å Sunday, February 19th, 2017

What Brown is saying in her essay “The Most We Can Hope For…” reminds me a bit of Pateman from last week. Pateman was asking feminists to look outside the current power structure, and language to figure out what they wanted on their own terms and in their own terms. Brown is directing us to be as objective when talking about human rights activism.

Acts of activism don’t exist in a void, there are consequence for every action, and we can’t always know all the consequences and repercussions of the actions we take. In this way activism is inherently political, are we helping the current regime? Hurting it? Or are we refusing to help one group because of its other human rights violations? These are all political acts. Brown doesn’t want us to subscribe to any one ideology because of these types of agendas. She uses the great word “generic” (60) to explain that no subjugation or abuse is generic, and neither than is the response. We choose to act in certain ways and we can’t always know what will happen long-term. One analogy that I believe is relevant is that many people choose to be vegetarian because of all the issues surrounding factory farming, issues that are moral, environmental, humanist, economic and on. However, an increase in vegetable farming leads to an increase in pesticides in certain cases which has decreased the bird population in farming communities. This was a negative consequence of a well-intentioned deed. I’m not saying we should stop being vegetarians, just that there is a large picture.

Human rights work and our viewpoints on it are subjective, and influenced by our upbringing, our beliefs and society. Brown points out that our acts are influenced by dynamic contexts (for example political and economic context), and by this I think she means where we as activists are coming from. Missionaries believed they were doing good as well. When we choose a project because of our interests, we don’t offer support to a separate project, this is another way in which our activism is political.

I think what Brown is writing makes complete sense, we must be critical and constantly evaluate ourselves and the human rights movement. Just as we note that actions that made sense to our parents, from the small to the large, from serving the husband first to how they considered race, things are evolving in our time. We have to constantly be checking ourselves to be sure we are doing the most good. The argument reminds me of myself as a feminist, and the ways in which I need to continually check my privilege, which is hard and easy to forget or push back against, but if I just believe that I’m right, and trying to do good I’ll never grow. If I still maintained the beliefs I had even a year ago without recognizing new information the stagnation would make me and my beliefs obsolete.

Wendy Brown’s essay, “The Most We Can Hope For…” Human Rights and the Political of Fatalism addresses many points on human rights activism, she also uses Michael Ignatieff to improve and support her argument.

Human rights are freedom in which every human being needs to have, to protect themselves from cruelty or maltreatment. Brown’s argument is that human rights activism is more than beneficial because it is an efficient factor to limit political violence and most importantly agony. Brown’s believe in political mantle, which makes it seem anti-political to denied human rights to those innocent and powerless people. She explains the differences between how human rights take their shape, moral discourse, which focuses on pain and cruelty, instead of political discourse of comprehensive justice.

Wendy Brown supports her argument using Ignatieff three claims; “Human rights matter because they help people to help themselves”, “civil and political freedoms…”, and “conflict, deliberation, argument and contention.” Moreover, she focuses on Ignatieff position on the Iraq war. One of her most crucial evidence found in claim number one was Ignatieff position on the Iraq war. He came up with the term “empowerment” to hide the truth. In other words, empowerment is going towards the anti-political side. In claim number two, which focuses on the economic and political possibilities. Food, shelter, security, and healthcare are the four most necessary human needs to develop a form of survival. To me it seems like Ignatieff has a very different point of view when it comes to human survival, he is choosing freedom of speech over the most important basic needs of human survival. In claim number three he states, “A world of normal equality is a word of conflict, deliberation, argument, and contention (95). In other words, Ignatieff disagree with individual’s equality and thinks individuals will prospect to empower for democratic determination. Finally, Brown uses Ignatieff own words to prove and support all her arguments. She also talks about Ignatieff poor interest in defending the empowerment people. I agree with Wendy Brown; human rights activism plays an important role in society. It would be extremely unfair to leave innocent and powerless people with no rights or a way to defend themselves from suffering. I had a hard time trying to understand this reading, maybe I misunderstood what Wendy Brown was trying to explain. I know she uses Ignatieff’s claims to support her argument. I can’t wait for the class discussion on Tuesday.

Wendy Brown directs her essay, “’The Most We Can Hope For…’: Human Rights and the Politics of Fatalism” as a response to a series of lectures given by Michael Ignatieff.  Along the way, Brown identifies ways in which human rights activism is more than the antipolitical movement attempting to defend the innocent against abusive states and actors it claims to be.  Firstly, by challenging the assertion that human rights activism is antipolitical, Brown then identifies the unintended consequences of human rights activism and lastly claims it to be used as a tool to further imperialist international policy and of the global capitalist economy. Let us first look at the claim that human rights activism is antipolitical.

