"During the decade I was immersed in the arcane details of formal semantics and pragmatics, the United States was in the throes of a mad experiment in mass incarceration, falling largely on the heads of the minority who were the descendants of slaves. Sylvia Wynter published an article that begins with the information that "public officials of the judicial system of Los Angeles routinely use the acronym 'N.H.I.' to refer to any case that involved a breach of the right of young Black males who belonged to the jobless category of the inner city ghettos. N.H.I means 'no humans involved.'" Wynter's article links the method of dehumanization of American citizens of African descent to the dehumanization of Armenians by Turkish pan-nationalists in the First World War Period, and Jew by German nationalists during the Second War World period, In these latter cases, the dehumanization was a preparation for mass slaughter." Id. at xiv (citing Sylvia Wynter, "'No Humans Involved': An Open Letter to My Colleagues," Knowledge on Trial 1 (1994): 3-11).
"Why are we so inclined to confuse, quite sincerely, objective claims of reason with what turns out to be, introspect, biased and self-serving opinions? Why does seemingly objective discourse seem nevertheless to tap into bias and stereotype? And most pressingly, why, across continents and centuries, are the claims of oppressed and exploited groups routinely dismissed at the time, when history has subsequently revealed that the claims should have appeared to be clearly correct? These are the questions at the hear of this book." Id. at xvi-xvii.
Jason Stanley, Know How (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2011).
Jason Stanley, Knowledge and Practical Interests (Oxford: Clarendon Press/Oxford U. Press, 2005).
Jason Stanley, Language in Context (Oxford: Clarendon Press/Oxford U. Press, 2007).
