One common way of explaining violent and degrading interpersonal conduct is the paradigm of dehumanization. Dehumanization is the idea that interpersonal violence is made possible (or, at least, made much easier) by the dehumanizer’s representation of his victims as subhuman or nonhuman. Those who subscribe to this view are “humanists”. When we deny the humanity of others, we override a psychological disposition to treat fellow humans well, so the humanist typically argues. David Livingstone Smith has a pretty paradigmatic humanist position in his paper “Paradoxes of Dehumanization”, where he develops a new position from these basic humanist assumptions. Basically, Smith, tries to accommodate the fact that evildoers seem to acknowledge their victim’s humanity during the commission of violent acts. Smith argues that the coexistence of a belief in an opponent’s humanity with a belief in an opponent’s inhumanity renders the opponent even more threatening, because it induces an uncanny, monstrous feeling towards the victim.
But is humanism really a good explanation for violent interpersonal conduct? No, not really. We should reject the dehumanization paradigm in favor of a non-humanist perspective that better accounts for the impact of social structures on violent and oppressive conduct, a view called “structuralism”.
The Humanist Paradox
Before introducing Smith’s conception of humanism, I will briefly clarify the more basic humanist position Smith develops his account from. Humanists think that people have psychological dispositions which discourage interpersonal violence. However, sometimes interpersonal violence is attractive to social groups- for example, due to conflict over limited resources. The dominant group faces a “problem of ambivalence” where interpersonal violence is simultaneously repellent, due to our supposed psychological dispositions against violence, and attractive, because violence would bring benefit to the prospective aggressor.
Dehumanizers solve this problem by attributing a subhuman essence to their victims. As Smith points out, the ascription of subhumanity carries moral weight because humans are taken to have more moral value than non-human animals or vermin. So, when a person is dehumanized, she's devalued accordingly, because her human essence is replaced with a subhuman essence in the mind of the dehumanizer. In the eyes of humanists, when dehumanizers call their victims "vermin", or define them as subhuman, it is more than a rhetorical move by the dehumanizer. Under humanism so conceived, this representation is a real, sincere belief that is ultimately backed up by violent and degrading action. When people are sincerely believed to be dangerous pests, the violence committed against them is exactly as morally permissible as the violence used to eradicate actual vermin.
However, there is a problem with even this basic conception of humanism. While dehumanizers might call their victims animals, and represent them as subhuman in rhetoric and propaganda, dehumanizers also seem to acknowledge implicitly that their victims are human. When oppressing their victims, the perpetrators of atrocities often do not exhibit the sort of callous indifference one might expect from, say, an exterminator dealing with literal rats or termites. Rather, dehumanizers tend to treat their victims with a cruelty that only makes sense in light of the humanity and agency of the victim. The forms of violence perpetrated against victims of atrocities presuppose that these victims are deserving of torture, dispossession, and mistreatment. If the perpetrators of violent acts conceive of their victims as deserving of anything, including mistreatment, that conception implies that dehumanizers believe that notions of desert apply to their victims, ie, the victim "deserves" to be treated this or that way. Such a conclusion spells trouble for this simple version of humanism because it contradicts one of humanism’s basic assumptions, namely that dehumanizers really do believe that their victims are nonhuman.
Humanism’s problem can be presented in the form of a paradox like this:
(1) Dehumanizers believe that their victims are not human
(2) Dehumanizers implicitly acknowledge their victims’ humanity
(3) Thus, dehumanizers believe that their victims are not human, and dehumanizers believe that their victims are human, which is a contradiction
(4) Thus, humanism is mistaken
Smith rejects the logical jump from (3) to (4). He concedes that dehumanizers hold this position but argues that it is precisely the dehumanizer’s sincere, contradictory belief in (4) which renders his victims acceptable targets for violence.
If dehumanizers really believe in (4), how is this belief articulated psychologically? Smith suggests that dehumanized people transgress socially sanctioned, metaphysical boundaries- they don’t quite fit in with people, because of the subhuman essence ascribed to them, but they don’t quite fit in with subhuman animals either, because it is hard to sincerely deny another human’s humanity. Smith uses the term unheimlich, a German adjective which roughly translates to “uncanny”, to describe this special state of dehumanized people. These uncanny and metaphysically transgressive beings demand a response because, while vermin in vermin form may be a nuisance, the idea of a literal vermin in human form is truly revolting and threatening. Thus, for Smith, it is precisely the humanity of dehumanized people which renders them so monstrous in the eyes of dehumanizers.
