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A review by kevin_shepherd
Infrahumanisms: Science, Culture, and the Making of Modern Non/Personhood by Megan H. Glick
4.0
“In blunt terms, this work imagines the infrahuman as a position of liminal human speciation created within an anthropocentric frame.” (4)
Megan H. Glick teaches American Studies at Wesleyan University and it shows. Her Infrahumanisms: Science, Culture, and the Making of Modern Non/Personhood is a focused collection of original research with extensive citations and references that read like notations on a doctoral thesis. This is not a layman’s guide to ideology but rather a biopolitical narrative written in the jargon of academia. Infrahumanisms is an insightful and enlightening read, but be sure to bring your thinking cap.
The Theory of Infrahumanity
Picture a large circle drawn on a blank page. The area within this circle represents humanity. Now picture concentric circles within that circle, each a little smaller than the last, each denoting diminishing inclusion in the fellowship of personage. Some of the boundaries are blurry and indistinct but most are sharply drawn and the impetus of exclusion, as the circles diminish in size, is readily apparent.
“…the promise of universal personhood and the reality of marginalized non/personhood are dually forged.” (4)
Nonhuman Animals
Activists on the side of animal rights often argue that particular nonhuman species have been scientifically shown, through studies of behavior and brain activity, to possess high levels of intellectual aptitude. Sadly, even the most intelligent of animals are held at the outermost periphery of our circle through the “vague modalities of species membership.”
“…anthropocentric systems of thought include certain human individuals who do not meet established standards of intellectual capacity, while excluding other nonhuman subjects who do.” (9)
Human Children
Odd as it may seem on its surface, children have long been conceptualized as “evolving” along a somewhat Darwinian scale, therefore bridging the gap between animalistic and humanistic spheres. The familiar apparatus of the playground “jungle gym,” for example, was patented in 1920 on the premise that children needed an avenue to express their “natural method of locomotion which the evolutionary predecessors of the human race were designed to practice.” Its inventor, Sebastian Hinton, argued that children had a “monkey instinct” that desperately needed a mechanism of expression.
Surprisingly (yet not surprisingly) it was animal rights activists who first took up the cause of criminalizing child abuse and curtailing child labor.
“The child is an animal. If there is no justice for it as a human being, it shall at least have the right of the cur in the street… It shall not be abused.” ~Henry Bergh, founder of the ASPCA, 1874 (31)
Third World Aliens
Western political discourse is frequently couched in xenophobic rhetoric. There is the “First World” and then there is the “Other.” By differentiating between predominantly white/predominantly Christian countries and those that are not, a racist standard is normalized and masqueraded as justified. In fact, 2018 saw a sitting U.S. President dispense with all pretense of ethical decency when he referred to Haiti, El Salvador and African nations as “shithole countries,” a remark that was both boldly racist and blatantly ethnocentric.
“The use of Second and Third Worldism was a gesture that not only dehumanized certain nations in the sociopolitical sense so well understood; it literally placed them outside the confines of human life…” (116)
Pregnant Women
Before the advent of medical photography, human fetuses were almost always visualized as umbilically connected to the women who carried them. Beginning in the early to mid-1960s, new techniques and technologies allowed for the imagery of the unborn as conceptually independent entities. In 1965, photographer Lennart Nilsson’s fetal photographs were featured in Life magazine. His images were enhanced and manipulated, replacing the mother’s womb with an image of nighttime sky. The effect was mesmerizing but misleading.
“Theorists have predominantly interpreted Nilsson’s photographs as a foreboding sign of the emergence of fetal personhood at the expense of the mother’s body and rights. After all, the mother is literally excised from the photograph.” (121)
In Summary
To be sure, Glick covers many more forms of exclusion and subjugation than are touched on in this review. She delves into eugenics, exobiology, obesity, HIV/AIDS… The list is extensive. Ultimately, the center of Western personhood is personified as white and male. In Professor Glick’s terminology, ‘infrahuman’ is synonymous with subhumanity and her plea is for a state of inclusion and the “possibility of radically antiracist humanism.”
