Abstract
Human rights were a defining discourse of the twentieth century. The opening decades of the twenty-first, however, have witnessed increasing claims that the time of this discourse as an emancipatory tool is up. Focusing on international human rights law, I offer a response to these claims. Drawing from Elizabeth Grosz, Drucilla Cornell and Judith Butler, I propose that a productive future for this area of law in facilitating radical social change can be envisaged by considering more closely the relationship between human rights and temporality and by thinking through a conception of rights which is untimely. This involves abandoning commitment to linearity, progression and predictability in understanding international human rights law and its development and viewing such as based on a conception of the future that is unknown and uncontrollable, that does not progressively follow from the present, and that is open to embrace of the new.
Original language | English |
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Number of pages | 22 |
Journal | Social and Legal Studies |
Volume | 28 |
Issue number | 6 |
Early online date | 05 Dec 2018 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 05 Oct 2019 |
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Profiles
-
Kathryn McNeilly
- School of Law - Senior Lecturer
- The Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice
Person: Academic