Human Rights Discourse in a Global Network

Books beyond Borders

Lena Khor

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317119791
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In her innovative study of human rights discourse, Lena Khor takes up the prevailing concern by scholars who charge that the globalization of human rights discourse is becoming yet another form of cultural, legal, and political imperialism imposed from above by an international human rights regime based in the Global North. To counter these charges, she argues for a paradigmatic shift away from human rights as a hegemonic, immutable, and ill-defined entity toward one that recognizes human rights as a social construct comprised of language and of language use. She proposes a new theoretical framework based on a global discourse network of human rights, supporting her model with case studies that examine the words and actions of witnesses to genocide (Paul Rusesabagina) and humanitarian organizations (Doctors Without Borders). She also analyzes the language of texts such as Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost. Khor's idea of a globally networked structure of human rights discourse enables actors (textual and human) who tap into or are linked into this rapidly globalizing system of networks to increase their power as speaking subjects and, in so doing, to influence the range of acceptable meanings and practices of human rights in the cultural sphere. Khor's book is a unique and important contribution to the study of human rights in the humanities that revitalizes viable notions of agency and liberatory network power in fields that have been dominated by negative visions of human capacity and moral action.

Chapter 1
Human Rights Discourse and its Global Network

Human rights discourse often refers to official documents from an international human rights regime. These official documents might include legal and governmental documents on human rights such as the human rights instruments adopted by the United Nations and the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices issued annually by the US State Department.¹ It is important to recognize, however, that human rights discourse also includes the often overlooked unofficial materials oriented around human rights language, ideology, and ethics, such as literature, film, plays, and poetry produced by artists and consumed through reading groups, film festivals, theater performances, and poetry readings. Such unofficial documents interact with their official counterparts in a system of networks. Some networks operate at national and international levels such as when official documents travel within a state and between states respectively. Some networks operate at local and global levels whereby unofficial materials circulate amongst individuals and groups within a situated locale and across a range of locales worldwide to reinforce consciousness about human rights issues. Whether their texts are official or unofficial, whether they function at national, international, local, or global levels, these multiple discourse networks are connected by human rights language, ideology, and ethics, primarily as articulated in the UDHR. Together, they comprise a global discourse network of human rights.

This chapter is dedicated to developing this idea of a global discourse network, describing its seven key characteristics and introducing its capacities of network identity, power, and conventions. It argues that because of the discursive and networked nature of this global discourse network of human rights, individuals and groups who tap into or are linked into it can gain access to globally-recognizable identities and globally-influential powers that they would not have otherwise. It also suggests that this global discourse network is a discourse empire, one of the global power networks that Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri argue rule over our contemporary, globalized world as Empire.² As a discourse empire, however, this global discourse network also holds the potential for its own, if not revolution, at least resistance and reform. The set of actors that enables this inherent capacity for change is what Hardt and Negri call “multitude.” To lay the foundation for this concept of a global discourse network of human rights, this chapter first defines its critical terms including discourse and networks, as well as the kinds of agency and actions they enable.

Human Rights as Discourse

Although the paradigm of discourse is an appropriate model for these networks, it can be elusive because critics use it in multiple ways—to refer to substance, structure, or both. As substance, discourse refers to a broad range of texts, that is, “all utterances or texts which have meaning and which have some effects in the real world.”³ As structure, it refers to “a regulated practice that accounts for a number of statements,” that is, “the rules and structures which produce particular utterances and texts.”⁴ As both substance and structure, it refers to “an individualized group of statements,” that is, “groups of utterances which seem to be regulated in some way and which seem to have a coherence and a force to them in common,” as is the case with human rights discourse.⁵ My use of discourse here refers to it as both substance and structure. To talk of human rights as discourse, then, is to reference the individual acts of human rights discourse (language/lexicon and texts), the set of conventional practices that govern them (discursive and social practices), and the system of ideas and values that inform and connect them (ideology and ethics).⁶ For my purposes, human rights discourse acts as a convenient shorthand to refer to the collection of vocabulary and texts as well as discursive and social practices that are associated with the language, ideology, and ethics of human rights, all of which are inscribed in its project’s founding document, the UDHR.

