces displayed stereo­ typical traits of Black individuals and some of White individuals, but the pictures had identical surface luminance. When subjects matched lightness to different samples of gray, White faces were consistently matched to lighter tones of gray than in the case of Black faces. According to Levin and Banaji’s (2006, 501) conclusion, “perception of a fundamental property such as lightness is affected not only by the immediate perceptual context provided by surface or form as has been shown, but also by a top-down influence previously unstudied in the context of high-level vision.” Furthermore, when participants looked at labeled racially ambiguous faces (labeled as “Black” or “White”), faces labeled “White” were judged to have a lighter skin tone than faces labeled “Black.”The shade of gray that participants chose as a match was fixed by the label, supporting the thesis that cognition can influence how we perceive low-level properties. According to an alternative explanation, there is no evidence of cognitive penetration here. The effects can be explained as linked to changes in perceptual attention. Quite simply, the task is guiding participants’ attention to particular features, which explains the perceptual change. I have elsewhere argued that an explanation by recourse to differing patterns of attention faces difficulties in explaining how attending to different parts of a surface can change how color is perceived (see Varga 2017a), but in this context it is more important to highlight that with respect to the perception of mentality, cognition can influence perception by changing patterns of visual attention. An intriguing line of recent research links the perception of faces to the perception of minds (Deska et al. 2016). In contrast to the way we perceive objects, which we normally process fea­ ture by feature, being exposed to human faces typically gives rise to configural perceptual processing. Faces are processed as a whole; that is, as a single and integrated perceptual unit. Indicating that configural face processing is linked to mind perception, recent studies used face inversion to experi­ mentally interrupt configural processing (Hugenberg et al. 2016; Deska and Hugenberg 2017).7 This has compelled participants to rely more on feature‐by‐feature processing, which resulted in reduced mind ascription and decreased speed in recognizing words associated with humanity. At the same time, while perceiving minds in others is dependent on face‐typical processing being utilized, beliefs about and attitudes toward others can influence face processing. In a series of intriguing studies by Fincher and Tetlock (2016), participants who were informed that they were looking at faces of norm violators (serious criminals like murderers and rapists) used less configural processing. The conclusion was that when faces were processed more like objects, reduced mind perception perceived is correlated with an increased readiness to assign harsh punishments. This is consistent with both findings suggesting that denying mind facilitates punishment (Viki et al. 2013) and findings suggesting that members of outgroups that tend to be denied fully 386

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human minds also tend to prompt less configural processing than members of ingroups.This is the case for racial outgroups (Michel et al. 2006; Rhodes et al. 2006), for racially ambiguous stimuli labeled as outgroup members (Michel et al. 2007), for sexualized women (Bernard et al. 2012), and even for identical faces assigned to minimal outgroups (Bernstein et al. 2007; Hugenberg and Corneille 2009). In a recent study by Mende-Siedlecki et al. (2019), the authors investigate how disruptions of configural processing of faces belonging to marginalized racial outgroups are linked to pain perception and care. The study finds that White participants show higher thresholds for perceiving pain on Black faces than on White faces. While the effect cannot be attributed to low-level differences, the study maintains that disrupted configural face processing is the driving force behind the perceptual bias, which is “distinguishable from the influence of stereotypes concerning status or strength, inaccurate medical beliefs, or explicit racial prejudice” (Mende-Siedlecki et al. 2019, 884).

25.7 Concluding remarks The main goal of this chapter was to explore and critically engage a common assumption in the literature on dehumanization. The assumption in question is that the mechanism that underlies the denial of humanness (or the attribution of lesser-than-human minds) belongs to post-perceptual processing. Simply, dehumanization occurs after the visual experience, whether it is rooted in stereotypes, negative beliefs, or emotions directed at the outgroup. At the same time, the possibility that dehumanization might at least in part be a perceptual phenomenon has not received systematic consideration, perhaps due to the prevalent idea that perceptual access to mentality is not possible. To offer support for the view that this assumption might be flawed, the chapter considered work on the perception of animacy and studies on perceptual aftereffects. It was argued that top-down modulation does not constitute an intractable challenge to the view that perception is able to present human bodies as instantiating minds and mental properties.The results pave the way for the possibility that dehumanization might at least in part be a perceptual phenomenon, without claiming that dehumanization is entirely perceptual, or that initial perceptual phases that do not involve mindedness are not distorted.

Notes 1 While stereotypes play a major role in the process, beliefs in a human essence (psychological essen­ tialism) may not be necessary for dehumanization (Kronfeldner, this volume). 2 Some have reserved the term for “complete deprivation of humanity” (Leyens et al. 2007) and deploy “infrahumanization” to refer to the more subtle and common phenomenon, which can also occur in absence of intergroup conflict or hostility. 3 Questions about how we attribute distinctly human mental capacities were traditionally addressed under the label “person perception.” In contrast,“mind perception” (Wegner 2002) accommodates that human beings can attribute minds to nonhuman agents (e.g., pets, deities, figures) and deny mental states to other human beings. 4 Others may be attributed little agency or experience, a high degree of experience but little agency, or high agency but little experience (Epley and Waytz 2010; Gray et al. 2007; Gray and Wegner 2008). 5 Rutherford (2013) argues that the findings cannot be accounted for by general learning mechanisms but only by the activity of specialized social perceptual psychology. 6 That said, there might be cases of animacy without goal-directedness (see e.g., Gao et al. 2012). 7 “Configural” and “holistic” processing in this part of the literature are sometimes used interchange­ ably, although others point to differences (for a review, see Piepers and Robbins 2012). Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out to me.

