Assignment 03 Wendy Brown
Human rights cannot rationally be said to exist only to protect the weak from abuse, as they are more and more politicized and designated as an mechanism through which the politics of power is advanced. Brown’s example of this is the United States and Britain “intervention in Iraq” (Brown, 2004, p. 455) which according to Brown was hailed a human rights effort which according to Ignatieff’s view was intended to reduce the suffering in that country and promote agency or “help people to help themselves” but what choice did that country have. The United States’ intrusion in Iraq did not reduce or prevent suffering what the U.S did was advance its own political power in that country.
Another claim Brown is making is that human rights are not universal they are applied selectively, not universally, and can be used to further US interests rather than to protect people who fall victim to human rights abuses.
Brown is also arguing that human rights are a part of politics and can be tied to economics as well. Rights can be a means and a medium of authority and domination.
I think Wendy Brown is arguing that human rights and how they are applied can lead to abuse of these rights and that human rights have to encompass more than just security and protection from suffering and political power. Brown also points out that Ignatieff’s doesn’t think that human rights should include food or shelter and that individual rights and how they are exercised cannot be separated from politics. The state is in the position to enforce or provide these rights to people.
Human rights discourse creates a “certain kind of subject in need of a certain kind of protection.” Another point raised in the text is that Americans have more rights today than they’ve ever had but little power to shape collective justice and political aims. So it appears that for all the rights that we have or fight for we still have relatively little say in government decisions even when they affect us.
I also believe that Brown is also making a point that human rights is a Western concept and therefore may not necessarily be able to be applied universally. At the same time she is touching on the idea that the U.S is in the position to create and impose this concept and can use the language of human rights rhetoric to justify military interventions in other countries as well as economic sanctions.
