Post-Humanitarianism: The Contemporary Politics of Solidarity

• In Event: Postnormative Cosmopolitanism: Voice, Space, and Citizenship

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss historical change in the communication of solidarity, within the fields of human rights and humanitarian communication. To this end, I present a typology of forms of solidarity, dominant in the past 50 years, and focus, in particular, on a new form, what I call a
'post-humanitarian' solidarity, which tends to focus on 'us' rather than distant sufferers as the moral source for action on their suffering. Drawing on specific examples of this emerging form of solidarity, I explore its key features and reflect on its moral and political implications.

Lilie Chouliaraki is Professor of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics. She has written extensively on cosmopolitanism and on distant suffering as a problem of communication and is the author, among others, of 'The Spectatorship of Suffering (2006/2011); 'The Soft Power of War (ed, 2008) and 'The Ironic Spectator. Solidarity in the Age of Post-humanitarianism' (2013) link:https://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=978074564211.

Author

• Lilie Chouliaraki, London School of Economics and Political Science