Making Monsters, David Livingstone Smith
Making Monsters, David Livingstone Smith
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Making Monsters
The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization

Author: David Livingstone Smith

Narrator: Timothy Andrés Pabon

Unabridged: 9 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/07/2021

Synopsis

"I wouldn't have accepted that they were human beings. You would see an infant who's just learning to smile, and it smiles at you, but you still kill it." So a Hutu man explained to an incredulous researcher, when asked to recall how he felt slaughtering Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. Such statements are shocking, yet we recognize them; we hear their echoes in accounts of genocides, massacres, and pogroms throughout history. How do some people come to believe that their enemies are monsters, and therefore easy to kill?

In Making Monsters David Livingstone Smith offers a poignant meditation on the philosophical and psychological roots of dehumanization. Drawing on harrowing accounts of lynchings, Smith establishes what dehumanization is and what it isn't. When we dehumanize our enemy, we hold two incongruous beliefs at the same time: we believe our enemy is at once subhuman and fully human. To call someone a monster, then, is not merely a resort to metaphor—dehumanization really does happen in our minds. Turning to an abundance of historical examples, Smith explores the relationship between dehumanization and racism, the psychology of hierarchy, what it means to regard others as human beings, and why dehumanizing others transforms them into something so terrifying that they must be destroyed.

About David Livingstone Smith

David Livingstone Smith is a professor of philosophy at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine. He has written or edited eight books, including Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, which won the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf award for nonfiction. His work has been translated into seven languages. David is an interdisciplinary scholar, whose publications are cited not only by other philosophers, but also by historians, legal scholars, psychologists, and anthropologists. He has been featured in several prime-time television documentaries, is often interviewed and cited in the national and international media, and was a guest at the 2012 G20 economic summit, where he spoke about dehumanization and mass violence.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Benjamin on September 17, 2024

Excellent, thought-provoking, and very troubling. David Livingstone Smith has produced a raw, incisive and generally non-biased inquiry into what makes us human and, more to the point, what happens when we allow ourselves to see each other as less than human. With much bloody history to reflect on i......more

Goodreads review by Chris on October 23, 2021

David Livingstone Smith has done it once again with this book discussing dehumanization. David is one of the few people studying this topic and how so many atrocities happen throughout history from the Holocaust to other genocides and the lynching of Black Americans. In this book, David brings a phi......more

Goodreads review by Dillon on January 15, 2022

9.5/10 This is the most thoroughly researched book I read in 2021. The author takes a nuanced approach to every topic explored. The argument is well organized and constructed in a logical way that makes it followable. Every claim is backed up with ample evidence. Smith achieves what he set out to do.......more

Goodreads review by Words on January 14, 2024

I came to this one largely because I'd started to come up with some ideas about dehumanisation, but much like Livingstone Smith addresses in the opening chapters of this book, when I tried to answer the seemingly basic question, 'what is dehumanisation?', I found a simple satisfactory definition elu......more

Goodreads review by Jan on August 23, 2023

If you are unfamiliar with David Livingstone Smith's work on dehumanization, start here and you will be richly rewarded! If you are familiar with his work, please make sure to read at a minimum the conclusion of "Making Monsters." The author's discussion on using his work to justify anti-abortion ar......more

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