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Agamben and the Politics of Human Rights: Statelessness, Images, Violence
Agamben and the Politics of Human Rights Statelessness Images Violence Author:John Lechte We are living in world in which human rights are violated at an unprecedented scale, often by the very sovereign states claiming to protect them. According to Giorgio Agamben, this is no coincidence. Poor human rights are a reflection of our growing powerlessness and political alienation in the face of a globalized sovereign state of exception. ... more »Branching out from Agamben's critique, John Lechte and Saul Newman identify the paradoxes at the center of the politics of human rights, exploring questions of statelessness, exclusion, the violence of securitization, and the visual representation of refugees and illegal migrants in the media. They propose a radical rethinking of human rights, disengaged from humanitarianism, biopolitics, sovereignty, and the society of the spectacle in order to become genuinely political.« less