Читать книгу Critical Humanism - Ken Plummer - Страница 16

Critical humanism suggests a fallible, worldwide, contested narrative about the collective, connecting and changing ways of being ‘human’. Just what this ‘human’ signifies is itself a long tale: of searching for the meanings of vulnerable life in a precarious plural world. The very idea of ‘humanity’ becomes a debated and contested one.

Critical humanism becomes a project shaped by many controversies. It highlights the plurality of our lives and humanisms, the connectivity and contingency of life and the narrativity of humanity. It argues for a humanism that is truly worldwide and not just an argument for some narrow, culture-bound version. It can learn from a wide range of different humanisms that have existed. And all this leads to the thorny problem of universalism and essentialism, a problem that haunts all discussions of humanism. As such, it is clear that a deep tension arises between the various claims for the generalities of a universal humanity in a world where lives are also and always lived in context-specific particularities, a ‘radical contextuality’.⁴

Critical humanism, then, is an open project not a closed theory. It is an ever-changing endeavour to rethink and remake a narrative of a world humanity. Different groups have struggled throughout history over just what it means to be a human being in a fragile universe. The task now is to connect: to imagine ‘like a world’ and build a rich planetary agenda of diverse and multiple critical projects that bring us together to re-create a better world for all. Box 1.1 sets out the basic agenda, which is then pursued in the rest of the book. By the final chapter, it will have somehow transformed itself into a political manifesto.