stake, when humanitarianism is precisely the context in which we are supposed to
articulate our response to inhumanity.
Christopher Coker reveals interesting assumptions, which are worth brief
exploration, about the problem-solving predisposition of humanitarianism and
about the timeframe in which humanitarian action following on from that response
to inhumanity is expected to take place.
Our humanism also rests not as it did in the past on the redemption of
humanity over time (the purported “end of history”). It rests on “real time”.
Our age is intensely self-referential. Increasingly we experience events
without the need for historical perspective that characterized the past. We
are not products of a grand narrative; instead, we have become our own
source or object of reflection. Accordingly, our achievements are no longer
directed at the future. Few of us are much interested in the opinion of the
next generation. Few if any look to posterity for their reward. Instead, we
demand immediate recognition. Most of our popular heroes are disinclined
to postpone the results of their efforts beyond their own personal existence.
Humane wars are likewise predicated on the belief that martyrdom is
illegitimate unless freely chosen; that the martyr should no longer be
expected to bear witness to the future. The victims of history should be
avenged at the time.^75This statement about humanism seems particularly true of contemporary
humanitarianism, which demands practical responses and resolutions in the here
and now, and privileges them over, say, post-facto acts of memorialisation.
Common humanity must be defended now, and defence may imply an army. There
are good reasons for this, as we have seen, to do with the desire to stop cruelty and
suffering. But Coker’s point reveals the magnitude of the task of replacing grand
narratives with the grand ambition of redeeming humanity in real time, and
suggests that the task, when it comes to humanitarian intervention as a redemptive
practice, may be a Sisyphean one.
Once enacted, humanitarian intervention brings home with force the
contingency of even a humanitarianism that takes human rights seriously. The
paradox to emerge here is that the attempt to establish a humanitarianism based
75
Coker, Humane Warfare , 19.