Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 22:50:46 +1000
Subject: Re: AUT: humanism and anti-humanism
From: Thiago Oppermann <thiago_oppermann-AT-bigpond.com>


On 30/4/2004 8:21 PM, "Tahir Wood" <twood-AT-uwc.ac.za> wrote:

> it is extraordinarily difficult to imagine under
> what pretext one would criticise the insufficiency of legal anthropology and
> the cynicism of government except by reference to another, more humanist
> humanism.
> Thiago
> 
> Agreed
> Tahir

The more I think about it the less this has much to do with the category of
'human' and much more to do with the politics of negotiating likeness and
universality. A negotiation that is in no sense prior to power relations -
that much is obvious - but at the same time I wonder: how is it so different
to claim that one had the right to determine oneself outside the imposition
of some category of the human derived from classic liberalism? That too was
one such process of negotiation. I don't see how one escapes from the
problems of humanism by rejecting a philosophical theory that is very much a
flag of convenience...

What was said before about antihumanism being a turn from the analysis that
begins with 'man' to an analysis that looks at forces, material processes,
etc... reminds me of the old saying about the turn from the rule of men to
the government of things - one practical result of which was the government
of men as things, which has hardly been very pleasant. The antihumanism of
government cannot be prefaced with 'ostensible' : one might say: sure,
Soviet theory had a hidden Man governing the people-cum-things; but is this
so different from what is proposed in philosophical anti-humanism? Isn't it
here again the case that the forces will be put to the work of 'you' as the
self-defining entity? This is just as liable to be phoney; if it is not, it
will be because of other precautions one takes... As I see it, the target
ought to be the notion of governance and sovereignty, and as a corollary of
that, of the understanding of man that stems from these. The reverse order
of priorities does not really seem tenable. So I would ask: what is the
governmentality, or critique of governmentality that informs antihumanism?
Is it incompatible with the more general humanism I have described?

Thiago



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