The Sovereignty of Classification: Categorical Violence and the Institutional Determination of Human Worth

This conceptual theory article examines when institutional classification becomes a form of authority capable of determining human standing, credibility, protection, eligibility, burden, and disposability. It develops Classification Sovereignty, Standing Conversion, the Classification Sovereignty Threshold, the Categorical Closure Loop, and the Sacred Standing Constraint. The article distinguishes necessary institutional categorization from Categorical Violence: patterned and preventable harm produced when classifications acquire institutional force, diminish standing, propagate beyond their evidentiary purpose, and restrict meaningful correction or appeal. It explains how classification systems can become Post-Personal Dark Leadership when they continue directing conduct and allocating harm through policies, archives, databases, algorithms, and organizational routines while responsibility becomes difficult to locate. Building upon Francisco M. Martinez’s Mythotechnic Fiction, Mythic Authority, Cultural Command Transmission, Post-Personal Dark Leadership, and Ethical Reopening frameworks, the article integrates focused scholarship on classification, commensuration, epistemic injustice, social construction, algorithmic discrimination, and sociotechnical systems. It also develops a bounded Christian theological analysis drawing upon Scripture, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Ignatius of Loyola, and the Nicene Creed. The Sacred Standing Constraint holds that no human or machine classification can exhaust the identity or cancel the intrinsic worth of the person. The article provides mechanisms, domain boundaries, rival explanations, ten theoretical propositions, falsification criteria, ethical design implications, and an empirical research agenda. Martinez’s fiction is treated as a constructed interpretive laboratory for theory generation and boundary testing rather than empirical proof.