Dehumanization: New Approaches to Understanding the Politics of Human Nature

Conference Dehumanization: New approaches to understanding the politics of human nature Central European University, Budapest 6-9 April 2016 Titles and Abstracts Guido Abbattista (University of Trieste) Human aliens on display: 1850-1940 During nearly a century, between the 1851 London Great Exhibition and (at least) the eve of WWII a very ancient practice of putting on display human beings of exotic origins established itself in Europe and, in general, in the Western world, modifying their previous significance and scope and assuming the aspect of a highly organized commercial activity and a regular spectacular happening within the great expositions of different size and extent – national, international, colonial, imperial, universal – which became a frequently recurring international rendezvous. On such occasions, groups of human beings were systematically brought from every part of the non-European world toward the Western capitals and other cities seats of the expositions to be variously put on display as actors of what has also been termed ‘human zoo’, but we can better call an ‘exhibitionary complex’, whose script in fact was the result of different and often competing agencies engaged in defining how those ethnic types were placed in the great map of mankind, civilization and societies. What was at stake in a more or less explicit way was their possessing all the requisites of a fully developed human nature and their rightful or conditional or limited belonging to a proper human condition. The interplay between the several actors involved in the living ethno-exhibitions determined the degree of de-humanization or animalization or commodification, or else of positive appreciation, to which those peoples were exposed. This paper intends – by reference to a series of historical examples and by discussing the ‘human zoos’ paradigm – to offer a summary interpretation of a phenomenon through which the nature of the displayed individuals as human beings and as members of cultural groups was questioned and interpreted according to the different paradigms concurring to define roles and meanings of the participants to the exhibitionary devices. 1 Eyja M. Brynjarsdóttir and Gunnar Sigvaldason (University of Iceland) Appraisal of people and dehumanization When ideas about human rights began to form, it no longer became acceptable to consider humans as such as tradable products for sale. Thus, dehumanizing slaves with ideological means, such as through racism, became a way to justify something that seemed economically feasible for those holding the power. It seems clear that the removal of individual freedom as takes place in slavery is dehumanizing, but being sold on a market "like cattle" seems to be so as well. However, humans do sell their labor, we speak of marketable skills, the labor market, etc., without thinking of that as dehumanizing. So looking into what it is about this particular kind of sale is important in order to understand dehumanization. We consider various ways in which human beings are appraised and whether and to what extent they are dehumanizing. For instance, on the website celebritynetworth.com, one can find out that the net worth of Bill Gates is 79.5 billion dollars whereas the net worth of Donald Trump is "only" 4.5 billion dollars. It is very unlikely that anyone will worry about this kind of appraisal having a dehumanizing effect on Gates or Trump. On the other hand, if the worth of two women were being appraised on the basis of their sex appeal, it would be dehumanizing. We look at what is considered important about being human, both by looking at some historical and recent example and through an analysis of conceptions of human nature but we maintain that, although conceptions of human nature seem to have gone out fashion in mainstream contemporary philosophy, they still influence us more than we would like to believe. Is there an important difference between commodification of those in the position of being sold or used as currency, commodification of women's bodies and such on the one hand, and the marketization of human labor skills on the other hand, making the former dehumanizing and the latter not? Does it matter whether the individuals in question belong to a group that has historically been subordinated and been the subject of group-based inequality, as Debra Satz has suggested, or should we specially focus on the individuals themselves, and not the group to which they belong? Commodification has been a widely discussed topic within philosophy, and the various views help us get a better picture of the issue at hand, views ranging from Immanuel Kant and Karl Marx who criticize commodification vehemently to the Chicago economist Gary Becker who seems to want to utilize market thinking for almost every aspect of human life. We support a view that focuses on the social context of the commodification at hand. Another element to consider is the quantifiability of value, which takes place through commodification and appraisal. A price can only be expressed quantitatively, whereas a human life is much more varied and qualitative in its nature. The problem of quantifying the qualitative is common to any kind of pricing, also when it comes to selling labor that we would not consider dehumanizing. However, we might consider that under certain circumstances, orin certain contexts, expressing the value of human labor quantitatively can be dehumanizing and harmful to human flourishing, such as when the context is such that it gets presumed that the value in question is all that matters about the given person. We argue that this runs parallel to arguments that have been made about objectification, e.g. by Martha Nussbaum and Margaret Jane Radin, about the harm of objectification being dependent on circumstances. 2 Lukas Einsele (Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts) Attempts to make dehumanization visible In this lecture I will present material from my two long-term art projects: “One Step Beyond – The Mine Revisited” (2001 – 2007) and “The Many Moments of an M85 – Zenon’s Arrow Retraced” (2009 ff.). Both projects examine and visualize the relation between weapons and people but from very different point of views: ”One Step Beyond” focuses on the survivors of landmines and rehumanizes them: from being numbers and charts in a humanitarian or military game to persons with a face and memory, with their own story to tell. The project “The Many Moments of an M85” reconstructs the relations between the diversity of people, events, places and objects on the vast map of the construction, production, trading, and use of this (in-)famous example of a cluster bomb. M85 are ground-launched bomblets, which can be dispensed from a variety of cluster munitions, including artillery cargo projectiles, mortars and rockets. The two functions of M85 are: to penetrate armour and to create fragmentation for an anti-personnel/anti-materiel effect. M85 are small and of cylindrical shape. M85 are the only bomblet containing a self destruct (SD) mechanism that have been used in combat; in 2003 by the United Kingdom in Iraq, in 2006 by Israel in Lebanon, and in 2008 by Georgia against Russia. The project documents the trajectory of M85s: from a spot where one explodes (or not) back to its origins. Who are the individuals behind, besides, and in front of it, and what is their relation to M85 and to each other? None of them seems to have the intention to kill people. There is the farmer, the surgeon, the deminer, as well as the engineer, the factory worker, the politician, and the soldier. They all do their best, from their perspective and role. But roles are not persons, is it? Is the splitting up of the roles causing dehumanization? My photographs and research is committed to the following: war is not the result of obvious evil, but of personal, commercial, political, and societal interests, not only interests in general, but of individuals, and yet they do not combine to a coherent story. The trajectory of M85 consists of so many small segments… The resulting material of the project shall help to change our conception, our actions, and, at least symbolically: the (seemingly) inevitability detonation of M85. By zooming into the parts and dimensions of the trajectory, by looking at it, in every detail, we might find - and see, and feel - the moments when Zenon‘s arrow stands still on it’s long way, when it becomes visible as that what it is: another cruel and futile product of man. We might learn to see dehumanization happening. My lecture might lead to the question whether it is possible to create a valid connection from the distance between “us” and the “others”, no matter if they are victims/survivors or offenders or just actors in a conditionally dehumanized situation. 3 Victoria Esses (University of Western Ontario) The Automatic Dehumanization of Refugees: Causes and Consequences Victoria M. Esses, Alina Sutter and Stelian Medianu We are currently witnessing the largest refugee movement since the end of the Second World War, with more than sixty million refugees worldwide. This corresponds to close to one percent of the world’s population. While many Western countries have committed to accepting large numbers of refugees in the near future, the public in Westerneffect of media portrayals on this dehumanization. In particular, we have been examining whether media portrayals of refugees influence the extent to which they are automatically associated with animals in people’s minds. To do so, we experimentally manipulate the portrayal of refugees in fictitious news articles that we present to individuals, and then examine the effects of these different portrayals on implicit dehumanization. Our measure of implicit dehumanization assesses the strength of the association of refugees with animals versus humans.

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