Human Rights Discourse in the Post-9/11 Age

ISBN-13: 9783030138714 / Angielski / Twarda / 2019 / 235 str.

Kanishka Chowdhury

Spis treści

1. Introduction: Reading Rights Discourse in a Transnational Economy

Human Rights Discourse in Our Time

Constructing Human Rights Discourse

Human Rights Discourse and Wealth Accumulation

Overview of the Argument

2. Historicizing Rights Discourse Post-9/11

Introduction

Decolonization and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Fetishizing the Politics of Development in the Declarations of the 1990s

The Post-9/11 Landscape of Rights: A Critical Consideration

Neoliberalism and Rights Discourse

3. Workers’ Rights, Exploitation, and the Transactional Moment

Introduction

Oppression and Exploitation: Some Differences

Marx’s Analysis of the Injustice of Wage Labor

Unsettling the Morality of Rights and Regulations

Conclusion

4. Gender Rights and the Politics of Empowerment

Introduction

Empowerment and Neoliberalism

NGOs and the Construction of “Civil Society”

Microcredit: Empowerment and Debt

Nirantar, Gender Rights, and the Challenges of Transformative Work

Conclusion

5. “Tomorrow There Will Be More of Us: Rights Discourse, The State, and Toxic Capitalism in Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People

Introduction

The State and the Struggle for Rights

Contextualizing Animal’s People in Neoliberal Times

The Bhopal Disaster and its Aftermath

Literature and the Language of Human Rights

“Hope is Not a Fiction”: Interrogating Rights Discourse in Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People

Conclusion

6. Refugees’ Rights: Capital, Óscar Martínez’s The Beast, Gianfranco Rosi’s Fuocoammare, and the “Problem” of the Surplus Population

Introduction

Seeking Refuge in a Global Context

Óscar Martínez’s The Beast: Inciting Rage, Generating Respect

“Beyond the Reach of Political Discourse”: Gianfranco Rosi’s Fuocoammare

The “Problem” of the Surplus Population

Designating “Crisis,” Fixing Borders

Conclusion

Chapter 7/Conclusion

O autorze

Kanishka Chowdhury is Professor of English and Director of the Program in American Culture and Difference at the University of St. Thomas, MN, USA. His first book, The New India: Citizenship, Subjectivity, and Economic Liberalization, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2011.

Blurb

This book offers a materialist critique of mainstream human rights discourse in the period following 9/11, examining literary works, critical histories, international declarations, government statutes, NGO manifestos, and a documentary film. The author points out some of the contradictions that emerge in contemporary rights language when material relations are not sufficiently perceived or acknowledged, and he directs attention to the role of some rights talk in maintaining and managing the accelerated global project of capital accumulation. Even as rights discourse points to injustices—for example, injustices related to labor, gender, the citizen’s relationship to the state, or the movement of refugees—it can simultaneously maintain systems of oppression. By constructing subjects who are aligned to the interests of capital, by emphasizing individual “empowerment,” and/or by containing social disenchantment, it reinforces the process of wealth accumulation, supports neoliberal ideologies, and diminishes the possibility of real transformation through collective struggle.

Kanishka Chowdhury is Professor of English and Director of the Program in American Culture and Difference at the University of St. Thomas, MN, USA. His first book, The New India: Citizenship, Subjectivity, and Economic Liberalization, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2011.