This seminar will explore the intersection of contemporary literature and human rights discourse, foregrounding the humanities-based contributions made to human rights study. Deeply-rooted cultural assumptions have played a tremendous (at times very problematic) role as analysts and the general public alike have struggled to evaluate international policy and various forms of state sanctioned violence in an era of profound globalization. For those not inclined to embrace Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis, the difficult promotion of a “transcultural” basis for human rights often leads to a rethinking of cosmopolitanism, or to a renewed exploration of universal standards of human behavior. Of course, ample evidence suggests that much remains to be done in terms of studying the possibilities, implications and limitations of such transculturally-based standards. Conflicts between strongly-held local beliefs and prescribed universal standards become even more complicated when human rights initiatives are yoked to neoliberal economic polices by organizations like the World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund, institutions that control the flow of financial aid to countries in need. A sophisticated analysis of human rights issues and institutions exists in the humanities--in humanistic objects of study as well as in humanistic methodologies, theories and extant criticism--and this resource has the potential to contribute significantly to future scholarship, activism and policy that must ultimately wrestle with the cultural assumptions shaping the human rights movement.
Questions that we will pursue include: Does a human rights orientation promote certain notions of the “human” over others? How are notions of the “human” and “rights” reshaped as the literature critiques/engages neoliberalism and/or globalization? How does the literature negotiate between different conceptions of rights (including those grounded in national, international and universalist contexts)? How does the literature negotiate the Cold War and “third world” ideological conflicts that have so dramatically shaped U.N. human rights efforts since their inception? What does the literature reveal about the limitations of rights discourse generally? When injuries necessitate a response from a community or a state, a response that reaches beyond the mechanisms provided by the rule of law, how do the law and culture interact? According to the literature, how might the law and culture, in their interaction, support or inhibit redress/healing?
Authors will include: Arjun Appadurai, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Zygmunt Bauman, Judith Butler, J.M. Coetzee, Ariel Dorfman, Louise Erdrich, David Harvey, Mo Hayder, Jospeh Heller, Lynn Hunt, Micheline Ishay, Mark Kelman, Saskia Sassen, Joseph Slaughter, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Elie Wiesel. |
