Human Exceptionalism Dehumanizes All

"[C]olonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, [and] race hatred."
― Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism

Israeli society, including the heart of Israeli officialdom, has been filled with language dehumanizing Palestinians since 10/7. “We are fighting human animals”, said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Calling others “animals” is common to virtually all campaigns of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Israeli rhetoric here is not exceptional, nor is the ethnic cleansing unfolding in Gaza the only one in the world right now. However, it seems appropriate to focus on examples from there since Israelis are publically deploying this rhetoric on the world stage. A former Israeli ambassador to the UN, for example, said during an interview on Sky News he was “puzzled” anyone cares about Palestinians, whom he called “horrible, inhuman animals”.

Why would being “animals” authorize Palestinians’ oppression, their destruction? Of course, many people see nonhuman animals as objectively inferior, of little or no worth, and believe people have the moral right to dominate all nonhuman lives. Simultaneously, “animality” is often characterized as dangerous, as primitive and uncivilized, as something that must be tamed or put down or transcended.

But these are perverted notions of “animality”.

Humans are animals. It is trivially true: Human beings are an animal species. Animality is a fundamental part of being human. When we are violent or peaceful, our animality is present. When we hate or love, our animality is present. When we share food, when we philosophize, when we smell flowers, when we build cities, our animality is present. Animality is part of the human condition.

But if I call someone else an “animal”, I’m invoking a perverted, awful, frightening notion of “animality”. Mary Midgley said it is “the forces that we fear in our own nature, forces that we are unwilling to regard as a true part of it”. To deny their animality, some construct illusions about humanity’s place in the world. Raymond Williams described an ideology that posits a sharp border between “Society” and “Nature”; “animality” is, of course, part of “Nature” in this construct, while the domain of “humanity” is “Society”. Accordingly, “humanity” is not ecologically-situated like animals are. Indeed, it is above “Nature”, a master of it.

This idea is Human Exceptionalism. Ironically, Human Exceptionalist-thinking allows for many literal flesh-and-bone humans to be positioned as “Nature”, as “animals” outside of civilized “Society”. We see this in Israeli rhetoric about Palestinians.

Val Plumwood said Human Exceptionalism makes us “not only lose the ability to empathise and to see the non-human sphere in ethical terms, but also get a false sense of our own character and location that includes an illusory sense of agency and autonomy”. In plain terms, those who deny their own animality are lying to themselves about what it means to be human. Ironically, when they de-nature themselves, they strip away their own genuine humanity for a delusional “humanity”.

Take Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s words: “This is a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.” Of course he construes Palestinians as part of “Nature”, which is evil. Simultaneously, he claims “humanity” for him and his ilk, but not a literal flesh-and-bone humanity, not a universal humanity. This “humanity”, these “children of light”, are above evil “Nature” and above other actual flesh-and-bone humans. From this superior position “humanity” is authorized to act with moral impunity upon anything below.

Let us apply Césaire’s insight that “colonization works to decivilize the colonizer” at another level: Human Exceptionalism works to dehumanize Human Exceptionalists; by claiming a position above “Nature” and beyond ecological-situatedness, by advancing derogatory notions of animality and denying core elements of what it means to be human, and by morally authorizing themselves to commit horrors. This “humanity” despises the genuine human condition. Human Exceptionalism dehumanizes all – some are positioned below “humanity” while others are set above actual flesh-and-bone humanity.

Human Exceptionalism authorizes genocide and ethnic cleansing. It informs the brutal logics of factory farming, ecocide, patriarchy, and racial and ethnic supremacy. It justifies horrors upon anyone and anything judged to be outside the sham borders of de-natured “humanity”. Alongside material efforts and direct actions to stop the bloodshed, in order to assist Palestinian liberation, and to liberate ourselves, we must reckon with what it means to be human.