Risk, Desire and Adaptation: The Paradox of Queer Solidarity and the Political Possibility of Death Under Neoliberalism and Homonationalism

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
Natalie Kouri-Towe
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
State Violence ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sexual Rights ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Strategy I

In 2015, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid Toronto (QuAIA Toronto) announced that it was retiring. This article examines the challenges of queer solidarity through a reflection on the dynamics between desire, attachment and adaptation in political activism. Tracing the origins and sites of contestation over QuAIA Toronto's participation in the Toronto Pride parade, I ask: what does it mean for a group to fashion its own end? Throughout, I interrogate how gestures of solidarity risk reinforcing the very systems that activists desire to resist. I begin by situating contemporary queer activism in the ideological and temporal frameworks of neoliberalism and homonationalism. Next, I turn to the attempts to ban QuAIA Toronto and the term ‘Israeli apartheid’ from the Pride parade to examine the relationship between nationalism and sexual citizenship. Lastly, I examine how the terms of sexual rights discourse require visible sexual subjects to make individual rights claims, and weighing this risk against political strategy, I highlight how queer solidarities are caught in a paradox symptomatic of our times: neoliberalism has commodified human rights discourses and instrumentalised sexualities to serve the interests of hegemonic power and obfuscate state violence. Thinking through the strategies that worked and failed in QuAIA Toronto's seven years of organising, I frame the paper though a proposal to consider political death as a productive possibility for social movement survival in the 21stcentury.

scholarly journals WHERE HAVE ALL THE REVOLUTIONARIES GONE? HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE REINVENTION OF REVOLUTION IN REBIYA KADEER’S DRAGON FIGHTER

eTopia ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharine Lu
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Prisoner ◽  
Departure Point ◽  
Amnesty International ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Unique Vantage

For five and half years, Rebiya Kadeer was imprisoned as a political prisoner in China and was finally released in 2005 after Amnesty International campaigned for her release. Today, she now campaigns as a human rights activist against what many Uyghurs consider Chinese occupation of their homeland, Xinjiang. Although many organizationswork on human rights violations against the Uyghurs, Rebiya Kadeer has emerged as the primary symbol of Uyghur resistance in China, much like the Dalai Lama for Tibet.Her simultaneous position as both a human rights activist and resistance symbol offers a unique vantage point in exploring the relationship between memory, women, and nationalism. In sketching out these connections, this paper will analyze the agency and representation in the process of memory making and the gendering of resistance in relation to the life and memoir of Rebiya Kadeer. The political project of witnessing through representation offers a practical departure point for better understanding the formation of a feminine revolutionary subjectivity in contrast to the romanticized icon of the masculine, revolutionary hero. In proposing the relationship between memory, women and nationalism, this paper aims to ultimately understand whether the revolutionary subject has in effect become the human rights activist. And if this is the case, what then are the conditions for revolution, and is revolution possible within the logic of human rights discourse?

Liberal Democracy, Human Rights, and the Eucharistic Community: Contrasting Voices in American Orthodox Ethics

2021 ◽  
pp. 095394682110459
Author(s):  
Philip LeMasters
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
Human Person ◽  
The Political ◽  
Orthodox Christianity ◽  
Eastern Orthodoxy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Orders ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between Eastern Orthodoxy and the political ethos of the West is of crucial importance for contextualizing the Church’s social engagement in the present day. Aristotle Papanikolaou and Vigen Guroian highlight points of tension in their respective accounts of the relationship between the Orthodoxy and western democratic social orders. Analysis of their argument provides a context for examining their contrasting understandings of human rights as a dimension of the public engagement of Orthodox Christians with the political realm. While neither completely rejects appeals to human rights, neither claims that such rhetoric manifests the full truth about the dignity of the human person according to the theological anthropology of Orthodox Christianity. Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, Archbishop Anastasios Yannoulatos of Albania, the statements of the Council of Crete (2016), and several other contemporary Orthodox voices place appeals to human rights in a theologically nuanced context that affirms their legitimacy while refraining from identifying them with the fullness of the moral and spiritual vision of Orthodox Christianity. Analysis of the debate between Papanikolaou and Guroian gives rise to a tentative affirmation of the critical use of the language of human rights in Eastern Orthodox social ethics.

14. Land Law and Human Rights

Land Law ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 593-629
Author(s):  
Chris Bevan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Land Law ◽  
European Court ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the relationship between land law and human rights. From a distinctly land law perspective, the human rights discourse has given rise to much debate, which continues to fuel much academic commentary including recent examination of the availability of horizontal effect in McDonald v McDonald in the Supreme Court and in the European Court of Human Rights. The chapter focuses chiefly on the two most pertinent provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) for land law; namely Art. 1 of the First Protocol and Art. 8 and reflects on the, at times, difficult relationship between land law and human rights.