Language here refers to a set of vocabulary (singular terms or words, phrases, sentences) particular to the ideology and ethics of human rights. Terms and phrases such as “human dignity,” “self-determination,” and “perpetrator” are some typical examples. Texts refers to written, spoken, visual, and multimedia products such as legal documents, memoirs, speeches, photographs, flyers, and films.⁷ Legal documents like the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), campaign posters and in-depth reports like those on Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch websites, and documentary video of human rights abuses on the WITNESS website are some typical examples of texts.⁸ Discursive practices refers to a particular set of ways in which individuals and groups use the language, ideology, and ethics of human rights when they produce texts.⁹ Discursive practices encompass the whole gamut of processes needed to produce, distribute, and consume texts.¹⁰ Concluding in-depth reports with a set of “next steps,” for example, is a discursive convention practiced by most human rights organizations. Representing the abusive experiences of human rights survivors in the genres of autobiographies, memoirs, or biopics is another example. Discursive practices are a particular kind of social practice.¹¹ Social practices refers to a particular set of ways in which individuals and groups embody the language, ideology, and ethics of human rights when they act in its name.¹² Believing that human beings are subjects of rights by virtue of their being human, and interacting with them accordingly, for example, are two social conventions practiced by most human rights activists and their organizations.

Even as it is helpful to distinguish these dimensions of discourse (language, texts, discursive and social conventions, as well as ideology and ethics), it is also important to note that these dimensions are largely inseparable in practice. Any act of discourse is at once an instance of language in use, a piece of text, an instance of discursive and social conventions in practice, and an instance of ideology and ethics made manifest. A Human Rights Watch in-depth report, for instance, may most closely resemble a textual dimension of human rights discourse. But the report may draw on phrases such as “human dignity,” “self-determination,” “victim,” and “perpetrator,” which are common to the lexicon of human rights in legal, civil society, and popular contexts, thereby encompassing the language dimension of discourse. The report may also connote the first two phrases positively and the last one negatively, thus enacting two common discursive conventions of human rights. It may further represent the victims as needing help, appeal to its readers’ sympathy, and ask readers to sign petitions urging their political representatives to bring the plight of the victims to political and legal attention. These appeals correspond to conventional practices of human rights in society. The representation of victims as needy and readers as potential helpers; the proscribed interaction of beneficence between powerless victims and powerful readers; and the prescribed recourse to political representation and the rule of law: each of these aspects reflects the ways individuals and groups signify, interact, and act in society within the frame of human rights. They capture the conventions of being, interacting, and acting as human beings within a human rights paradigm.

Such a paradigm is, of course, created, informed, and reinforced by the last two dimensions of human rights discourse—its ideology and ethics. The outrage at human rights abuse and the compulsion to stop the abuse in a Human Rights Watch report stems from a view of the world that believes human rights must be upheld and protected, a key aspect of human rights ideology. It also arises from a system of morality that believes one has the moral duty to stop the suffering of another, a critical component of human rights ethics. These formulations of ideology and ethics are implicit in all the other discursive dimensions of human rights language, text, and convention as well. This explanation of the dimensions of human rights discourse prepares us to consider its forms of agency.

Human Rights Discourse and Agency

Acts of discourse (textual acts such as words, books, photographs, and films, as well as performative acts such as speeches, rallies, and humanitarian work) enjoy particular forms of agency. First, they have the capacity to interact with and act upon other acts of discourse because of the intertextual nature of discourse. Intertextuality here refers to the manner in which each act of discourse is influenced by another.¹³ This influence may be in terms of content, whereby one text incorporates words, phrases, images, or ideas from other texts; or it may be in terms of form, wherein one text borrows the narrative conventions, genres, or symbolic codes from other texts. As they interact in this intertextual mode, these texts can reinforce, revise, or resist the content or form of their predecessors. They can also generate content and form altogether different from their predecessors. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners Burma (AAPP) and the Burmese Women’s Union (BWU), for example, have both repurposed selected essays from Aung San Suu Kyi’s Letters from Burma to advocate for other political prisoners in Burma.¹⁴ They have included Suu Kyi’s essays in their own reports, harnessing the international fame and sympathy attached to Suu Kyi for their own purposes. They have also drawn on the image of Suu Kyi as an icon, a symbol for all prisoners of conscience striving for human rights and democracy. Acts of discourse then can also beget other acts of discourse. This self-generating nature of discourse is a second form of agency for human rights discourse.