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INDEX

Note: Italicized page numbers refer to figures, bold page numbers refer to tables Abbattista, G. 10, 13

ableism 10, 18, 181, 372

abortion 178

absolutism 46

Abu Ghraib prison 194, 334, 337

Abulafia, D. 369

Acosta, J. de 55, 60

actualized (activist) dehumanization xvii,

189–190, 194

Adel (nobility) 101

Adorno, T. 169

Aemilianus, Scipio 42

affective body 321

Afghanistan 209

African Americans 135, 137, 153, 336

African Union 190

Agamben, G. 19

age stereotypes 249

agency 4–9, 13, 18, 83, 133, 147–156, 163, 211,

249, 252, 314, 328, 379–380

aggression 3, 113, 115–117, 139–141, 263, 270, 356

Agricola 42

Akbar 45

Aktion T4 (euthanasia program) 173

Ali, S. 192–193 alienation 9, 237, 314

Alkidamas 41

Alland,A., Jr. 118

Allen, T.W. 232

Allport, G. 3, 363

Al-Qaeda 209

ambivalent stereotypes 248–250, 251

Amerindians 53–56, 365–366 Améry, J. 3, 14, 350

Amt Rosenberg (Rosenberg office) 99

amygdala 136; see also brain

anachronistic interpretation 18, 99, 196, 371

Andrighetto, L. 266

androids 297–302; see also robots

anger 351

animacy 8; perception of 381–382; see also agency

animal ethics 165–167

animal studies 5–6, 18, 113–114

animalistic dehumanization 9, 99, 104, 132,

149, 190, 248, 261; see also mechanistic

dehumanization

animalization 9, 159–169; and dehumanization as critical category 161–163; ideologies of 160–161; in living human exhibitions 86–88; resistance to 163–169 animals: and dehumanization 159–160; and ethics 165–166

anthropomorphism 114, 133

anthropoids 65, 68

anthropological theories 14, 17, 99, 106–108, 114

anti-black racism 163, 168; see also racism

Antiphon 41

anti-Semitism 11, 13–15, 103–104, 239–241, 360;

see also Jewish people; National Socialism

Apartheid 208

Appiah, K.A. 356

Aquinas, T. 55

Ardrey, R. 116–118

Arendt, H. 3, 15, 113, 197, 204–207, 215–216, 222,

224–225, 309, 313, 344, 351

Aristotle 2, 41, 54, 152, 233–234, 349, 351,

367–368

artificial intelligence (AI) 19, 295, 302–303;

see also robots

Aryan race 104; see also National Socialism

Asch, A. 179

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Index Assam Cattle Preservation Act 1950 (India) 192

assertiveness 252

asylum seeker 12, 275, 275–277, 279, 281, 282;

see also immigrants; refugees

atrocities xvi-xvii, 3, 7, 11, 13, 130;Athenians 42;

colonial 315; mass 266, 344–346; Nazi 14–16,

98, 181, 203; Spanish 56

attitudes: dehumanizing xvii, 6–7, 138, 188–190,

355; naturalistic versus personalistic 322;

objectifying 327–330, 332; reactive 11, 350–351,

356; sadistic 334

Atuahene, B. 208–209, 211

Atwood, M. 337

Auschwitz camp 223, 346, 349–350

autism spectrum disorders 382

automata 359–360; see also robots autonomy 153, 193, 197, 262, 312–314, 328, 331;

and dignity 209, 211; and sadistic attitudes 334;

see also agency

Azil (Eskimo girl) 84

Baartman, S. (Hottentot Venus) 84, 93

Backhouse, J. 2

Bacon, F. 56–57 Baldissarri, C. 266

Bamberger,V. 85

Banaji, M.R. 386

Bandura,A. 3, 130, 267

barbarians 39, 41, 43, 46–49, 55–56, 60, 154,

232, 234

barbarization 9, 231

Barnett, S.A. 115

Barnum, P.T. 85

Bar-Tal, D. 130

Bastian, B.B. 262, 264, 267, 269–270

Battle of Algiers 314

Baur, E. 105–106 Baur, G. 169

behavioral dehumanization 6, 366; see also actualized dehumanization Bell, C.M. 262

Benga, O. 84, 90

Ben-Meir, E. 262

Bentham, J. 147

Bernard,V.W. 5, 11

bestialization 9; see also animalization; demonization; diabolization Bhattacharjee, M.F. 192

Biggar, N. 352

Bildung 217–218 biological anthropology 106–107, 112–121 biological determinism 112, 114–115, 117–120, 373; see also inalterability biological racism 101–102; see also racism Biology as a Social Weapon symposium 119

Black Elk (Sioux Chief) 92

Black Lives Matter (BLM) 168

Black people 77, 87, 93, 155, 159, 195, 245, 248,

315–317

blatant dehumanization 134, 156, 283, 366

Bleiker, R. 4, 277

Bloom, P. 13

Blum, L. 14

body: affective 321; appearance of 2; vital 321

Bonaparte, R. 91

Bosnian War 15

Bouvier, A. 85

brain 136; disgust-related response 248; and mind

368; neuroimaging 135–136, 251; of orangutan

70; predictions 299; regions 280; scans 245, 251;

see also craniology

Bruce, J. Nayo (John Tevi) 92

Brudholm,T. 3, 11, 14–15, 322

Bruller, J. (pseud.Vercors) 64–65 Bruneau, E. 134, 136, 261, 264, 283

Bruno, G. 365

Buch, W. 241

Buddhism 47

Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de 60, 65,

67, 70

bullying 139

Burnett, J. 67

Bush, G.W. 209

Cacioppo, J. 132

Caesens, G. 262–263, 269

Cahill,A. 331, 337

Calgacus 42–43 Cambiano, G. 234

Campbell, D. 277

Camper, P. 77–78 Canada: Jewish refugees in 275; refugees in

277–278; Syrian refugees in 285–286;Tamil

refugees in 278

cannibalism 2, 41, 53, 55, 58, 60, 90, 370

Carroll, N. 359

Castano, E. 266

categorical dehumanization 7, 9, 17, 140–141, 152,

188, 362, 367

Cathars 235

Catholicism 100

Catlin, G. 85, 93

causes of dehumanization (overview) 11, 138–139 Celts 53

Cerialis 42

Charles V, Emperor 55

Charles X, King 58

Charta of Human and Peoples’ Rights 190

Chen, H. 264

Chen An 47

Cheng He 48

Chichester, A. 232

“children overboard” incident 275

chimpanzees 65–66, 68, 70–75, 114, 233

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Index China 46–49; barbarians 47–49; dehumanization of women 49; Sinocentric dehumanization 46–49 Christians 40, 43–44, 53, 235

Cicero 164, 210

civilization 39, 40, 41, 44, 46–47, 50, 55–56, 67, 76,

90, 112, 114, 120, 150–153; see also savages

Clinton, H. 153

Cody,W.F. (Buffalo Bill) 85

Coetzee, J.M. 217–220 cognitive dehumanization 6, 368; see also attitudes Cold War 3, 5, 18, 113–115, 117

Cole, D. 210–211 colonialism 237, 366; European 154; justification of

154; legitimization of 237; and racism 168, 237,

315;Vitoria’s endorsement of 55

Columbian Exchange, dehumanization before 39–50 Columbian moment 53

Columbian shift 369

Columbus, C. 235, 365, 369

commodification 9, 71, 91

competence, stereotype content model 133, 247,

250–253

Confucianism 47

Congo (DRC) 90, 238, 332–333

Conrad, J. 238

consequences of dehumanization (overview)

