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Manhunts: A Philosophical History

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Touching on issues of power, authority, and domination, Manhunts takes an in-depth look at the hunting of humans in the West, from ancient Sparta, through the Middle Ages, to the modern practices of chasing undocumented migrants. Incorporating historical events and philosophical reflection, Grégoire Chamayou examines the systematic and organized search for individuals and small groups on the run because they have defied authority, committed crimes, seemed dangerous simply for existing, or been categorized as subhuman or dispensable.

Chamayou begins in ancient Greece, where young Spartans hunted and killed Helots (Sparta’s serfs) as an initiation rite, and where Aristotle and other philosophers helped to justify raids to capture and enslave foreigners by creating the concept of natural slaves. He discusses the hunt for heretics in the Middle Ages; New World natives in the early modern period; vagrants, Jews, criminals, and runaway slaves in other eras; and illegal immigrants today. Exploring evolving ideas about the human and the subhuman, what we owe to enemies and people on the margins of society, and the supposed legitimacy of domination, Chamayou shows that the hunting of humans should not be treated ahistorically, and that manhunting has varied as widely in its justifications and aims as in its practices. He investigates the psychology of manhunting, noting that many people, from bounty hunters to Balzac, have written about the thrill of hunting when the prey is equally intelligent and cunning.

An unconventional history on an unconventional subject, Manhunts is an in-depth consideration of the dynamics of an age-old form of violence.

232 pages, Hardcover

First published March 25, 2010

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About the author

Grégoire Chamayou

17 books48 followers
Grégoire Chamayou is a research scholar in philosophy at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. The author of Manhunts: A Philosophical History, he lives in Paris.

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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
Profile Image for Alexander.
199 reviews213 followers
May 12, 2023
This is my favourite kind of book - enormous in scope, modest in page-count, dripping in historical anecdote, and all approached through a very specific lens: the manhunt. The first thing to be established is just how relevant the manhunt is in our own time. Far from a vestige of a primitive past now left behind, the manhunt today takes its form in the sweep for illegal immigrants, the 'bounties' on abortion and gender care seekers, the murderous buzz of Predator drones, or else the algorithmic hunt for both cybercriminals and whistleblowers. In fact, once acquainted with the workings of the manhunt, its presence becomes impossible to 'unsee’, a form of power - 'cynegetic power' - at work not only in the hunting of the Helots by ancient Spartans, but equally in every other police procedural now beamed into homes on an almost nightly basis.

As a specifically philosophical history however, Chamayou isn't content just to chart the various occasions in which manhunts come to the historical fore - although he does that too. Instead, each small chapter here functions as something of a mini-thesis in itself, with each shift of focus (from hunting Indians, to hunting the poor, to hunting Jews), offering a grim opportunity for Chamayou to shed light on the wider stakes of what manhunts have to say about some of our deepest philosophical notions. From reflections on the status of the human (was it invented so as to better invoke the 'non-human' like the slave?), to the workings of sovereignty (if the state has to delegate its hunting power to others, what does this say about its own power?), all the way to a reassessment of Hegel's famous master-slave dialectic, all of these and more are worked over from the particular angle of the manhunt, exercises as intriguing as they are chilling.

Developed then, as a series of vignettes rather than a sustained argument, Manhunts nonetheless draws out a few features that are specific to 'cynegetic power'. Perhaps most sharp is the contrast between the hunt and the duel. Where the duel involves enemies recognised as such (equal in standing, even if not equal in power, as per standard military conflict), the hunt instead begins from an irreducible asymmetry - between the hunter and the prey. Whence the critique of Hegel: not two ‘free’ consciousnesses struggling for recognition, but a master whose life is precisely not at stake, over and against a prey who is already a kind of living dead. For the prey, the victory over death does not guarantee the position of mastery, but simply… capture, further slavery. That this dialectic eluded Hegel, speaks too, Chamayou shows, to Hegel’s own treatment of real life slavery in his time: too unfree to even enter into the master-slave dialectic, African and Haitian slaves did not qualify, for Hegel, even for the struggle for freedom.

