What It Means to Be Human: Historical Reflections from the 1800s to the Present
Joanna Bourke
Language: English
Pages: 448
ISBN: 1582436088
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In this fascinating account, Joanna Bourke addresses the profound question of what it means to be “human” rather than “animal.” How are people excluded from political personhood? How does one become entitled to rights? The distinction between the two concepts is a blurred line, permanently under construction. If the Earnest Englishwoman had been capable of looking 100 years into the future, she might have wondered about the human status of chimeras, or the ethics of stem cell research. Political disclosures and scientific advances have been re-locating the human-animal border at an alarming speed. In this meticulously researched, illuminating book, Bourke explores the legacy of more than two centuries, and looks forward into what the future might hold for humans, women, and animals.
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generosity of my colleagues has fostered my work over many years; and my students have consistently forced me to think anew about received wisdom. Finally, though, thanks go to my supportive, extended families in New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland and Greece. In particular, my parents have helped my understanding in innumerable ways. But nothing happens without Costas. His intellectual acumen is breathtaking; his solidarity with the sans papiers and the aganaktismenoi (the ‘indignant’),
social life. Perhaps the very concept of ‘culture’ is an attempt to differentiate ourselves from our ‘creatureliness’, our fleshly vulnerability. What philosopher Giorgio Agamben has called the ‘anthropological machine’, or the compulsive inclination to demarcate the territory of the human from that of the non-human, is one of the great driving forces of history.5 Delimiting those territories not only involves violence, but inspires it. Most of this book, then, involves untangling varying
a summary jurisdiction, and, if the court thinks it fit destroyed” – so far as all sense of decency is concerned’. This was even more unfair on women because, unlike stray dogs who might bite people, women ‘might be injured through no fault of their own’ but as a result of the actions of ‘licentious men’.16 At the very least, women would never be treated with respect if men continued to valorize power and sensuality over morality and sensitivity. This was the view of ‘Vanessa’, writing in the
lost on these reformers that the true human in this politics was female; she was the person who valorized emotions over reason. PA RT 3 . R E C O G N I Z I N G The Legal Construction of Humanity CHAPTER SEVEN Mr Heathcliff quarter of a century before the Earnest Englishwoman posed the question ‘Are Women Animals?’, another Englishwoman had also hidden behind a pseudonym, but her question was exactly the opposite. Are men really human? she asked. Ellis Bell – in reality, the shy
time but with artistic skill. Then, ‘because all my senses were reeling’, he cried out a loud ‘Hallo!’ With this word he ‘broke into human speech, sprang with this cry into the community of men, and felt their echoing cry: “Listen, he’s speaking!”’ The ape said ‘Hallo’ and was catapulted into the ‘community of men’. Humans, it turned out, are speaking apes. They are (as Red Peter certainly was) fond of ‘using images’, thus demonstrating the ability to think conceptually or in abstract terms. For
