[Reader-list] Post- ISF questions

[Oishik Sircar]

It's interesting how Jeebesh's position perfectly reflects what Upendra Baxi has called human rights 'wariness' of the Global South -- while it is important to be critical of the cruelly liberal project of the UN authored rights discourse -- from which has also emerged the powerful rhetoric of the 'rights-based' approach -- it will be counterproductive to undermine its potential as a tool for enganing in 'justice seeking' processes. I agree so far as we are willing to put the UN authored rights discourse under constant interrogation to check its hegemonic and essentialist tendencies -- while at the same time learning the strategies for its intelligent use -- there's a 'small voice of history', in the 'political society' of the disadvantaged which also articulates 'human rights' concerns -- the strategy is it put the meta-narrative of 'human rights' under the scanner of this 'small of voice of history' -- not to discard and trivialise its potential. 

OISHIK SIRCAR
oishiksircar at hotmail.comoishiksircar@justice.com
 Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 18:00:20 +0000From: amitrbasu50 at yahoo.co.inTo: jeebesh at sarai.net; reader-list at sarai.netSubject: Re: [Reader-list] Post- ISF questionsjeebesh,  thanks for raising such crucial questions to ponder on. such kind of cultural hegemony of rights discourse would emerge in the golbalised model of the state was hinted by some. your refection from the isf is indeed timely and pushes me to think critically.  amitJeebesh Bagchi <jeebesh at sarai.net> wrote:  Dear All,Walked around ISF (9th - 13th Nov, Delhi) for some time and it was amazing how deep the "Rights" based language has seeped into the social body and imagination. If you take away that word, there will be nothing left to hold on to. The "masters" thunder facts of displacement and terrors by "LPG" (liberalization, privatization, globalization), rhetorically induce powerlessness and guilt and then move towards a carving of a "rights" based petitioning. The ghost in
 the ISF machine was the State, its social welfare mystique and its robin hood mythologies!!From the conceptual debris of the last century, this one word has gathered many adherents. There was no "issue" that was not under this "rights" scanner. Am totally foxed - how this pervasive spread of this discourse? Why is it such a popular discourse? The abstraction that a "rights" based discourse would produce will land up erasing so much of the diversity that all these groups are claiming to be representing. Or is this the only form by which "leaders" can talk to each other? Or is this the beginning of new govermentality, that incorporates everyone as a "implementor" of emerging state policies and designs over space, labour, and resource...Maybe it is just that the present production of speed and terror of capitalist accumulation has everyone bewildered and only a naive recourse to State seems a way to hold on
 to some ground. Rest all looks lost, long and evaporating.So comrades the task of critical and creative thinking is going to be fun!!bestjeebesh_________________________________________reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.Critiques & CollaborationsTo subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header.To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/> 
	

	
		 
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