Peter Linebaugh
EVERY GREAT HISTORICAL EPOCH in the freedom struggle raises the question: what is a human? The answer changes, to quote Askia Muhammad Toure of the Revolutionary Action Movement, with “the Gong of History.” Amid all the confusing din of history, a note may sound that makes it audible and intelligible.
Yet the answer is always contested, and it may be lost in ideological noise. For instance, five hundred years ago, with the slaughter of millions of Native Americans, with the witch-burnings and demonization of women, with the voyages to Africa and the commencement of the Atlantic slave trade, the ideology of humanism functioned to cover up these crimes. French surrealists of the early twentieth century denounced Western humanism as justification of slavery, colonialism, and genocide in an essay called “Murderous Humanitarianism.” Walter Johnson’s critique of “the rights-based notion of the human being at the heart of the historiography of slavery” is part of this tradition. His broader project is to criticize the humanitarian excuses of neoliberal imperialism.