12, 139

Coon, C. 118

Corrias, L. 10

Costello, K. 283

Cotler, I. 342

Cotterill, S. 134

craniology 77–78, 368; see also brain Crary,A. 14, 16, 19

crimes against humanity 6, 10, 201–202, 211, 349

Cudd, A. 326

culturalism 46

Cyclopes 39

Darré, R.W. 99, 101–102 Darwin, C. 106–107, 175, 366

Davies, J. 232

Davis, D.B. 65

Davis, L. 180

Dawson, A.J. 136

de Beauvoir, S. 3, 5, 11, 309, 317–321

de Pizan, C. 49

de Wilde, M.D. 262

Declaration of Human Rights in Islam 191

Declaration of the Rights of Man of the Citizen 190

Defoe, D. 217–220 dehumanization studies: fields of application 10–11, 136–138; historical overview xvii; measurement of dehumanization 134–136; multidisciplinarity of 3–6, 127–129; and other challenges of humanism 18–19, publications by field 128;

recent 131–133; after Second World War 2–3,

129–131; theoretical complexities 14–18; usage

of different terms 9

deification 9, 189, 195

deindividualization (deindividuation) 9, 194

Delbo, C. 3

delegitimization 130

demonization 9, 189, 194, 195

Demoulin, S. 9, 10, 13, 14, 262

depersonalization 9

derivatization 9, 331, 337

desocialization 9, 12, 231–240 Deuteronomy 43–44 Deutsch, R. 284

Dhimmi 45

diabolization 9, 236; see also demonization Diamond, L. 245

Dickson,W. 76, 77

dignity xvii, 54, 57, 107, 305; assault on 192; and

autonomy 209; and human rights 192, 195;

Kant’s take on 164; restoration of 211; and

subhumanization 194

Direction Générale pour la Coopération 94

Diruf, M. 297

disability 19, 178–179; and eugenics 177–181; intellectual 176; stereotypes 249; studies 5–6 discrimination 12, 18, 196; justifications of 15;

modes of 232; racist 232, 233, 260; victims’

reactions to 269

disgust 247, 247–250 dislike 280

Dobson, K.S.H. 264

Dostoevsky, F. 216

Douglas, M. 68, 359

Dovidio, J.F. 283

Down syndrome 177, 179–181 drug addicts 145

Du Bois,W. E. B. 232

dual model of dehumanization 132; see also animalistic dehumanization; mechanistic dehumanization; social psychology of dehumanization Duddington, N. 380

Duff,A. 342–343, 349–351 Dunn, L.C. 64, 277

Dupagne, A. 90

Duterte, R. 145

DuVernay, A. 168

Dworkin, A. 330

dyshumanization 9

Eaglestone, R. 216

Early Modern history of dehumanization 52–61

Eberhardt, J. 135, 183

ego defense 11

Eichler, L. 7

Eichmann,A. 3, 351

394

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Index Eiseley, L. 116

elderly people 10, 251, 265, 293, 318, 380

Elephant man (Joseph Merrick) 84

embodiment 18, 310, 314, 316, 318, 320, 321, 331

emotions 10–11, 13, 280; and ethnic otherness 92;

of hate 342; and inferiority of others 317; in

infrahumanization 134; moral 347, 352; negative

131, 136, 263, 300; positive 131; primary 131,

270, 282; projections 320–321; secondary 131,

155, 282, 379; versus sentiments 131

empathy 214–215 enemy 234, 240; barbarians 280, 281; beating

333; friend versus enemy dichotomy 40, 222,

223; of humanity 197, 210–211; Nazi concept

of 98, 104

Enlightenment 2, 65–67, 74, 114, 236–238

Enock, F. 16

entitativity 371–373 envy 247, 248–250 Enz, S. 297

epidermalization 14, 314–317 epistemic deference 358–359 Epley, N. 132–133 equality 12, 19; human rights 191; legal 201, 203,

204, 206; moral 164; natural 206; racial 206;

social 232, 329, 330; see also hierarchy

error theory 364–365; see also essentialism Espina,A. de 236

essentialism 362–374;Aristotelian 367–368; and dehumanization 362–371; metaphysical 102–105; see also psychological essentialism Esses,V.M. 12, 13, 137

ethics and animals 165–166 ethismos 54

ethnic exhibitions see living human exhibitions ethnic otherness 91–92; see also living human exhibitions ethnicity 136–137 ethnocentrism 162

eugenics 173–184; and disability 178–179; expressivist objection 178–179; family studies 175; history of 174–175; international congresses 175; liberal 174; marked human variation 179–181; moderate 174; newgenic traits 178–179; persistence of dehumanization in 181–183; reproductive technologies 178–179; reproductive value 175–176; standpoint 176–178; sterilization 182; sterilization law 174–175; survivors of 177–178; traits 175–176; utopian 174 Eugenics Records Office 175

European Convention on Human Rights (1950) 190

euthanasia 177

evolution 52–53, 64, 115–117, 366, 368

evolutionary theory 112

exclusions (moral and social) 3, 12, 45, 60, 130,

196, 205; see also social death

existential phenomenology 309–322

exotic 2, 5, 71–72, 83–87, 90

experience condition 148–149

exploitation 11

expressive dehumanization 189–190, 194

expressivist objection 178

face 381; ambiguous 384; animate 384; ape 248;

Black 248; dehumanized 2; emotional 384;

gendered 384; inversion 386; robot 299, 300

Falkland,V. 232

Family of Man (exhibit) 115

Fanon, F. 3, 83, 89, 113, 309, 314–317

Farchi, M. 262

Fasoli, F. 265

Fatum 43–45 feature atypicality 299

femicides 160

feminist theory 5, 49, 120–121, 161, 326–330; see also women Ferrari, F. 297, 300

Ferrer,V. 236

fields of applications: ethnicity 136–137; gender 137; immigrants 137; medical 137; psychiatric 137; race 136–137; refugees 137; self-perceptions 137; see also targets Fincher, K.M. 386

