"After the revolution, it might very well remain necessary to place people where they could not do harm to others. But the one under restraint should be cut off from the rest of society as little as possible"
About this Quote
Deming refuses the comforting fantasy that a revolution will purify human nature. Even after the old order collapses, she concedes, there will be people who can still do harm - and a society serious about protecting the vulnerable may need restraints. That opening clause is a deliberate dismantling of utopian bravado: she’s speaking from inside radical politics while warning it against its favorite self-deception.
The sentence pivots on a moral trap Deming wants to spring: the moment you justify restraint, you risk rebuilding the very machinery of domination you supposedly overthrew. Her careful phrasing - “place people where they could not do harm” rather than “punish,” “eliminate,” or “lock up” - signals a nonviolent ethic. The goal isn’t vengeance or moral theater; it’s harm reduction. Yet she’s equally insistent that restraint must not become banishment. “Cut off...as little as possible” is a quiet indictment of carceral logic, which treats isolation as both solution and spectacle: we disappear “dangerous” people and call it justice.
The subtext is about power’s addictive convenience. Prisons, exiles, blacklists, psychiatric warehousing - these are all revolutionary tools that quickly stop being temporary. Deming, a key voice in nonviolent and feminist movements, is sketching an alternative: containment without social death, accountability without degradation, safety without a new caste of the untouchable. It’s a revolutionary discipline aimed not at enemies, but at the revolutionaries themselves: if your freedom requires someone else’s permanent disappearance, you’ve just renovated the old regime.
The sentence pivots on a moral trap Deming wants to spring: the moment you justify restraint, you risk rebuilding the very machinery of domination you supposedly overthrew. Her careful phrasing - “place people where they could not do harm” rather than “punish,” “eliminate,” or “lock up” - signals a nonviolent ethic. The goal isn’t vengeance or moral theater; it’s harm reduction. Yet she’s equally insistent that restraint must not become banishment. “Cut off...as little as possible” is a quiet indictment of carceral logic, which treats isolation as both solution and spectacle: we disappear “dangerous” people and call it justice.
The subtext is about power’s addictive convenience. Prisons, exiles, blacklists, psychiatric warehousing - these are all revolutionary tools that quickly stop being temporary. Deming, a key voice in nonviolent and feminist movements, is sketching an alternative: containment without social death, accountability without degradation, safety without a new caste of the untouchable. It’s a revolutionary discipline aimed not at enemies, but at the revolutionaries themselves: if your freedom requires someone else’s permanent disappearance, you’ve just renovated the old regime.
Quote Details
| Topic | Human Rights |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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