Hegel aside, the other major philosophical figure to be addressed here is Foucault, or more specifically, Foucault’s conception of ‘pastoral power’, which, according to Chamayou, is opposed ‘point by point’ to cynegetic power. Where Foucault traced the history of a power that was exercised by means of care and benevolence (caring for the flock in pasture), cynegetic power is, as might be guessed, entirely predatory. None too concerned with the lives of those it presides over, cynegetic sovereignty simply replaces loss by hunting anew; not the government of lives but accumulation of them is the rule under which it operates. For Chamayou, only by considering these two modes of power as operating side-by-side, ‘parallel and opposed’, can proper sense be made of the operation of politics in both the past and the present. Politics, it should be noted, not only of ‘the West’, but globally too, with the book refreshingly taking into account hunting not only in Europe, but equally in the Americas and Africa too.

Although written in neutral, scholarly tones, the cumulative effect of Chamayou’s documenting of manhunts is, once all the arguments are waded through, nothing less than horror. There is little romanticism here. These are not stories of the ‘little guy’ against the Man. These are stories of people and peoples relentlessly pursued, if not to death in harrowing ways - torn apart by hunting dogs, sent to the gas chambers - then consigned to lives of misery and loss. One of the lessons of the manhunt is that the prey loses, regularly. That said, while sharing themes with say, Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer (the ’sacred man’ abandoned by the law, exemplified by the regime of ‘bare life’ in the Nazi concentration camp), Chamayou’s examples are both more varied and more specific in their histories, lending themselves to a richer and, I think, less inescapably suffocating model of political power than the one proposed by Agamben. That concreteness makes this a distressing book, but to recall that the distress is one whose presence in the world is ours for the reckoning, makes it all the more necessary.
Profile Image for João Cruz.
358 reviews23 followers
July 17, 2023
A história do homem que caça outro homem por ele ser pobre, ser estrangeiro, ser negro, ser índio, ser judeu ou ser ilegal. Tanto sofrimento e ainda assim há quem continue a defender esta caça. Portugal não é exceção no comportamento de franjas da sociedade que são racistas, xenófobas e intolerantes, sem um pingo de humanidade no seu discurso e no seu coração.
Profile Image for Vaggelis.
61 reviews9 followers
December 6, 2024
Υπέροχο βιβλίο!

Ο Chamayou με πολύ αναλυτική και ιστορικά τεκμηριωμένη σκέψη a la Foucault, παρουσιάζει την νοοτροπία της αιχμαλωσίας και της αστυνομικής καταστολής σε όλα τα επίπεδα. Τα κεφάλαια πάνω στους μετανάστες και τους φτωχούς ειναι εξαιρετικά διεισδυτικά!

Αν σας ενδιαφέρουν τα ανθρώπινα δικαιώματα τότε αυτο το βιβλίο είναι θησαυρός.

4.5/5
Profile Image for ellie.
226 reviews2 followers
December 7, 2022
Manhunts: A Philosophical History

Book 50/52

Read for my 21st Century Theory module. Very interesting ideas that I will definitely use in my essay, but a tad too historical for my usage. Learnt a lot however!
Profile Image for Kai.
155 reviews2 followers
January 29, 2024
Great rec by @Alex — if only all non fiction books were like this on some perfectly scoped, niche esoteric topic. Read like an evolved, more mature version of the Oxford V Short Introduction series.
Profile Image for oceana.
29 reviews
January 5, 2025
i didn't care much for the ancient and more "mythological" chapters (first three) but it got sooooo interesting from then on. never fails to amaze me how humans, rational beings capable of compassion, can be so evil and cruel to one another
89 reviews27 followers
April 15, 2020
Chamayou dresse ici une histoire des sociétés humaines articulées autour de la notion de chasse l'homme. Il commence par définir les trois types de chasses à l'homme : Chasse d'acquisition (issue de l'histoire pastorale pour avoir des sujets), chasse d'exclusion (pour bannir les hors la loi) et chasse homme-loup (ou en meute qui répondent à des impératifs plus communautaires). La suite de l'ouvrage étudie l'évolution de nos sociétés qui se sont structurées autour de ces types de chasse, les fusionnant ou enrichissant les structures sociales avec ces derniers.

