Mass atrocity requires marginalizing victims, not denying their humanity
Evidence
Much later Hiroko reflects on what she has learned in an observation that sums up the novel’s politics: “When Konrad first heard of the concentration camps he said you have to deny people their humanity in order to decimate them. You don’t.… You just have to put them in a little corner of the big picture” (362). — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 432
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- SEED: Serves as a quotable thesis for an essay on the mechanics of dehumanization — peripheralization rather than outright denial — usable in arguing how fiction can expose Islamophobia’s logics.