Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2004 11:46:21 +1000
Subject: Re: AUT: humanism and anti-humanism
From: Thiago Oppermann <thiago_oppermann-AT-bigpond.com>


On 28/4/2004 1:21 AM, "andrew robinson" <ldxar1-AT-yahoo.com> wrote:

> This echoes with the semiotic point that any concept requires
> 
> an opposite: the “human” as a concept only makes sense if
> 
> differentiated from something else, such as the “un-man”, because
> 
> language is a differential structure.  In other words, the west
> 
> with its concept of the “human”, however apparently universal
> 
> this is, requires enemies who represent the “un-man” or the
> 
> “inhuman”, because otherwise the concept wouldn’t make sense.


Well, this is exactly what I mean. Unman is precisely still a category
within the cultural matrix of humanism. It is rather futile to argue that it
is the rejection of all categories. I can just invent the category of
rejections of all categories. And so long as you understand language and
culture in terms of categories ­ and let's face it, the alternatives are
pretty nebulous ­ these people have just added another entry to a long list
of humanisms the characteristic of which is to reject previous humanisms.
This ain't set theory.

It's also not entirely true that every concept requires an opposite because
language is a differential structure. First you might want to observe that
there are a good many ways things can be opposed. Is the opposite of a
mongoose a non-mongoose or is it the cobra? What's the opposite of green?
There is a sense in which this pea is the opposite of Saturn. The word
'opposite' makes for a poor explanation, since it is usually what needs to
be explained... which is where I part ways with my structuralist colleagues.
'Opposite', as it relates to human, could mean a good many things. It need
not be subhuman. It could be dirt, or animal, an equation, George Bush,
etc... 
 
The language game of humanism is such that it is entirely possible to reject
the categories of humanism and remain a humanist. I think you underestimate
how much 'antihumanism' is in fact contained within humanism. The trouble
with what you have written, as I see it, is that understood in terms of its
political effectivity, humanism is much less about definite categories and
more about a strategy of universalisation. It is  intensely, erm,
rhizomatic. It is intimately connected precisely with the hope Stirner
expresses that one could exist beyond the determinations imposed by an
alterity. While that, to me, is the Enlightenment in a nutshell, this hope
colonizes everything that is touched by the antihumanism of governmentality
and science, as the moment of resistance. As I said before, it's hardly as
if humanism is a hegemonic discourse; it's a little island that is slowly
submerging, and, probably because it is a seductive and very pious form of
resistance, it has managed to multiply itself in all sorts of ways.
Including in antihumanism.

Personally, if you want a way out of this ­ and it isn't obvious to me that
that is such a good idea, since humanism can, in certain ways be a very
effective strategy ­ I'd recommend reading something like Eduardo Viveiro de
Castro's From the Enemy's Point of View, which is an ethnography of the
Araweté, an Amazonian Tupí group. Here is a lifeworld in which everything is
fundamentally human. Animals and plants are human. Human in the sense that
they are fundamentally 'like us,' which means something completely different
precisely because they are 'like us'... The net result of this is so far
away from the results of western humanism that it is difficult to put it
without it sounding funny. Whereas we work from the ontological premise that
there are no intentions in the world and arrive at the Universal
Declaration, these guys work from the premise that everything is
fundamentally human and arrive at the conclusion that cannibalism is the
only mode through which a person can complete herself.... after all, if
everything is human, that is unavoidable.

But perhaps I am exaggerating the difference. Maybe the right model for
understanding humanism, and particularly liberal humanitarianism, which has
always been intimately connected with imperialisms (with no crypto-, the
matter has always been very explicit), is some kind of anthropophagy.

Thiago








 




Thiago



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