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Writing for Dark Times: A Literary History of Human Rights [Pehme köide]

  • Formaat: Paperback / softback, 336 pages, kõrgus x laius x paksus: 229x152x23 mm, kaal: 426 g, 29 halftones
  • Ilmumisaeg: 15-May-2026
  • Kirjastus: University of Chicago Press
  • ISBN-10: 0226847829
  • ISBN-13: 9780226847825
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Writing for Dark Times: A Literary History of Human RightsSuurem pilt
  • Formaat: Paperback / softback, 336 pages, kõrgus x laius x paksus: 229x152x23 mm, kaal: 426 g, 29 halftones
  • Ilmumisaeg: 15-May-2026
  • Kirjastus: University of Chicago Press
  • ISBN-10: 0226847829
  • ISBN-13: 9780226847825
Teised raamatud teemal:
Püsilink: https://www.kriso.ee/db/9780226847825.html
Märksõnad:
"A history of human rights that places writers and their ideas at its center. At Amnesty International's headquarters in London hangs a large copy of Seamus Heaney's "From the Republic of Conscience," a poem that touches on neither imprisonment nor torture but instead suggests that acts of literary creation are themselves a form of human rights work, important for bringing new things into the world rather than removing evil from it. Why does a poem about the power of creation stand at the center of an organization known for publicizing atrocity? What can it tell us about human rights? Hadji Bakara's Writing for Dark Times tells the story of the writer's distinct place in the history of human rights. It argues that the relationship between the creative work of writing and the pursuit of universal rights is an important but misunderstood dimension of both literary and human rights history over the past century. Following a diverse cast of characters from the First World War through the end of the Cold War,including Bertolt Brecht, H.G. Wells, Archibald MacLeish, Albert Camus, Czeslaw Milosz, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'O, Muriel Rukeyser, Nadine Gordimer, and J.M. Coetzee, Bakara shows how many writers took up questions about human rights, from refugees in the early century to a poet-statesman who helped draft the United Nations declarations of human rights to imprisoned writers and writer-activists who became integral parts of the global human rights movement. But the book also shows that these writers' efforts to theorize and support human rights were bound up with changing ideas about the place of their own work in the world--the work of writing. For those who study human rights, Writing for Dark Times offers both an archive and a method for better understanding the influence of writers on the historical development of the concept. For those in literary studies, the book provides a new account of how human rights shaped the politics of twentieth-century literature. Few books have made as vivid a case for literature's relevance to our most exalted ideals and institutions"-- Provided by publisher.

A history of human rights that places writers and their ideas at its center.

At Amnesty International’s headquarters in London hangs a large copy of Seamus Heaney’s “From the Republic of Conscience,” a poem that touches on neither imprisonment nor torture but instead suggests that acts of literary creation are themselves a form of human rights work, important for bringing new things into the world rather than removing evil from it. Why does a poem about the power of creation stand at the center of an organization known for publicizing atrocity? What can it tell us about human rights?
 
Hadji Bakara’s Writing for Dark Times tells the story of the writer’s distinct place in the history of human rights. It argues that the relationship between the creative work of writing and the pursuit of universal rights is an important but misunderstood dimension of both literary and human rights history over the past century. Following a diverse cast of characters from the First World War through the end of the Cold War,  including Bertolt Brecht, H.G. Wells, Archibald MacLeish, Albert Camus, Czeslaw Milosz, Ngugi wa Thiong’O, Muriel Rukeyser, Nadine Gordimer, and J.M. Coetzee, Bakara shows how many writers took up questions about human rights, from refugees in the early century to a poet-statesman who helped draft the United Nations declarations of human rights to imprisoned writers and writer-activists who became integral parts of the global human rights movement. But the book also shows that these writers’ efforts to theorize and support human rights were bound up with changing ideas about the place of their own work in the world––the work of writing.

For those who study human rights, Writing for Dark Times offers both an archive and a method for better understanding the influence of writers on the historical development of the concept. For those in literary studies, the book provides a new account of how human rights shaped the politics of twentieth-century literature. Few books have made as vivid a case for literature’s relevance to our most exalted ideals and institutions.

Arvustused

The book I have been waiting for. Combining deep archival research with an extraordinary literary historical range, Bakara returns the study of human rights and writing to the question posed by Orwell in his dark times: Why do I write? The result is both an urgent and deeply scholarly study that will reset debate in the field. Necessary, thoughtful, and most definitely a book for our times. * Lyndsey Stonebridge, University of Birmingham * A powerful rethinking of the relationship between literature and human rights, one that emphasizes writing as a creative, material act bridging individual and collective life. Bakaras focus on the struggle for human rights in the dark times of the twentieth century holds profound relevance for thinkers and writers today. * Amanda Anderson, Brown University * There are many histories of human rights, and it is by now a commonplace that literature and the arts have played an important part in this history. Proponents and critics share this claim, but in doing so, they tend to take the meaning of human rights for granted. Bakara disrupts this silent consensus by ranging across the globe and the twentieth century to chart what happens when writers adopt the language of human rights and then, in turn, transform that language. Bakaras brilliant book shows us that this is a radical eventhistorically, theoretically, and politically. * Thomas Keenan, Bard College * What can writers contribute to a theory of human rights? Surprisingly, Writing for Dark Times demonstrates that many of the twentieth centurys most prominent writers emphasize literatures creative potential, not as an alternative but as part of writings value as a form of protest and witness. Bakara illustrates that the right to create ought to be near the center of a capacious intellectual history of human rights. Through a combination of deft close readings and institutional histories of PEN International and Amnesty International, this compelling book treats writers as thinkers whose creative practices ask fundamental questions about the nature of writing and the basis of rights. * Peter Kalliney, University of Kentucky * Writing for Dark Times is an original and compelling account of the relationship between literature and human rights. Refugees, activists, prisoners, and witnesses come together in this study as writers connecting writing and rights as they seek to make sense of human cruelty through their literary works. I do not know of any other study that takes such an approach to that relationship and explores both the relevance of writing to human rights and the relevance of human rights to the act of making literature. The conceptual depth of this work fresh and exciting. * Priscilla Wald, Duke University * In Writing for Dark Times: A Literary History of Human Rights, Baraka urges a provocative new perspective on the relationship between literature and human rights discourse. Instead of accepting the longstanding notion that literature exists in ancillary relation to this discourse, often as a critique of state stricture and state violence, he argues persuasively that novelists, poets, and essayists generated their own poetics of human rights, in the process transforming the social meaning of imaginative writing. Bakara examines a richly diverse group of littérateursArendt, Brecht, Camus, Coetzee, MacLeish, Milosz, Neto, Weiland demonstrates an extraordinary talent for virtuoso close reading. Spanning the globe and ranging across most of the twentieth century, this stunning literary study will appeal to any reader concerned about the fate of the human in dark times. * Harilaos Stecopoulos, University of Iowa *

List of Figures

Introduction: On Writing and Human Rights History

Part I: The Refugee
1. Stateless Writing
2. The Problem of the Refugee Writer

Part II: The Legislator
3. Poetry in the Shadow of Human Rights

Part III: The Prisoner
4. The Writers Freedom
5. The Prisoners Pressure

Part IV: The Witness
6. Suffering and the Fate of Utopia

Conclusion: The Writers Imagination and the Imagination of the State

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Hadji Bakara is assistant professor of English at the University of Michigan. His articles and essays on human rights and migration have appeared in such publications as Journal of Narrative Theory, PMLA, German Quarterly, American Literary History, the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the coeditor of The Oxford Handbook to Literature and Migration.