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Human Rights Regimes and The Last Utopia

Human Rights Regimes and The Last Utopia POLITICAL ENDS, HISTORICAL OVERTURES A Discussion of Samuel Moyn’s The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History Human Rights Regimes and The Last Utopia jason frank Human rights has been proclaimed the hegemonic normative dis- course of our time— the “only political- moral idea that has won universal acceptance” — but as the following exchange vividly demonstrates, the history of human rights ascendance and its con- tribution to emancipatory politics is sharply contested. In part, the controversy springs from the very different forms of politics and governance that have taken shape around the discourse of human rights over the past half century: the contours of different human rights regimes. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights ad- opted by the United Nations in 1948, for example, provided an international legal framework for adjudicating state atrocities like those committed by the Nazi regime during World War II. Dur- ing the 1980s, human rights were invoked by protesting citizens themselves urging the democratic transformation of authoritarian regimes. Closer to our own time— in the “age of terror”— human rights has become the ruling norm of global security politics, au- thorizing international economic sanctions and state military in- terventions, and spawning the parallel governmental http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences University of Nebraska Press

Human Rights Regimes and The Last Utopia

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Publisher
University of Nebraska Press
ISSN
1938-8020

Abstract

POLITICAL ENDS, HISTORICAL OVERTURES A Discussion of Samuel Moyn’s The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History Human Rights Regimes and The Last Utopia jason frank Human rights has been proclaimed the hegemonic normative dis- course of our time— the “only political- moral idea that has won universal acceptance” — but as the following exchange vividly demonstrates, the history of human rights ascendance and its con- tribution to emancipatory politics is sharply contested. In part, the controversy springs from the very different forms of politics and governance that have taken shape around the discourse of human rights over the past half century: the contours of different human rights regimes. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights ad- opted by the United Nations in 1948, for example, provided an international legal framework for adjudicating state atrocities like those committed by the Nazi regime during World War II. Dur- ing the 1980s, human rights were invoked by protesting citizens themselves urging the democratic transformation of authoritarian regimes. Closer to our own time— in the “age of terror”— human rights has become the ruling norm of global security politics, au- thorizing international economic sanctions and state military in- terventions, and spawning the parallel governmental

Journal

Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences – University of Nebraska Press

Published: Oct 6, 2013

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