Human Rights and Constituent Power: Without Model or Warranty

Description

With the emergence of modern human rights in the Universal Declaration, what remained of a radical political potential of the discourse withdrew: statism and individualism became its authorised foundations and the possibilities of other human rights traditions were denied. The strife that once lay at the heart of human rights was forgotten in an increasing juridification. This book seeks to recover the radical political pole of human rights. It looks to the debates surrounding constituent power – the ‘power of the people’ – in order to understand different possibilities for the discourse. Using continental political philosophy and critical legal theory, Human Rights and Constituent Power presents a very different conception of human rights, more at home on the riotous streets than in courtrooms and parliaments. Front Cover Human Rights and Constituent Power Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgements 1. Democracy, radical politics and a differential human rights 2. Challenging human rights histories Three strategies of pacification Slavery, the Haitian Revolution and abolition 3. The withdrawal of the radical in human rights The withdrawal of the radical Statist and individualist metaphysics 4. The authority of change: Sieyès and Kant Sieyès and the realization of the nation Kant and the abyssal heart of the constituent 5. An open constituent power: Sorel, Benjamin and Bataille Reflections on violence Critique of violence The dark night of revolution-without-end 6. Differing the people: Derrida and Rancière A substantive or elided people? Derrida and Rancière’s deconstruction of the people 7. On being-together: beyond the subject of human rights Heidegger’s Volk The people, the political and community 8. On world: biopolitics, singularity and ‘global’ human rights Human rights, biopower and singularity World, globe and capital 9. On right-ing: constituent power and human rights Two radical notions of rights Right-ing and the sovereignty of human rights? Notes Bibliography Index