ABSTRACT
My purpose in this chapter is not to write a history of the human, the humane or the humanitarian or to find its genealogy in the struggles of the past in any comprehensive or even persuasively contextual way. Rather I intend to meditate at first on the role of animal and machine metaphors in our current conceptions and to see what this tells us about the overtly judgemental side of the concept ‘the humane’. To do that, I refer to texts, commentaries and current usage that accompany discussion of the international conventions on the laws of war and the various declarations of human rights. As I pursue that project, I also touch on some of the ways that sex, gender and sexuality figure in producing the concepts and distinctions through which these conventions and declarations are operative and from which ethical judgements and practices are produced (Kinsella 2008).