Finley, M. 234

Fischer, E. 105–106 Fiske, S.T. 4, 7, 10, 13, 135–136, 251

Fitzhugh, G. 155

Flower, H. 72

Foer, J.S. 169

folic acid 179

foot binding 49

forms of dehumanization (overview) 7–9, 39–40 Forti, S. 215–216 Fousiani, K. 266

Fox, R 118

freak shows 84–85; see also living human exhibitions Freeman, J.B. 385

Freud, S. 117, 232

Frick, M.-L. 6, 9–10 Friedman, J.B. 369

Frisch, K. von 116, 117

Fromson, M.E. 130

Fu Yi 47

Fuegians (Selk’nams) 88

functions of dehumanization 3, 4, 11–12, 90, 138,

160, 246, 336, 345, 356

Gabbiadini, A. 266

Gabriel, C. 85

Gaels 53

Galton, F. 174, 175

Gao, T. 382

García de Mora, M. 236

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Index Gardner, J. 14, 331–332 Gaucher, D. 13

Gegenrasse (counter-race) 173

gender 43, 71–75, 113, 137, 161, 180–181,

246, 384

gender studies 5, 10, 168, 364

Genesis 40, 59, 77

Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees

(1951) 276

genocide 3–5, 15, 112, 129, 135, 145, 154, 173, 177,

189, 201–202, 216, 237, 335, 341–342, 344, 349

Gerald of Wales 232

Gessi, R. 84

Giner-Sorolla, R. 266

Gmelin, J.G. 71

Goebbels, J. 99

Goff, P. 135

Goffman, E. 3, 343

Golan-Shapira, D. 262

Goodwin, G.P. 151

Gould, S.J. 118

Graham, J. 141

Gravelot, H.-F. B. 72

Gravier, F. 85

Gray, C. 149, 155

Gray, H. 132–133, 147–148 Gray, K. 132–133, 147–148, 149

great chain of being 57, 70, 76, 152

Greenberg, J. 278

Griffiths, S. 264

Grotius, H. 58

Gunderson, E. 42

Habimana, K. 189

Haeckel, E. 107

Hagan, J. 4

Hagenbeck, C. 85, 87

Haidt, J. 348

Hall, C. 75

Hamby, S. 194

Han Dynasty 46, 48

Hann Xin 47

Haraway, D. 120–121 Harding, J.F. 264

Hardy, T. 216

Harris, L. 135, 251

Hartman, S. 113, 159

Haslam, N. 4, 7–9, 11–12, 132, 135, 149, 190, 262,

279, 280, 343–344, 365, 373, 379

hate/hatred xvi, 341–352; versus anger 351; and compassion 352; dehumanization without 343–345; without dehumanization 346–348; dehumanizing 342–343; self-hatred 350; speech 342; studies 342; violence 347; virtuous 348–352 Hegel, G.W.F. 237–238 Heinämaa, S. 6–10, 12, 14

Hendrick, F. 68

Henry, F. 277

Herman, J. 182

Herodotus 41

Herrenvolk 241

Hesiod 40

Hier, S.P. 279

hierarchization 318–319 hierarchy 61, 68, 100, 105, 107, 138, 221, 236,

253–254, 316; cultural 84; human-animal

166–167, 169; racial 103, 106; sexual 321

Himmler, H. 99

Hinton, A. 194

history of dehumanization: Cold War, 3, 112–120,

155; before Columbian exchange, 39–50; Early

Modern, 52–61, 152–153, 365; Enlightenment,

2, 65–67, 74, 114, 236–238; eugenics, 174–175;

Greek Antiquity, 41–42; medieval, 369;

monotheism, 43–46; Nazi ideology, 99–108,

145; as part of living human exhibitions, 84–88;

and polygenism, 7, 76, 153–154, 366; racist,

101–105, 153–155, 231–241; Roman Empire,

42–43; Sinocentric, 46; and slavery, 41–42, 54,

152, 193–194, 233–234, 366; of women, 49,

366–368; see also anachronistic interpretation;

dehumanization studies

Hitler,A. 99, 104, 145, 155, 206, 347

Hobbes, T. 58

Hodson, G. 133, 137, 261

Holocaust xvi, 3, 6, 14–15, 114, 120, 130, 135, 173,

211, 223, 341, 344

Holy War 43–45 homeless people 136, 245, 247–248

Homer 40–41 Homo sapiens 53, 166, 356

Homo sylvestris 68, 70

homogeneity 363; see also psychological essentialism homunculi 365

Hornsey, M.J. 296

Hose, S. 357

hostis humani generis (enemy of humanity) 210; see also enemy, of humanity Hottentot Venus (Saartjie Baartman) 84, 93

Howard, A. 283

Hubbard, R. 118, 119

Hull, D. 362–363, 364

human dignity see dignity humanism xvii, 18–19, 100, 119–120, 191–192, 197

humanity, xvii, 52; and aggression 115–117;

ambiguous recognition of 16; and automation

112; bare 15–16, 162–163; boundaries of 2,

43–49, 53–56, 64–67; colonial discussions on

53–56; common 39; crimes against humanity

xvii, 6, 10, 201–211; definitions of 64–65;

degrees of 68–71; dehumanization of humanity

17–18, 120–121; enemies of 6, 197, 210–211;

failure to recognise 16–17; full recognition 16,

396

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Index 334–338; historization of humanity 54–56, 67;

versus humankind 188; invention of humanity 2,

19; and modern natural law 58–61; and modern

science 56–58; as moral category 163, 197–198;

naturalization of 5, 67, 101–102, 367–369;

observation of humanity 54, 364, 367–370;

origin and history of humanity 53, 114–117;

problem of 27, 356, 358–359; questioning

64–68; reducing and destroying of 329–331; and

Reformation 56–58; see also universalist thought

humanization 2, 120, 121; animal 6, 61; of

chimpanzee 74; narrative 222; of orangutan 65,

68; of refugees 13, 285; robot 5, 12, 292–293,

295–298, 300, 302

humankind 64–68; defined as distinct from humanity 188; see also humanity; Homo sapiens human nature 112–121; anthromorphism 114; biological determinism 117–120; and denial of humanness 379; inhumanity of 112–121; sociobiology 117–120; stakes of 113–115; zoomorphism 115–117 humanness xvii, 2, 4, 7–8, 15, 19, 102–103,

131–133, 197, 265, 279–280, 296, 355, 379–380;

see also dual model; infrahumanization

human rights 187–198, 214–215; dehumanization

though lens of 191–195; protection of

195–196; restricted reciprocity 197; through

dehumanization lens 195–198; violations 195

human uniqueness 8, 132, 134, 190, 296, 379

human zoos see living human exhibitions humiliation xvii, 19, 91–92, 141, 332

Hund,W.D. 4, 12

Hunt, L. 13, 85, 215, 222

Husserl, E. 309–310, 313

Hutchison, E. 277

Hutton, C.M. 106

identity 345

immigrants 137; see also asylum seekers; refugees Immigration and Refugee Protection Act 2001

