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More than Life: Human Dignity and the Problem of Rights
- Mosaic: a journal for the interdisciplinary study of literature
- Mosaic, an interdisciplinary critical journal
- Volume 48, Number 4, December 2015
- pp. 77-92
- 10.1353/mos.2015.0043
- Article
- Additional Information
This essay interrogates the concept of “dignity” underlying rights discourse in order to show that the extension of human rights to animals is both oxymoronic and counter-productive. Because dignity signifies the sovereign power to transcend life, human rights theory would be better served by what Jacques Derrida calls a “power” of “not-being-able.”