The Critical Image... Must Not Only Fail

Until We Learn That Other Lives Are Equally Grievable And Have An Equal Demand On Us To Be Grieved - Especially The Ones That We've Helped To Eliminate - I'm Not Sure We'll Really Be On The Way To Overcoming The Problem Of Dehumanization.

Whether Or Not We Continue To Enforce A Universal Conception Of Human Rights At Moments Of Outrage And Incomprehension, Precisely When We Think That Others Have Taken Themselves Out Of The Human Community As We Know It, Is A Test Of Our Very Humanity.

People Who Expect Enmity To Suddenly Convert Into Love Are Probably Using The Wrong Model.

Bound To Seek Recognition Of Its Own Existence In Categories, Terms, And Names That Are Not Of Its Own Making, The Subject Seeks The Sign Of Its Own Existence Outside Itself, In A Discourse That Is At Once Dominant And Indifferent. Social Categories Signify Subordination And Existence At Once. In Other Words, Within Subjection The Price Of Existence Is Subordination.

A Certain Kind Of Permission Is Given To Live Differently, To Conceptualize And To Act According To A New Conceptualization.