Moral status – human status? Interrogating the connection between morality and dehumanisation during mass violence

Abstract

Beginning with early studies in the 1970s, dehumanisation has become a key feature in attempts to grasp the fundamental dynamics and conditions under which mass atrocities emerge. One of the most long-standing, prominent and widely accepted conceptions sees the loss of moral status as a key constitutive component of processes of dehumanisation, suggesting that the victims’ exclusion from the moral universe of obligation breaks down moral barriers, enabling forms of persecution outside the established practices of violence among human communities. With reference to the paradigmatic case of the Holocaust, this article critically interrogates this so far unquestioned equation of a loss of moral standing with dehumanisation. Overall, it argues for a much more nuanced differentiation between normative and analytical uses of dehumanisation, the need for more detailed reflections on its empirical appearances and relevance, and a more critical engagement with its conceptual grounding. Doing so will lead dehumanisation research beyond its current state and would allow for a more intricate assessment of its uses, meanings and relevance in cases of mass violence.