Imagining human rights / / edited by Susanne Kaul and David Kim.

• Author: Kim, David D.
• TeilnehmendeR: Kaul, Susanne, 1974-; Kim, David, 1979-
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter,, 2015.
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (viii, 227 pages) :; illustrations
• Notes: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Why is it that human rights are considered inviolable norms of justice at local and global scales although the number of their violations has steadily increased in modern history? On the surface, this paradox seems to be reducible to a straightforward discrepancy between idealism and reality in humanitarian affairs, but Imagining Human Rights complicates the picture by offering interdisciplinary perspectives on the imaginary status of human rights. By that the contributors mean not merely subject to imagination, open to interpretation or far too abstract, but also formative of a social imaginary with emphatic identifications and shared values. From a variety of disciplinary perspectives, they explore critical ways of engaging in rigorous interdisciplinary conversations about the origin and language of human rights, personal dignity, redistributive justice, and international solidarity. Together, they show how and why a careful examination of the intersection between disciplinary investigations is essential for imagining human rights at large. Examples range from the legitimacy of land ownership rights and the inadequacy of human faculty to make sense of mass violence in visual representation to the stewardship of human rights promoters and the genealogy of human rights.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Acknowledgments / Kaul, Susanne / Kim, David -- Table Of Contents -- Introduction: Imagining Human Rights / Kaul, Susanne / Kim, David -- The Sacredness of the Person or The Last Utopia: A Conversation about the History of Human Rights / Joas, Hans / Moyn, Samuel -- Section One: Claiming Human Rights -- The Progressive Potential of Human Rights / Pogge, Thomas -- The More Who Die, the Less We Care Psychic Numbing and Genocide / Slovic, Paul / Västfjäll, Daniel -- On Invoking Human Rights When There Aren't Any / Bittner, Rüdiger -- The Cosmopolitics of Parrhesia: Foucault and Truth-Telling as Human Right / Kim, David -- Imagining Threatened Peoples: The Society for Threatened Peoples (Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker) in 1970s West Germany / Wildenthal, Lora -- Neoliberal Charity: German Contraband Humanitarians in Kenya / Berman, Nina -- Section Two: Human Rights In Imagination -- Poetic Anarchy and Human Rights: Dissensus in Georg Büchner's Danton's Death and Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade / Wogenstein, Sebastian -- The Aesthetics of Human Rights in Franz Werfel's The Forty Days of Musa Dagh / Kohns, Oliver -- The Right To Tell That It Hurt: Fiction and Political Performance of Human Rights in South Africa / Bösch, Michael / Kaul, Susanne -- Embodiment and Immigrant Rights in Alejandro González Iñárritu's Biutiful -- Why Them and Not I? An Account of Kalliopi Lemos's Art Projects About Human Dignity / Manolopoulou, Artemis -- List of Contributors -- Index of Persons -- Index of Subjects