Human Rights, Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
In this timely study of the historical, ideological, and formal interdependencies of the novel and human rights, Joseph Slaughter demonstrates that the twentieth-century rise of “world literature” and international human rights law are related phenomena.
Slaughter argues that international law shares with the modern novel a particular conception of the human individual. The Bildungsroman, the novel of coming of age, fills out this image, offering a conceptual vocabulary, a humanist social vision, and a narrative grammar for what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and early literary theorists both call “the free and full development of the human personality.”
Revising our received understanding of the relationship between law and literature, Slaughter suggests that this narrative form has acted as a cultural surrogate for the weak executive authority of international law, naturalizing the assumptions and conditions that make human rights appear commonsensical. As a kind of novelistic correlative to human rights law, the Bildungsroman has thus been doing some of the sociocultural work of enforcement that the law cannot do for itself.
This analysis of the cultural work of law and of the social work of literature challenges traditional Eurocentric histories of both international law and the dissemination of the novel. Taking his point of departure in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, Slaughter focuses on recent postcolonial versions of the coming-of-age story to show how the promise of human rights becomes legible in narrative and how the novel and the law are complicit in contemporary projects of globalization: in colonialism, neoimperalism, humanitarianism, and the spread of multinational consumer capitalism.
Slaughter raises important practical and ethical questions that we must confront in advocating for human rights and reading world literature—imperatives that, today more than ever, are intertwined.
Joseph R. Slaughter
Joseph R. Slaughter is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and President of the American Comparative Literature Association.
Related to Human Rights, Inc.
Related ebooks
Counting the Dead: The Culture and Politics of Human Rights Activism in Colombia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hidden in Plain Sight: Slave Capitalism in Poe, Hawthorne, and Joel Chandler Harris Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reading Prisoners: Literature, Literacy, and the Transformation of American Punishment, 1700–1845 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Critical History of Poverty Finance: Colonial Roots and Neoliberal Failures Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAbuse of Power: How Cold War Surveillance and Secrecy Policy Shaped the Response to 9/11 Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Hierarchy and Value: Comparative Perspectives on Moral Order Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEurope and Its Shadows: Coloniality after Empire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPassionate Declarations: Essays on War and Justice Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Liberal Defence of Murder Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Violence of Development: Resource Depletion, Environmental Crises and Human Rights Abuses in Central America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSocialism Looks Forward Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSensitive Pasts: Questioning Heritage in Education Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfter Grenfell: Violence, Resistance and Response Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOpen Borders: In Defense of Free Movement Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTechnocrats and the Politics of Drought and Development in Twentieth-Century Brazil Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfrican Land Questions, Agrarian Transitions and the State: Contradictions of Neo-Liberal Land Reforms Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Anatomy of a South African Genocide: The Extermination of the Cape San Peoples Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Politics of Non-state Social Welfare Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEnemies of All Humankind: Fictions of Legitimate Violence Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGlobal justice networks: Geographies of transnational solidarity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRadical Democracy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Best Place?: Gender, Family, and Migration in the New West Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNo One's Son: The remarkable true story of a defiant African boy and his bold quest for freedom Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHungry for Revolution: The Politics of Food and the Making of Modern Chile Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Beginning of History: Value Struggles and Global Capital Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArise Africa, Roar China: Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMicro Media Industries: Hmong American Media Innovation in the Diaspora Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWorries of the Heart: Widows, Family, and Community in Kenya Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEurope's Fault Lines: Racism and the Rise of the Right Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Literary Criticism For You
The Art of Seduction: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Novel by Gabriel Garcia Márquez | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Power of Habit: by Charles Duhigg | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Speed Reading: How to Read a Book a Day - Simple Tricks to Explode Your Reading Speed and Comprehension Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/512 Rules For Life: by Jordan Peterson | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 48 Laws of Power: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Man's Search for Meaning: by Viktor E. Frankl | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Verity: by Colleen Hoover | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.by Brené Brown | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Letters to a Young Poet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Bad Feminist: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain | Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Circe: by Madeline Miller | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Kids: A National Book Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5SUMMARY Of The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in Healthy Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Virtues Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago: The Authorized Abridgement Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Reader’s Companion to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Human Rights, Inc.
3 ratings0 reviews