Reviewed by:

• Making Monsters: The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization by David Livingstone Smith
• Dr. Linda Roland Danil (bio)

In this book, David Livingstone Smith’s concern is how human beings can come to conceive of other human beings “as subhuman creatures”¹—a phenomenon that is not limited to a single culture or a specific, isolated historical period. Further, in this book, Smith seeks to rectify what he sees as a shortcoming in his earlier book—Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others.² The argument he offered in that [End Page 848] book, Smith feels, was both “incomplete and, in some respects, misleading.”³ In that book, Smith’s thesis was that when one dehumanizes others, they are conceived as “appearing human when they are really subhuman.”⁴ Smith is now unconvinced, however, and instead proposes that when we dehumanize others, we actually perceive them as both entirely human and entirely subhuman simultaneously.

To begin with, what does Smith mean by the term and phenomenon of “dehumanization”? For Smith, dehumanization occurs when we conceive of others as “subhuman creatures.”⁵ These creatures might be nonhuman animals, or they might be fictional or supernatural beings, such as monsters or demons. Dehumanization is an attitude and takes place inside people’s heads. Consequently, Smith sets himself a considerable challenge—to ascertain what it is that people truly, internally believe, rather than just what they express in speech or action (and the two need not necessarily entirely or partially correlate. People can and do express, for example, views that they do not genuinely subscribe to or believe in.) And not only that—Smith, while acknowledging that it is a tall order, also argues that it is possible to detect “asymptomatic”⁶ forms of dehumanization—that is to say, instances where “dehumanizing attitudes are betrayed by subtle and indirect cues rather than being explicitly embodied in speech or action.”⁷

As Smith argues, “I believe that when people dehumanize others, they really do conceive of them as subhumans, and that when these dehumanizing attitudes are expressed in speech, they are meant to be literally descriptive.”⁸ Dehumanization is also not just about attributing subhuman traits, but rather about attributing a subhuman essence. The import of Smith’s work lies in this argument, because, according to Smith, people like Nazis and white supremacists “were and are, for the most part, sane human beings.”⁹—that is to say, their beliefs were not a product of pathology—so how could they mistake another human being for a rat, or vermin, amongst other things?

Smith skilfully unearths the contradictions that belie the true underlying attitude. For example, one can describe someone as subhuman but treat them in ways that are only relevant to human beings. Dehumanized beings are often held to be morally responsible for their actions, for example, or they are humiliated. However, vermin, or lice, or other related entities used to dehumanize others, cannot be held accountable as moral agents, and they cannot be humiliated. Smith deftly unpacks fallacies like racial essentialism, which, for Smith, is the most “prevalent, fundamental, and destructive” ¹⁰ folk theory of race. Moreover, understanding and debunking racial essentialism is crucial for Smith, because it represents a specific manifestation of the larger psychological propensity known as psychological essentialism, which is also a considerable part of the psychological foundation for dehumanization. Succinctly, psychological essentialism entails the tendency to attribute essences to certain kinds of things. As Smith argues, [End Page 849] essentialism in biology is suspect, and when it comes down to the species level, it is simply inconsistent with what biological science tells us—and yet, according to Smith, even those who are clearly aware that it is a psychological bias with no scientific evidence to back it up can slip into its mindset if not careful.

To put it simply, racial divisions do not correspond to real, biological categories. The only “variations” that exist are at the level of alleles—that is to say, one person having blue eyes and another having brown constitutes being in possession...