Megan H. Glick teaches American Studies at Wesleyan University and it shows. Her Infrahumanisms: Science, Culture, and the Making of Modern Non/Personhood is a focused collection of original research with extensive citations and references that read like notations on a doctoral thesis. This is not a layman’s guide to ideology but rather a biopolitical narrative written in the jargon of academia. Infrahumanisms is an insightful and enlightening read, but be sure to bring your thinking cap.
The Theory of Infrahumanity
Picture a large circle drawn on a blank page. The area within this circle represents humanity. Now picture concentric circles within that circle, each a little smaller than the last, each denoting diminishing inclusion in the fellowship of personage. Some of the boundaries are blurry and indistinct but most are sharply drawn and the impetus of exclusion, as the circles diminish in size, is readily apparent.
“…the promise of universal personhood and the reality of marginalized non/personhood are dually forged.” (4)
Nonhuman Animals
Activists on the side of animal rights often argue that particular nonhuman species have been scientifically shown, through studies of behavior and brain activity, to possess high levels of intellectual aptitude. Sadly, even the most intelligent of animals are held at the outermost periphery of our circle through the “vague modalities of species membership.”
“…anthropocentric systems of thought include certain human individuals who do not meet established standards of intellectual capacity, while excluding other nonhuman subjects who do.” (9)
Human Children
Odd as it may seem on its surface, children have long been conceptualized as “evolving” along a somewhat Darwinian scale, therefore bridging the gap between animalistic and humanistic spheres. The familiar apparatus of the playground “jungle gym,” for example, was patented in 1920 on the premise that children needed an avenue to express their “natural method of locomotion which the evolutionary predecessors of the human race were designed to practice.” Its inventor, Sebastian Hinton, argued that children had a “monkey instinct” that desperately needed a mechanism of expression.
Surprisingly (yet not surprisingly) it was animal rights activists who first took up the cause of criminalizing child abuse and curtailing child labor.
“The child is an animal. If there is no justice for it as a human being, it shall at least have the right of the cur in the street… It shall not be abused.” ~Henry Bergh, founder of the ASPCA, 1874 (31)
Third World Aliens
Western political discourse is frequently couched in xenophobic rhetoric. There is the “First World” and then there is the “Other.” By differentiating between predominantly white/predominantly Christian countries and those that are not, a racist standard is normalized and masqueraded as justified. In fact, 2018 saw a sitting U.S. President dispense with all pretense of ethical decency when he referred to Haiti, El Salvador and African nations as “shithole countries,” a remark that was both boldly racist and blatantly ethnocentric.
“The use of Second and Third Worldism was a gesture that not only dehumanized certain nations in the sociopolitical sense so well understood; it literally placed them outside the confines of human life…” (116)
Pregnant Women
Before the advent of medical photography, human fetuses were almost always visualized as umbilically connected to the women who carried them. Beginning in the early to mid-1960s, new techniques and technologies allowed for the imagery of the unborn as conceptually independent entities. In 1965, photographer Lennart Nilsson’s fetal photographs were featured in Life magazine. His images were enhanced and manipulated, replacing the mother’s womb with an image of nighttime sky. The effect was mesmerizing but misleading.
“Theorists have predominantly interpreted Nilsson’s photographs as a foreboding sign of the emergence of fetal personhood at the expense of the mother’s body and rights. After all, the mother is literally excised from the photograph.” (121)
In Summary
To be sure, Glick covers many more forms of exclusion and subjugation than are touched on in this review. She delves into eugenics, exobiology, obesity, HIV/AIDS… The list is extensive. Ultimately, the center of Western personhood is personified as white and male. In Professor Glick’s terminology, ‘infrahuman’ is synonymous with subhumanity and her plea is for a state of inclusion and the “possibility of radically antiracist humanism.”