Organization of American States

1960 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 484-485 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Dominican Republic ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Political Prisoners ◽  
The Political ◽  
Special Report ◽  
American States ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Relationship

Following an investigation resulting from the request by the government of Venezuela that the Council of the Organizationof American States (OAS) ask the Inter-American Peace Committee to look into the flagrant and widespread violations of human rights by the government of the Dominican Republic, the Committee, in a special report, allegedly concurred with the charges, stressing its opinion that international tensions in the Caribbean had increased and would continue to increase, so long as the Dominican Republic persisted in its repressive policies. On the basis of evidence collected during its four-month investigation, the Committee condemned such practices as the denial of free assembly and free speech, arbitrary arrest, cruel and inhuman treatment of political prisoners, and the use of intimidation and terror as political weapons. Despite reports of 1,000 arrests for subversive activities, the Dominican Republic had accounted for only 222 such arrests and had pointed to acts of elemency granted to many of these people; the Committee had, however, been barred from visiting the country. Desirous nevertheless of avoiding any step which might adversely affect the fate of the political prisoners, and in the hope that the Dominican Republic would decree an amnesty on Easter, April 17, the Committee postponed making a pronouncement on the case; instead, it merely issued a general report on April 14 on the relationship between violations of human rights and the political tensions affecting the peace of the Hemisphere. In the later special report the Committee noted that the hope of an amnesty had turned out to be unfounded, and that it had therefore decided to examine all the information available to it, mosdy in the form either of testimony from exiles and other nationals who had recently been in the Dominican Republic or of extensive and reliable press material.

Post-Islamist Transformations in Morocco

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 125-145
Author(s):  
Jibreel Delgado
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

This article explores the continuities and ruptures of modern Islamic social movements starting with the reformist salafiyya of Egypt, North Africa, and the Levant, moving through the Islamic political activism of the Muslim Brotherhood along with its various affiliated political parties in the Middle East and North Africa (mena), and finally the radical Jihadist militant groups calling for armed insurgency in parts of the mena as well as globally. After an extensive overview of the varied movements within Salafism in its global context, I will hone in on its articulation in Morocco, its relations with other Islamist movements, as well as with the Moroccan monarchical authoritarian system. I argue that in the wake of post-Islamist adopting of human rights discourse and notions of pluralism in the workings of the Justice and Development Party (pjd) government, the Salafi trend is also undertaking a transformation in Morocco. Placed in its historical and social contexts, however, I show that this trend has never been static and continues to change in relation to competing and collaborating Islamist trends as well as toward the Moroccan government.

scholarly journals Creencia y praxis en la fundamentación de los Derechos Humanos. Una tensión entre metafísica y subjetividad

Pelícano ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 196-208
Author(s):  
José María Boetto
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Relationship ◽  
Jose Ortega Y Gasset ◽  
Michel De Certeau ◽  
Derechos Humanos ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Geographical Space

Belief and Praxis in The Foundation of Human Rights. A Tension between Metaphysics and Subjectivity ResumenLa fundamentación implica, al menos en un sentido inmediato, el intento de asir una determinada naturaleza, y por consiguiente conserva la pretensión de fijar –bajo una cierta categoría de conceptos inmóviles– un “algo”, que, de suyo, se realiza en el trasiego del movimiento.A partir de ello surge la siguiente problemática: ¿cómo expresar una ética acerca del hombre si este –en tanto subjetividad derelicta en el tiempo– se resiente a ser detenida y fosilizada en una categoría racional, connaturalmente quieta y ajena a la experiencia del movimiento? ¿Es posible, a partir de ello, establecer un fundamento acerca de los Derechos Humanos, que parecieran ser –al menos como supuesto– el a priori desde el cual concebir la relación ética y humana en el espacio político?A partir de ello consideramos relevante pensar, que detrás de su formulación –aún problemática y revisable– se esconde la tensión de dos modos de intelección que han atravesadoel modo de ser de la filosofía occidental, a saber: el metafísico y el pragmático.Intentaremos, desde dos autores contemporáneos, tales como José Ortega y Gasset y Michel de Certeau, que aunque disímiles en el espacio geográfico de la reflexión, congruos en cuanto al planteamiento de la relación entre “praxis, creencia y circunstancia”, ofrecer la posibilidad de una palabra sobre el intento de fundamentación de los Derechos Humanos, justificación, en que la misma praxis –sin abandonar lo revisable de la circunstancia– apela a la universalidad de creencias comunes sin fundamentación alguna en la metafísica de la verdad como sustancia. AbstractThe foundation implies, at least in an immediate sense, the attempt to grasp a certain nature, and therefore retains the claim to fix –under a certain category of immovable concepts– a “something”, which, of yours, is carried out in the movement of the movement.From this, the following problem arises: how to express an ethic about man if he –as a subjectivity that is timeless– resents being detained and fossilized in a rational category, inbornly still and oblivious to the experience of the movement? Is it possible, from this, to establish a foundation about Human Rights, which seems to be –at least as assumed– the a priori from which to conceive the ethical and human relationship in the political space?From this we consider it relevant to think that behind its formulation –still problematic and revisable– the tension of two modes of intellection that have crossed the way of being of Western philosophy is hidden, namely: the metaphysical and the pragmatic.We will try, from two contemporary authors, such as José Ortega y Gasset and Michel de Certeau, that although dissimilar in the geographical space of reflection, congruous regarding the approach of the relationship between “praxis, belief and circumstance”, offer the possibility of A word about the attempted foundation of Human Rights, justification, in which the same praxis –without abandoning the review of the circumstance– appeals to the universality of common beliefs without any foundation in the metaphysics of truth as a substance. Key words: Belief, Idea, Recognition, Otherness, Bastardy.

