[Reader-list] Post- ISF questions

[mahmood farooqui]

the point is well taken oishik but what comrade jeebs was concerned
about, i think, was that at a moment like the india social forum where
momentous and farreaching reflections are supposed to happen, by a
whole gamut of organisations, peoples, beings, movements, this kind of
hegemonic discourse is alarming, as indeed it is!

On 14/11/06, Oishik Sircar <oishiksircar at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 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.com
> oishiksircar at justice.com
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 18:00:20 +0000
> From: amitrbasu50 at yahoo.co.in
> To: jeebesh at sarai.net; reader-list at sarai.net
> Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Post- ISF questions
>
> jeebesh, 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. amit
>
> Jeebesh 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!!
>
> best
> jeebesh
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