Decolonizing Genocide: The L → N → A → C → I → S Cycle as an Internal Horizon of Modernity

This article proposes a decolonial redefinition of genocide—not as a moral rupture or exceptional event, but as an internal horizon of European modernity, deeply entangled with the logics of coloniality and capital. We argue that the genocidal process does not begin with hatred or even exclusion, but with L (Legitimate Classification): the ostensibly neutral, scientific, administrative, or managerial work of rendering populations legible for purposes of governance, development, or security. Only under conditions of crisis—often produced by capitalist dynamics of surplus, dispossession, and racialized labor hierarchies—does this infrastructure activate a cyclical pattern: N (Norm), A (Anomaly), C (Corpus), I (Institutionalization), S (Suppression). Drawing on a genealogy from the 15th-century Reconquista—where Europe first questioned the essence of the human—to contemporary migration regimes, we show how each stage inherits moral and epistemic legitimacy from its predecessor. The Reconquista, far from being a medieval relic, inaugurates a new ontology: humanity is no longer universally granted by divine creation, but must be demonstrated through rationality, civility, governability, and productivity. This shift enables the classification of certain beings as deficient, sub-human, or incompatible—laying the philosophical and material groundwork for five centuries of eliminationist logic. By integrating insights from Marxist critiques of racial capitalism and decolonial theory, we demonstrate that genocide is not merely an ideological aberration, but a recurrent possibility embedded in the very architectures of modern statecraft and political economy.