(Canada) 285

immorality 265–266 imperialism 42, 154

Implicit Association Test (IAT) 135

implicit dehumanization 3, 7, 12, 134–135, 183,

281, 283–284

inalterability: of essential properties 365; see also biological determinism; psychological essentialism indifference 3, 11, 162, 165, 346

inferiorization 314–317 informativeness of categories 364; see also psychological essentialism infrahumanization 9, 131–132, 145, 248, 343–344,

363, 379

infringement of rights 202

ingroups 247–248

inheritance 363; see also biological determinism inhibition to kill 4, 11, 98, 130, 190;

dehumanization as necessary to overcome 346

inhumanity xvi, 13, 15, 78, 93, 112–121, 131, 140,

221, 267

institutional dehumanization 4, 7, 137, 177, 182,

183, 202, 210

instrumental violence (versus moral violence) 15,

141, 347–348

instrumentalization 9, 329, 332–334 intentional agency 379

interdependence 11, 252, 253; cooperative/

competitive 7, 246, 254, 255; global 2;

warmth-competence stereotypes 251

invention of humanity 2, 19

Ishi (Yahi Indian) 84

Islam 40, 44

Jack, A.I. 136

Jacoby, N. 136

James, W. 117

Jardine, J. 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14

Jefferson, T. 77

Jenkins, B. 168

Jentsch, E. 359

Jetten, J. 265, 296, 300

Jewish people 14–15, 44; demonization of 235; extermination of 211; Final Solution 207; Hitler’s dehumanization of 347; legal dehumanization of 206–207; murder in Treblinka 345; murder of 173; Nazi ideology’s animalization of 102–104, 145; Nazis’ persecution of 206–207; public degradation of 189; recognition as legal persons 206; refugees in Canada 275; Rosenberg’ assault on culture of 154 Johnson, B. 283

Johnson, K.L. 385

Johnson-Reid Immigration Act 1924 (USA) 176

Jordan, W. 65

Jost, J.T. 286

Judaism 100

juridical person 204–206; see also legal dehumanization justifications of dehumanization 2, 11, 15, 42, 94,

98, 192, 370

Kambuchea (Democratic Republic of) 191

Kanaks (inhabitants of New Caledonia) 89, 90

Kant, I. 146–147, 164, 193, 236–238, 311, 351

Kashima,Y. 280

Kateb, G. 193

Kawakami, K. 283

Kay, A.C. 286

Kelman, H. 3, 15, 130, 344–345

Khan, Gengis 48

Khoury, C, 262

397

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Index Kierkegaard, S. 320–321

killing see inhibition to kill

Kim, C.J. 159, 163

Kim, S.Y. 298

Kingsley, C. 232–233

Kinmont, A. 153

Kipling, R. 153

Kiralfy, I. 85

Klemperer,V. 3

Klocker, N. 277

Knobe, J. 148

Ko, Syl 163

Kolbenhoff, W. 239

Kontler, L. 2, 8

Koselleck, R. 5

Kosztolányi, D. 216

Kouchaki, M. 265, 267

Kramer, N.C. 298

Kristeva, J. 19

Kronfeldner, M. 5, 7–8, 15, 17, 188, 366

Kteily, N. 7, 134, 136, 261, 263–264, 283

Kuper, L. 4, 15

Landy, J.F. 151

Lang, J. 3, 11, 14, 98–99, 108, 322

Langton, R. 327, 334, 336–337

language use 135

Las Casas, B. de 55, 60, 152–153, 234

latent dehumanization 6, 188–190, 194

Laughlin, H. 175

Laustsen, L. 283

Laws of Burgos 54

Leach, E. 117

Lebensraum 356

LeBon, G. 368

legal dehumanization 201–211; apartheid in South Africa 208; cases of 206–210; definition of 202; of the Jews 206–207; juridical person and 204–206; and law 202–204; and legal studies 6; a priori presuppositions 203; purposiveness of 203; and rehumanization 210–211; and torture memos 209–210; and values of law 202–204 Leibniz, G.W. 70

LeMoncheck, L. 330, 331

Lenz, F. 105–106 Lessing, D. 216

levels of dehumanization (overview) 6–7 Levi, P. 3, 346, 348–349 Levin, T.D. 386

Levinas, E. 223, 309, 311, 319

Lévi-Strauss, C. 64

Lewis, M.E. 47

Lewontin, R. 118

Ley, R. 342, 343

Leydesdorff, S. 13

Leyens, J.-P. 4, 9, 131, 363, 371, 379

Li Ling 48

liberal eugenics 174

Linné, C. von (Linnaeus) 60, 65, 67, 71

literature, dehumanization in 5, 214–215; difficult empathy in 220–224; perpetrators of 215–217; representations of 217–220 Littell, J. 217, 220–224 living human exhibitions 83–95; ambiguity and self-legitimization in 90–91; animalization in 86–88; dehumanizing practices 88–89; ethnic exhibitions 84–85; ethnic groups 85–86; feeling and emotional reactions of the displayed people in 92; freak shows 84–85; legal actions 93; locations of 84; rehumanization in 91–92, 94; roles of missionaries in 92; strategies 88–89; temporal distance in 89–90; visual commodification of ethnic people in 91–92 Livingstone, D. 192

Locke, J. 58–60, 70, 209

Long, E. 75–76 Lorenz, K. 116–118 Loughnan, S. 135, 280

Lowe, M. 119

Luban, D. 197, 210

Ma Huan 48–49 Maasai people 94

MacDorman, K.F. 299–300 Machery, E. 8–9, 147, 149–151, 155–156 MacKinnon, C. 328–330 Madame Chimpanzee 71, 73

Mahtani, M. 277

Mair, J. 54

Manetti, G. 197

Manne, K. 16, 162, 335–336, 346–348, 356

marked human variation 179–181 Marshall, S. 342–343, 349–351 Marx, K. 9, 232, 237

Marxism 100

mass atrocities 344–346 Massaquoi, H. 87

Mathur, M.B. 299

Matson, F. 5, 11, 112, 120–121

Matza, D. 15

McGraw, O. 119

McMahan, J. 162

measurement of dehumanization 134–136;

language use 135; neuroimaging 135–136;

questionnaires 134; rating scales 134

mechanistic dehumanization 9, 132, 149, 261, 268,

270; see also animalistic dehumanization

media (role in dehumanization) 5, 192, 248, 277–282

Meillassoux, C. 234

Meiners, C. 154

Melians 42

memory condition 148–149 Mencius 46, 47

Mende-Siedlecki, P. 387

398

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Index meritocracy 249, 263

Merleau-Ponty, M. 311

Merrick, J. (Elephant man) 84

Mesa, B. 54

Mesopotamia 193

metadehumanization 9, 262–264; in clinical and psychiatric contexts 262; conceptual model 261; consequences of 263; definition of 261; future of 267–270; interpersonal maltreatment as triggers 262; and self-dehumanization 261, 264–265; systematic conceptualization 268–270; systematic naming 267; target’s perspective 260–261; in trauma victims 262; see also self-dehumanization metaphysical threat 359