scholarly journals “Droit européen“ à la liberté religieuse et paradigmes des relations État- religions dans l’Europe contemporaine: une cacophonie épineuse

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Ferrari
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
The Other ◽  
Multilevel System ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
National Models ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The One ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
The Relationship

SOMMAIRE: 1. Introduction: paradigmes de relations et droit à la liberté religieuse, de l’identité à la tension - 2. Des paradigmes des relations État-Églises au droit à la liberté religieuse - 3. La force attractive des paradigmes dans le scénario européen contemporain - 4. Les paradigmes des relations État-Églises dans la nouvelle arène internationale - 5. Conclusion: une citoyenneté inachevée. The “European Right” to Religious Freedom and Paradigms of State-Religion Relations in Contemporary Europe: a thorny cacophony ABSTRACT: The article examines the dialectic between European national models of religious freedom and the paradigm of religious freedom shaped in the international order and in particular by the human rights discourse. The analysis of the relationship between the modern - national-centered - and the contemporary - individual-centered - paradigm of religious freedom reveals, on the one hand, the difficult but inevitable osmosis between legal systems in a multilevel system of rights protection and, on the other hand, the deep transformation of religious freedom in contemporary Europe.

scholarly journals Toronto Civic Workers Bargaining Without a Base: The Significance of 2012

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlo Fanelli
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
City Council ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Workplace Democracy ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Public Sector Unions ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

This article explores how the politics and economics of austerity has influenced collective bargaining between the CUPE Locals 79/416 and the city of Toronto. I explore the relationship between neoliberalism and workplace precarity, drawing attention to the importance of the municipal public sector to trade unionism and the political potential of urbanized Left-labour radicalism. Following this, I provide an overview of the repeated attempts by City Council to extract concessions from unionized workers with a focus on the concession-filled 2012 round of bargaining and its relationship to earlier rounds. In what follows I discuss the implications of austerity bargaining for Locals 79 and 416 members, drawing attention to the repercussions this may have for other public sector workers. To conclude, I propose an alternative political strategy for municipal public sector unions, stressing the importance of a radicalized labour approach. It is my contention that this requires the development of both alternative policies and an alternative politics rooted in demands for workplace democracy and social justice.

scholarly journals War Veterans, Demobilization and Political Activism: Greater Romania in Comparison

Fascism ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constantin Iordachi ◽  
Blasco Sciarrino
Keyword(s):  
Political Activism ◽  
The Political ◽  
War Veterans ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Ideological Polarization ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Postwar Italy ◽  
The Relationship

This article aims to further problematize the relationship between patterns of demobilization, fascism and veterans’ activism, on several inter-related counts. We argue that the relationship between fascism and war veterans was not a fixed nexus, but the outcome of a complex political constellation of socio-economic and political factors that necessitates a case-by-case in-depth discussion. Also, we argue that these factors were both national and transnational in nature. Finally, we contend that researchers need to employ a synchronic as well as a diachronic perspective, thus accounting for various stages and forms of mobilization of war veterans over time. To substantiate these claims, the current article focuses on a relevant but largely neglected case study: the demobilization of soldiers and war veterans’ political activism in interwar Romania. It is argued that, contrary to assumptions in historiography, demobilization in Romania was initially successful. Veterans’ mobilization to fascism intensified only in mid-to late 1930s, stimulated by the Great Depression, leading to a growing ideological polarization and the political ascension of the fascist Legion of ‘Archangel Michael’. To better grasp the specificities of this case study, the concluding section of the article compares it to patterns of veterans’ activism in postwar Italy.

Group Identities and Human Rights: How Do We Square the Circle in International Law?

2018 ◽  
Vol 75 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 94-106
Author(s):  
Gaetano Pentassuglia
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Human Rights Practice ◽  
Group Identities ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Group Diversity ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
The Relationship

The identity of groups of an ethno-cultural variety has long fallen within the remit of internati­onal human rights law. In this context, discussions have been largely concerned with the legal status of groups and/or the nature of the legal right(s) in question. While acknowledging the importance of these dimensions, in this article I seek to provide an alternative account by dis­cussing the continuities and discontinuities in articulating the very concept of group identity. I first examine the potential, limitations and eventual hybridity of human rights practice across the spectrum of minority/indigenous identities. Then, I critique a range of instabilities in human rights discourse relating to the idea of group identities, their personal scope and the role of international law. I argue that such instabilities do not merely mirror the ambivalent outlook of the relationship between human rights and group identities; they raise the broader question of whether there is a relatively more coherent way to capture the legitimacy of group claims. I conclude by pointing to the outer limits of identity claims, the understated interplay of sove­reignty and inter-group diversity, and the need to unpack the reasons why certain groups merit protection in the way they do.

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