Cosmopolitanism and the End of Humanity: A Grammatical Reading of Posthumanism

Abstract

The academic discipline of International Relations has yet to systematically begin tracing the impact of posthumanism on ethics in global politics. In a context where a humanist picture of the subject is in “a state of crisis that is more acute than ever,” and the “end of humanity” is being declared by some, the question arises as to whether a moral commitment to liberal cosmopolitanism can be maintained. It arises because the moral commitments of cosmopolitanism traditionally rest on a humanist foundation, and posthumanism, at first glance, seems an obvious threat to it. In this article, rather than reading posthumanism as a threat to humanity, I read humanism as the threat. I propose that, tricky though it may be, a cosmopolitanism that embraces the end of humanity can be formulated and defended as a moral commitment to humanity: a cosmopolitanism without foundations. This cosmopolitanism without foundations is, I suggest, one way to overcome the skeptic's fantasy that we are hidden from each other, and with it the belief that our primary relation to the world is one of knowledge anchored to foundational promises of certainty. Instead, a life lived in the world with others is proposed, and with it a cosmopolitan commitment to humanity as an unavoidable ethical responsibility.

Risky dis/entanglements: Torture and sexual violence in conflict

“…In this ‘Cartesian duality’, the mind has the capacity for thought, reason and rationality; the body emerges as a realm both separated from the mind and devoid of reason — it is ‘merely the crude container of the mind’ (King, 2004: 31). The assumption of a dichotomous relationship between the rational mind and irrational body not only has ‘dominated the structure of our thinking and social practices since the Enlightenment’ (Prokhovnik, 2002: 4; see also Pin-Fat, 2013), but moreover is deeply gendered, with the rationality of the mind associated with masculinity and the irrationality of the body with femininity (Prokhovnik, 2002: 1; see also Grosz, 1994; King, 2004: 31).…”

Posthuman security

“…Journal of New research and new re lexion -by anthropologists, psychologists, philosophers and others -suggests that the humanity of humans is, as with most phenomena, inite, that the de inition or concept that regulates it has limits, that these limits have become more tangible, and that, as a consequence, a new look at 'human security' is warranted (Baxi, 2009;Braidotti, 2013;Dinello, 2005;Fukuyama, 2003;Hayles, 1999;Ong & Collier, 2005;Pin-Fat, 2013).…”

Language as a middle ground: Using grammatical reading to ‘find’ theory in development practice

“…In this section I will give a brief example in order to highlight the benefits of using this approach in development studies. There is no definitive way of conducting a grammatical reading, this is just one example: other examples are Pin-Fat (2000, 2005, 2010, 2013); Pin-Fat and Stern (2005); Redhead (2007). What a grammatical reading will look like depends on what is being ‘read’; no two readings will be exactly the same.…”

“…The second step of a grammatical reading is to render the familiar unfamiliar (Pin-Fat, 2010, 2013), that is, to demonstrate that the story the report is telling us, about security and development, depends upon the particular construction of possibility which is determined only by grammar. It will show that the report’s authors do not end up where they wanted to be because of grammatical (im)possibility, the conjunctive failure which occurs when we draw a line as hard.…”