This book examines the ideas about rights and their evolution in modern political thought.
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.
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
Okparantas 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 Earths
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
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 Womens Commission, Bangalore, Karnataka. Her engagement has been with philosophy, womens 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.
