The Ethics of (Lacking) Responsibility in the Humanities : A Comment on Will Bridges's "A Brief History of the Inhumanities"

Abstract

Abstract

en The humanities have had a frustrating share in the inhumanities committed in the name of humanism. Scientific racism and African studies as kith and kin of colonialism and Maafa are just the tip of the iceberg. We need to revisit this history critically and with visions of what the new humanities should look like. In doing so, unlike Bridges, the article acknowledges the rich efforts of ``critical humanities'' as displayed within gender, postcolonial, disability, and posthuman studies. Thus framed, the article will delve into a genealogical rereading of Western humanism and its humanities that bridges antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and the longevity of the futures thereof. In doing so, it will focus on the entanglement of humanism/humanity and colonialism/racism, while starting off from a posthumanist complication of the culture/nature divide.