Humankind and Humaneness

In the chapter “Heart of Humaneness: The Moral Economy of Humanitarian Intervention,” from Contemporary States of Emergency, Didier Fassin writes about the two aspects of humanitarian government – humanitarian reason and emotion. Humanitarian reason, Fassin writes, is “the principle according to which humans share a condition that inspires solidarity with one another,” while humanitarian emotion is “the affect by virtue of which human beings feel personally concerned by the situation of others” (271). These two aspects, Fassin argues are what produce solidarity and compassion in humanitarian intervention. These elements serve a two point categorical imperative for humanitarianism that on the one hand, presents such shared experiences as an identification with humankind, with an affective relationship toward others, through sympathy or emotion, or what Fassin terms humaneness.  These identifications, with humankind and humaneness through affect are what provide the basis for a contemporary moral economy that stands alongside a political economy, forming what Fassin theorizes as the politics of life. This is what is so compelling in Didier Fassin’s work and what insights he offers most, particularly in the ways that such economies (moral and political) become standardized and regulated. Humanitarianism, then for Fassin, is what is most at stake in the relationship and apparent separation between the humanitarianism and politics. Drawing from Agamben, such separation between the two also represents the extreme phase of the separation of the rights of man from the rights of the citizen. In Fassin’s earlier work, “Humanitarianism as a Politics of Life,” Fassin argues that the world falls into two camps: politics, which sacrifices or has the authority to choose between life and death, and humanitarianism, whose imperative is to save as many lives as possible.

            What interests me in this discussion are the implications for the relationship of human aid and human rights within such a formation. Put differently, if humanitarian intervention rests on identification with humankind and the affective relationship toward others through humaneness, then how are individuals figured when there are clear human rights violations without the aide of humanitarian intervention? What can we say about these terms of humankind and humaneness if the vulnerabilities of certain groups are not recognized by such military humanitarian interventions? On the one hand, what does it say about whom is constituted as vulnerable enough to receive humanitarian intervention? Conversely, how does the lack of such intervention articulate such groups as non-human and/or disposable – as living outside humankind of do not qualified for humaneness?

Fassin writes,

 “The fundamental value that forms the basis for humanitarian government is human life. The highest justification of humanitarian government’s intervention in this context is saving life. It is in this framework that the military can call its intervention ‘humanitarian’” (275).

Returning to the point made by Agamben – the separation between humanitarianism and politics as the separation between the rights of man and the rights of citizen, what else is at stake for those who live in the interstices of humanitarianism and politics? On the one hand, how can we think of these groups as dwelling in the interstices between government and humanitarianism and what are the stakes of such a position in terms of the biopolitics of humanitarian intervention, when it becomes a matter of to live and let die? Secondly, what does it say in terms of how such groups are articulated, if such humanitarian interventions are absent? Are they at the level of bare life? Another level of (non)life? How are they constituted as (non)humans? Perhaps the week of Zones of Abandonment will further discuss these issues, but this is an issue that I would like to further discuss.