Meyers, D.T. 6, 10

Micheaux, O. 168

Mikkola, M. 6, 9, 14, 16, 199, 202, 322

Milam, E.L. 5, 11

Milgram, S. 344

mind perception 132–133, 380–381; see also moral standing; perceptual dehumanization; social psychology of dehumanization Ming Dynasty 46, 47

Miraikan museum 303

Mischlinge (people with three Jewish grandparents) 207

misogyny 336–337 Mitchison, D. 264

Möller, H. 85

Möller, W. 85

Mond, J.M. 264

monotheism 40, 42, 43–45

monsters and monstrosity 9, 11, 16, 18, 198, 220,

235, 356–357, 359–360, 369

Montagu,A. 3, 5, 11, 64, 112, 116, 118, 120–121

Montaigne, M. de 57–58 Montesinos,A. de 54, 365

Moor, A. 262

Moore, T. 2

moral disengagement 130, 197; see also exclusion

moral standing 145–156; and agency 147–151; and

experience 147–151; grounds of 146–147; high

experience/high agency 150; high experience/

low agency 150; Kantian tradition 146–147;

loss of 152–156; low experience/high agency

150–151; low experience/low agency 151;

sources of 147–151; utilitarian tradition 147

moral violence 15, 141, 347–348

morality 46, 152, 205; and animals 18; and empathy

13; geographical 89; misguided 240; moral

exclusion 130; Nordic 100, 102; and self-

dehumanization 265, 267; in stereotype content

model 248, 252; and warmth 247

Mori, M. 298

Morris, D. 116, 118

Mountz, A. 277

M.S. St. Louis (ocean liner) 275

Mughals 45

Murphy, J. 351

Murphy, S. 343

Murray, S.B. 264

Musharbash,Y. 18

Muslims 15, 44

My Lai massacre 130

Nabokov,V. 217, 223–224 narrative empathy 5, 13, 215, 219, 221

nationalist thinking 11, 279

National Socialism 98–109; attacks against universalistic concepts 100; and biological anthropology 106; biological racism 101–102; concentration camps 207–208, 223, 241; and early 20th century German anthropology 105–108; eugenics 174–175; Final Solution 207; Führer principle 206; hate speech 342; and image of Jewish parasite 103–104; legal dehumanization of Jews 206–207; metaphysical racism 102–105; murder of Jews 173; and Nordic humanity 103; and philosophical anthropology 107; significance and character of 99–101; volk 100, 239–240 Native Americans 53–56, 365–366 natural kind thinking 362, 364–368, 371–374 natural law 58–61 natural slavery 41–42, 54, 152, 233–234

naturalization 9; of difference and inequality 5; of

factional competition 117; of humanity 102, 118;

of Jews 104; of man 8, 52, 57, 58, 61, 67; of sex

and race 117

Nazi Labor Front 342

Neanderthals 53

Neilsen, R. 4

Nelson, K. 182

neuroimaging 135–136, 251; see also brain neutralization 15

New Right 119

New Testament 44

newgenic traits 178–179 Nguyen, N. 262

Nietzsche, F.W. 320–321 nomadische Wanderrasse (nomadic wander-race) 101–102 non-observability of essential properties 365; see also psychological essentialism non-reductive objectification 326, 328, 331–334

Nordic race 100–103; see also race Norr, M.E. 136

North American Indians 93

nuclear family 115

Nuremberg laws 202

Nussbaum, M. 11, 13, 193, 215, 222, 309, 317–318,

320, 328–331, 348

obedience 15, 57, 215, 344

objectification 9, 310–314, 327–338; benign 330;

cluster concept of 193; definition of 311, 327;

399

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Index and derivatization 331; feminist accounts of 328;

and instrumentalization 329; non-reductive 326,

328, 331–334; phenomenology of 311; in rape

332–334; reductive 326, 328, 330–331; thingly

311–312

objectifying attitude 328–329, 330, 332

objective dehumanization 190

Octavianus Augustus 42

Ofili, C. 168

ontological contrasts 8–9 ontologization 9

Opotow, S. 3, 7, 130

orangutan: dissection 70; and Enlightenment

65–67; humanization of 64–78; Madame

Chimpanzee exhibition 71–75; synonymous

words 65, 70; see also chimpanzee; simianization

organ harvesting 312

oriental despotism 46

Orientalism 280

Orwell, G. 344

Over, H. 348

ownership: objectification as 328

pagan 44, 53, 232

pain 147, 148–152, 154–156, 224, 347, 379

Paladino, M.P. 5, 10, 11, 16, 300

paradox of dehumanization 15–17, 334–338; see also problem of humanity Parker, S. 277

Patagons 88

Patterson, O. 234

Paul III, Pope 55, 152

Pechersky, A. 13

Peloponnesian War 42

perceptual dehumanization: animacy perception 381–382; assumptions in 379–380; cognitive penetration in 385–387; configural processing in 385–387; denial of humanness 379–380; mind denial 380; mind perception thesis 380–381; visual adaptation 383–385; see also social psychology of dehumanization perceptual mismatch hypothesis 299

perfectibility 67, 236–238 perpetrators 98–99, 102–104, 215–217, 347

persona 205

phenomenology 310–311, 314, 322, 359

philosophical anthropology 107–108 Philippines 154

physiological and mental differences 368–370, 370

Piazza, J. 151

Pico della Mirandola, G. 57, 197

pity 247

Pliny the Elder 235

Poliakov, L. 236

polygenism 7, 76, 153–154, 366

Polyphemos 41

polytheism 40

post-colonial theory 19, 160

post-humanism 18–19, 163–164 post-structuralism 161, 166

post-perceptual processing 378, 380, 385, 387

prejudice 3, 115, 136, 138, 260, 280; anti-Asian 255;

against homosexuals 374; and infrahumanization

131; intergroup 11, 197; interspecies model of

164; towards Blacks 283–284

prenatal screening 178

Presterudstuen, G. 18

pride 247, 247

Prinz, J. 13, 148

problem of humanity 356, 358–359 projection 12, 317–320, 337; affective body 321;

emotive 320–322; vital body 321

properties used in dehumanization (overview) 7–8; see also humanness psychological essentialism 362–374; and

dehumanization 362–364; entitativity 371–373;

error theory of 364–365; hidden essence

365–371; homogeneity 365; and humanness 355;

inalterability 365; informativeness 365; inherence

365; inherent essence 365–371; meta-level

371; naturalness 365; necessity-claim 367; non­ observability 365; normality 365; physiological

and mental differences 368–370, 370

psychological theories of dehumanization see social psychology Pufendorf, S. von 58

