Full Description
This book examines the possibility of creating new ways of existing beyond human rights. Multiple socio-political crises and the dominance of neoliberal and capitalist policies have led legal and political theorists to question the emancipatory promise of human rights and to reconceptualise human rights in theory and practice. The possibility of creating new ways of existing beyond human rights has been left significantly under examined, until now.
Having as its starting point the ferocious, yet brief, critique on human rights of one of the most prominent French philosophers of the 20th century, Gilles Deleuze, the book argues that Deleuze's critique is not only compatible with his broader thought but that it has the potential to give a new impetus to the current critiques of human rights, within the 'disciplinary borders' of legal and political theory.
The book draws upon Deleuze's broader thought, but also radical legal and political theory and continental philosophy. In particular, it investigates and expands on two of Deleuze's most important notions, namely those of 'immanence' and 'becoming' and their relation to the philosopher's critique of human rights. In doing so, it argues that these two notions are capable of questioning the dominant and dogmatic position that human rights enjoy.
Contents
PART I
DELEUZE'S CRITICAL REMARKS ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Introduction
I. Human Rights: 'A Flashing Light' of Resistance, or 'The Blinding Light' of Authoritarian Tendencies and 'The Death' of Every Potentiality?
II. Why Deleuze?
III. A Note on Method as Problematisation: What is the Problem with the Problem? Or How Does the Examination Proceed?
1. Deleuze on Human Rights
Prologue
I. Human Rights Through Deleuze's Eyes: Does the Philosopher Add Something New to the Multiple Critiques of Human Rights?
II. Immanence vs Transcendence and Becoming vs Being: An Introductory Note
III. Commentators on Deleuze's Critique of Human Rights: The Cases of Alexandre Lefebvre and Paul Patton
PART II
HUMAN RIGHTS, IMMANENCE, TRANSENDENCE AND THE DISTINCTION OF ETHICS AND MORALITY
2. The Question of Immanence
Prologue
I. Immanence vs Transcendence: The Case of Spinoza
II. A Definition in Constant Flux: The (Immanent Mode of) Deleuzian Immanence, or How is Immanence?
III. Where to after the Affirmation of Immanence?
3. Immanent Ethics and Transcendent Morality: Deleuze's An-Archic Ethos
Prologue
I. 'To Have Done with the Judgment of God'
II. Human Rights in a State of Abeyance(?)
PART III
THE SUBJECT OF RIGHTS AND THE QUESTION OF BECOMING
4. Questioning the Subject of Human Rights, or How is a Becoming?
Prologue
I. How Did We Become Subjects of the Subject?
II. The Human Rights of an Alienated Subject and the Subject of Alienating Human Rights
III. The Ways of Becoming
PART IV
BEYOND HUMAN RIGHTS: TOWARDS AN AN-ARCHIC JURISPRUDENCE
5. Deleuze's Jurisprudence: Is there Phronesis Beyond Human Rights?
Prologue
I. Which Jurisprudence? - A Multiplicity of Meanings
II. A Deleuzian Jurisprudence: Restoring the phronesis and ethos of ius
6. Apodosis: Towards an An-archic Jurisprudence
Prologue
I. Institutions against the Law
II. 'It is a nomos Very Different from the "Law"'
III. (In)Conclusions
