Thoughts on "Linguicide"

The 1948 Genocide Convention doesn't specifically enumerate the intentional destruction of a group's culture as an act which constitutes genocide. When speaking of destruction of the group, the Convention specifies that this destruction is "physical" in nature. While it does cite "mental harm" intentionally inflicted upon members of the group, this has generally been interpreted as psychologically warfare as most often associated with terror campaigns, torture, and rape (as noted here and here). Thus, the language of the Convention does not specifically cite cultural destruction as an act of genocide.

However, Raphael Lemkin - the principle force behind the Convention - wrote at length about the importance of culture in the sphere of genocide. The devastating consequences reaped by genocide, he argued, far exceeded even the most heinous forms of physical destruction, because genocide involves wiping out a people's memory, as well as countless individuals who may otherwise have contributed greatly to the world's culture (let alone the specific group's culture). This, even if one does limit the scope of the discussion to physical destruction, it is difficult to deny the cultural implications of the elimination of an entire people. Entire cultures are lost to the world, and this, Lemkin argues, is as powerful a reason to resist genocide as the physical elimination that causes the devastation of culture.

Bearing these arguments in mind, I would like to introduce the concept of "linguicide," pondered by various scholars, including Skutnabb-Kanga and Ngugi wa Thiong'o. The word refers to the destruction of language: as so many have argued across time, language is the key to culture itself and the transmission of cultural mores. In his 2009 book Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance, Ngugi asserts that the destruction of colonized people's languages imposed by colonialism constitutes a significant destruction of the very group itself. In the case of the English colonization and - arguably - genocide against the Irish in the late 16th century, the elimination of Irish names and most aspects of Irish language disconnects the Irish people from a sense of identity and their own cultural history. The history that comes to replace it is that of England's construction of Irish history: yet, as Irish identity is destroyed with the elimination of names and language, Irish history becomes a lost concept. Ngugi gives examples which imply that this emphasis on the destruction of language and the original names of peoples can be found in many genocides throughout history, in a variety of geographic and sociopolitical contexts. Social memory is lost when language is lost; if social memory is lost, identity is lost; if identity is lost, can it not be argued that the group itself has been lost, or rather, destroyed? Thus, can genocide be committed through making it illegal to speak one's native tongue; educating people only in foreign tongues that their parents do not speak; or imposing new names to replace old family names, as in the case of African slaves and (on occasion) immigrants arriving at Ellis Island? I will leave it up the reader to evaluate these questions.

Genocide by... Abortion?

While perusing the internet during my finals week for news on genocide (as, alas, I am prone to do), I found a post which accuses President Obama of beginning a genocidal policy against African Americans in the United States. What's the argument for this? It is based upon two principal notions: the first is the assertion that the health care provisions Obama is struggling to get would encourage abortions, and the second is that an exceptionally large number of African women already have abortions per year, and encouraging this would be tantamount to genocide.

For the sake of this posting, I want to leave aside the debate surrounding health care and abortion per se. Rather, I wish to focus simply on the alleged relationship between abortion and genocide. This claim asserts that encouraging - not necessarily forcing - abortions among a certain group can constitute genocide. (It was not made clear in the posting whether this allegation is supposed to be taken in context of the historical [and contemporary] oppression of African Americans in the United States. ) According to the UN Genocide Convention of 1948, genocidal acts do include "Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group." This is thus dependent upon the debate I said I would avoid - whether Obama's health care proposals will, indeed, encourage abortions or - more significant to this argument - whether it is intended to do so. I've said that I won't get into this here, and I won't, because I see a larger point here (I'm sure there are many).

The argument presented on the post I am referring to did not refer to the economic situation which does, indeed, lead many African American women to get abortions. I would argue that it is economic class, rather than a 'racial identity,' which fuels high rates of abortion, particularly in young women. Thus, if one wants to argue that imposing situations where abortion is encouraged amongst members of a group constitutes genocide, I think the argument can be better made on the level of class rather than racial categorization. This is somewhat sticky, though, because the Genocide Convention does not list 'class' as a protected group.

This raises the question: do members of groups that are not 'national, ethnical, racial, or religious' not receive protection under the Convention? Are those four groups meant to be exclusionary of other groups, like 'political' or 'economic class'? In the context of the time that the Convention was drafted, this certainly was the case (as the Soviet Union feared that its actions could be perceived as genocide if 'class' or 'political groups' were considered explicitly). Are documents of international law ones whose interpretation is supposed to change over time, or are they supposed to be destined to remain, forever, trapped in the context of their original ratification?

Stanley Milgram redux?

Some final thoughts on Kathleen Taylor's Cruelty. The book's key puzzle addresses the "unthinkable" human behavior of human cruelty and our capability to engage in cruel, tortuous, sadistic behavior. Is such behavior really so unthinkable, she asks, or is it part of our very nature, part of our biological make-up? The answer, not surprisingly, is the latter.

Taylor contends that the evolutionary path humans took meant that discriminating between groups ("us" versus "them") became a favored trait for self-protection. Humans are hard-wired to "otherize." Our brains also take short-cuts to minimize reaction time and cognitive dissonance, particularly in times of stress. These two impulses permit people to treat those they deem "not one of us" with incredible cruelty and avoid introspection concerning the real implications and consequences of our actions. The more we think of others as "vermin" or "cockroaches" and the more pressure we get from authority figures who portray these others as dangers to ourselves, our way of life, or our existence, the less likely we are to question them.

This conclusion is not particularly surprising. Stanley Milgram, Yale psychologist and Queens College alumni, found that people would render torturous electroshock to people upon instruction by an authority figure. Philip Zimbardo has a webpage devoted to his all too successful effort to recreate a prison experiment, complete with sadistic guards. But the neuro focus of Taylor's book is useful. She uses a style of noted in recent non-fiction books that deal with scholarly subjects but written for a general audience: a smart literature review without much new evidence or independent empirical testing. It does give me some fodder for adjusting my thoughts on the instrumental versus primordial debate in the social sciences, but I talked about that already.