Pugh, M.C. 4

Purdue, P. 46

Qin Dynasty 46

Quoias Morrou 65

Quran 44

race 136–137 race-soul 102

racialism, versus culturalism 46

racism 231–241; biological 101–102; and dehumanization 231–241; as desocialization 232; and egalitarianism 231; and Enlightenment 236–238; metaphysics 102–105; and Nazi ideology 101–105; and religious heresy 234–236; and slavery 233–234; Untermenschen (subhumans) 239–241 Radbruch, G. 202–204, 206

Radzik, L. 350

Rai,T. 141, 347

rape 14, 332–334 rating scales 134

rationality xvii, 77, 86, 131, 132, 320, 368;

see also reason

reason: and abstract thought 70; and dehumanization of women 320; faculty of 41; neutral concept of 161–163, 165; and passion 54; and reactive attitudes 11, 350, 356

“realism inconsistency” hypothesis 299

400

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Index realizations of dehumanization 6–7; see also actualized dehumanization; behavioral dehumanization; blatant dehumanization; cognitive dehumanization; expressivist dehumanization; latent dehumanization reciprocity 12, 319; behavioral 263; restricted 10, 197

recognition xvi, 16, 101, 148, 173, 206, 220, 293,

343, 348

reductionist instrumentalization 193

reductive objectification 326, 328, 330–331

Reformation 56–58 Refugee Convention (1951) 276

refugees 275–286; consequences of dehumanization 283–284; crisis 277; dehumanization of 279–284; media portrayals of 277–283; media’s role in dehumanization of 280–282; rehumanization of 284–286; social psychology of dehumanization 137; worldwide situation 276–277 rehumanization 12–14; of ethnic otherness 91–92, 94; by law 210–211; of refugees 284–286; and stereotype content model 254–255 Reibpartien (scrub parties) 189

Reichling, D.B. 299

religion: dichotomy of 40; monotheism 40, 43–45;

and racism 234–236; religious others 43

Renger, D. 267

reproductive: technologies 178; value 175–176 Richardson, C. 266

Richardson, S. 216

Ricoeur, P. 204–206 right to have rights 3, 192, 197, 206, 220, 223

Roberts, R. 350

robot humanization 292–303; fear of androids 298–302; fears in 293–295; and social identity theory 296; threat to human distinctiveness 295–298; uncanny valley phenomenon 298–302 robots 292–303; androids 297–298;“artificial servant/slave” 294–295; fear of 294; fear of androids 298–302; human appearance of 297; living with 293–295;“prosthetic enhancement” 294–295; prototypes 294; and robotics 5; reactions to study 293–295; in science fiction 294; threat to human distinctiveness 295–298; uncanny valley phenomenon 298–302 Rodger, E. 346

Rohingya Muslims 190

Rohrbach, P. 239–241 Rorty, R. 13, 15, 163, 196, 224

Rosenberg,A. 99, 102–105, 154, 155, 234

Rosenthal-von der Putten,A. 298

Rosoff, B. 119

Rothbart, M. 364–365 Rousseau, J.-J. 67, 77, 237

Ruttan, R.L. 267

Rwanda 145, 342

Rymond-Richmond, W. 4

Sajjad, T. 279

Sakalaki, M. 266

Saminaden,A. 135, 280

“sanctioned massacres” theory 15, 344

Sartre, J.P. 3, 309, 311, 318

savages 2, 5, 39–41, 43, 45, 48, 53, 56, 59–60, 67, 71,

84–92, 94, 132, 159, 232, 368

Saxe, R. 136

Schadenfreude 252, 255

Scheler, M. 107–108, 313

Schmitt, B.H. 298

Schneirla, T.C. 117

Scholasticism 49

Schwartz, S.H. 130

Scotin, J.B.G. II 72, 73

Scott, J.P. 117

Sebastiani, S. 7

secondary emotions 131, 155, 282, 379; see also

emotions; infrahumanization

Second World War 3, 115, 117, 173, 205, 220–221

self-contempt 350

self-dehumanization 9, 264–267; conceptual model 261; consequences of 266–267; future of 267–270; and immorality 265–266; and machiavellism 266; and metadehumanization 261, 264–265; and opportunism 266; selfperceptions 137; systematic conceptualization 268–270; systematic naming 267; target’s perspective 260–261; see also metadehumanization self-hatred 350

self-legitimization 90–91 Selgelid, M.J. 174

Sepúlveda, J.G. de 54–55, 151, 234

Sereny, G. 345

sexism 249–250 sexual harassment 139

sexual objectification 5, 264, 330, 335, 338

sexualized violence 332–334 sexualized women 249–250 Shakespeare,W. 197, 216

Sharp, G. 75

Shelley, M. 220

Sheridan, G. 279

Shute, S. 14, 331–332 Sicroff, A. 236

Sima Qian 46–47 simianization 232; see also orangutans; chimpanzees Singer, P. 162, 165–166 Sinocentric dehumanization 46–49 skepticism regarding dehumanization 15, 57,

357–358

slavery 41–42, 54, 152, 193–194, 233–234, 366

Smith, C. 155

Smith, D.L. 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 16, 334–335,

363–367, 370

social contract 204, 207, 209

401

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Index social death 4, 12, 231–232, 234

social dominance orientation 138

social identity theory 296

social psychology of dehumanization 3, 127–141; before 2000 129–131; causes 138–139; conceptualization and measurement 134–136; dual model 132; ethnicity 136–137; fields of applications 136–138; gender 137; historical overview 127–129; immigrants 137; implicit methods 134–135; infrahumanization 131; language use 135; medical 137; mind perception 132–133; neuroimaging 135–136; outcomes 139; psychiatric 137; publications 128; questionnaires 134; race 136–137; rating scales 134; refugees 137; self-perceptions 137; stereotype content model 133; targets of dehumanization 137–138; theories 131–132; see also perceptual dehumanization social robots see robots social status quo, defending 11

societalization (socialization) 4, 12, 231–240; see also social death sociobiology 114, 117–120 Soldania (Saldanha Bay, South Africa) 60

