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"In a complex world where competing groups claim to be speaking on behalf of incommensurate versions of 'humanity, ' the authors represented in "In the Name of Humanity" ask not what humanity is but what are the epistemic, market, governmental logics, and environmental parsings that fashion humanity, and the humans who will inhabit humanity in the 21st century."--Elizabeth A. Povinelli, author of "The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism"

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In the Name of Humanity

Duke University Press

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.............................................................................................................................................................................viiIntroduction GOVERNMENT AND HUMANITY Ilana Feldman & Miriam Ticktin.......................................................................................................................1When Humanity Sits in Judgment CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY AND THE CONUNDRUM OF RACE AND ETHNICITY AT THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR RWANDA Richard Ashby Wilson.....................27Children, Humanity, and the Infantilization of Peace Liisa Malkki..........................................................................................................................58Narrative, Humanity, and Patrimony in an Equatorial African Forest Rebecca Hardin..........................................................................................................86Inhumanitas POLITICAL SPECIATION, ANIMALITY, NATALITY, DEFACEMENT Allen Feldman............................................................................................................115"Medication is me now" HUMAN VALUES AND POLITICAL LIFE IN THE WAKE OF GLOBAL AIDS TREATMENT Joo Biehl....................................................................................151Environment, Community, Government Arun Agrawal............................................................................................................................................190The Mortality Effect COUNTING THE DEAD IN THE CANCER TRIAL S. Lochlann Jain...............................................................................................................218Inequality of Lives, Hierarchies of Humanity MORAL COMMITMENTS AND ETHICAL DILEMMAS OF HUMANITARIANISM Didier Fassin.......................................................................238The Politics of Experimentality Adriana Petryna............................................................................................................................................256Stealth Nature BIOMIMESIS AND THE WEAPONIZATION OF LIFE Charles Zerner....................................................................................................................290BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................................................................................................325CONTRIBUTORS................................................................................................................................................................................359INDEX.......................................................................................................................................................................................363

Chapter One

Crimes against Humanity and the Conundrum of Race and Ethnicity at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda Richard Ashby Wilson

IN ORDER to exercise universal jurisdiction, the international humanitarian law that grounds modern international criminal tribunals and courts (e.g., for Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, and the International Criminal Court) in most instances requires an undifferentiated notion of "humanity." This chapter investigates some of the problems that arise in international trials when representatives of "humanity" come to deliver judgment on acts of racially motivated mass violence.

LAWS OF HUMANITY

Modern human rights directly emanate from ideas of natural law and natural rights based on a universal human nature. The latter have a long history that predates the modern era, but with the rise of modernity these ideas become central to secular forms of republican governance. While a universal conception of humanity can be found in monotheistic religious traditions extending back thousands of years, a radical shift in consciousness took place in Europe and the Americas during the eighteenth century. At this point in time, political philosophers, legal thinkers, and politicians detached the ideas of humanity and human nature from their religious moorings and incorporated them into a secularized moral, legal, and political code that formed the basis of a new republican sovereignty, particularly in the revolutions in France and British North America.

There was a significant legal dimension to the new politics of humanity in the eighteenth century. Of what did this "humanity law" consist? In their attempts to secularize humanity, early advocates of international law such as Emmerich de Vattel (the author of The Laws of Nations [2005], first published in France in 1758) defined humanity negatively, that is, humanity was constructed in its breach. A negative treatment of humanity characterizes eighteenth-century legal judgments such as Somerset v. Stewart, a groundbreaking case supporting the antislavery movement's efforts to render the slave trade illegal in Britain and its colonial empire. On June 22, 1772, the lawyers of the former slave Somerset applied for his freedom before the court and served a writ of habeas corpus. Lord Mansfield's judgment found in favor of Somerset and drew heavily on natural law to justify its line of argument, "The state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political; but only positive law, it's so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged" (§510).

In eighteenth-century European legal and political thought, humanity was largely a negative category. It was created by acts that repel and were considered odious, repugnant, and disgraceful, rather than by human behaviors deemed beautiful or intellectually or morally edifying. "Humanity" materializes when there is an offense against natural law, the legal and moral basis of human rights in the eighteenth century. From the outset, laws of humanity have been a mirror for human cruelty that can seemingly be applied in any setting. These ideas retain an influence to this day, as evidenced by the category of "crimes against humanity." Humanity is still constructed in its breach.

The newly secularized humanitarian sensibility expressed sympathy and compassion when faced with suffering inflicted on others, not only of one's kin or tribe or nation, but any person, regardless of race, religion, or origin. This humane response was seen in the eighteenth century to be self-evident, natural, and therefore universal. It required not just a disposition of empathy from the actor but an active indignation that motivates the political will to end all unacceptable suffering. In this way, the idea of humanity provided legitimate intellectual and moral foundations for a new type of political sovereignty, one which can be exercised across political borders and established jurisdictions. Without the idea of humanity, one cannot pass laws with universal jurisdiction, prohibiting a range of heinous crimes against distant others that offend the global sensibility of humanitarians.

Humanitarianism assumed an even greater prominence in international affairs in the nineteenth century, when the first array of "laws of humanity" were...