Force of humanity: The regulation of warfare and its Human(s)

What is the relationship between the law regulating warfare and the figure of the human? "Force of Humanity" focuses on this question to re-examine the epistemic formation of the human as a particular category of being juridified by this body of law. My intervention departs from viewing the doctrinal development of the regulation of warfare as constrained to the practice between states and the human as a mere subject to be included or excluded. Instead, I situate the development of the law governing warfare within the larger production of Western knowledge on the human. Through this reframing, I argue that the doctrine regulating warfare acts in a reiterative manner to juridify a particular human rooted in coloniality and anti-blackness. This human is universalised through a forcible assimilation of other modes of being human and non-human into its juridical categories, which is best understood as a process of humanisation. Thus, the doctrinal regulation gives legal form to specific vernaculars of humanity that become over-represented through warfare.

Through Sylvia Wynter's rethinking of the 'human' and the practice of 'Black Study', I trace the over-representation of this particular humanity and demonstrate how coloniality and anti-blackness persists in the legal project of regulating warfare. I return to key moments in the historical development of this body of law and contextualise them within the wider scope of Western humanity's self-fashioning. Across these critical moments, I trace three distinct yet complementary vernaculars of humanity, 'Christianised humanity', 'racialised humanity', and 'securitised humanity'. I locate these particular forms of being human by immersing myself in a wide range of primary materials, including mediaeval canonical instruments, works of history by jurists, colonists, and planters, as well as colonial and contemporary military manuals. Turning to these primary materials expands the relevant sources of, and contributes to, the historiographic literature on the laws of armed conflict. This method precipitates a shift away from the multiple binaries underpinning the laws of armed conflict and instead reorients our gaze towards modes of waging war excessive to the legal categorisation of armed conflicts. By rethinking the violence of armed conflict through the broader category of warfare, I bring to light three forms of warfare, 'missionary warfare', 'savage warfare', and 'counterinsurgency warfare', each corresponding to their particular vernaculars of humanity. These forms of warfare illuminate a shadow narrative of the legal regulation of warfare tied to the emergence of a particular humanity in the context of Euro-modernity's global expansion.

My intervention spans three chapters, with each set across scenes of humanisation demonstrating the emergence and overrepresentation of a distinct vernacular of humanity through its corresponding mode of warfare. Chapter 1, 'Christianising Humanity', looks at the emergence of a distinctly Christianised humanity through the waging of missionary warfare authorised by the Catholic church as 'just war'. Across two scenes, the Medieval Crusades and the Portuguese expansion towards West Africa, and the Spanish conquest of the Americas, I illustrate how missionary warfare juridifies a specifically Christian form of being and universalises it. In chapter 2, 'Racialising Humanity', I show how the particular mode of Christianised humanity is transformed to the secular variant of an inclusive racialised humanity and made universal through the doctrine of savage warfare. By focusing on the English colonisation of Virginia, the Jamaican plantocracy's war against the Maroons, and small wars in the South Asian subcontinent, the three scenes demonstrate how the epistemic exercise of race-making contributes to the juridification of racialised humanity by savage warfare on the colonial frontier. In the final chapter, 'Securing Humanity', I show how counterinsurgency warfare has worked to juridify a hyper-assimilatory form of securitised humanity through the intertwining of development and security. In the three scenes, spanning from late-colonial counterinsurgency during decolonisation, to the counter-terror operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the domestication of counterinsurgency warfare through policing and prisons, I show that counterinsurgency warfare acts as a form of racialised social control that juridifies a form of humanity which is to be secured for development in perpetuity. Ultimately, the regulation of warfare to humanise battlefield conduct juridifies and over-represents the human through the forceful incorporation of all other modes of being. By understanding 'humanising warfare' as a continuation of Western humanity's self-validation and universalisation, I conclude with advocating for the abolition of the human and its attendant juridical categories to realise reparative futurities.