Philosophy Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Anti-humanism: Anti-humanism is a philosophical stance that critiques traditional humanism's focus on rational, autonomous individuals. It questions the centrality of "the human" in knowledge, ethics, and politics, emphasizing structures, language, and power relations instead. Thinkers like Foucault and Althusser argue that human identity is shaped by external forces rather than innate essence. See also Humanism, Posthumanism, Critical theory, Foucault._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Rosie Braidotti on Anti-Humanism - Dictionary of Arguments
Braidotti I 23 Anti-Humanism/Braidotti: Anti-humanism emerged as the rallying cry of this generation of radical thinkers who later were to became world-famous as the ‘post-structuralist generation’. In fact, they were postcommunists avant la lettre. They stepped out of the dialectical oppositional thinking and developed a third way to deal with changing understandings of human subjectivity. >Dialectics, >Subjectivity/Braidotti. By the time Michel Foucault published his ground-breaking critique of Humanism in The Order of Things (1970)(1), the question of what, if anything, was the idea of ‘the human’ was circulating in the radical discourses of the time and had set the antihumanist agenda for an array of political groups. >Michel Foucault, >Archeology/Foucault. The ‘death of Man’, announced by Foucault formalizes an epistemological and moral crisis that goes beyond binary oppositions and cuts across the different poles of the political spectrum. What is targeted is the implicit Humanism of Marxism, more specifically the humanistic arrogance of continuing to place Man at the centre of world history. >Marxism. Even Marxism, under the cover of a master theory of historical materialism, continued to define the subject of European thought as unitary and hegemonic and to assign him (the gender is no coincidence) a royal place as the motor of human history. Anti-humanism consists in de-linking the human agent from this universalistic posture, calling him to task, so to speak, on the concrete actions he is enacting. Different and sharper power relations emerge, once this formerly dominant subject is freed from his delusions of grandeur and is no longer allegedly in charge of historical progress. The radical thinkers of the post-1968 generation rejected Humanism both in its classical and its socialist versions. Braidotti I 26 My anti-humanism leads me to object to the unitary subject of Humanism, including its socialist variables, and to replace it with a more complex and relational subject framed by embodiment, sexuality, affectivity, empathy and desire as core qualities. Equally central to this approach is the insight I learned from Foucault on power as both a restrictive (potestas) and productive (potentia) force. This means that power formations not only function at the material level but are also expressed in systems of theoretical and cultural representation, political and normative narratives and social modes of identification. These are neither coherent, nor rational and their makeshift nature is instrumental to their hegemonic force. >Nature, >Identification, >Identity politics. 1. Foucault, Michel. 1970. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences. New York: Pantheon Books._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Braidotti I Rosie Braidotti The Posthuman Cambridge, UK: Polity Press 2013 |
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> Counter arguments against Braidotti
> Counter arguments in relation to Anti-Humanism
