AJHR 22-2: Special issue on Utopias and human rights

Published date: 
Nov 2016

Articles in this issue

Afterword - Decolonising utopia
Abstract:

To date, modernist thinking has dominated the interdisciplinary field of intellectual inquiry engaged with utopia and utopianism.

Author(s):

Eve Darian-Smith, Professor and Department Chair in Global Studies, University of California. Email: darian@global.ucsb.edu

November, 2016
Key words:
Human Rights, utopia, dystopia, indigeneity, Northern Territory Intervention, colonialism
Victims’ rights, victim collectives and utopic disruption at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
Abstract:

This article examines victim participation at Cambodia’s hybrid tribunal, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).

Author(s):

Rachel Hughes, Senior Research Fellow, School of Geography, the University of Melbourne. Email: hughesr@unimelb.edu.au

November, 2016
Key words:
Cambodia, victims’ rights, victim participation, ECCC, reparation, utopia
Towards a realistic utopia: literary representations of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
Abstract:

The ad hoc international criminal tribunals established by the UN Security Council in the 1990s represented the first international efforts to respond to war crimes since the Nuremberg Trials.

Author(s):

Terri Tomsky, Assistant Professor, Department of English & Film Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta, Canada. Email: tomsky@ualberta.ca

November, 2016
Key words:
Human Rights, realistic utopia, international criminal tribunals, Yugoslavia, literature, memoir
Crooked lines: utopia, human rights and South Asian women’s writing and agency
Abstract:

My article focuses on the relationship between human rights and utopia with special focus on South Asia and women's writing and agency. Utopia offers possibilities to capture, in writing and practice, the impossible good place.

Author(s):

Barnita Bagchi, Department of Languages, Literature, and Communication at Utrecht University. Email: b.bagchi@uu.nl

November, 2016
Key words:
speculative fiction, Hansa Mehta, utopia, dystopia, Human Rights, South Asia
Framing human dignity: visual jurisprudence at South Africa’s Constitutional Court
Abstract:

The Constitutional Court of South Africa is a unique space by international comparison because it houses a large visual art collection developed by and for the court. The purpose of this article is to look at the connections between human dignity and art at the Constitutional Court.

Author(s):

Eliza Garnsey, PhD Candidate, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge. Email: esg35@cam.ac.uk

November, 2016
Key words:
visual jurisprudence, dignity, art, Constitutional Court, South Africa, utopia
Realising rights here and now
Abstract:

A focus on utopia risks obscuring complexities in the process of realising human rights in time through institutions of governance. This article recounts judicial rituals by which judges delay the coming into effect of their conclusion that a law violates human rights.

Author(s):

Robert Leckey, Dean and Samuel Gale Professor, Faculty of Law, McGill University, Canada. Email: robert.leckey@mcgill.ca

November, 2016
Key words:
Human Rights, utopia, remedies, South Africa, Canada
Material subjects and vital objects — prefiguring property and rights for an entangled world
Abstract:

This article considers the effects of the critique of the subject–object distinction on the concept of property rights.

Author(s):

Margaret Davies, Professor of Law, Flinders University. Email: margaret.davies@flinders.edu.au.

November, 2016
Key words:
subject–object, new materialism, property theory, post-humanism
On the genealogy of human rights: an essay on nostalgia
Abstract:

On the genealogy of human rights: an essay on nostalgia nostalgia

Author(s):

Ben Golder, Faculty of Law, UNSW Australia. Email: b.golder@unsw.edu.au

November, 2016
Key words:
Human Rights, genealogy, utopia, nostalgia, Samuel Moyn, Michel Foucault
Introduction - Human rights, interdisciplinarity and the time of utopia
Abstract:

This article explores the relationship between human rights and utopian thinking through three recurrent tropes: interdisciplinarity, time and the promise.

Author(s):

Benjamin Authers is an Assistant Professor, School of Law & Justice, University of Canberra, and Visiting Fellow, School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), Australian National University. Email: benjamin.authers@canberra.edu.au

November, 2016
Key words:
Human Rights, utopia, interdisciplinarity, time and human rights, the promise of human rights