Humanity After Biopolitics

On the Global Politics of Human Being

Bibliographic Data

ID4875573
AuthorsAnthony Burke (0000-0002-4599-2272, UNSW Sydney, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume16
Issue4
Pages101-114
Publication date2011-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAngelaki (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0969-725X • E-ISSN: 1469-2899
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0969725x.2011.641348
OpenAlexW1587976536
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited18

Against the background of a profound critique of human rights, cosmopolitan universalism and humanistic political agency offered by writers as diverse as Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt and Jenny Edkins, this essay seeks to recover and rethink the figure of humanity. Arguing that the critique of biopolitics and sovereignty unwittingly frustrates visions of human dignity and agency that can serve as a resource against its abuses, the essay argues that a vision of interdependent, indebted, and dispersed human being – one that can never be reduced to the ego or subject or an arc of history – is both an undeniable global fact and a normative resource. Conceived as a primary value that should normatively precede and condition (bio)politics, even as it never escapes it, humanity is a system of relations with animals, ecosystems, and physical/cosmic environments which occasions profound collective responsibilities. Always intertwined with the powers and terrors of human capacity and action, such a vision is at once a source of philosophical hope and an endless task of critical political work

Agency (philosophy · Biopower · Cosmopolitanism · Dignity · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Human rights · Humanism · Humanity · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Sovereignty · Subject (documents · Universalism · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Political Theology and Sovereignty