humanitarianism

is a form of charity which splits the world into the helpers and those to be helped as such, it can become an instrument for reinforcing rather than redressing inequality.

Jane Addams One of America's foremost progressive reformers and social entrepreneurs, Jane Addams kept busy not simply founding Hull House and changing the way we provided support for the urban poor, but writing about the philosophical challenges of philanthropy and democracy. This article is important for its recognition that charity inevitably splits the world into the helpers and those to be helped and can, as such, become an instrument for reinforcing rather than redressing inequality.

If this one doesn't hurt your soul, you might not have one. Eloquent, pleading and brimming with barely-controlled rage, Rieff's 'Bed for the Night' is a chronicle of an ever growing disenchantment with the hypocrisy of humanitarian intervention and a serious condemnation of the overreach of aid and development organizations.'

is a naive enterprise due to limits of solidarity and the difficulties of transcending class difference.

Ivan Illich'In the late 1960s, post-development theorist Ivan Illich levied this scathing critique of the naivety of international assistance on a group of university students about to begin volunteering in Mexico. It cuts straight to the bone of the limits of 'solidarity' and the difficulty of transcending class difference to create partnerships for change.'

is an 'infinite transgression' of capitalism, allowing it to continue, an 'antagonism' outside of which capitalism is not possible.

Accordingly, Zizek rejects every attempt to alleviate its injustices, all forms of humanitarian intervention, up to and including such organizations as the Zapatistas in Chiapas and Medecins sans frontieres. He even rejects such powerful single-issue parties as the Greens, which necessarily remain ineffective in so far as they are not organized in terms of some universal struggle. And yet, if these resistances are only the 'inherent transgression' of capitalism, allowing it to continue, they might also be understood as a kind of 'infinite judgement' upon it, that 'antagonism' outside of which it is not possible. As Zizek will say of another series of political movements, this time conceived of in terms of the Universal: 'It is too simple to conceive of these movements as the last embodiments of the millenarian radicalism that structures the social space as the exclusive antagonism between 'us' and 'them', allowing for no possible forms of mediation . . . Khmer Rouge and the Senderistas as the 'infinite judgement' on late capitalism are, therefore, in Hegelese, an integral part of its notion: if one wants to constitute capitalism as a world system, one must take into account its inherent negation, 'fundamentalism', as well as its absolute negation the infinite judgement on it' (23).

is an enterprise which, despite its intentions, prolongs war.

is an enterprise whose attempts to appear depoliticized makes it into a kind of biopolitics where the difference between democracy and totalitarianism grows faint.

And, as Rancie re points out, liberal humanitarianism a la Ignatieff unexpectedly meets the 'radical' position of Foucault or Agamben with regard to this depoliticization: their notion of 'biopolitics' as the culmination of Western thought ends up getting caught in a kind of 'ontological trap', in which concentration camps appear as ontological destiny: 'each of us would be in the situation of the refugee in a camp. Any difference grows faint between democracy and totalitarianism and any political practice proves to be already ensnared in the biopolitical trap'. (Zizek 2005 : 128)

is problematic in the way it elevates human subjects through victimizing, reducing them to bare life, absolutely passive and dispossessed. Human(itarian) subjects are split in themselves and never freed of their inhuman excess.

For i ek, human rights humanism elevates human subjects to their sublime essence through victimizing, reducing them to a form of bare life, absolutely passive and dispossessed, awaiting humanitarian intervention and redemption... human(itarian) subjects, in other words, are split in themselves and never freed of their inhuman excess.'

is problematic in the way that it often presupposes that the key to ending global poverty is more aid money rather than governance and bureaucracy.

White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (2006)William EasterlyEasterly, the 'anti-Jeff Sachs,' wrote this book to prick the swelled expectations of movements like the One Campaign that suggest that the key to ending global poverty is more aid money. While the work has been used as a bludgeon by the anti-aid political Right, Easterly's focus on challenges like governance and bureaucracy should be required reading.

humanitarianism, n.Definitions

humanitarianism