Abstract: This essay reviews three recent books which each provide a different account of human rights and their critics. Jean-Yves Pranchère and Justine Lacroix’s Human Rights on Trial constructs a genealogy of critiques of human rights discourse from the late eighteenth century to the present day. Joe Hoover’s Reconstructing Human Rights proposes a critically redemptive approach to human rights, pushing human rights further leftward through the resources of pragmatism and agonistic theories of democracy. But it is ultimately Ratna Kapur’s Freedom in a Fishbowl that articulates the most profound, and radical, challenge to human rights by indicting its Eurocentric notions of freedom and challenging us to engage with non-European conceptions of freedom.
Current Issue
Our long-awaited issue of Humanity journal is out! Its special dossier, Iran under Sanctions, examines the myriad and devastating impacts of international sanctions on society, culture, and politics. The issue includes an essay on the legal case Herero and Nama v. The Federal Republic of Germany to theorize reparations for German colonialism and slavery as they became linked with the aftermath of the Shoah. It also includes essays on T.H. Marshall and the right of access to justice; visual representations of Armenian genocide survivors; and, the concept of radical friendship in relation to the Farmers’ Protests in India.
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