Dehumanisation Quotes

“Traumatic events destroy the sustaining bonds between individual and community. Those who have survived learn that their sense of self, of worth, of humanity, depends upon a feeling of connection with others. The solidarity of a group provides the strongest protection against terror and despair, and the strongest antidote to traumatic experience. Trauma isolates; the group re-creates a sense of belonging. Trauma shames and stigmatizes; the group bears witness and affirms. Trauma degrades the victim; the group exalts her. Trauma dehumanizes the victim; the group restores her humanity.
Repeatedly in the testimony of survivors there comes a moment when a sense of connection is restored by another person’s unaffected display of generosity. Something in herself that the victim believes to be irretrievably destroyed---faith, decency, courage---is reawakened by an example of common altruism. Mirrored in the actions of others, the survivor recognizes and reclaims a lost part of herself. At that moment, the survivor begins to rejoin the human commonality...”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“The human need to be visible is countered by the need to be invisible to avoid further abuse, and the need for intimacy and the dread of abuse, all pose insoluble dichotomies which promote further withdrawal from human contact, which reinforces the sense of dehumanisation.”
― Christiane Sanderson, Introduction to Counselling Survivors of Interpersonal Trauma

“It all I can do not to cry. I make myself wood I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. That's how I come to know trees fear man.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“Perhaps nowhere is our human mania for possessing, our delusion that the owned cannot have a soul of its own, more harmful to us. This disanimation justified all the horrors of the African slave trade. If the black man is so stupid that he can be enslaved, he cannot have the soul of a white man, he must be a mere animal.”
― John Fowles, The Tree

“I tried to map the cultural trends leading up to it but as I did they grew, interconnecting and weaving backwards and sideways out to everything. Next to the megalithic institutionalized shredding of people's humanity, marked by tombstone malls and scabby hills, the Styrofoam gullets and flag-waving god-chatterers casting their votes for eternal paternity on the lap rapists - next to all of that, the intimacy between a terrorist and his target was almost a beautiful thing but I still couldn't solve that moment when they did it anyway so I grabbed more paper and widened my field of vision.”
― Vanessa Veselka, Zazen

“he uses my body
to make his dream come true”
― Laura Gentile, you ate popcorn in my house of grief: transgenerational poetry

“Sometime she believes she can see around her robots that walk, and respond as if moved by some strange and monstrous force from within. There is no more flesh such as it is in the noble sense of accomplishment through food and love. It is void of the spirit which is nurtured by love.”
― Rodica Iulian, Les hommes de Pavlov: [roman]

“If you mean confessing,' she said, 'we shall do that, right enough. Everybody always confesses. You can't help it. They torture you.'

'I don't mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter: only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you — that would be the real betrayal.'

She thought it over. 'They can't do that,' she said finally. 'It's the one thing they can't do. They can make you say anything, but they can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you.'

'No,' he said a little more hopefully, 'no; that's quite true. They can't get inside you. If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can't have any result whatever, you've beaten them.”
― George Orwell, Ninteen Eighty-Four

“The practice of explicitly describing others as less than humans is nowadays often frowned upon and is widely condemned. So propagandists who cultivate dehumanizing attitudes most often do this indirectly. Rather than overtly referring to a group of people as animals or monsters, they describe them in ways that invoke this image in the minds of their listeners.
There are certain themes that reappear over and over in this dehumanizing discourse.

The common one is criminality. The dehumanized group is made to appear inherently threatening and their criminality is represented as crudely animalistic typically involving rape and murder.

Another common theme is parasitism. The dehumanized group conspires to exploit the majority sucking the blood out of decent, hard-working people and claiming privileges that they haven't earned.

Images of filth and disease are also very frequent. Dehumanised groups are vectors of infection, they are dirty and contaminating. They are often thought of as invaders, outsiders who are taking us over. They are reproducing at an alarming rate and they will soon outnumber us unless we do something about it.”
― David Livingstone Smith, On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It

“La jeune fille était probablement plus exigeante, plus gourmande que la moyenne. Elle avait déjà deux tentatives de suicide derrière elle. Je me souviens d'elle allongée sur un lit d'hôpital, qui cherchait à fixer un point indéfini sur le mur immaculé pour ne plus entendre les gémissements des autres, pour tromper le temps, les allées et les venues des infirmières au masque dur et impassible, mais qui finissait par se retrouver face à elle-même, qu'était-elle devenue, sinon encore un numéro à qui il fallait administrer ceci et cela.”
― Marceline Loridan-Ivens, L'Amour après

“Першою афроамериканкою, якій присудили премію Американської кіноакадемії, стала Гетті Макденієл. Вона отримала цю високу винагороду за роль Маммі (дбайливої, огрядної й асексуальної протилежності Скарлетт ОʼХара, яка була ідеалом жінки) у фільмі 1939 року «Віднесені вітром». Маммі, більш віддана білій родині, ніж власній, була готова вступити в бій із чорношкірими солдатами, щоб захистити своїх білих поневолювачів. Цей образ став зручною підпорою для зображення рабства в художніх фільмах, однак це була вигадка кастової системи, що суперечила історичним фактам. В епоху рабства більшість чорношкірих жінок були худорлявими, навіть виснаженими через скупе харчування, яким їх забезпечували. До того ж мало хто з цих жінок працював у будинках, оскільки їх вважали ціннішими на полі.”
― Ізабель Вілкерсон, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

“Ендогамія зміцнює межі касти, забороняючи шлюби поза своєю групою чи статеві стосунки або навіть найменші ознаки романтичного інтересу до членів інших каст. Вона створює захисний екран між кастами й стає головним засобом утримання ресурсів та спорідненості в межах кожного рівня кастової системи. Завдяки усуненню законних родинних звʼязків між кастами ендогамія позбавляє людей здатності до емпатії чи почуття спільної долі. Під впливом ендогамії члени панівної касти рідко виявляють особистий інтерес до щастя, самореалізації й добробуту тих, кого вважають нижчими за себе, втрачаючи здатність ототожнювати себе з цими людьми та їхньою долею. По суті, ендогамія посилює схильність членів панівної касти вважати нижчих за себе не лише чимось меншим за людей, а й ворогами, чужинцями та загрозою, котру слід тримати під контролем за будь-яку ціну.”
― Ізабель Вілкерсон, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents