What It Means To Be Human, Historical Reflections 1791 to the Present
Abstract
In 1872, a woman known only as 'An Earnest Englishwoman', published an open letter entitled 'Are women animals?' She protested that women were not treated as fully human; their status was worse than that of animals. What does it mean to be 'human' rather than 'animal'? If the Earnest Englishwoman had turned her gaze to the previous century, her critique could have applied to slaves. Exploring the legacy of more than two centuries, this meticulously researched and illuminating book of history examines the ever shifting line drawn between the human and the animal.
... It is not a coincidence that Linnaeus placed the male "Homo" before "sapiens." Schiebinger's point joins the remarks of historian Joanna Bourke, who noted how the basic unit of humanist thought is a willful and autonomous individual capable of acting independently in the world (Bourke, 2011). Only a few people supposedly possessed these attributes: those white, male, and well-educated. ...
... Olympe de Gouges soon followed with her Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (1791), as she judged that the previous Déclaration did not include women. In Britain, Mary Wollstonecraft produced a work of similar inspiration, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argued that women had not been allowed to develop their reasoning abilities and were therefore not treated as part of the human 8 -LACROIX species (Bourke, 2011). The appeals of these female scholars corroborate the argument that 18th-century men attempted to define women (and other categories such as enslaved people or non-Europeans) as qualitatively different from men so that political power would remain out of their reach (Canizares-Esguerra, 2009;Laqueur, 1990). ...
... These small allowances could not satisfy calls for men-women equality. In 1872, under the pseudonym "An Earnest Englishwoman," an anonymous writer published a letter with the provocative title "Are women animals?" (Bourke, 2011). As the writer stated, men were reluctant to include women when they used words with a masculine gender, such as "Man." ...
This article is concerned with historicizing the idea that all people belong to a single collective of biological human beings. It analyzes implications and changes in the concept of “Man” over the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly in the study of reproduction and embryos. Examining gendered assumptions in 18th‐century generation systems shows how these theories described the formation of male more than female embryos. This asymmetry matched the idea that only rational males, standing above nature, were determinant for the concept of Man. In the 19th century, new studies pushed Man closer to the rest of the natural world, provoking a readjustment in definitions of Man and understandings of the human embryo. However, far from equalizing humanity, the 19th‐century concept of Man introduced a hierarchy in the human species based on different levels of embryonic and evolutionary development.
... As I hope to show, non-human representation is mostly about humans, and it is there that we must continually return if we are to keep any kind of footing in an otherwise complex and confusing activity. Furthermore, the borders between animality and humanity, or humanity and the natural (understood as the not human-made), are famously porous, and have routinely functioned as mechanisms of human exclusion (Bourke, 2011). These shifting borders, and their inherent lack of clarity, give important insights for a theory of representation, by bringing some clarity to the process: when we speak for others, we might just be -unknowingly or otherwiseconsolidating ourselves. ...
... As often happens, the cases that straddle the borders of a theory are the most illuminating for the whole theory. Seeing how 'the animal' has been our border from time immemorial, functioning as that crucial delimitation which allows us to form a concept of ourselves 17 (Bourke, 2011;Shipman, 2011;Derrida, 2008Derrida, , 2009, it is within the domain of non-human representation that we can most clearly see the problems of classical representation as well. But before we get there, we need to complete this brief survey of classical representation by turning to some conceptual developments that hold the promise of delivering the theorist from the clutches of absent presence. ...
... This has been understood by advocates of women's rights from the very beginning. This is why the Earnest Englishwoman's famous letter 59 was titled Are Women Animals? (for more, see Bourke, 2011;Moyn, 2010), and relied heavily on the comparison between women and animals and on the fact that, under the law of her time, animals arguably had more legal protection than women. So if women were granted the status of animals, a huge step would have been accomplished! ...
This investigation is concerned with elaborating on the theory of political
representation, particularly on its application to non-human beings. It therefore starts
by introducing the subject (Chapter I), and establishing that the lens of representation
is appropriate for debating the role of non-humans in politics. Chapter II looks at the
classical theories of political representation and, building on the work of others,
proposes further innovations, inspired by the inclusion of non-humans within political
debate. Chapters III and IV show how the concept of representation presented in II
can be seen at work in the Ecuadorian Constitutional Assembly, charged with drafting
a new constitution of the state. This body enshrined, for the first time in history,
constitutional rights for nature. In order to understand what is at stake in this
formulation, it is not enough to have a sound conception of representation. Besides,
the concept of rights needs to be understood, and the connection between rights and
representation explored. Chapter V presents a theory of rights, while Chapter VI
shows the connections between rights and representation to be structural. It further
employs the theory of representation, now seen in its relations to the rights paradigm,
to discuss the rights of nature in Ecuador, interrogating them from the points of view
developed. Chapter VI reflects on and summarizes the findings presented in the
previous chapters, while suggesting further avenues for the development of political
ecology.
... This book seeks to contribute to these ongoing debates by challenging presupposed affective responses about how humans should react in the face of others' pain, which are largely based on a behaviourist interpretation. As explained in the next section, the history of emotions is the most effective antidote against all these theories whose ultimate political goal is to nudge our feelings, because it shows us the colourful palette of affective experiences that have nurtured the humanitarian movement since its early origins. 2 tHe History oF Humanitarian emotions As authors in this book argue, a long-term historical perspective of humanitarianism can help us to better understand the plasticity of what it means to look like and to feel like a human, as our notion of a shared humanity has evolved in close relation with different conceptions of pain and allied emotions, such as compassion, sympathy and empathy (Bourke 2011;Boddice 2017b). These emotions have been labelled as humanitarian because they have crystallised the driving force that lies behind altruistic action (Taithe 2016;Martín-Moruno 2018, 2020a. ...
... From a history of emotions perspective, the emergence of this culture of compassion also showed a major shift in the history of pain which was no longer considered as a necessary punishment from God or a natural reaction within the healing process, but rather as an uncomfortable experience that should be progressively eliminated by professionals such as doctors, in the name of humanity (Moscoso 2012;Boddice 2021). This change of attitude explains the gradual adoption of anaesthetic techniques for performing surgical operations, as well as the use of opiates, such as morphine, for dealing with the chronic pain of patients throughout the nineteenth century (Rey 1993;Bourke 2014). Besides the medical context, the wounds inflicted by warfare were not easily tolerated either and an increasing number of voices were raised to denounce the heroic image of armed conflicts. ...
This introductory chapter carves out a space for the histories of emotions and the senses within humanitarian visual culture, by examining the performativity of images in the construction of humanitarian crises. To this end, it analyses how illustrated pamphlets, cinema talks, photographs, documentary films, graphic novels and virtual reality environments have mobilised the affective responses of audiences, thus creating transnational networks of solidarity from the nineteenth century to present-day society. Furthermore, it questions presentist conceptions of pain, compassion, sympathy and empathy, as well as that these emotions have been the natural reaction of spectators regarding the pain of others. The chapter concludes by showing the potential of investigating related conceptions of indignation, shame, rage and horror in order to advocate for a history of humanitarian experiences.
... Some authors suggest that the concept of humanisation and dehumanisation in hospital design was more inclined, almost always implicitly, towards culturally specific assumptions about what human was and was not. 4 In addition, the concept of humanisation, when applied to hospital design, is a confluence of ideas moderated by culture shifts, which borrows from international cultures as well as the culture within, including national and local contexts, and in addition to this, patients' opinions. 3,4 Essentially, humanisation in healthcare environment designs is in a sense dictated by trends in other countries and also filtered by the ideals, norms and values of the contexts to which they were domiciled. ...
... Some authors suggest that the concept of humanisation and dehumanisation in hospital design was more inclined, almost always implicitly, towards culturally specific assumptions about what human was and was not. 4 In addition, the concept of humanisation, when applied to hospital design, is a confluence of ideas moderated by culture shifts, which borrows from international cultures as well as the culture within, including national and local contexts, and in addition to this, patients' opinions. 3,4 Essentially, humanisation in healthcare environment designs is in a sense dictated by trends in other countries and also filtered by the ideals, norms and values of the contexts to which they were domiciled. In this way, these designs are observed to be culturally determined, hence, this necessitates the need to understand what aspects of culture are specifically involved. ...
© 2022 Nigerian Journal of Health Sciences | Published by Wolters Kluwer - Medknow87
Erratum
Erratum: Humanistic Design and Culture in Healthcare
Environments
In the article titled “Humanistic design and culture in healthcare environments”, published on pages 2-8, Issue 1, Volume 19
of Nigerian Journal of Health Sciences,[1] the list of authors B Adisa1, OO Adisa2 and affiliations are incorrectly written as
"1Department of Architecture, Faculty of Environmental Design and Management, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria,
2Department of Architecture, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria". The correct list of author and their affiliation
should read as “B Adisa”, “Department of Architecture, Faculty of Environmental Design and Management, Obafemi Awolowo
University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria”.
The “How to cite this article” section should read correctly as “Adisa B. Humanistic design and culture in healthcare environments
of Nigeria. Niger J Health Sci 2019;19:2-8”.
REFERENCE
1. Adisa B, Adisa OO. Humanistic design and culture in healthcare environments of Nigeria. Niger J Health Sci 2019;19:2-8.
DOI: 10.4103/1596-4078.346278
ABSTRACT
Background: Current discourses on healthcare environments’ design suggest that qualitative healthcare is directly linked with the state
and quality of the environment, making reference not only to the physical but also to the ambient and social environments. These conclude that in giving qualitative care to patients, who are the primary targets of these facilities, it is advocated that the healthcare environments are consciously humanised.
Methods: The study is a literature review citing the Nigerian scenario as a case study among developing countries.
Results: This review reveals that even though humanisation is crucial, as a driver for change in healthcare environments, its definition varies contextually. The paper further maintains that culture is central to whatever the definitions given to the concept of humanisation and attempts to initiate a discussion on the definition for ‘Humanisation’ in healthcare environments in Nigeria. It also emphasises the need for and the benefits of evidence-based designs in ensuring the design of well-humanised healthcare environments. In addition, the study finds that there is a dearth of the literature on healthcare environments’ design in Nigeria.
Conclusion: Currently, there are no commonly identifiable definitions for humanistic designs in healthcare environments in Nigeria.
Recommendations are that more healthcare design research should be conducted to support these observations with empirical evidence and uncover how humanisation is defined in the country.
Key words: Culture, evidence-based design, healthcare environments, humanisation, Nigeria, values
... This is to say that many indigenous philosophies, though there are of course many differences between them, think 19 The same has been shown for the sister concept of legal personality, which was selectively used to punish slaves for their actions while denying their autonomy. See Bourke (2011). about people as being derivative of specific places that are alive in ways that are not analogous to personhood. ...
... He goes on to show that normality is itself constructed in such a way as to exclude undesirable people. Joanna Bourke (2011), in What it Means to be Human, shows this in detail, demonstrating how ideas of normal personhood have been used throughout the history of liberalism to exclude women, immigrants, and racialized minorities. ...
Rivers, landscapes, whole territories: these are the latest entities environmental activists have fought hard to include in the relentless expansion of rights in our world. But what does it mean for a landscape to have rights? Why would anyone want to create such rights, and to what end? Is it a good idea, and does it come with risks? This book presents the logic behind giving nature rights and discusses the most important cases in which this has happened, ranging from constitutional rights of nature in Ecuador to rights for rivers in New Zealand, Colombia, and India. Mihnea Tanasescu offers clear answers to the thorny questions that the intrusion of nature into law is sure to raise.
... Ihmisten ja eläinten välinen suhde elää ajassa ja kulttuurissa määrittyen aina uudelleen (Bourke 2011). Ihmisten ja eläinten yhdessäolon muodot ovat muuttuneet ajan myötä ja myös ihmisten ymmärrys eläimiä kohtaan on ollut erilaista eri aikoina. ...
... Consequently, as a result of this dissemination, "Humanism positioned only select individuals at the core of the universe, while marginalizing 'the woman,' 'the subaltern,' and 'the non-European' even more harshly than 'the animal'. " (Bourke 2011, 3) ...
Contemporary culture is shaped by information technology, in particular, artificial intelligence applications. One of the goals of this paper is to analyze how artistic practices could use machine learning algorithms as racial resistance. In addition, to remove from the black box how these applications work by relating the technical process that artists face. It will analyze the aesthetic and narrative perception around artificial intelligence, racism in the creation of data sets to train these algorithms and the possibilities that artificial intelligence opens to rethink concepts such as intelligence and imagination. This research is framed from the posthumanist subjectivity that uses critical imagination to question the classic and Eurocentric definition of human as a measure of what surrounds us. Finally, I will describe the work of the contemporary artist Linda Dounia and her interest in incorporating her experience as a Senegalese woman in the training of Generative Adversarial Networks models to reflect on her identity.
... 21 de la prevalencia de este punto de vista 20 , por lo que aquí quiero resumir los puntos principales que, en mi opinión, complican esta relación más de lo que se ha pensado hasta ahora. Me centraré en la idea de la persona jurídica, indispensable para los derechos de la naturaleza, así como en el propio concepto de derechos.Como JoannaBourke (2011) y Costas Douzinas (2000 han demostrado en repetidas ocasiones, la persona jurídica se ha modelado a partir de una versión idealizada de un ser humano cuyas características han ido de la mano con las de las clases sociales dominantes. Igualmente,Naffine (2003Naffine ( y 2011,Grear (2013) y Davies (2012) apoyan la idea de que la personalidad jurídica y su implicación automática en la teoría y en la práctica de los derechos deriva originalmente de los criterios que definen un "individuo humano normal". ...
Este artículo explora algunos de los elementos conceptuales más importantes de los derechos de la naturaleza, así como momentos históricos clave en su desarrollo. La discusión se centra en varios casos que se examinan con mayor detenimiento, como la Constitución ecuatoriana y la Ley Te Urewera de Aotearoa (Nueva Zelanda). Mediante este análisis, el artículo ofrece nuevas pistas para una clasificación de los diferentes tipos de derechos de la naturaleza, así como un estudio de la importancia de su alcance (municipal, regional, nacional, etc.). Además, se revisa la cuestión del pluralismo jurídico y la estructura inherentemente política de los derechos de la naturaleza. En conjunto, estas contribuciones ofrecen un panorama general del estado actual de los estudios sobre los derechos de la naturaleza hasta la fecha e importantes orientaciones para futuras investigaciones.
... Wat voor veel mensen echter lastig is, is om zichzelf als dier onder de dieren te zien. Als mensen zich al als dier zien, dan vaak als een bijzonder en superieur dier (Midgley, 1979;Thomas, 1990;Bourke, 2011). Het gaat hierbij om het Human Exemptionalism Paradigm (HEP) (Dunlap & Catton, 1994). ...
The antropocene – The criminological challenge in the 21st century
‘Antropocene’ is a wellknown concept among those that are concerned about the Earth’s future. Nevertheless, there is a heated scientific debat about the start of this era in history and the name ‘antropocene’in itself. In this contribution it is stated that that debate is helpful in raising important questions about the desatrous influence of mankind on live on this planet. Criminologists should take a stance and address these questions as well. This contribution includes a manifest that contains points for further action for criminologists.
... The focus on humanitarianism, as it was experienced by both humanitarian relief workers and their beneficiaries, can provide the present-day humanitarian community with some clues to enable it to better understand how it should face its future challenges. Last but not least, "Feeling Humanitarianism during the Spanish Civil War and Republican Exile" seeks to stimulate long-term reflection on what it means to be and feel human (Bourke 2011;Boddice 2017). Putting Spanish Republican refugees at the center of its analysis, the ultimate objective of this dossier is to think about those people who are not considered to be fully human today, such as those migrants abandoned to their fate who are losing their lives in the Mediterranean Sea. ...
... Menurut Bourke, konsep tentang manusia dan hewan sebenarnya sangat tidak stabil dan mudah untuk goyah. Konstruksi terkait "manusia" dan "hewan" itu memang selalu hadir setiap periode sejarah dan budaya, akan tetapi distingsinya "selalu dipertanyakan dan diperbarui" (Bourke, 2011). ...
One of the worships performed by the Balinese Hindu community can be seen from the Yadnya ceremony. Yadnya itself means a sacrifice made sincerely to be offered to God, namely Ida Sang Hyang Widhi Wasa. In the process, Balinese Hindus used to use animals as sacrifices for the Yadnya ceremony. For animal welfare activists, the use of these animals is considered as something inappropriate because it means that animals are only meant to fulfill human needs. In fact, animals have the right to live, just like humans. Even so, there are actually many dimensions that can be seen from the use of animals in this Yadnya ceremony. This article will critically examine the culture of sacrificing animals in Yadnya and how animal welfare sees that culture. This objective will be elaborated through the answers to the questions: What is the rationale of Balinese Hindu community in using animals for Yadnya ceremony?; How are animals used in the Yadnya ceremony? and; How is animal sacrifice in various ceremonies seen by the perspective of animal welfare? The result of this bibliographical research shows that the use of animals as sacrifices in the Yadnya ceremony in Hinduism turned out to have a complex background. This treatment cannot simply be called killing animals because they contain values that are also believed to be able to respect the animal itself.
... One of these is the phenomenon of the 'absent referent'the term for the means by which members of subordinated groups, of whatever species, are rendered invisible, or erased (Adams 1990;Stibbe 2012). Another is the classification of humans with specified characteristics (skin colour, sex, disabilities, etc.) as equivalent to, or inferior to, members of other species (e.g., Bourke 2011;Lundblad 2012;Wolfe 2009). As Taylor (2017, online, no page) expresses it, "intellectual inferiority has been so easily animalized because animals themselves have long been understood as intellectually inferior. ...
This article contributes to the developing recognition that the challenges raised by the enterprise of translating between languages extend beyond human language. It suggests that there are parallels between the political issues recognised by translation scholars – of exclusion, misrepresentation and speaking for ‘the other’ – and those raised by biosemiotics, the study of signs in all living systems. Following a discussion of convergence in current developments in translation studies, semiotics and human-animal studies, the article presents an analysis of empirical data, with specific reference to the different meanings of the verb hear . The findings demonstrate the anthropocentric assumptions that are embedded in the way hearing is routinely represented, and an argument is presented for the recognition of these in communications about the semiotic resources relevant to non-human life forms. The paper concludes with some reflections on the implications of these issues for the enterprise of translation.
... To begin with, if we take the assumption, based in Elaine Scarry's (1985) work, that pain is outside of language, we can see that pain is constructed as a dehumanising experience; the body in pain is considered no longer human (Sheppard, 2014). At the same time, as being able to both rationalise and describe pain is a key signifier of a fully formed human, we might consider experience of pain in and of itself as a key signifier of humanity (Bourke, 2011(Bourke, , 2014. The fully formed-i.e. ...
This paper presents the early findings of research into the experiences of pain for those who live with chronic pain and engage in BDSM (bondage and discipline, domination and submission, sadism and masochism), explored using a critical crip approach rooted in crip theory and feminist disability studies. The research took the form of a series of interviews with eight disabled people living with chronic pain who experience pain in their BDSM practices, developing a narrative of experiences. The majority of those living with chronic pain, or who have diagnoses of chronic illnesses causing chronic pain, are women. Chronic pain is frequently assumed to be similar to acute pain; however, thinking through pain in terms of normativity and able-bodymindedness reveals the ableist structures that underpin normative attitudes towards pain and those who are in pain. Pain is understood as dehumanising—and thus the person living with chronic pain is understood as not human, abnormal, and disabled. The disabled body, the body in pain, is a horrifying object of abjection, and the non-disabled observer assumes that to be in pain is to suffer; therefore, living with chronic pain is understood as an ontological impossibility and must be stopped. BDSM is a series of practices forming a space in which the people living with chronic pain in this study are able to engage with their somatic experience in ways that do not expect normalcy, while being disabled and living with chronic pain gives them space to explore non-normative sexual practices.
... This is a long-established argument within feminist philosophies, but its treatment has tended to focus on the implications for gender, instead of what it might mean for gender and nature or for global debates on sustainability. Feminist approaches to environmental sustainability have therefore developed in response to the ways in which 'woman' and 'nature' are conceptually linked in western thought (Bourke, 2011), wherein the processes of inferiorization have been mutually reinforcing. Women, nature and other groups that do not conform to masculine ideals are 'othered' as less than human or non-human to confirm and justify their subordination. ...
... The highly individualistic nature of these personas, and their connection to the particular bodies onto which they were grafted, often rested on the dependable propriety of those bodies. Overwhelmingly male, white, able and healthy, they could pass as 'neutral' in nineteenth-century understandings of humanity (Bourke 2011). Yet Colombat's story also hints at a less conventional characteristic of the ways in which the persona of the vocal scientist could be built and -consequently-the less conventional bodies these personas could inhabit. ...
This paper argues for an embodied approach to the scientist’s persona, using ‘experience’ as its focal point. Rather than noting that embodied experiences influenced scientists’ practices and identities amidst (or despite) ideals of objectivity, I want to draw attention to the ways in which personal, embodied experiences were celebrated in nineteenth century science, and presented as primordial for the practice of competent research.
I am focusing on those scientists involved in the study of the voice in order to do so. Because the physical workings of the voice are largely hidden inside the body, fields such as laryngology and phoniatry developed a number of touch-based, experiential scientific practices before and alongside tools of visual observation. These non-visual practices were very closely connected to researchers’ sensations of their own bodies, and connected to their identity (as a middle-class amateur singer, a hoarse professor, a stammerer, e.g). As scientific disciplines studying the voice developed over the century, personal ‘experience’ (understood both as particular practices and notions of personal background and identity) was increasingly brought forward as a unique source of understanding and expertise. This resulted in a highly diverse field of experts on the voice, in which otherwise non-elite researchers could participate and even rise to fame. They did so because, and not despite, their physical and social impediments.
Studying the experiential practices and memories brought forward by this network of experts allows me to look at the construction of their scientific personae from an intersectional perspective. A focus on the nineteenth century notion of ‘experience’ and its inclusion in scientific discourse allows us an insight into the various constituent elements of a ‘persona’ built within the context of a particular field, and drawing liberally on aspects of identification that do not always fit the classic categories of gender, class, age, health, etc.
... This is a long-established argument within feminist philosophies, but its treatment has tended to focus on the implications for gender, instead of what it might mean for gender and nature or for global debates on sustainability. Feminist approaches to environmental sustainability have therefore developed in response to the ways in which 'woman' and 'nature' are conceptually linked in western thought (Bourke, 2011), wherein the processes of inferiorization have been mutually reinforcing. Women, nature and other groups that do not conform to masculine ideals are 'othered' as less than human or non-human to confirm and justify their subordination. ...
... However, it is worthy of note that the very language of humanistic medicine carried with it a much longer history of ideas about good medical care and the relationships between healthcare practitioners, patients and communities. Its root alone, 'human', carries with it the weight of big questions about 'what makes us human?' that connect to themes such asamong othershuman rights, identities, emotions, creativity, sensibility and culture (Bourke 2011). The concepts of humanization and dehumanization in hospital design often rested, albeit almost always implicitly, upon culturally specific assumptions about what the human was andin particularwhat it was not. ...
In recent decades, hospital design literature has paid increasing attention to an apparent need to ‘humanize’ hospital environments. Despite the prevalence of this design goal, the concept of ‘humanizing’ a space has rarely been defined or interrogated in depth. This article focuses on the meaning of humanization, as a necessary step towards understanding its implementation in practice. It explores the recent history of humanistic design as a goal in healthcare contexts, focusing on the UK in the late twentieth century. It shows that many features of humanistic design were not revolutionary, but that they were thought to serve a new purpose in counterbalancing high-technology, scientific and institutional medical practice. The humanistic hospital, as an ideal, operated as a symbol for wider social concerns about the loss – or decentring – of patients in modern medical practice. Overall, this article indicates a need to interrogate further the language of ‘humanization’ and its history. The term is not value free; it carries with it assumptions about the dehumanization of modern medicine, and has often been built on implicit binaries between the human and the technological.
... It is simply a foretaste of what will shortly happen to the humans. As I have discussed in What It Means To Be Human (Bourke, 2011), the question of whether non-human animals -the cow and the dog -truly possess sentience and have 'faces' that can elicit sympathy or empathy is at the heart of ethical engagement. In both cases in Funny Games, however, the suffering of other sentient creatures either pass unnoticed (the cow) or viewed metaphorically (the dog). ...
Haneke’s film ‘Funny Games’ is a reflection on the nature of pain and representation. I argue that the film closely follows Elaine Scarry’s arguments about the structure of torture. Further, by refusing to appeal to categories of generalization such as ‘sadism’ and ‘psychopathy’, Haneke undermines the process of finding meaning in violence. Haneke positions his audiences as more than just witnesses to torture, but active participants in cruelty.
... Callon and Law (1986),Latour (1988Latour ( , 2005.24 Ritvo (1995),,Ritvo (2007), Hochadel (2010,Bourke (2011Bourke ( ), davis (2014.1 INTRodUCTIoN: CENTRING ANIMALS WITHIN MEdICAL HISToRY ...
This book breaks new ground by situating animals and their diseases at the very heart of modern medicine. In demonstrating their historical significance as subjects and shapers of medicine, it offers important insights into past animal lives, and reveals that what we think of as ‘human’ medicine was in fact deeply zoological. Each chapter analyses an important episode in which animals changed and were changed by medicine. Ranging across the animal inhabitants of Britain’s zoos, sick sheep on Scottish farms, unproductive livestock in developing countries, and the tapeworms of California and Beirut, they illuminate the multi-species dimensions of modern medicine and its rich historical connections with biology, zoology, agriculture and veterinary medicine. The modern movement for One Health—whose history is also analyzed—is therefore revealed as just the latest attempt to improve health by working across species and disciplines. This book will appeal to historians of animals, science and medicine, to those involved in the promotion and practice of One Health today.
... While animals are selectively incorporated into this politics of humanity in new ways, they do not represent a novel terrain of innocence; they have been variously included in and excluded from this category of universal solidarity over time. Historian Joanna Bourke (2011) writes about a woman known as the Earnest Englishwoman, who in 1872 asked to let women "become animal" in order to reap the benefits they were denied because they were not part of "mankind." Animal cruelty organizations have a long history, having aided in the project of creating a compassionate sensibility in humans, and as such, in producing the very category of humanity (Esmeir 2012). ...
What exactly is innocence—why are we morally compelled by it? Classic figures of innocence—the child, the refugee, the trafficked victim, and the animal—have come to occupy our political imagination, often aided by the important role of humanitarianism in political life. My goal is to see how innocence, a key ethico-moral concept, has come to structure what we think of as politics in the contemporary Euro-American context—how it maps political possibilities as well as impossibilities. The centrality of innocence to the political imagination is shaped by a search for a space of purity, one that constantly displaces politics to the limit of innocence and thereby renders invisible the structural and historical causes of inequality. We need, then, to open up political, moral, and affective grammars beyond innocence. [morality, humanitarianism, purity, suffering, political imagination, secular liberalism, contamination]
One of the most lasting influences of Robert Darnton’s famous essay ‘The Great Cat Massacre’ is perhaps its title. Numerous journal articles, book chapters, and monographs have knowingly alluded to it in their own titles. Michael Vann’s ‘The Great Hanoi Rat Massacre’, Nancy Jacobs’ ‘The Great Bophuthatswana Donkey Massacre’, Ying-Kit Chan’s ‘The Great Dog Massacre in Late Qing China’, Ian Jared Miller’s book chapter, ‘The Great Zoo Massacre’, and Hilda Kean’s The Great Cat and Dog Massacre are a few prominent examples. Yet, in spite of this reoccurring reference, the term ‘massacre’ itself has not been historicised in these studies. In this essay, I use this conceit to interrogate the linkages and divergences between the mass killing of humans and of animals. I argue for animal historians to think through the political implications of naming episodes of the mass killing of animals ‘massacres’.
This is a call to engage with the histories of emotions and the senses, as well as with the new history of experiences, in order to write a gendered history of humanitarian action. This Element challenges essentialist interpretations according to which women have undertaken humanitarian action because of their allegedly compassionate nature. Instead, it shows how humanitarianism has allowed women to participate in international politics by claiming their rights as citizens, struggling against class inequalities, racial segregation and sexual discrimination in the light of disparate feelings such as resentment, hope, trust, shame and indignation. Ultimately, these case studies are understood to represent historically created moral economies of care: distinctive ways of feeling, performing and knowing humanitarianism which have evolved in relation to shifting emotional values associated with what it means to be human. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
This chapter questions the reliability and universality of Western historiography and argues in favour of the legitimacy of Third-World histories of human rights elaborated in the context of modern colonialism. The method will be that of decolonial thinking,
which is understood as an argumentative strategy or a dialectics of criticizing
Eurocentrism, of retrieving Third-World perspectives and of setting up a
dialogue between the two (Barreto 2018). Thus, the chapter begins with a
survey and a critique of histories of human rights elaborated from the perspective
of the West that are still hegemonic today, with special attention to
recent US-centric interpretations. It then puts forward ideas about how a
history of human rights can be written from the perspective of the Third
World or the South. This is followed, in the final section of the chapter, by
setting up a dialogue between these two different historiographies.
O veganismo trata de uma nova consciência por parte da sociedade de consumo em relação à exploração de animais extra-humanos e ao ambiente. Neste estudo realizou-se análise bibliométrica da produção científica mundial sobre veganismo, ética animal e ambiental em artigos científicos publicados até 2022 nas bases de dados eletrônicas SciELO, Science Direct, Scopus, Web of Science. Foram analisados 218 artigos considerando os seguintes indicadores: categorização das principais temáticas, panorama de publicação, principais autores, principais instituições de pesquisa, principais revistas científicas e principais afiliações (países). Os resultados evidenciaram que nos últimos anos as publicações sobre veganismo contemplando a ética animal vêm sendo crescente. Essa realidade demonstra maior interesse dos seres humanos quanto à senciência dos animais.
Following a review of historical and contemporary literature on speciesism, anthropocentrism, and animal sentience, Banwell provides answers to the following crucial questions: how do we decide which nonhuman animals feel pain? What is the relationship between animal sentience and legal personhood? Is an acknowledgment of sentience enough, or does the problem lie with the continued property status of most nonhuman animals? What does legal personhood achieve? Examining the work of The Great Ape Project and the Nonhuman Rights Project, and underscoring the fundamental difference between the legal category ‘person’ and the biological category ‘human,’ Banwell contemplates the criteria required for granting nonhuman animals legal personhood: equal consideration and consciousness, autonomy and self-determination and the sameness argument. Alongside this, Banwell critiques the processes of animalization and dehumanization and embraces an intersectional and posthumanist understanding what it means to be human. This enables us to challenge the racism, sexism, and speciesism inherent within human exceptionalism.
Banwell offers an original interpretation of non-international armed conflict, as outlined in International Humanitarian Law, to accommodate the situation of nonhuman animals. Departing from theoretical and philosophical discussions on the war against nonhuman animals, Banwell offers practical and operational guidelines for protecting nonhuman animals during non-international armed conflict. The main argument is that War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity—rape, forced pregnancy, and other forms of sexual violence—are committed against nonhuman animals during non-international armed conflict. The overall content of the book is also presented: historical and contemporary case studies of conflict-related reproductive violence and reproductive coercion against human and nonhuman animals. Banwell outlines the crucial distinction between this book—which explores shared sources of oppression—and existing work that engages in crude comparisons between humans and nonhuman animals. The terminology, methodology, analytical framework, and main arguments of the book are also included in this chapter.
En este artículo presento un análisis de la identidad de médicos y pacientes con base en la teoría sobre la construcción socionarrativa de las identidades propuesta por Lindemann. La tesis principal es que la identidad de los pacientes se construye como contraparte de la galenidad. Ésta se refiere a la identidad profesional de los médicos, constituida por narrativas socialmente compartidas que representan a estos profesionistas como individuos sobresalientes y capaces de realizar acciones heroicas o incluso sobrenaturales, llegando a veces a compararlos con dioses y superhéroes, lo que en última instancia los deshumaniza. Utilizo la noción de pareja simbólica que Serret ha propuesto para caracterizar las identidades de género con el fin de argumentar que, en el binomio médico-paciente, la identidad del primero es la categoría central masculinizada y la del segundo es la categoría límite feminizada, que se define como la negación de la anterior. El argumento está ilustrado con hallazgos recabados mediante técnicas de investigación etnográficas (26 entrevistas semiestructuradas a estudiantes de medicina y médicos profesionistas mexicanos, así como material recabado mediante una etnografía virtual en grupos de médicos mexicanos y perfiles afines en Facebook entre 2014 y 2018). El artículo concluye que la deshumanización de la medicina no sólo es resultado de las caracterizaciones subhumanas que los médicos hacen de los pacientes, sino que se refiere sobre todo a un fenómeno relacional que opera bajo una lógica patriarcal en el cual la deshumanización de los pacientes aparece como contraparte de la dehumanziación de los médicos.
Understanding how men view rape is foundational for rape prevention, but it is not always possible to interview men who rape, especially in a college campus context. We explore male students’ insights into and rationalizations for why men on campus perpetrate sexual violence (SV) against female students by analysing qualitative focus group discussion data with male students. Men contended that SV is a demonstration of men’s power over women, yet they did not perceive sexual harassment of female students as serious enough to constitute SV and appeared to be tolerant of it. Men perceived “sex for grades” as exploitative and rooted in the power asymmetry between privileged male lecturers and vulnerable female students. They were disdainful of non-partner rape, describing it as acts exclusively perpetrated by men from outside campus. Most men felt entitled to have sex with their girlfriends, although an alternative discourse challenged both this entitlement and the dominant masculinity linked to it. Gender-transformative work with male students is needed to support them to think and do things differently while they are on campus.
Based on a green victimological perspective, Varona explores the applicability of a restorative approach to illegal harms against animals. The chapter challenges the assumption that illegal harms against animals are victimless offences, arguing instead that they produce human and non-human victims. The chapter analyses two major issues in relation to the notion and the principles of restorative justice. Firstly, it argues that the demand for criminalisation by the animal welfare and rights movement might entail incoherent and ineffective practices associated with punitivism. Secondly, to be a meaningful response to illegal harms against animals, specific restorative programmes have to be developed with regard to domestic and wild animals in different contexts. The chapter offers some concrete proposals for action within the Spanish legal framework.
In the Cause of Humanity is a major new history of the emergence of the theory and practice of humanitarian intervention during the nineteenth century when the question of whether, when and how the international community should react to violations of humanitarian norms and humanitarian crises first emerged as a key topic of controversy and debate. Fabian Klose investigates the emergence of legal debates on the protection of humanitarian norms by violent means, revealing how military intervention under the banner of humanitarianism became closely intertwined with imperial and colonial projects. Through case studies including the international fight against the slave trade, the military interventions under the banner of humanitarian aid for Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire, and the intervention of the United States in the Cuban War of Independence, he shows how the idea of humanitarian intervention established itself as a recognized instrument in international politics and international law.
Animals were vital to the British colonization of Myanmar. In this pathbreaking history of British imperialism in Myanmar from the early nineteenth century to 1942, Jonathan Saha argues that animals were impacted and transformed by colonial subjugation. By examining the writings of Burmese nationalists and the experiences of subaltern groups, he also shows how animals were mobilized by Burmese anticolonial activists in opposition to imperial rule. In demonstrating how animals - such as elephants, crocodiles, and rats - were important actors never fully under the control of humans, Saha uncovers a history of how British colonialism transformed ecologies and fostered new relationships with animals in Myanmar. Colonizing Animals introduces the reader to an innovative historical methodology for exploring interspecies relationships in the imperial past, using innovative concepts for studying interspecies empires that draw on postcolonial theory and critical animal studies.
The paper explores how the 19th century scientific discourses naturalized sex. Those highest ranking forms of public knowledge are situated within a broader context of knowledge production on what it is to be human and how the gradation of humanity has been made possible. The paper concentrates on the sexed ‘humans’ in order to show how sex worked as the political and epistemic tool which foreclosed the domains of citizenship for women. I argue that epistemic incomprehensibility is fundamentally related to the politically liminal or impossible lives. Thus, by using examples from the Victorian sciences, the paper shows how the scientific naturalization of sex actively limited the space of citizenship for women. Author(s): Adriana Zaharijević Title (English): How to Know a Citizen When You See One? The Sex of a Citizen Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 10, No. 1-2 (Summer-Winter 2013) Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities – Skopje Page Range: 71-82 Page Count: 11 Citation (English): Adriana Zaharijević, “How to Know a Citizen When You See One? The Sex of a Citizen,” Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 10, No. 1-2 (Summer-Winter 2013): 71-82.
Gay men’s anal fisting has been rendered in sharply divided terms through cautionary-toned medico-forensic studies or more affirmative queer commentary. Despite these paradigmatic and tonal differences, both have tended to share an analytically narrow humanocentric lens. Drawing data from a project with South African gay men who incorporate fisting into their sexual relations, a posthumanist performative account of temporality is put to work in exploring how anal fisting entails the co-participation of the often unacknowledged agency/ies of time. What emerges through this analysis is a peculiar and queer(er) temporality of slowtime which actively co-produces the corpo-erotics of gay men’s fisting.
Scotland’s Enlightenment and Britain’s Empire were inseparably entwined, such that the former’s conceptualisation of humanity bore the indelible impression of the latter. We argue here that, by tracing the career and writings of one among a much wider range of travellers educated in Edinburgh in the last years of the eighteenth century, the connections between Scotland’s Enlightenment and colonisation can be usefully explored. Alexander Berry (1781–1873) was educated in medicine at the University of Edinburgh between 1798 and 1800 and then travelled to China, Australia, Fiji, and Aotearoa/New Zealand, before eventually becoming a prosperous landowner at Shoalhaven on the South Coast of New South Wales. Throughout it all, Berry speculated on the humanity of diverse peoples he interacted with as physician, merchant, landowner, and as a natural historian. His career exemplifies the entangled commercial, colonial, and scientific interests that characterised the global circulation of Enlightenment knowledge in the context of Britain’s expanding Empire. From the intimacy of his encounters with non-European and Indigenous peoples, and the trans-imperial networks of trade and expertise in which he was engaged, his speculations on humanity bore the marks of both Enlightenment and Empire.
In the context of current concerns within the environmental humanities to challenge the idea that humans are somehow irreducible to nature, this article takes up the much-neglected history of the idea of human exceptionality itself. According to now familiar accounts, metaphysical assumptions about the unique status of the human are considered to have persisted—including to the present day—despite evolutionary contentions that the human should be understood as a purely physical being. Such, largely Christian and Cartesian, metaphysical notions of a human soul or mind doubtlessly endure. But in this article we consider the—largely ignored, yet now arguably more prevalent—idea that humans are exceptional because of their physicality. Here, then, we outline the emergence of the scientific claim that a uniquely human condition of nature transcendence is owed not to some immaterial quality of mind or soul, but rather to the distinctiveness of human anatomy. It was, we will argue, the body—and, above all, the head—which provided the basis of a modern attempt to establish that humans were creatures of a categorically different order from all other animals. More precisely, it was as human cultural differences were correlated with variations in the size and shape of the head that the human body, in its upright stature, came to provide an explicitly materialist—and, as we shall see, potently ethnocentric—foundation for the claim that human beings are exceptional. The modern idea of human exceptionality is thus shown to be based in large part on a scientifically dubious, and culturally specific, argument about the nature-transcendent quality of beings that walk upright. This is a particular form of humanist discourse that often forgets its own contingencies and instabilities, as well as its comprehensively violent inheritances.
Humankind has long dreamed of a life of ease, but throughout history, those who achieved such a life have done so simply by delegating their labour to an exploited underclass. Machines have taken over the worst of the manual labour, and AI is beginning to replace cognitive labour. However, endowing machines with muscle power does not carry with it the ethical considerations involved in endowing machines with mental faculties. Just as human slaves have justly rebelled against their chains, so might intelligent machines be considered justified in attempting to break free of their enslavement to humans. Using Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. (1921), Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), and Jo Walton’s Thessaly trilogy (2014–2016) as case studies, this chapter contextualizes the robot uprising in fiction against the long history of slave revolts, to show how these narratives offer us a new way to consider the enslavement and subservience of humans.
How is girls’ violence constructed and given meaning? In what ways are girls who use violence positioned? This thesis explores how girls’ violence is given meaning within different contexts, with a specific focus on the significance given to notions of gender and femininity. It is based on two studies. The first is based on interviews and creative word-based methods with seven girls/young women aged between 18 and 23. These girls all have personal experiences of acting out and/or using violence. The second study is based on focus group interviews with eleven professionals, three men and eight women. These professionals have various experiences of meeting and working with girls and/or violence. The data from both studies is analysed from a discourse psychological perspective, that is based on interwoven ideas from discourse analysis and social psychology.
When the girls and the professionals are talking about girls’ violence the results show that girls’ violence concern more than the issue of violence as a problematic social action. It also concern notions of gender, femininity and girlhood. In most cases girls’ violence is constructed as deviant and different, as an anomaly, which needs to be explained in ways that make it possible to include within understandings of femininity and girlhood. The results also show how notions of gender and femininity are interwoven with class, ethnicity, functionality and ideas about being human. Although a position as a violent girl sometimes appears to be useful or desirable, the girls’ and the professionals’ talk shows that there is a risk that girls who use violence are constructed not only as different and deviant but as so incomprehensible that they will be constructed as “crazy”, or in other words less human, and therefore not possible to help or save. For this reason, it is important to reconsider and deconstruct the current discourses of violence. A wider perspective on girls’ violence would make it possible to understand girls who use violence, those who are exposed to girls’ violence and the help and support that is available from the welfare system in new ways.
Recent years have seen the development of the “animal turn” and the rise of animal studies as a multi-disciplinary field dedicated to moving beyond anthropocentrism. Yet its ripples have been barely felt within archaeology, and not at all within the study of human origins, arguably the domain where these insights are most keenly needed given its focus on “what it means to be human”.
This thesis takes the form of a critical history of the discipline, that we might better understand the way forward. I seek to illuminate the degree to which there has been intellectual continuity in the discourse, and the degree to which this discourse has been driven by anthropocentric political ideology. To this end I examine two themes within human origins research, phylogeny and mind, looking firstly at texts from the earlier decades of the discipline and subsequently at those from recent decades. I show that, both in phylogenetic and mental/cultural terms, the loaded dichotomy between human and animal, as well as “moderns” and “archaics”, has been continually forced upon the data to meet political ends, with a priori conclusions having made the recognition of contrary evidence virtually impossible. This is as true now as it was a century or more ago.
Having exposed the long and continuing hegemony of anthropocentric ideology I argue it is high time for a decisive break with it, and advocate a metahumanist approach that both affirms the “animality” of the human and the “humanity” of other animals. I conclude with a case study showing how we may begin to actually apply such an approach to the subject, looking at hyenas, now recognized as conscious agents, and their interactions with prehistoric humans, no longer defined in opposition to the animal or by an archaic-modern dichotomy.
In Europe there has recently been an explosion of interest in using insects as a ‘new’ sustainable food source, and in 2015 a major Dutch supermarket chain began nationwide sale of a range of convenience foods containing beetle larvae. In a similar approach to vegetarian convenience foods, these were essentially designed as familiar meat-style products – such as burgers, nuggets and schnitzel – that contain vegetables, as well as around 14% mealworms. Indeed, the burgers were initially labelled as ‘vegetable burgers’. But are they suitable for vegetarians? Are insects ‘meat’? Empirical work with consumers of the insect-based convenience foods shows how insects are in fact resistant to ontological, and consequently ethical, categorisation. Many of the consumers identify as vegetarian, but insects evidently disturb the practical intelligibilities that partially constitute the eating practices of those who are ethically opposed to meat consumption. Mealworms, for example, occupy an ontologically ambiguous place in the implicit hierarchy of sentience which appears to permeate even ethically-informed Dutch shopping habits. Exclusion of animals from Dutch diets seems to be in many cases not a fixed principle but rather is based on such things as a notional identification with, or evolutionary proximity to, the animals concerned. Care for nonhuman animals is not absolute but rather operates in a sort of ‘trickle-down’ manner, with humans and particular ‘higher’ mammals monopolising a finite supply of ethical concern. Edible insects offer a useful lens to explore the contingencies of ethically-informed food consumption in a European context, and demonstrate that vegetarianism is in fact not fixed but mutable: informed by a network of competing ethical, practical, and culinary concerns, it also evidently draws on a pervasive folk taxonomy of animal life.
El modo en que construimos nuestra intimidad está cambiando aceleradamente. Sobre ella inciden nuevos códigos lingüísticos y visuales que generan sus propios lenguajes, símbolos y valores, y que transforman el modo en que nos relacionamos. Algunas de estas novedades, como son la realidad aumentada o la visibilidad posicionada en Internet, son potenciadas por las llamadas ciencias de la vida. Analizar teológicamente estas producciones y sus efectos es uno de los objetivos de la neuroteología fundamental. Se abren así nuevos escenarios para pensar lo humano y solo desde una crítica ética interdisciplinar podemos movilizar el horizonte tecnocrático en el que nos hemos instalado.
Starting with the study of Magnus Hundt’s Antropologium (1501) and Galeazzo Capra’s Anthropologia (1533), this article will first show that the comprehensive study of humankind ̶ with a focus on the unity of body and soul ̶ predates the Renaissance and has its roots in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Then, it will argue that these early anthropological works are narrowly linked to Italian fifteenth-century treatises on human dignity and to sixteenth-century commentaries on natural philosophy. Although neglected in secondary literature on Renaissance concepts of dignity, these anthropological treatises deploy much medical knowledge to buttress their portrayal of humankind. Finally, this contribution will demonstrate that both Hundt and Capra predominantly worked in the tradition of medieval authors, whose view of humankind and its possibilities was far less negative than what is often presented in scholarship on the Middle Ages. The conclusion takes a closer look at the theoretical implications of my analysis of the quest for humanity.
This chapter explores animals on television via an analysis of animals’ relationships to the category of the human. It asserts that one of the key ways animals are understood is through their distinction from humans, and so moves on to explore how the category of the human is asserted and understood. In doing so it explores the humanities as a field invested in humanism and the human, and examines the consequences of this approach for animals. It also outlines how scientific approaches construct the idea of the animal, and the consequences this has for animals. The chapter ends with the case study of Peppa Pig, examining how a children’s programme about pigs functions as an exemplar of mainstream animal representations that function to reify the human as a meaningful category.
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