ABSTRACT
João Arriscado Nunes
Drawing on a genealogy of humanitarianism, I examine the ways in which Western security and humanitarian policies are put into practice in “emergency humanitarian situations” and the forms of resistance which challenge them. This approach is the starting point for examining how human borders and attributes are expressed in different concepts of human dignity, as well as the differences between humans, including the denial and qualified attribution of humanness. Drawing on the epistemologies of the South, I propose a view of suffering that considers it a condition of human existence, but also the result of specific and mutually constructed forms of oppression which are differently named and recognized.