Smith continues by suggesting that uncanniness explains why dehumanized people are sometimes called “partially human” by their aggressors. To the dehumanizer, the dehumanized might look human, but they are still believed (implicitly or explicitly) to be monstrous on the inside. Smith’s view also provides an explanation for why oppressed people are often represented as “superpredators”. In those cases, the dehumanized person is represented as appearing human, but with superhuman capability to cause social, moral, and physical harm. On the other hand, sometimes the dehumanized are conceived as appearing human while having no internal agency, as if they had the essence of domestic livestock or a trained animal. In all these cases, Smith argues, the great metaphysical distance between the being’s human appearance and nonhuman essence, results in an uncanny feeling. The dehumanizer feels that there is a disturbance in the metaphysical order of things that needs to be righted.
But dehumanized people are not merely represented as less than human, they are also treated as less than human. For Smith, the dehumanized person’s representation as both human and subhuman demands resolution. The aberrant being might be labeled as impure and polluting, clearing the way for the dehumanized to be quarantined, segregated from the rest of society, or killed in order to preserve the purity of the dominant social group. Smith suggests that these uncanny entities might also be incorporated into ritualistic practices which exert social control over the dehumanized person, thus defusing the dehumanized person’s uncanniness. Smith suggests the practice of lynching as a paradigmatic example of such a ritual. The point here is that the violence committed against the dehumanized person is a response to the cognitive dissonance latent in the dehumanizer’s contradictory, simultaneous belief in the opponent’s humanity and sub humanity.
So, Smith argues that what seemed to be a paradox is not a paradox at all, as (3) is a consistent expression of the dehumanized subject’s uncanny, threatening representation in the mind of the dehumanizer. This negative representation is then consummated with violence, so humanism is still correct; the dehumanization of a victim is still necessary to commit mass violence.
Critique of Smith’s View
When a set of propositions necessitate a contradiction, normally that means that one of the propositions is mistaken. Smith’s attempt to draw a semi-paraconsistent reconciliation out of (3) should only be accepted if it really seems like both (1) and (2) absolutely must be true in some sense. I solve the paradox by rejecting (1). I’ll introduce two counterexamples of interpersonal violence related to the US legal system where the victim’s humanity is explicitly acknowledged, and in fact is emphasized by the aggressing party. If I succeed, this constitutes a direct refutation of (1) because I would have shown that, in at least in two cases, aggressors recognize their victim’s humanity while subjecting them to mistreatment
Consider the 2021 sentencing of Colorado truck driver Rogel Aguilera-Mederos to 110 years in prison. Aguilera-Mederos experienced a brake failure while hauling lumber, causing a crash which resulted in the death of four people. The prosecutor in this case justified the widely sentence by noting that Aguilera-Mederos rejected plea negotiations. In justifying this extreme state violence, the trucker’s humanity, far from being denied, was in fact emphasized by the aggressing party (the prosecutor). Aguilera-Mederos freely turned down a plea deal which presumably entailed a somewhat less violent consequence, so Aguilera-Mederos really only had himself to blame for his sentence of a lifetime-and-a-half behind bars, so went the prosecutor’s justification. This humanization of Aguilera-Mederos worked to give justification for such an undue prison sentence, a sentence for an event which was essentially an accident. The trucker needed to be represented as human with the rational autonomy and the personal liberty to make an intelligent choice to reject the plea negotiations so that potential accusations of cruelty could be countered.
A related example of the humanization of victims is the phenomenon of the “adultification” of Black children by the US legal system and school system. For example, Black boys are 18 times more likely to be tried as adults for the same crimes committed by white boys of the same age. Black girls are also more likely to be called “little women” by teachers, and age-appropriate behavior is represented as calculated and malicious, resulting in disproportionate punishment of Black girls at school. In the context of the legal system, police officers in a psychological study greatly overestimated the age of Black children accused of delinquency. By ascribing an adult essence to children, the aggressors are again greatly exaggerating these children’s agency and rational autonomy, two characteristically human traits. Fully capable humans are morally blameworthy- by ideologically representing that these children are adults, the path is clear for harsher treatment than would otherwise be given if the biological limitations of childhood were recognized. I argue that this is a “humanizing” move rather than a dehumanizing move because adultification represents Black children as having a higher degree of agency than they really do. Again, agency is a precondition for an act to be blameworthy, and a blameworthy act is a necessary precondition for the punishments meted out unfairly to Black children at school and in their interactions with the legal system.
Here, I anticipate an objection. A supporter of Smith might say that these examples are both really forms of demonization (and thus dehumanization). In the case of Aguilera-Mederos, the trucker, one of the immediate reactions by observers is the gross disparity between his sentence and the sentences of people who have committed crimes seen as much more heinous, like rape and intentional murder. Here the humanist might say that prosecutors might accurately represent his rational autonomy but deny that he has equal moral worth to other humans. This denial of moral equality thus dehumanizes Aguilera-Mederos because equal moral worth is part of a complete human essence, so the humanist might argue. He might really be represented and treated as a calculating, rational being to whom moral egalitarianism doesn’t apply, which is a recipe for the kind of uncanny revulsion Smith describes in his account of humanism.
