Detention camps are designed to render inmates invisible and outside national community

Evidence

Forced labor as a punishment is limited as to time and intensity. The convict retains his rights over his body; he is not absolutely tortured and he is not absolutely dominated. Banishment banishes only from one part of the world to another part of the world, also inhabited by human beings; it does not exclude from the human world altogether. Throughout history slavery has been an institution within a social order; slaves were not, like concentration-camp inmates, withdrawn from the sight and hence the protection of their fellow-men; as instruments of labor they had a definite price and as property a definite value. The concentration-camp inmate has no price, because he can always be replaced; nobody knows to whom he belongs, because he is never seen. From the point of view of normal society he is absolutely superfluous, although in times of acute labor shortage, as in Russia and in Germany during the war, he is used for work. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 994 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Coercive institutions like prisons and detention centres are overlooked micro-publics of conviviality. — Luke de Noronha, The conviviality of the overpoliced,…, 15; Indefinite detention camps for non-citizens have deep antecedents in modern nation-state practice — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 406; Meaningless administrative categories engineered camp inmates’ self-identity and blocked solidarity. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1009 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Camp inmates are socially superfluous, unlike slaves who had defined value #complicates (0.72) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 994