Urgent and paramount questions of “Who Counts as Human?” were raised on Friday at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Yassmin Abdel-Magied chaired the talk with speakers Surekha Davies and Nicola Kelly, whose new books complement each other in tackling difficult subjects such as Othering, xenophobia and the idea of “monster-making”.
Davies’s new book is called Humans: A Monstrous History, and it traces the idea of the monster from antiquity to today. Essentially, Davie’s concept of “monster-making” considers the notion that a “normal” person is commonly registered by people as a consequence of comparison. Thus, differences are what paint people as “monsters”. It’s a key precursor to the contemporary idea of Othering, the “us vs. them” mentality that Davies noted as being at the forefront of such politics as Trumpism and Reform UK. As a rebuttal, Davies puts forward the concept of “Monster-Futurism”, which aims to embrace the concept of the monster as the norm, thus alleviating xenophobic narratives.
Kelly’s new book Anywhere But Here: How Britain’s Broken Asylum System Fails Us All touches on similar themes. Kelly is an investigative journalist on the UK’s asylum system, and her book is structured by following the journey of an asylum seeker entering Britain. It starts with the perilous journey across the Channel, then follows migrants as they attempt to settle down and integrate into British society. In the discussion, Kelly highlighted the exploitative impact of conglomerates working for the home office, such as Clearsprings and Serco, which own various establishments that house migrants. Clearsprings, for example, has been the centre of controversy, with incredibly poor living conditions resulting in bed bugs being found in migrant housing. Kelly highlighted how xenophobia is instrumental to the conditions faced by immigrants.
Unfortunately, Omar El Akkad was unable to attend the talk. He’s written prescient, thought-provoking eco-futurist fictional epics such as American War, and it is not hard to see how his new non-fiction book, One Day Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This, about the Israel-Palestine conflict, would have slotted most effectively into this discussion.
The success of the session was due primarily to the interplay between the two texts and authors. For example, Davies introduced the idea of Stochastic Terrorism. This entails an incitement of violence by verbal means, with enough plausible deniability to evade prosecution. It’s like saying “well, you could go and attack [group A] but I’m not really inciting violence or anything.” The concept is as Trumpian as it is Faragian, and it reads effectively in tandem with Kelly’s observation of the migrant crisis in the UK, of which Stochastic Terrorism was a driving force behind the 2024 UK riots.
Kelly also called for more journalists to call out their editors when creating headlines. Regarding Gaza, she questioned why some outlets reported “collapsed buildings” as opposed to “bombed buildings”. Both authors argued that failing to recognise the genocide legitimises the—to use Davies’s term—”monster making” of Palestinians by Israeli forces.
There was also a recognition that this question of “Who Counts as Human” is nothing new. Indeed, Davies’ book begins by considering the Ancient Greek conception of their mythological monsters, and it is fascinating to consider that this notion of Othering, us vs. them, can be traced from thousands of years ago through to today’s rhetoric.
Abdel-Magied asked about hope towards the end of the session and Davies put forward a surprising exemplar Monstro-Futurist text: The Muppets. As amused as the audience was, she pointed out the utopian ideal the Jim Henson creation represents: a celebration of difference and an acceptance that the Other is never the same; this should be the norm.
Image via Oliver Paul.