In the case of the adultification of Black children, the humanist might argue along similar lines that the legal and school systems represent Black children as superpredators with superhuman levels of agency, to the point that they are represented as making conscious, evil choices as beyond their human capacity as young children and preschoolers. Again, the trait at issue here is moral egalitarianism, namely the school and legal system’s lack of recognition of Black children’s moral equality to children of other races. Adulthood in this case is a subhuman essence because it’s a demonizing overstatement of the human capabilities of a child. So, to Smith or a supporter, adultification could be explained as just another example of demonizing dehumanization. Black children are represented and treated as uncannily childlike on the outside, but willfully disobedient adults on the inside.
My response to this objection begins with my interpretation of what is really meant by humanity in (1) and (2). I argue that humanity’s ideological content is dependent on a given social period and context. In our current liberal regime, the concept of a common human essence covers traits like rational autonomy, the exercise of personal liberty, and moral egalitarianism. However, all such content is socially and historically contingent. In other times and places, if it existed at all, the idea of a universal humanity and accompanying ideas of human rights have had other ideological content (for example, Christian humanism or the "socialist humanism" of the later, revisionist USSR)
Taking my cue from Louis Althusser, while humanism might have a specific ideological content in a given time and a given social formation, humanism has no universal theoretical truth that holds for all time and all social formations. In other words, there is no definitive theory of humanity which we have discovered, or we could discover. With the opening of the social and behavioral sciences after the contributions of figures like Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, and Auguste Comte, I think that philosophical theories of humanity should be replaced by scientific concepts that explain human society and behavior. Theoretical humanism filled explanatory gaps before the beginning of these new scientific methods of analyzing human society and behavior. Now that we do have the economic, sociological, psychological, and anthropological methods to come to scientific conclusions about people’s behavior, we should turn to the discoveries of those fields instead of theorizing about human essences which are prime candidates for Hume’s fork.
The ensemble of traits which constitute the socially and historically contingent content of liberal humanism are not constants that are denied by dehumanizers. These traits are applied to people, whether for benign or malign reasons. Humanists already recognize the corollary of this thesis, because they argue that the demonizing and animalizing essences applied to people may have ideological weight while possessing no theoretical truth. The application of only some of the full constellation of traits in the broader liberal human essence in the cases considered above is only inconsistent if humanism is taken theoretically, which I argue that it shouldn’t be, in light of better theories from the social and behavioral sciences.
So, this potential objection to my criticism fails because moral egalitarianism is not an empirical, objective trait that can be identified in a person. Moral egalitarianism, like the rest of the content of liberal humanism, is only true in its social force as an ideology; it is not an objective given for all members of our species. Moral egalitarianism was not applied to Aguilera-Mederos because that ideology did not aid in justifying and motivating his ill-treatment, but the application of the ideology of rational autonomy and personal liberty did help motivate his mistreatment, so Aguilera-Mederos’s rational autonomy and personal liberty was emphasized by the prosecutor. Similarly in the case of adultification, ascribing an age-inappropriate degree of autonomy and rationality to Black children is conducive to racism, but applying moral egalitarianism did not.
Thus, we can reject (1). There are cases where profound interpersonal violence occurs while the victim’s humanity is recognized and emphasized, and no dehumanizing belief exists- in fact, such a dehumanizing representation would conceivably defeat the main humanizing attack. It could be argued that an omission or under-emphasis of one of the traits in the liberal human ideological constellation is a denial of humanity as a whole when taken strictly (and thus is dehumanization), but I think such an objection could be answered in much the same way as I have considered the main objection above, by returning to the lack of objective truth in all humanist theories.
A Structuralist View
A promising start for a replacement of humanism comes from another critic of Smith, Kate Manne, who argues for a socially situated view of conflict. Manne argues that people need to be conceptualized as existing in the social world and thus swayed by history, custom, and (importantly for our purposes) social hierarchies like racism. When people are represented for mistreatment in an “us versus them” fashion, the “us” in question doesn’t necessarily refer to humanity as a whole, and the “them” need not refer to subhuman creatures. Rather, the “us” could refer to those occupying a dominant position on a social hierarchy. A complete conception of an agent needs to include the context of the agent’s society, where many categories besides those of “human” and “non-human” carry ideological weight. Since a higher position on a social hierarchy implies a better life, it follows that rational agents in a stratified society have the disposition to jostle for higher positions on these hierarchies and try to preserve their high status as applicable.
