Letters to the Contrary: A Curated History of the UNESCO Human Rights Survey

ISBN-13: 9781503605343 / Angielski / Miękka / 2018 / 376 str.

Mark Goodale

Opis

Since its adoption in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) has served as the foundation for the protection of human rights around the world. Historians and human rights scholars have claimed that the UDHR was based in part on UNESCO's global survey of intellectuals, theologians, and cultural and political leaders to generate truly universal assessment of human rights. This book provides a critical analysis of the use and misuse of the UNESCO process within contemporary debates over the origins, legitimacy, and universality of human rights. Based on meticulous archival research, Letters to the Contrary revises and corrects the current understanding and discourse circulating regarding UNESCO's supposedly "global" survey. Mark Goodale's extensive archival research uncovers a historical record filled with letters and responses that were omitted, and outright rejections of the universal human rights ideal. This volume collects these neglected survey responses, including letters by T.S. Eliot, Ghandi, Auden, and other mid-century notables. In collecting, annotating, and analyzing these responses, Goodale reveals an alternative history that is deeply connected to the ongoing life of human rights in the twenty-first century. This history demonstrates that the UNESCO process was at the same time both much less than supposed, but also much more. In many ways, the intellectual struggles, moral questions, and ideological doubts among the different participants who both organized and responded to the survey reveal a strikingly critical and contemporary orientation, begging similar questions about the current and future debates surrounding human rights scholarship and practice.