Autorentext

Vishnu Varatharajan is a PhD candidate at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland. His research focuses on identifying the fundamental belief systems that open up the fault lines of political polarisation in parliamentary democracies. He also works as a research officer at Global Survivors Fund, involved in mapping the status of and opportunities for reparations for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence.

Meera Chakravorty, PhD is a doctoral advisor in the Department of Cultural Studies, Jain University, Bangalore. She has been a member of the State Women's Commission, Bangalore, Karnataka. Her engagement has been with philosophy, women's studies, cultural studies, consciousness studies, and translation projects. She has translated some award-winning literary works of renowned authors published by Sahitya Akademi (The Academy of Letters, India). She was awarded for her writing on "time" by University of Interdisciplinary studies, Paris, and John Templeton Foundation jointly. She has also been awarded for her literary work by the Tagore Cultural Centre, Bangalore.

Mbuh Tennu Mbuh is Head of the English Department, The University of Bamenda, Cameroon. He is also the President of the Anglophone Cameroon Writers' Association, ACWA. He is presently working on his fourth poetry collection, The Sins of a Patriot, and at the same time tidying up his third novel, The Inheritors of Alahmbit. He has also published short stories and plays.

Klappentext

This book examines the ideas about rights and their evolution in modern political thought. The essays in the volume present a comprehensive overview on major thinkers and the evolving discourse on rights, interrogate the idea of rights in the postcolonial context and for the twenty-first century, and introduce a Global South perspective in the rights discourse. The volume will be of great interest to scholars, students, and researchers of politics, especially political theory and international law.

Inhalt

List of contributors vii

Introduction 1

Vishnu Varatharajan, Meera Chakravorty, and Mbuh Tennu Mbuh

PART I

The health of cultural anxieties 11

1 The right to mental health? International law and the privatisation of anxiety 13

Adam Strobeyko

2 African (Igbo) ethics of rights' discourse: Theory and practice 27

Stanley Uche Anozie

3 Reinventing our humanity and reclaiming our freedom to co-create a new world 41

Iman Ibrahim

PART II

Gendering rights: Many rights, single goal 71

4 The new "other": The postcolonial African lesbian experience in Chinelo Okparanta's under the Udala trees 73

Blossom Ngum Fondo

5 Conflict-related sexual violence: Perspectives from the Global Reparations Study 87

Vishnu Varatharajan

6 Rethinking pluralism and rights 100

Ananta Kumar Giri

PART III

Culture, philosophy, and rights 113

7 On ideas about rights in thinking and writing rights: Exploring Earth's rights 115

Meera Chakravorty

8 A critical Buddhist perspective on truth and rights in an unequal world: The parable of the skilled physician revisited 129

Penny Ehrhardt

9 Rights left out 155

Karl-Julius Reubke

10 Rights, liberalism, multiculturalism 171

Gianluigi Segalerba

11 From Kantian enlightenment to Rortyan rights: A pragmatist perspective 195

Rahul Kumar Maurya

Index 204