Video: Étienne Balibar, ‘Critical Reflections on the New Definition of the Human Species’

Theory in Crisis Seminar

Held on February 19, 2021, by University of London Institute in Paris (part of the Research Seminar Series: Theory in Crisis).

In this session, Étienne Balibar gives a talk entitled ‘Critical Reflections on the New Definition of the Human Species’:

The pandemic is crystallizing a new understanding of the Human as a “Species-being”, as well as the very category of the "species" itself, which connects biological, medical, anthropological definitions. A new material unity, a new commonality with other species, but also a destructive character and a rising to the extremes of anthropological differences themselves. As a consequence, biopolitics, cosmopolitics, and necropolitics become a single problem, which calls for a genealogy and a critical reflection.