Social Exclusion: Practices of Misrecognition

Abstract

Social Exclusion can be mainly understood in three different ways: as a form of spatial separation, a lack of participation, or as emanating from practices of misrecognition. One of the approaches based on the latter understanding was proposed by the Israeli social philosopher Avishai Margalit. For him, social exclusion by practices of misrecognition is one way to harm human dignity. Margalit frequently referred to the persecution of Jews during National Socialism in order to substantiate this thought. In my chapter, I take up this thought and demonstrate that in national socialist Germany various practices of misrecognition played an important role within anti-Semitism, a fact which can be clearly shown in the politics of the personal name. This is because the personal name is a unique symbol of human dignity. The giving of a name is not only a performative act by which we become singular and distinctive; first and foremost, it inaugurates us as social beings. I would like to distinguish four stages within which Jewish names were targets of social exclusion during National Socialism: insult, degradation, debasement and humiliation. What began as a seemingly harmless and ordinary practice of teasing, displayed in nicknames such as “Itzig”, gradually developed into a system of utmost cruelty, embodied in a state-run policy of debasement and exclusion of a whole section of the population, which was initiated by the declaration of the names “Sarah” and “Israel” as obligatory for Jews. This system culminated in the concentration camps where the number replaced the human name. As the paradigmatic figure of the nameless, I will examine the so called “Muselmann” more closely. He marks the transitional point where social exclusion turns into social death, and the loss of human dignity becomes absolute.