ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the hiatus, paradoxical injunctions and moral dilemmas that constantly populate the mind of the humanitarian agent while acting in the field. On the one hand, the post-human ‘augmented man’ of modern biosciences as desired, engineered and brought to reality through prosthesis, gene therapy, 3D printing of tissues and complex cyborg solutions for organic failures; on the other hand, the human reduced to its bare life that the humanitarian agent meets in the emergency situations of warfare, epidemic outbreaks and man-induced ‘natural catastrophes’. The two realities coexist in the imagination, normative universe and sense of self of the humanitarian agent, and this mere coexistence expresses the internal and external brutality and complexity of the contemporary humanitarian moment. Between the globalisation of problematics like environmental health, new epidemics or ‘non-conventional’ violence and the weakening of coordinated political decision in a fragmented world of understanding, vision and actors, this is a moment when the anthropologist could usefully be one more player at the table.