Ainsi, Chamayou dresse un continuum de la violence sociale, systématiquement au détriment des dominés, qui, sans se répéter, évolue et se renforce au cours du temps. Ainsi, entre la chasse policière pour expulser des réfugiés, la chasse nazie pour exterminer des juifs, la chasse coloniale pour asservir les natifs d'Amérique, sans qu'il y ait de ressemblance dans le fond, il y a des constructions similaires. L'une de ces constructions est l'intellectualisation fallacieuse de la chasse, qui vise à naturaliser la dite chasse (ils sont pas comme nous / s'ils voulaient être libres, ils le seraient) alors qu'elle résulte d'une dissymétrie sociale et anthropologique qui se reproduit au cours du temps. Quand on possède le monopole de la violence et des armes en masse, c'est compliqué de résister sur le long terme.

Chamayou développe des liens entre la chasse et le capitalisme, non dans le sens où le capitalisme aurait crée la chasse, ce qui serait anachronique, mais dans le sens où la chasse prend une ampleur mondialisée avec le capitalisme, avec des conséquences désastreuses, notamment la montée du fascisme, pourquoi ? Car avec la mise en concurrence des travailleurs du monde entier, une fracture au sein du prolétariat a été effectuée, avec la peur du migrant qui vient prendre le travail du natif. Cette peur a pu être canalisée par les fascistes et leur donner du pouvoir. Mais nous pouvons blâmer aussi les libéraux de gauche qui tenaient un discours pro-libre échange et qui ont fini par adopter une rhétorique protectionniste dans laquelle s'est engouffré l'extrême droite pour se l'approprier. On comprend les difficultés de la FI à parler de "protectionnisme solidaire" dans un tel contexte historique. Autre lien avec le capitalisme, la chasse aux pauvres qui a pris une ampleur nouvelle avec l'essor du capitalisme, mais qui existait déjà avant.

Il y a encore tellement de choses à dire que je préfère laisser les personnes intéressées découvrir l'ouvrage. Ce qui est essentiel est que nos sociétés sont construites, historiquement, autour des chasses à l'homme de manière à contrôler les masses à partir d'un cibles dominées sur le plan social et scientifique. Chamayou propose de dépasser la dialectique de la chasse pour créer un nouveau rapport à la violence sociale, dans une société où, collectivement, nous aurions crée des institutions qui protègent de la prédation entre les êtres humains. Tous les êtres humains. Ce que je partage, bien que je comprends la difficulté que pourraient avoir certaines populations dominées à ne pas ressentir des envies de vengeance.

Le livre est de taille moyenne (198 pages) pour un prix de 13€ mais il est possible de le trouver gratuitement en ligne en torrent pour les personnes qui n'auraient pas les moyens de s'acheter des livres et qui voudraient quand même s'informer.
Profile Image for homoness.
65 reviews49 followers
June 14, 2014
This book is a take on the development of cynegetic power in the
Western Occident; it focuses on manhunts. Its main points are, that
cynegetic power has developed considerably, from a raw hunt on men on
the grounds of slave acqusition over pastoral hunts to hunts of
slavery again in the 16th century. Cynegetic power takes a decisive
turn with the emergence of capitalism, when it becomes far-reaching
and contributes greatly to the emergence of police and the bioplitical
framework of modernity.
The author makes two particular points about hunting:

