Modern execution technologies fused democratic equality with mass-scale killing.
Evidence
In France, the advent of the guillotine marks a new phase in the “democratization” of the means of disposing of the enemies of the state. Indeed, this form of execution that had once been the prerogative of the nobility is extended to all citizens. In a context in which decapitation is viewed as less demeaning than hanging, innovations in the technologies of murder aim not only at “civilizing” the ways of killing. They also aim at disposing of a large number of victims in a relatively short span of time. At the same time, a new cultural sensibility emerges in which killing the enemy of the state is an extension of play. More intimate, lurid, and leisurely forms of cruelty appear. — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 50
Categorization
- DEFINE: Illuminates the core necropolitics move: ‘democratization’ of killing means extending sovereign violence to all, not liberating anyone.
- XREF: Connects to Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (referenced in the paragraph) and to the scaffolding theme of modern bureaucratic rationality enabling mass exclusion. — connects to: Bureaucratic-technical framing enabled depersonalized mass murder at unprecedented scale. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 529; Potent technology plus designed-order ambition produced modern genocide — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 620; Modern mass murder is rational, calculated, and free of spontaneity — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 262 (+6 more)
- SEED: Angle: how ‘civilized’ methods of lethal state power came wrapped in egalitarian discourse — useful contrast for contemporary drone warfare or gas chambers.
Related
- Modern mass murder is rational, calculated, and free of spontaneity (similarity 0.85)
- Bureaucratic-technical framing enabled depersonalized mass murder at unprecedented scale. (similarity 0.83)
- Mass murder required neutralizing proximity-based moral drives. (similarity 0.80)
- Potent technology plus designed-order ambition produced modern genocide (similarity 0.79)
- Modern genocide functions as social engineering toward a perfect society (similarity 0.78)
- Modern rational society enabled systematic genocide and discredited impulsive mass violence (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Bureaucratic-technical framing enabled depersonalized mass murder at unprecedented scale.
#expands(0.92) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 529 - Potent technology plus designed-order ambition produced modern genocide
#expands(0.88) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 620 - Modern rational society enabled systematic genocide and discredited impulsive mass violence
#expands(0.84) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 261 - Modern genocide functions as social engineering toward a perfect society
#expands(0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 264 - Modern mass murder is rational, calculated, and free of spontaneity
#expands(0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 262 - Modern genocide requires bureaucracy meeting a rationally engineered social design
#expands(0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 309 - Modern technology extends action beyond the moral vanishing point, enabling harm
#expands(0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 548 - Mass murder required neutralizing proximity-based moral drives.
#expands(0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 528 - Distributed lethal systems fabricate irresponsibility by diluting causal attribution.
#expands(0.74)