Locating the Human: World-Literature and the Concept of Rights

这个项目探讨文学如何介入，并重新考虑占主导地位的人权话语。我的研究背景是最近对人权话语的批评激增，特别是适用于受到人道主义危机和干预影响的所谓“发展中国家”。批评意见包括：欧美法律对非西方国家的（不）适用性（Kapoor，2008年），那些被阻止获得人权的人的“他者化”（弗里克，2019年; Klein，2016年），以及权利话语作为“治理的一个方面”（Brown，2004年）。与此同时，越来越多的人呼吁“普遍人权”，尤其是由于气候危机，联合国人权事务负责人最近称之为“对人权的最大挑战”（巴切莱特，2021年）。如果“人权话语的胜利意味着我们的时代同时是人权时代和人权滥用时代”，（斯劳特，2007），然后把文学批评的眼光带到这个话语框架和“阅读”人权变得至关重要。我的研究建立在WReC的“世界文学”的概念（2015），通过身体经验的棱镜来阅读资本主义世界体系的文本记录，有助于对世界文学“记录”的新理解。我还在解决环境退化对人权影响的工作基础上，为环境人文学做出贡献（尼克松，2011年）。阅读来自世界各地的小说中对人权的具体登记，揭示了边缘化作家如何批判“普遍人权”作为资本主义世界体系的一种功能，并提出替代方案。因此，我的研究是由三个问题：1。（半）边缘小说如何记录权利话语和实践的影响？2.它如何在身体层面上质疑“不可剥夺的权利”的概念？3.当面对质疑人性概念的空间化文本体现时，对人权话语和实践的理解如何改变？

This project explores how literature intervenes in, and reconsiders dominant human rights discourses. Myresearch context is the recent proliferation of critiques of human rights discourse, especially applied toso-called 'developing countries' impacted by humanitarian crises and intervention. Critiques haveincluded: the (in)applicability of Euro-American laws to non-western countries (Kapoor, 2008), the'othering' of those prevented from accessing human rights (Frick, 2019; Klein, 2016), and rightsdiscourses as 'an aspect of governmentality' (Brown, 2004). These come alongside increasing calls for'universal human rights', not least due to the climate crisis, which the UN Rights Chief recently called'the greatest challenge to human rights' (Bachelet, 2021). If 'the discursive victory of human rightsmeans that ours is at once the Age of Human Rights and the Age of Human Rights Abuse' (Slaughter,2007), then bringing a literary-critical eye to this discursive framework and 'reading' human rightsbecomes vital.My research builds upon the WReC's concept of 'world-literature' (2015), reading textual registrations ofthe capitalist world-system through the prism of bodily experience, contributing a new understanding ofworld-literary 'registration'. I also contribute to the environmental humanities, building on workaddressing the impact of environmental degradation on human rights (Nixon, 2011). Reading bodilyregistrations of human rights in novels from across the world reveals how peripheralized writers critique'universal human rights' as a function of the capitalist world-system, and suggest alternatives. Thus, myresearch is animated by three questions:1. How does the (semi-)peripheral novel register the impact of rights discourses and practices?2. How does it interrogate the concept of 'inalienable rights' at a bodily level?3. How do understandings of human rights discourses and practices change when confronted with aspatialised textual embodiment questioning the very notion of humanity?