War and Ecology in the Early Modern Period ― Iago's Dream

War and Ecology in the Early Modern World argues that early modern war frequently unsettled humancenteredness, but it ultimately strengthened humans’ sense of autonomy and singularity. The early modern period is hardly unique in this way: while we carelessly invoke words like "inhuman" to characterize the horrors of war, we neglect to examine the way war interpellates us as human. Although it destabilizes the categories we use to separate the human from the nonhuman, it also shapes the physical environment for human and nonhuman species, giving humans the illusion of physical and intellectual separation. Critiques of humanism and/or anthropocentrism tend to focus on philosophical, scientific, or theological ideas— the animal rationale, the domination of nature, or Christian hierarchies. The sense of human superiority that Bertram explores here, on the other hand, rarely appears in an explicit fashion as an ideology or philosophy. It is not found in Descartes or Christian theology, yet it is quite possible that those forms of humancenteredness are in fact indebted to the sense of human superiority examined, namely, that the experience of action during perpetual war makes us regard ourselves, sometimes consciously—and sometimes not— as human. Our conscious ideas about the humanimal distinction are less important than our actions and practices. War—like zoos, laboratory experiments, or factory farming—interpellates us as human.

Benjamin Bertram is Associate Professor of English at the University of Southern Maine