On the human – Zadie Smith in NYBooks:

‘In Trump’s world, this logic can be perfected: there will be only the resort. The other world, the wretched world, has been left on the flip side of the portal, through which gleeful orphaned children run, more than eager to forgive, forget, and frolic on a boulevard built atop the bones of their parents.’

(…)

‘Fanon’s incisive critique of colonial pretensions to universality has been essential. Still, he never despaired of the possibility of a just universe, one in which human beings are no longer treated as mere resources to be exploited. That kind of justice requires a defense of the human qua human. Without it, we are left with a void, a hole, a portal. One which Trumpism is more than happy to fill, aided and abetted by AI. But we can’t let machines do our human accounting for us, nor allow Trumpism to lead the whole of humanity into a binary, Manichean world of number ones versus human zeroes. Of those who matter and those who don’t.’

Read the article here.

A defense of the human qua human.

Hand out copies of Kant I would say.

Even if they have nothing to eat, let them read Kant.

If humanism wants to make a comeback, and the question is if, we need more cunning actors.

And for most of the bourgeois in the Western world humanism was just another kind of cubism.

Human rights taste better with a glass of champagne in your hand. Or prosecco. But they are worth defending I hasten to say. If necessary defend them with champagne in your hand.