ABSTRACT
This chapter traces some of the ideological assumptions that make anti-genocide activists respond with horror to what they regard as the most brutal violations of that 'human'. If humanitarianism and human rights evolved as missions dedicated to bringing relief to human suffering, it then follows that the deliberate infliction of suffering constitutes the greatest threat to that mission. In studying the horror at suicide bombing, Talal Asad pays particular attention to the 'horror of formlessness' that can be evoked by the deformation of the human body. The horror at mass atrocities comes not only from the explosive number of killings, but moreover and perhaps more crucially by the fear that the organized and systematic way of killing could become 'a self-driving force', could become a socially accepted, normalized 'kind of thinking'. Replacing a dictatorship with a democratic government, and prosecuting the perpetrators might not be enough to halt mass atrocities.
