are to do justice to the revelatory moments of humanitarianism, which take place
on an intimate scale.^9
Another way of putting all this is to recognise the importance of a kind of
democratic impulse in the politics of humanity. We have already seen this in several
different contexts: the power of a life story, fully told (Chapter 3); the desire of
professional humanitarians to be accountable to those they aid (Chapter 5); the
promise of human “rights talk” to empower victims to speak (Chapter 5); the
importance of bearing witness as a last ditch attempt to preserve the “possibility of
humanity” (Chapter 4). This is the intuition that, though humanitarian action itself is
necessarily presumptive (we presume to help the patient, but in doing so may
constrain the agent), it is at its best when it creates space for the voices of those
with whose suffering it is concerned, and it considers their felt injustices (and
indeed perhaps the felt injustices of their enemies) alongside the mobilising
collective sense of an injustice done to others.
By raising the question of a democratic impulse, I make no pretence to be
articulating a cosmopolitan vision of global democracy. The “politics of humanity” is
clearly far too contingent for that, not least because it is a politics without political
community, and because, in answer to the classic question of democratic politics,
“who are the people?”, the answer must always be both simple, everyone, and
infinitely contestable, anyone.^10 In the absence of a collective agency of humanity,
claims to act in the name of humanity necessarily serve as surrogates, with the
totalising excesses that implies.
Rather, in pointing to the importance of a democratic impulse, I want to
make the point that since humanity is political, it is important to consider how we
approach the “politics of humanity”: do we want a totalitarian understanding of it,
in which only a privileged few can legitimately speak “in the name of humanity”? If
9
10 Stein, "Humanitarianism as Political Fusion": 741.^
For a recent apposite use of “everyone” as a humanitarian campaign slogan, see Save the
Children, Everyone: Our Campaign to Save Children's Lives. Available at
http://everyone.org/en/; accessed on 13 August 2010. The front page of the campaign
website asks a classic Singerian question: “Q1: What would you give up if you knew it would
save the life of a child you’ve never met?” The possible answers are: “a cup of tea”, “a
meal”, “a day’s pay”, “a holiday”, “a car”, “your home”, “nothing at all”, “don’t know”.