SubStance

There is an anecdote, or perhaps a fable, about the philosophers of the Platonic Academy attempting to define the human. After much debate, the members of the Academy arrived at a seemingly succinct and accurate definition: man is a wingless biped (dipous apteron). At that moment, Diogenes the cynic, who had been eavesdropping on their deliberations, suddenly threw in the philosophers' midst a chicken whose feathers he had plucked and proclaimed: "Here is your man!" Although the horrified Academicians recoiled from this scene of animal cruelty, philosophers have not since shied away from defining the human in opposition to other animals. In a fable that is no longer fabulous, human being constitutes itself through a definite violence against the animal. Diogenes's denuded chicken becomes a primal scene of the human-animal relation—and thus a scene that is repressed, a scene from which philosophers have consistently turned their gaze every time man is the issue.

In the variegated history of the philosophical definitions of man, one has survived since it has been given the status of the self-evident. The definition in question comes from Aristotle's Politics: "the human is a political animal" (1253a3). There is something indisputable about this characterization: humans are, indeed, the most social of animals—they are denizens of the polis with its institutions and laws, its rulers, judges and generals. It would be difficult to contend that any other animal has recourse to the political as much as the human. Animals form herds unconsciously, while human beings form social relations by reflecting upon the constitution of their community—and it is due to this reflexive or rational process that they call themselves political animals. In this sense of the term, the political is what enables humans to avert their gaze from (and so derogate) the alternative sociality of nonhuman animals.

In Aristotle's thinking, humans are liberated from the immediacy of animal passions by virtue of their unique capacity for logos. As he says a couple of lines after defining man as political animal: "from all the animals, only the human possesses logos" (1253a 10-11). Logos means speech: the [End Page 3] capacity for public expression allows human beings to rationalize, normalize and eventually codify their behaviour. However, the gesture of aligning politics with the rational and the reflexive—a cornerstone of humanism—also leads to a disturbing separation between the active (or legislative) "human" and the passive (or collective) "animal." The effects of this humanist gesture are particularly visible in those policies that promote separation through violent means, such as the drawing of borders according to national or religious alliances, the persecution of so-called political opponents and the exploitation of those otherwise disenfranchised citizens whose collective power must be harnessed for the success of the policy. Another effect of that separation remains disturbingly invisible: we are thinking here of the various social fantasies that create and sustain a collective "we" in the name of whom violence is exercised.

There are two ways of failing to deal with the abovementioned after-effects of humanism, two ways of persisting with the definition of the human as a rational political animal. Either one accepts that politics is outside one's influence, which can only extend to a limited area. This option is particularly appealing to those who yearn for a good conscience, those looking for alibis. These are the beautiful souls of resignation. Or one rejects politics altogether, interpreting the personal lack of influence as a sign of decay and disease. There is nothing beautiful about this route, which leads to relativism and negation, to cynicism and, ultimately, to misanthropy. What characterizes this impasse of humanism is a violent separation of politics and the political: in both cases, the humanist surrenders to politics and thereby surrenders the political to the policy makers. The political now becomes nothing but the basis of justification and the legitimacy—either accepted or rejected—of the policy makers. Unconscientious dissent: another symptom of the political gaze turned away from the primal scene of violence against the animal.

An alternative to humanism becomes possible when one recognizes that such...