Human Rights, Posthuman Ethics, and the Material Aesthetics of Flight in Contemporary Irish Poetry

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-246
Author(s):  
Anne Karhio
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Seamus Heaney ◽  
Irish Poetry ◽  
Aerial View ◽  
Contemporary Irish Poetry

This article examines a series of poems by Irish authors, and focuses on their engagement with human rights violations and conflicts through the metaphors and imagery of flight and the aerial view. It argues that these poems address the need for a shift away from the perspective of a defined, distinct human subject, and towards a posthumanist framework which emphasizes relational, situated, and embodied ethics and aesthetics in an interconnected world. Since the introduction of modern aviation, Irish poets have frequently employed the imagery of flying to consider poetry's role in relation to conflict and crisis. Here, the adoption of visual and material metaphors of flight and aerial travel in human rights contexts is discussed, particularly in poems by Seamus Heaney, Peter Sirr and Justin Quinn. Through a reimagined poetics of flight, these poets question established dichotomies between proximity and distance, and material embodiment and disembodied abstraction.

Stolen Landscapes

2019 ◽  
pp. 19-43
Author(s):  
Walt Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Animal Model ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Inescapable Shock ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Seamus Heaney ◽  
Prose Poems ◽  
Irish Poetry ◽  
History Of ◽  
Contemporary Irish Poetry ◽  
History Of Place

This chapter shows how contemporary Irish poetry grapples with the politicized history of place, from the unfinished “ghost estates” to the recent monetization of water and the converted hotels used to keep asylum seekers in perpetual limbo. Readings of Irish poetry by Paula Meehan, Mary O’Malley, Seamus Heaney, and Sarah Clancy argue that the landscapes of contemporary Irish poetry are the indices of dispossession. The chapter then takes up poetic forms of the “block” and the “grid” to look more closely at the dispossessions produced by financialized capitalism, using as case studies British poet Keston Sutherland's Odes to TL61P (2013) and US poet Anne Boyer's "The Animal Model of Inescapable Shock" (2015). Finally, I turn to the literal displacement of forced migration, as well as its feminization and racialization, by reading the Iraqi poet Manal Al-Sheikh's prose poems.

Social representations of human rights violations: Further evidence

2001 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alain Clémence ◽  
Thierry Devos ◽  
Willem Doise
Keyword(s):  
Cluster Analysis ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Costa Rica ◽  
Young People ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Questionnaire Study ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
High Tolerance ◽  
Individual Actions

Social representations of human rights violations were investigated in a questionnaire study conducted in five countries (Costa Rica, France, Italy, Romania, and Switzerland) (N = 1239 young people). We were able to show that respondents organize their understanding of human rights violations in similar ways across nations. At the same time, systematic variations characterized opinions about human rights violations, and the structure of these variations was similar across national contexts. Differences in definitions of human rights violations were identified by a cluster analysis. A broader definition was related to critical attitudes toward governmental and institutional abuses of power, whereas a more restricted definition was rooted in a fatalistic conception of social reality, approval of social regulations, and greater tolerance for institutional infringements of privacy. An atypical definition was anchored either in a strong rejection of social regulations or in a strong condemnation of immoral individual actions linked with a high tolerance for governmental interference. These findings support the idea that contrasting definitions of human rights coexist and that these definitions are underpinned by a set of beliefs regarding the relationships between individuals and institutions.

American and Canadian Civil Actions Alleging Human Rights Violations Abroad by Oil and Gas Companies

2008 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 653 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Horlick ◽  
Joe Cyr ◽  
Scott Reynolds ◽  
Andrew Behrman
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
Forum Non Conveniens ◽  
The Government ◽  
Oil And Gas Companies ◽  
Political Question ◽  
The U.S

Under the United States Alien Tort Statute, which permits non-U.S. citizens to bring lawsuits in U.S. courts for human rights violations that are violations of the law of nations, plaintiffs have filed claims against multinational oil and gas corporations for the direct or complicit commission of such violations carried out by the government of the country in which the corporation operated. In addition to exercising jurisdiction over U.S. corporations, U.S. courts have exercised jurisdiction in cases involving non-U.S. defendants for alleged wrongful conduct against non-U.S. plaintiffs committed outside the U.S.The exercise of jurisdiction by U.S. courts over non-U.S. defendants for alleged wrongful conduct against non-U.S. plaintiffs committed outside of the U.S. raises serious questions as to the jurisdictional foundation on which the power of U.S. courts to adjudicate them rests. Defences that foreign defendants can raise against the exercise of jurisdiction by the U.S. courts are an objection to the extraterritorial assertion of jurisdiction, the act of state doctrine, the political question doctrine, forum non conveniens, and the principle of comity. These defences are bolstered by the support of the defendant’s home government and other governments.

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