ABSTRACT
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 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.