Thus, for Manne, the humanity of the members of subordinate groups doesn’t matter to the members of dominant groups because there are additional representations which cancel out any positive feeling that comes from recognizing the oppressed group as fellow humans. These competing negative representations result from the vertical social hierarchies that agents jostle for position on. For example, women entering high level professional and political positions might be represented as usurping men’s place in those positions from the perspective of powerful men whose privileged position has been subverted. Manne continues by pointing out that, in fact, the discovery of the humanity of subordinate groups is bad news for the dominant group because it reveals that oppressed people are equally capable as rivals during the jostle for higher social standing. Dehumanizing rhetoric is no more than a particularly hurtful “put-down” directed towards marginalized groups during this jostle for position. When dehumanizers use such rhetoric, they implicitly admit that dehumanized people have a human status to be put down from; that is the only way that dehumanizing language could have any rhetorical effect social conflict.
But, to avoid repeating the problems with humanism in explaining interpersonal violence, we need to take social and behavioral science seriously. Science provides natural explanations for natural phenomena. These natural explanations stand in opposition to supernatural explanations. For example, the thesis that malaria is sometimes caused by an evil spirit is a supernatural explanation for a biological phenomenon and should be rejected considering biology’s consensus around germ theory. Incidents of stratification, oppression, and war are social phenomena, and thus natural phenomena. The social sciences provide natural explanations for these natural phenomena, just as biology provides natural explanations to natural phenomena in the biological world. We should take sociological explanations of stratification and social structure as seriously as we take biological explanations of disease.
And does Manne’s account square with a scientific understanding of social structure? Social structure is not a static scaffold that people shuffle across, and social stratification and hierarchies are simple rungs that are climbed.
Under both the socially situated view and humanism, rational agents act upon the world. In contrast, social science generally sees people as determined subjects who are acted upon by the world. If we are to accept the premises of sociology and use sociological concepts like social structure, then we should similarly reject the whole notion of the rational autonomous human subject as supernatural, given that sociology suggests that we are largely determined by an ensemble of political, social, and economic relationships.
The socially situated view’s more social-scientific stance leads to its second gain over the dehumanization paradigm, namely that the socially situated view can account for the role of humanism itself in the prosecution of interpersonal conflict. As Andrew Pierce points out, the liberal humanist ideology’s false universality paints over real antagonisms in our society. Pierce shows that, throughout its history, the false abstractions humanism makes of our species have concealed and provided legitimacy for unequal relations between oppressed and oppressing social groups. Under the socially situated conception, we can say that the humanist ideology has been used by those situated in higher social positions to delegitimize the genuine movements for inclusion by oppressed people. Pierce uses the perfect examples of “All Lives Matter” and “Black Lives Matter”- the former slogan, an abstract humanistic platitude which does not accurately describe the current state of things in American society, frames the latter slogan as an unduly partisan and selfish bid for special treatment on behalf of Black people. White racists use elements of humanist ideology as weapons in Manne’s “jostle for position” on the U.S.’s political and economic hierarchies.
As a Marxist-Leninist, I take the argument further than Pierce does in his conception of the Black Lives Matter movement’s “humanism as praxis.” The political praxis of movements like Black Lives Matter demonstrates the poverty of philosophical debates over the humanity of oppressed people. Pierce recognizes the ideological nature of humanism but places many Black activists and thinkers in a broader philosophical movement to build a Black Humanist counter-ideology. However, the praxis of movements like Black Lives Matter assumes the humanity of Black people a priori, rendering such philosophical discussions pointless. This radical praxis in turn shall informs the creation of new radical theories of humanity which may (or may not) preserve the human subject without lapsing into humanism’s incorrect views about spontaneous empathy between members of our species in virtue of our shared humanity.
The humanist underpinnings of David Smith’s dehumanization paradigm are its undoing. Adversaries do recognize their opponent’s humanity, even in the midst of evil, violent, or degrading behavior against that opponent. It is that humanity which renders the enemy all the more frightening and unpredictable, and justifies the drastic measures used by the perpetrator. But the most malign consequence of humanism is perhaps its normative implication. If not recognizing our opponent’s humanity is the root of conflict, then conflict is always inappropriate to some degree. Humanism in theory and practice denies the right of oppressed people to rebel against their “fellow man” with concerns over the “humanity” of those oppressors. With that said, I hope I have demonstrated the reactionary nature of humanism in this blogpost.
Sources:
David Livingstone Smith, “Paradoxes of Dehumanization,” Social Theory and Practice 42 (2016)
Louis Althusser, “Marxism and Humanism,” Cahiers de l’I.S.E.A (June 1964)
Kate Manne, “Humanism: A Critique,” Social Theory and Practice 42, no. 2 (2016): 389-415
Andrew J. Pierce, “Whose Lives Matter? The Black Lives Matter Movement and the Contested Legacy of Philosophical Humanism,” Journal of Social Philosophy 51, no. 2 (2020): 261-282.
Some Readings on "Adultification":
https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/03/black-boys-older.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/parenting/adultification-black-girls.html
https://www.npr.org/2014/03/19/291405871/consequences-when-african-american-boys-are-seen-as-older
No comments:
Post a Comment