While human rights activism attempts to cast itself as morally antipolitical, Brown argues the mere fact that human rights exists within a political framework and their actions result in political consequences beyond their intended scope makes them political. Brown continues, identifying ways in which human rights activism can result in unintended ramifications (as the saying goes, the best of intentions…). Most glaringly, because human rights activism focuses on individual rights and justice, it has the tendency, purposeful or not, to supersede all other collective justice projects (p454-455). While some of the political consequences of human rights activism may not be intended, the use of human rights language to further global free trade and imperialist policy does seem to be purposeful.

Brown clearly identifies that Ignatieff’s focus on individual rights over collective rights creates an environment ripe for global free-trade capitalism, with the assumption that social and economic rights will follow. While the focus on individual rights may lead to an environment in which capitalism can thrive, Brown rightfully points out that history shows economic and social rights to not generally follow, at least not without organized activism (p. 457-458). Moving from global capitalism to imperialism, Brown identifies how the umbrella of human rights was used to invade Iraq and to justify the war on terror. Both not only resulted in gross human rights violations abroad, but also a limit on political and civil rights at home (p. 460).

While not an easy read for someone like myself with an optimistic bent, I cannot help but to agree with Brown. The examples she provides, the invasion of Iraq and the war on terrorism, illustrate how the pursuit of human rights can easily be distorted by imperialist and capitalist powers. Further, if we are to look at how the United Nations operates, focusing on human rights abuses by developing countries and ignoring the abuses (or not being allowed to investigate and publish the abuses) of the superpower and permanent security council member states, we are provided with yet another example. This isn’t to say that human rights activism should be dismissed outright. As Brown states in the closing of her essay, we need to find a way to address both collective and individual injustices, in addition to the imbalance of power, outside the current political framework of human rights activism.

According to Wendy Brown in her book “‘The Most We Can Hope For…”: Human Rights and the Politics of Fatalism,” Michael Ignatieff states that Human rights are a protection or privilege that every human should have in order to protect themselves from, cruelty, torture, abuse or violence. But for Brown Human right is not just protect people from the injustice is let them act and have these rights. When we talk about human rights it is not just about people’s rights but also about the political power over these rights.

Wendy Brown mentions how Michael Ignatieff has three claims about human rights. In his first claim, Ignatieff argues that every individual who has rights is able to decide about his life and what is good or bad for him. Contrary to Ignatieff, Brown believes that even though people have rights it will be always somebody deciding what is best for them. One of the examples she mentions is the 2003 Invasion of Iraq by the United States and Britain. In that moment this invasion was supposed to help people in Iraq giving them a message of human rights. But the reality was different and this invasion ended in a war and a lot of dead people. In this example, there were more political and economic interests than human rights (Pg,456).

In Ignatieff’s second claim, he says that the human rights of an individual should be limited to the ability of the individual to act, leaving aside vital needs such as food, shelter, and medicine. At this point I agree with Wendy Brown that human rights activism is more than “a pure defense of the innocent and powerless”, is a way to violate their rights to have free access to vital needs as food, housing, and healthcare.This is what we would call Capitalism over human rights.

In his third claim, Ignatieff’s argues that human rights “empower individuals (Pg. 458), to protect themselves and against suffering.  Even though human rights means that an individual has the decision in some aspects of their lives, as Wendy Brown mentions there will always be a government or political power who decides what is good or bad for that individual.

Finally, Wendy concludes her essay saying that “the most we can hope for” is maybe the reduction of the suffering that human rights are supposed to give all people in the world. (pg, 462).

I do agree with Brown that human rights are not just defending the innocent and powerless. On page 452 Brown says human rights is effective in limiting political violence, protects individuals from violence and abuse. It is put in place to stop torture, beatings, killings rape  and assault.  These example alone show and prove that human rights are not just to target a specific group of people but a whole population of people. Anything that is put in place in order to not only help the those that are in need  to also but to stop these specific act for good says a lot. Many people around the world as well as in this country that need protection from being rapped and assaulted. That alone is a task with in it self but Brown is trying to say that human rights is almost a cure in a way. If everyone actually followed the human right agenda the world would be so much better. Most times when a human right is violated it is because the other person does not see or understand the person to be human or may feel that the individual does not deserve rights which in turn makes it easier to violate a right that should be common. These are the people Brown is saying human rights are or need to be protected. The people who have not had a voice like African Americans, women, men who didn’t own property were the first people who human rights did not even include. Women were considered property as well as slaves , they were not considered human and so we must through human rights consider everyone and everyone is worth more than the minimum protection but to use human rights for all the things Brown is saying it actually does.