Professor of Philosophy David Livingstone Smith’s new book On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It was published on July 1 by Oxford University Press. It is a follow-up to his 2011 book Less Than Human, which won the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf award for non-fiction, an international award nicknamed the Black Pulitzer Prize. As the subtitle implies, On Inhumanity is a book about dehumanization, which Smith defines as the belief that some members of our species are less than human. In twenty-six short chapters the book explains what dehumanization is and how its works, its relation to racism (Smith calls dehumanization “racism on steroids”), the cognitive biases that drive it, propaganda, ideology, and many other topics. He illustrates theoretical points with vivid and often unsettling historical examples, such as spectacle lynchings in the United Sates, where thousands of White people gathered to watch Black men being tortured and burned alive, the Holocaust, the Rwanda genocide, as well as present-day atrocities such as the persecution of the Rohingya of Myanmar.
The book has received praise from prominent thinkers. Cornel West, public intellectual and professor of the practice of public philosophy writes “This brilliant and powerful book is a philosophically sophisticated and prophetically courageous treatment of dehumanization, especially in regard to race. It is timely and needful in our monstrous times! Don’t miss it!” And Timothy Snyder, Richard C. Levin Professor of History, Yale University, adds “This book is firm but gentle, wise but accessible. Its reflections on our worst habits of politics are phrased in such a way that they allow us to see what better habits might be.” Even though the book has only recently been published, Smith is very much in demand for interviews on podcasts, radio, and television.
Smith’s new book updates the theory of dehumanization that he described in Less Than Human and presents it in a way that is accessible to the general reader. He chose to write a book for a general audience, rather than an academic book, reflects the urgency of his message. As he said in a recent interview, “I don’t want to write a book that only twelve people will read. I write because I want to change the world.”
Links:
Review from the Los Angeles Review of Books: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/confronting-and-fighting-horror-on-david-livingstone-smiths- on-inhumanity-dehumanization-and-how-to-resist-it/
Interview with Riada Asimovic Akyol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpfITTxRTwY
Interview with Robert Right https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=wuFaNVp6kyY&feature=emb_logo