Sophia (social robot) 292

Sophists 41

South Africa 208

South Sudan 190

Soviet Russia 239

Spencer, H. 117–118 Spielhagen, C. 297

standpoint eugenics 176–178 Stangl, F. 345

statistical dehumanization 372–373 status 252–254 Staub, E. 130

Ste. Croix, G.D. 234

Steichen, E. 115

Steinbock, B. 178–179 Steizinger, J. 5, 17

Stellingen Tierpark 87

stereotype: anti-Semitic 13; barbarian 232–233, 235; of

being human 372; Japanese 155; salient properties of

humans 363; variation-discounting 372

stereotype content model 133, 245–255; ambivalent stereotypes 248–250; cases of 247; competence 247, 250–252; dehumanized outgroups 247–248; described 246–247; disability stereotypes 249; disgust 247–250, 247; envy 247, 248–250; future research 255; horizontal dimension 252, 254; methods for studying 250–252; pity 247; pride 247; and rehumanizations 254–255; rival theories 252–253; sexualized women 249–250; societal ingroups 247–248; status 253–254; unambivalent stereotypes 247–248; vertical dimension 252–254; warmth 247, 250–252; see also social psychology of dehumanization

sterilization 173–178, 180–183 Stichweh, R. 5

stigma 3, 343; disability 249; homosexuality 261

stigmatization 240–241, 318

Stillingfleet, E. 60

Stinglhamber, F. 262

Stoddard, L. 239–241 stoicism 58

Stonebridge, L. 215

Stowe, H.B. 153

Strack, F. 284

Strait, M.K. 300

Straus, S. 5

Strawson, P.F. 11, 327, 350, 356

Struch, N. 130

Stuurman, S. 2

subalterns 7, 233

subhumanization 9, 355, 357–358; activist,expressive or latent 194; as distinct from suprahumanization 189–190, 194–195; see also Untermenschen (subhumans) subjectivity 8, 18–19, 198; denial of 193, 195, 328,

335; granting of 196; and thingly objectification

310–314; of victims 98; of women 337

Sublimis Deus (Pope Paul III bull) 55, 152

Sun, P. 135

superpredators 153

suprahumanization 9, 10; as distinct from subhumanization 189–190, 194–195; see also bestialization; demonization; diabolization Sussman, D. 334

Swift, J. 84

Sykes, G.M. 15

Syrian refugees 285–286 Sytsma, J. 147, 149–151, 155–156 Tacitus 42–43 Tajfel, H. 373

Tamil refugees 278, 282

Tang, S. 265

Tang Dynasty 46, 47

target perspective 260–261, 267–268, 270

targets of dehumanization (overview of diversity of) 10, 137–138 Tator, C. 277

Taylor, M. 364–365 terrorism 134, 194, 203, 276–279, 281–282, 347

terror management 12

testimony of victims 3, 177–178, 341, 346

Tetlock, P. 386

Tevi, J. 92

Thalmann, N.M. 298

theoretical complexities 14–18 thingly objectification 311–312 Third Reich 3, 173

Thomas, W. 232

Thorleifsson, C. 279

402

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Index Tidyman, P. 155

Tiger, L. 118

Timár, A. 14

Tinbergen, N. 116, 117

Tobach, E. 119

torture 210, 334

Torture Convention 1984 210

Tournier, F. 85

toxification 9

transhumanism 1, 18

Trudeau, J. 285

Trump, D. 159

Tulp, N. 65, 68, 69

Tung Chung Shu 46

Tupinamba 58, 60

Turner, B.A. 193

Tutsis 145

Tyson, E. 65, 70

vita activa 3

vital body 321

Vitoria, F. de 55

Volk (people/race) 100–101, 103, 173

Volksgemeinschaft (community of people/race) 206,

239–241

Volksrasse (folk race) 239

Volksschädlinge (vermin of the people) 239, 241

Volpato, C. 5, 266

Von Hindenburg, P. 206

Ulrikab, A. 94

uncannyness 16, 335–338, 356, 359

uncanny valley phenomenon 298–302 Underwood, B. 130

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

(UNHCR) 276

Universal Declaration of Human Rights 190

universalist thought 2, 12; exclusionary universalism 40, 43–45, and human rights 191; particularist versus 100–101 Untermenschen (subhumans) 173, 231, 234, 239–241

Urbach, A. 85

Valdesolo, P. 141

valence of dehumanization (evaluative aspect)

10–11, 320

Varga, S. 8, 17

Vargas, P.A. 297

Veraart, W. 211

Vercors (Jean Bruller) 64–65 vermin 134–135, 173

verminization 9, 231, 239–241, 248, 342–343, 359

Vetlesen,A.J. 343, 351

Veyne, P. 42

victim testimony and experience 3, 177–178, 341,

346

Vietnam War 3, 130

Vigé, J.-A. 85

violability 328

violence: hate 347; mass 98, 99, 108–109, 130,

174, 248, 341, 346; moral versus instrumental 15;

religious 43–45; sexualized 332–334

Virchow, R. 91

visual adaptation 383–385 visual aftereffects 383

Walker, M. 344

Wannsee Conference 207

war on terror 197, 209

warmth, stereotype content model 133, 247,

250–252

Washburn, S. 116

Waytz,A. 132–134, 264

Weber, M. 232

Wegner, D. 132–133, 147–149, 155

Weissman, M. 4

West, P. 220

White, R. 232

White Australia Policy 176

Wiesel, E. 348

Wilberforce, W. 77–78 Williams,T. 4, 135

Wilson, E.O. 8, 13, 114, 117–118

Wittgenstein, L. 163, 167, 380

“wolfpack” effect 382, 382

women: dehumanization of 49, 366–369, 372; emotive projections 320–322; instrumentalization of 332–334; objectification of 249–250; otherness of 317–320; sexual selfobjectification 264; sexual violence against 332–334; sexualized 249–250 Xiongnu 46–47 Yanay, N. 352

Yogeeswaran, K. 298

Yuming He 48

Zaira (pygmy girl) 84

Zebel, S. 283

Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act

2015 (Canada) 285

Zimmerman, E.A.W. von 77

Žižek, S. 221

Zoll, C. 297

zoomorphism 113–117 zoos humains see living human exhibitions Zoroastrians 44

Zukowsky, L. 87–88

403

BK-TandF-KRONFELDNER_9781138588158-200119-Index.indd 403

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