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  • The (un)civilizing holocaus...
    Verinakis, Theofanis

    Social identities, 20/1/1/, Letnik: 14, Številka: 1
    Journal Article

    From the colony to modernity it seems that domination is predicated on transforming a human into a subject in order to 'civilize' he or she into a type of identity that validates the process by which they were subjugated. The civilizing mechanism implements a hierarchical ideology that ranks humanity on the basis of particular social, cultural, and political values. Certain values are associated with humanity in order achieve particular goals, and when the human being is classified so as to lose value the result is the dispossession of sovereignty. Alternatively, the process could turn a human into an animal in order to exterminate it. In either case there is a civilizing process behind this that implements concepts of humanity to dehumanize a subject. Culture, with the aid of race, links society and civility to civilization, while constructing hierarchies of bodies and minds. From the colony to the lagers, race was designed to remove the basic principles of humanity and civility from its victims in order to both justify their extinction and to project them as bestial, further validating their demise. Camps produced inmates deserving of death to fulfill a larger project; however, a new type of identity emerged from the shame and guilt of the loss of humanity to critique this act.