Bodily Practices as Vehicles for Dehumanization in an Institution for Mental Defectives

Abstract

This article analyzes the processes of dehumanization that occurred in the Michener Center, a total institution for the purported care and training of people deemed to be mental defectives 1 that operated in Alberta, Canada. I report on qualitative interviews with 22 survivors, three ex-workers, and the institutional archival record, drawing out the ways that dehumanization was accomplished through bodily means and the construction of embodied otherness along several axes. First, inmates' bodies were erased or debased as unruly matter out of place that disturbed the order of rational modernity, a move that meant inmates were not seen as deserving or even requiring of normal human consideration. Spatial practices within the institution included panopticism and isolation, constructing inmates as not only docile but as unworthy of contact and interaction. Dehumanization was also seen as necessary to and facilitative of patient care; to produce inmates as subhuman permitted efficiency, but also neglect and abuse. Finally, practices of hygiene and sequestering the polluting bodies of those deemed mentally defective sustained and justified dehumanization. These practices had profound effects for inmates and also for those charged with caring for them.

“God blessed me with employers who don't starve their helpers”: Food insecurity and dehumanization in domestic work

“…Yet negotiating bodily integrity and resisting dehumanization can also place workers at risk of termination, punishment, or criminal penalty. The corporeal transformation of a population into something less than human can naturalize or normalize expulsion, containment, or neutralization (e.g., Burnette, 2015; Malacrida, 2012; Savage, 2007). By rendering a population as less than human that necessitates control or containment, dehumanization serves to shift moral legitimacy to the perpetrator of abuse.…”

“…First, there is a need for more research on power and its interactions with dehumanization. Scholars have explored the role of dehumanization in naturalizing inequality (e.g., Malacrida, 2012; Savage, 2007), but there is a valuable opportunity to examine the role of dehumanization in rendering oppression ordinary, logical or necessary, as in intimate labor. Dehumanization in intimate labor may at first appear incongruous given the centrality of the “human touch” (literally and figuratively).…”

“…Haslam (2006, p. 252) defines dehumanization as “the denial of full humanness to others” and offers a distinction between (1) animalistic dehumanization which constructs persons or peoples as uncivilized, primitive, or animal‐like and (2) mechanistic dehumanization, which constructs targets as mechanical or automatons. Empirically, the processes, consequences, and drivers of dehumanization have been investigated in relation to socially different “Others” such as the targets of genocide (Savage, 2007), racial, and ethnic minorities (Billies, 2015), violence against indigenous peoples and women (Burnette, 2015), and the physically and intellectually disabled (Malacrida, 2012).…”

“…Second, research on dehumanization has focused on the eradication, expulsion, or containment of “Other‐ed” groups (e.g., genocide, racial or ethnic segregation, persons with disabilities) (e.g., Billies, 2015; Burnette, 2015; Malacrida, 2012; Savage, 2007). Proposed responses have therefore focused on increasing contact between groups or strengthening Other‐ed identities (Haslam & Loughnan, 2014).…”

Embodied Action, Embodied Theory: Understanding the Body in Society

“…She has published extensively on eugenics and institutionalization, and has recently completed a book on the history of eugenics in Alberta. Using Foucauldian theory on docile bodies and Mary Douglas s work on matter out of place, her article outlines how the body can be controlled through dehumanization [15].…”