The very idea of humanity seems to be in crisis. Born in the ashes of devastation after the slaughter of millions, the liberal conception of humanity imagined a suffering victim in need of salvation. Today, this figure appears less and less capable of galvanizing the political imagination. But without it, how are we to respond to the inhumane violence that overwhelms our political and philosophical registers? How can we make sense of the violence that was carried out in the name of humanism? And how can we develop more ethical relations without becoming parasitic on the pain of others?
Through a critical exploration of violence and the sacred, Ecce Humanitas recasts the fall of liberal humanism. Brad Evans offers a rich analysis of the changing nature of sacrificial violence, from its theological origins to the exhaustion of the victim in the contemporary world. He critiques the aestheticization that turns victims into sacred objects, sacrificial figures that demand response, perpetuating a cycle of violence that is seen as natural and inevitable. In novel readings of classic and contemporary works, Evans traces the sacralization of violence as well as art's potential to incite resistance. Countering the continued annihilation of life, Ecce Humanitas calls for liberating the political imagination from the scene of sacrifice. A new aesthetics provides a form of transgressive witnessing that challenges the ubiquity of violence and allows us to go beyond humanism to imagine a truly liberated humanity.
The very idea of humanity seems to be in crisis. Born in the ashes of devastation after the slaughter of millions, the liberal conception of humanity imagined a suffering victim in need of salvation. Today, this figure appears less and less capable of galvanizing the political imagination. But without it, how are we to respond to the inhumane violence that overwhelms our political and philosophical registers? How can we make sense of the violence that was carried out in the name of humanism? And how can we develop more ethical relations without becoming parasitic on the pain of others?
Through a critical exploration of violence and the sacred, Ecce Humanitas recasts the fall of liberal humanism. Brad Evans offers a rich analysis of the changing nature of sacrificial violence, from its theological origins to the exhaustion of the victim in the contemporary world. He critiques the aestheticization that turns victims into sacred objects, sacrificial figures that demand response, perpetuating a cycle of violence that is seen as natural and inevitable. In novel readings of classic and contemporary works, Evans traces the sacralization of violence as well as art's potential to incite resistance. Countering the continued annihilation of life, Ecce Humanitas calls for liberating the political imagination from the scene of sacrifice. A new aesthetics provides a form of transgressive witnessing that challenges the ubiquity of violence and allows us to go beyond humanism to imagine a truly liberated humanity.
List of Illustrations
Foreword: An Obituary for the Liberal, by Jake Chapman
Preface: Encountering the Void
Part I: The Sacrifice
1. Humanity Bound
2. The Sacred Order of Politics
3. The Shame of Being Human
Part II: The Fall of Liberal Humanism
4. A Higher State of Killing
5. The Death of the Victim
6. A Sickness of Reason
Part III: Into the Void
7. Annihilation
8. The Transgressive Witness
9. Wounds of Love
Notes
Index
Brad Evans is professor of political violence and aesthetics at the
University of Bath. His many books include Atrocity Exhibition:
Life in the Age of Total Violence (2019) and Disposable Futures:
The Seduction of Violence in the Age of Spectacle (2015). He led a
dedicated series on violence for The Stone, a forum for
contemporary philosophers from the New York Times, and is the lead
editor for the Histories of Violence section of the Los Angeles
Review of Books.
Jake Chapman is a British visual artist who works with his brother
Dinos as the Chapman Brothers. In their provocative practice, the
Chapman Brothers reappropriate work by figures from Goya to Hitler.
Evans does an excellent job of keeping a real political and social
agenda in view. The book is full of wonderful insights and examples
culled from a wide range of thinkers, artists, and writers, from
Dante (a major figure in the text) to Gaston Bachelard and from
Rodin to Rothko and Basquiat. And there is a powerful political
message at the core of the book.
*Los Angeles Review of Books*
[An] excellent new book.
*New Perspectives*
This is a bold and brave intervention that clear-mindedly attempts
to think the human in our current inhuman conditions of plague,
ultra-violence, and the fading out of liberalism. If philosophy is
its time comprehended in thought, then Evans has comprehended our
time philosophically. Highly recommended.
*Simon Critchley, author of Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us*
A breathtaking exploration of violence and monstrosity by one of
our leading political philosophers. How to make sense of the void
that is, whether we want it or not, always gazing back at us? Brad
Evans has courageously thrown himself into the void and as a result
we can read this outstanding book that offers not only a fierce
critique of liberal humanism but also points toward poetic
alternatives that are more necessary than ever.
*Srećko Horvat, author of After the Apocalypse*
In Ecce Humanitas, Brad Evans has given us a manifesto for how to
effectively address the cryptotheology that lies at the heart of
Western modernity. Whereas we tend to think of the sacred as an
archaic concept, Evans shows how it remains central to our lives;
unrecognized, it wreaks havoc (violent havoc) upon subject
populations. Evans proposes that we rethink the void that is at the
heart of the sacred as a place of power and creativity and, in that
way, both reaffirm the sacred and redeploy it against the very
violent forces that it is ordinarily instantiates. In so doing,
Evans has capped a highly successful career of studying violence
with a way out and through its dangerous entanglements. This is a
brave and extraordinarily timely work in a period when the threat
of violence is particularly acute and ubiquitous.
*James Martel, author of Unburied Bodies: Subversive Corpses and
the Authority of the Dead*
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