The intertextual and self-generating natures of discourse are not the only ways acts of discourse have agency. The dialectical relationship discourse shares with people and society also plays a part. Dialectical here refers to the way in which discourse is shaped by individuals and groups as well as social structures, and vice versa.¹⁵ Texts, discursive conventions, and social practices—acts of discourse—have the capacity to interact with and act upon individuals and groups who engage with them by shaping the identities, relationships, and systems of knowledge, belief, and values of these people. These acts of discourse can also influence the social structures they come into contact with, be these general social structures of class, race, gender, and religion, or particular social structures of organizations, institutions, fields, and industries. Conversely, people’s identities, relationships, and systems of knowledge, belief, and values can also shape these acts of discourse. The general and particular structures of society can shape these acts of discourse as well. When it comes to the textual dimension of discourse, this exchange of influence happens when texts are written or spoken by some people, and read and heard by others. It is facilitated, in short, by the processes of production, circulation, and consumption of acts of discourse.

The constructive quality of discourse implicit in the dialectical relationship between discourse and people is a fourth source of agency for acts of discourse. Texts, discursive conventions, and social practices do not just influence what and how people think of themselves, interact with others, and know and feel about the world around them. In fact, these acts of discourse invent these identities, relationships, and systems of knowledge, belief, and values that people have.¹⁶ Similarly, these acts of discourse constitute the general and particular structures of society as a whole; identifying what these structures are, delineating how they function, and stipulating their significance. Acts of discourse then are not simply representations of people and social reality, which then influence how people see and understand themselves, each other, and their world. Instead, acts of discourse are constitutions and constructions of people and social reality. They infuse people and society with meaning as they connect people and society in new ways. They establish the significance of people’s identities, the meanings of their relationships with others, and the relevance of their systems of knowledge, belief, and values. They also set up the significance of social structures and of social reality itself, hence also infusing different degrees of power in these structures and reality.

The capacity of discourse to construct and constitute people and society points to its ideological dimension as a fifth way acts of discourse have the capacity to act, to exercise influence, or create realities. They can create new systems of power or alter existing ones by generating or transforming ideologies.¹⁷ Ideologies here refers to systems of knowledge and belief about social reality, systems that shape relations of power between people in society. As with discourse, ideology is another paradigm that can prove elusive, especially in terms of its relationship with discourse. Sometimes ideology is seen as distinct from discourse: it produces the other, or it manifests itself in the other.¹⁸ Its dominance is such that it controls acts of discourse completely. Other times ideology is seen as dialectical to discourse: each produces the other; each influences the other.¹⁹ Neither one controls the other completely: rather, their respective powers over each other shift across time and space. I share this dialectical view of ideology and discourse. I take these dialectical interactions to be never completely equal, but nevertheless possible. I see ideology interacting in similarly dialectical ways with people and social structures.

Acts of discourse then are not just mediums for ideological transfer, they are also sites of ideological transformation. As sites of ideological transformation, acts of discourse have the capacity to negotiate relations of power because ideologies contribute to the production, reproduction, and transformation of power structures in society.²⁰ As Foucault puts it: “As history constantly teaches us, discourse is not simply that which translates struggle or systems of domination, but is the thing for which and by which there is struggle.”²¹ Every act of human rights discourse then is a site of struggle over the ideology of human rights, which in turn means a negotiation of the power structures and relations constituted by this ideology. As texts, discursive conventions, and social practices jostle to redefine what human rights are and what they mean, as well as what a world organized around human rights looks like in theory and practice, they can restructure the systems of power between people and within society that are informed or influenced by human rights. In so doing, acts of discourse can also transform the very language, ideology, and ethics of human rights upon which they are premised. This clarification of human rights discourse and its agency prepares the way for an articulation of its circulation through networks.

Human Rights Discourse and Networks

As with discourse and ideology, even as the paradigm of networks is appropriate here, it can also be elusive. The paradigm of networks is sometimes used to emphasize a particularly rhizomatic pattern of organization that multiplies itself in various directions repeatedly and almost randomly. Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, for instance, defin...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Human Rights Discourse and its Global Network
• 2 Human Rights Survivors as Multitude: Paul Rusesabagina, Hotel Rwanda, and An Ordinary Man
• 3 Human Rights Heroes/Humanitarian Saviors as Empire and Counter-Empire: Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), its Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, and Doctorswithoutborders.org
• 4 Literal and Literary Bystanders as Multitude and the Common: Michael Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost, and its Critical Reception
• Conclusion: The Global-National and Human-Personal Paradoxes of Human Rights Discourse
• Bibliography
• Index