What It Means to Be Human by Joanna Bourke

Ultimately, What It Means to Be Human is less an answer than it is an invitation to a series of questions, questions about who and what we are as a species, as souls, and as nodes in a larger complex ecosystem of sentient beings. Just as the one-sided surface of the strip has 'no inside or outside no beginning or end no single point of entry or exit no hierarchical ladder to clamber up or slide down,' so 'the boundaries of the human and the animal turn out to be as entwined and indistinguishable as the inner and outer sides of a Möbius strip.' Bourke points to Derrida's definition as the most rewarding, calling him 'the philosopher of the Möbius strip.' Escher Company - HollandĬuriously, Bourke uses the Möbius strip as the perfect metaphor for deconstructing the human vs. Escher: 'Which side of the strip are the ants walking on?' To rephrase Simone de Beauvoir's inspired conclusion about women, one is not born, but made, a human.īourke also admonishes against seeing the historical trend in paradigms about humanness as linear, as shifting ' from the theological towards the rationalist and scientific' or ' from humanist to post-humanist.' How, then, are we to examine the 'porous boundary between the human and the animal'?Ī Möbius strip, from a 1963 poster of the woodcut by M.C. It disparaged 'the woman,' 'the subaltern,' and 'the non-European' even more than 'the animal.' As a result, it is hardly surprising that many of these groups rejected the idea of a universal and straightforward essence of 'the human,' substituting something much more contingent, outward-facing and complex. Humanism installed only some humans at the centre of the universe. Human civilization had been forged in the image of the male, white, well-off, educated human.

The humanist insistence on an autonomous, willful human subject capable of acting independently in the world was based on a very particular type of human.

The broader question at the heart of the Earnest Englishwoman's outrage, of course, isn't merely about gender - 'women' could have just as easily been any other marginalized group, from non-white Europeans to non-Westerners to even children, or a delegitimized majority-politically-treated-as-minority more appropriate to our time, such as the '99 percent.' The question, really, is what entitles one to humanness.

Whether women are the equals of men has been endlessly debated whether they have souls has been a moot point but can it be too much to ask representatives, and ask - Is there not one among you then who will introduce such a motion? There would then be at least an equal interdict on wanton barbarity to cat, dog, or woman.

What It Means to Be Human by Joanna Bourke