1. there is a paradoxical dialectic of hunting: the reversal of hunting turns the prey into the hunter, thus turning resistance to hunting into a quandary since the prey becomes what it detests;
2. Hunting is not Hegelian - for instance, the black slave is not responsible for his slavery as had been argued by Hegel, who avered that the black slave's situation came about due to their
unwillingness to fight back. This idea presupposes hierarchial symmetry and absence of interpellative power relations which had not been existent empirically.
701 reviews78 followers
September 7, 2015
Un ensayo sobre el fondo antropológico de la dominación violenta de unos seres humanos sobre otros, lo que funda el poder y la desigualdad económica y se manifiesta en la esclavitud, el racismo o la persecución de judíos. Se trata de un libro muy interesante y claro -incluso cuando cita a Derrida-, cuya tesis, impecable,mes defendida con muchos ejemplos certeros.
Profile Image for María .
94 reviews7 followers
August 4, 2024
Un ensayo tan certero como difícil de asimilar, por la facilidad con que relata algunos de los crímenes más atroces cometidos por la humanidad contra sí misma. El autor utiliza el materialismo histórico como anclaje teórico para analizar fenómenos como la esclavitud, el antisemitismo o la persecución de fugitivos bajo un mismo prisma: el de la caza del hombre contra el hombre. "Caza" es la palabra clave de este ensayo, que, pese a la perspectiva a la que se agarra, no se desvía por vericuetos categóricos; antes al contrario, parte de hechos históricos concretos para analizar las similitudes y diferencias de los diferentes actos de caza.

La obra no carece de denuncia, pues admite de antemano el carácter trágico no solo de atrocidades como el holocausto, sino también de hechos más cercanos en el tiempo y a menudo justificados; entre ellos, la caza de inmigrantes en aras de su ilegalidad, es decir, de su nacionalidad. Sin embargo, la voz del autor, aunque comete algunas generalizaciones (por ejemplo, cuando habla de los cuerpos de seguridad del Estado, principalmente la policía), no cae en la moralina o el sentimentalismo fácil. Algunos capítulos se hacen más repetitivos y, personalmente, he echado en falta la perspectiva de género o, al menos, un análisis de las cazas por violencia machista, como la caza de brujas. Con todo, se trata de un ensayo de gran claridad y calidad, muy bien documentado y estructurado, y que demuestra la veracidad histórica de una de las partes más oscuras del alma humana.
Profile Image for Carlos.
67 reviews5 followers
June 10, 2022
Bastante interesante, un recorrido por los lugares comunes de la biopolítica (soberanía, excepción, Afuera, etc) pero a través de la figura de poder cinegético, entendido este como el que caza hombres, ya sea para eliminarlos de esa Naturaleza a la que han sido condenadas, sea como forma de "capturar" presas para aumentar el rebaño.

Me ha gustado más la primera parte, en la que aborda la caza de hombres (esclavos e indios, sobre todo), que cuando ya entra toda la jarana moderna sobre policía, soberanía biopolítica y demás. Supongo que a partir de la Modernidad ese tema se ha trabajado más (y, además, se entreteje más con la función policial) y desde posiciones que me resultan más atractivas, pero aún así, bastante wapo.
Profile Image for Rhys.
904 reviews137 followers
June 20, 2023
"If there is an animalization here, it is perhaps in the sense in which Hannah Arendt writes that man “can be fully dominated only when he becomes a specimen of the animal-species man”: total domination, a horizon that is difficult to attain, and thus does not involve the animalization of human beings in the sense in which they would cease to be “humans,” but rather the reduction of their humanity to human animality—an animality that always remains full of its own redoubtable resources."
Profile Image for Santiago Bustillo.
14 reviews
October 25, 2025
En conclusión toda justificación de la violencia está estrechamente ligada con proteger y enaltecer sustancializaciones como la esencia humana, el nacionalismo, la raza etc todas inoperables vacías y tramposas

Sería más sencillo reconocer que estamos todos enfermos y mandar este mundo al infierno ya!!!!!!!
Profile Image for Jeff.
25 reviews
November 6, 2015
"From manhunting for sport in the Occident to the global search for 'illegal aliens' in the 21st century, this book offers a history of human's preying on other human beings. A provocative take on an interesting subject." Jimmy Casas Klausen, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Profile Image for Elliott Colla.
Author 10 books29 followers
May 6, 2015
A stunning historical-philosophical account of human predation. Vital reading for understanding asymmetrical warfare and the vulnerability of the stateless, the exploited and the enslaved.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews

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