Abstract

In this chapter, Ayten Gündoğdu conducts a critical analysis of Giorgio Agamben's critique of human rights. Gündoğdu argues that what is distinctive and important about Agamben's criticism of human rights is his attentiveness to how human rights discourse and humanitarianism further expose human life to sovereign violence. Yet while Gündoğdu is sympathetic to Agamben's argument, she questions his pronouncement that we must go "beyond human rights" in order to resist, rather than reinscribe, sovereign violence. In particular, she argues that Agamben is insufficiently attentive to the potentiality of human rights to be otherwise - to be claimed in novel ways that resist the politics of sovereign violence he opposes.

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