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，特别是适用于受人道主义危机和干预影响的所谓“发展中国家”。批评包括：欧美法律对非西方国家的适用性（Kapoor, 2008），那些被阻止获得人权的人的“他者”（Frick, 2019; Klein, 2016），以及作为“治理的一个方面”的权利话语（Brown, 2004）。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，联合国人权事务高级专员最近将其称为“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的时代和侵犯人权的时代”（Slaughter,2007），那么用文学批判的眼光来看待这个话语框架和“阅读”人权就变得至关重要。我的研究建立在WReC的“世界文学”概念（2015）的基础上，通过身体经验的棱镜阅读资本主义世界体系的文本注册，为世界文学的“注册”提供了新的理解。在解决环境退化对人权影响的工作基础上，我还为环境人文学科做出了贡献（Nixon, 2011）。阅读来自世界各地的小说中对人权的全面登记，揭示了被边缘化的作家如何批评“普遍人权”作为资本主义世界体系的一个功能，并提出替代方案。因此，我的研究被三个问题所激励：1。（半）外围小说如何记录权利话语和实践的影响？它如何在身体层面上质疑“不可剥夺权利”的概念？当面对质疑人性的文本具体化时，对人权话语和实践的理解会发生怎样的变化？

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?