Unknown - In the Name of Humanity

INTRODUCTION
Government and Humanity

WHAT DOES IT MEAN to claim humanity as your political constituency? What is it to govern, fight, and care in the name of humanity? These are the questions that this volume grapples with. Surveying the contemporary political scene one finds humanity mobilized in a remarkable array of circumstances. Whether considering the challenge of global environmental destruction, the ethics of scientific research on stem cells, or the identification of genocide and other atrocities, activists on all sides of the issues know that a claim to speak on behalf of humanity stakes out a powerful position. It is one of the few categories that is meaningful across political, religious, and social divides. While people may disagree on the source of its power, almost everyone agrees that humanity should be considered sacred. As a universal subject, the claims of humanity should, it seems, be paramountand to speak on its behalf should bring discussion to a close, permit action to begin, and enable lives to be saved. And yet, the meaning of humanity is not as clear as its widespread appearance in political and ethical discourse might suggest. The call to humanity often does not have the intended clarifying effects. There are simply too many understandings of humanity for it to be the final word.

When everyone speaks in the name of humanity, no one can monopolize its meaning. In the debate over stem cell research, for instance, both advocates and opponents speak of saving lives and of protecting the sacredness of humanity. Opponents argue that research on stem cells derived from human embryos violates the sanctity of human life in the name of research; supporters argue that refusing to allow such research condemns humanity to further disease, suffering, and death. This debate remains unsettled, though recent technological advances suggest that the issue may be resolved by the possibility of creating stem cells without humanity. Humanity not only means many different things, its meanings are often contradictory. Environmental conservation efforts can, by displacing people and constricting their livelihoods, clash with the rights claims of local populations, and each can claim to pursue the good of humanity (Veit and Benson 2004; Alley and Meadows 2004). In other words, by identifying certain peoples as the source of environmental degradation, and by understanding environmental degradation as a threat to the future of humanity, conservationists mayin the name of humanitythreaten the basic human rights of local populations to live and to choose their own livelihood.

Similarly, human rights and humanitarian perspectives on how best to protect human life can mandate conflicting courses of action. This conflict is abundantly clear in the debate about what to do about the profoundly tragicand highly contestedsituation in the Darfur region of Sudan. After the outbreak of conflict in 2003, human rights activists called for military intervention to save Darfur, to stop what they identify as genocide. Humanitarian workers, in contrast, warned of the catastrophic effects of military action on their ability to deliver relief. They believed that more lives would be lost in the intervention because it would render the presence of humanitarian workers impossible, threatening humanitarian neutrality and aid workers lives. All parties to this debate, and many others like it, speak for humanity.

Faced with what sometimes seems a cacophony of competing voices it is tempting to dismiss humanity as an empty signifiera category that claims universal relevance and to encompass all human beings, but which in fact is so historically, geographically, and politically situated as to have no meaning beyond its particular instantiations. In this volume, however, we take a different approach. In exploring the importance of universalist claims in making humanity an effective category, we are not principally interested in proving that such claims are in fact particular. While such debunking work is often important, and claims to encompass every person and experience should not be simply accepted at face value, our project here is to explore the effects of the claim-making itself. In so doing, we consider what Anna Tsing (2005: 6) has termed the sticky engagements of universal categories. It is through such engagements, through friction, Tsing suggests, that universals become practically effective even as they never fulfill their promises of universality (8). The capacity of humanity to govern so much of the contemporary political and ethical imaginary, and to have such demonstrable and significant effects on peoples lives, is the product of a deployment of universals.

In this collection we bring together essays that consider the configurations of humanity in three different arenashumanitarianism and human rights, biological technologies, and humans and natureeach of which offers a distinct perspective on this problem. We choose these sites not only to highlight the diversity of spaces and scales at which humanity is articulated but to show that humanity gains its power in the intersection of these different areas. The chapters illuminate the range of governing practices that have been crucial to the production of humanity across a global field. The universalist claims and practicesabout justice, about bodily integrity, and about the meaning of the natural worldthat fill out the category of humanity are given concrete expression in governmental arrangements that rely on notions of humanity as their foundation.