The Aporia of Rights

Reviews / Votes

Tackling head on one of the most challenging, perplexing, and yet essential political relationships of our time, this collection is a must-read for those of us-political scientists, philosophers, sociologists, historians, lawyers-who work with, around and even against the aporetic connection between human rights and citizenship. * Chris McCorkindale, Lecturer, University of Strathelyde Law School, UK, and co-editor of Hannah Arendt and the Law * 'What is unprecedented is not the loss of a home but the impossibility of finding a new one.' Hannah Arendt thought that most of those who have to insist on their rights lack the precondition of even universal rights, a place to call home. Refugees, boat people, sans papiers and more are still in this situation. Also, others, very much at home, are bought and sold into imprisonment like chattel in a new institutional setting of private prisons and debt collections. Human rights talk abounds but on the ground rights require a fast diminishing public infrastructure to secure their bearers from arbitrary violence and illegitimate force. This volume deepens our thinking about human rights and their paradoxes at a time when such rethinking is sorely needed. * Bonnie Honig, Nancy Duke Lewis Professor, Brown University, US, and author of Antigone, Interrupted * This is an important contribution to the human rights literature, that successfully blends theoretical and empirical pieces and critical and explanatory approaches. A must read for anyone who takes rights seriously. * Jean L. Cohen, Nell and Herbert Singer Professor of Contemporary Civilization and Political Theory, Columbia University, US *