Global law and human rights: Marxist reflections. How can a political account of human rights avoid Eurocentrism?

摘要

My recent book The Degradation of the International Legal Order? attempts a political account of human rights, and engages with the work of China Miéville and Susan Marks, as well as the extraordinary opus of Alain Badiou. The book has been well received. Sympathetic reviews by Robert Knox and Upendra Baxi have levelled a number of constructive criticisms, and this paper seeks both to grapple with the issues raised and to take the project forward. What is at stake is the concretisation of a thoroughly materialist, properly communist historicisation of human rights, as a contribution to contemporary struggles. In particular, is this project in any sense necessarily Eurocentric?