Wronging Rights?: Philosophical Challenges for Human Rights

by Aakash Singh Rathore (Editor), Alex Cistelecan (Editor)

This book brings together two of the most powerful and relevant philosophical critiques of human the post-colonialist and the post-Althusserian, its balanced internal structure not just throwing these two critiques together, but actually forcing them to enter into confrontation and dialogue. The book is organised in three at each end, the post-colonialist and the post-Althusserian critiques are represented by some of their main thinkers (Ratna Kapur, G. C. Spivak, Upendra Baxi; Slavoj Žižek, Jacques Rancière), while in the middle, an American intermezzo (Richard Rorty, Wendy Brown) functions as a genuine Derridian always already contaminating the purity of the two theoretical schools, preventing their enclosure and, hence, fuelling and complicating further their mutual confrontation. As in any authentic dialogue, the introduction and the conclusion each claim victory for one of the sides by changing the very terms and rules of the dialogue, picturing it as a confrontation between emancipatory universalism and inefficient particularism (from the perspective of the post-Althusserians), or as a split between hypocrisy and truth (from the perspective of the post-colonialists).

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 11, 2011

About the author

Aakash Singh Rathore is Visiting Professor at the Centre for Philosophy, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India and Director of the International Research Network for Religion and Democracy (www.irnrd.org). He is also an International Fellow of the Center for Ethics and Global Politics in Rome, Italy.