How to Recapture Human Rights Within the Political: Validating the Discourse Theory Approach

A review of: Human Rights and Democracy: Discourse Theory and Global Rights Institutions by Eva Erman. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. 243 pp

Forskellige visioner og idéer om menneskerettigheder i demokratisk tænkning - Ferry og Renauts republikanske alternativ

Denne artikel beskæftiger sig med tilegnelsen og fortolkningen af menneskerettighederne inden for forskellige politiske diskurser (liberalisme, socialisme og republikanisme), og disse fortolkningers særlige relevans for deres forskellige normative forestillinger om demokrati. Der argumenteres for, at republikanismen i Luc Ferry og Alain Renaut aftapning kan danne en mulig forsoning og middelvej mellem liberalisme og socialisme

Magdalena A. Zolkos on Rethinking the Holocaust by Yehuda Bauer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. 335pp.

A review of: Rethinking the Holocaust by Yehuda Bauer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. 335pp

Life as a political problem: the post-human turn in political theory

The post-human turn in political theory has challenged the anthropocentric assumption that individuated human agency is the exclusive domain of political action, subjectivity, and community. Recently, there has emerged an important intersection between, on one hand, the “post-human turn” in political theory and, on the other hand, the critical studies of neoliberal governance and ideology, which define the contemporary historical moment in terms of the late capitalist monitoring, regulation, and exploitation of biological life of populations. In this context, the post-human turn in political theory has meant the extension of focus from human agency to include animals, plants, inanimate objects, and machines. Focusing on the work of Catherine Malabou, Maurizio Lazzarato, Brian Massumi, Brad Evans, and Julian Reid, I discuss some of the problems that arise from the attempt at non-anthropocentric theorizing of politics, including what it means—theoretically, politically, and epistemologically—to consider biological and machinic units in terms of political agency. I suggest that the problems encountered by these post-humanist contributions to the field of political theory are epistemological, analytical, and political. I focus in particular on whether the non-anthropocentric refiguring of politics offers new critical insights into, and resistances against, neoliberal governance

Testimony, Endurance, Tryvoga : A History Open to Shivering Bodies 1

This chapter approaches the narrative and visual material from war diaries from two theoretical perspectives. The first one comes from Georges Didi-Huberman's writings on the representation of peoples ‘rising up’ in protest. The second perspective is linked to the concept of performative citizenship, invoked by Timothy Snyder to consider the democratic importance of the social mobilisation and solidarity that Ukraine has demonstrated in response to Russia's invasion. However, in contrast to Snyder's discussion that privileges conception of an active (‘diurnal’) subject, the material from Diaries of War and Life suggests that people ‘rise up’ not only in their activities and undertakings, but also have a ‘nocturnal’ dimension that comes into focus in narratives and representations of standstill and withdrawal from action—in the bomb shelter, in sleep, waiting. This chapter develops the concept of the ‘nocturnal people’ by elaborating some of its key aesthetic and political motifs in the diaries, both in relation to corporeality (a bodily shiver or a tremor) and to affect (dread, alarm, fear). The latter is outlined using the Ukrainian word tryvoga, which connotes a prolonged experience of dread, anxiety, a state of alertness and trepidation. The chapter concludes by noting relational associations of tryvoga as endurance of a painful experience with others that is extended in time and considers its implications for our understanding of witnessing war and mass violence.peerReviewe