HuManitarianism: Race and the overrepresentation of ‘Man’

Abstract

AbstractThis paper explores the foundational role of race in humanitarianism, its historical geographies, genealogy, and contemporary practice. I pay particular attention to the work of Sylvia Wynter on the overrepresentation of (white bourgeois) Man in modernist understandings of the human that form the basis of humanitarianism in the present. Building on Wynter's work, I offer an alter‐historical geography of humanitarianism – locating its genus in the voyages of 1441 and 1492 – that unsettles other critical work on the colonial origins of humanitarianism as both a normative and instrumental form of governance and their geographies. In following what Wynter terms a “human view”, I explore the racist orderings of Rational Man and his irrational, racialised “others” that work to structure humanitarianism's subjects. Alongside this, I consider the parasitic relations of humanitarianism to the negation of life enacted through the genocide of Black and Indigenous peoples, arguing humanitarianism's claims to save lives and relieve suffering cannot be divorced from conquistador violence. I argue that grappling with what Wynter calls “category problems” is necessary as humanitarianism – or huManitarianism – faces the contemporary challenges raised by Black Lives Matter that undermine and question its universalist legitimacy.