Claiming the Human, Critiquing the Human
In the conclusion of The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon points to the limits of the European humanist subject (“Man”) and the ways in which its definition has involved violent actions and exclusions. He calls for a non-Eurocentric project to invent a “new man” that requires an expansion and reconsideration of humanity. This task of imagining and bringing into being a new human seems to involve a delicate double bind: humanity must be claimed in the name of those excluded from its purview; the claim to be human, however, may unwittingly reinforce the transparency and self-evidence of the very category that needs to be interrogated, thus further marginalizing alternative versions of humanity.