Chris Ealham, Living Anarchism: Jose Peirats and the Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalist Movement (original) (raw)
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Unlike their counterparts in Asia and Africa, many Latin American human rights scholars have passively accepted the supposed cultural relevance of the liberal discourse of human rights and have limited academic studiehs to the sphere of legal analysis. Nevertheless, the work of the social sciences in the region has enriched human rights thought and the practices of social movements have enriched human rights practice. This article proposes that the study of human rights in Latin America needs to move beyond the comfortable limits of European liberalism and enter the field of political sociology that studies precisely where violations occur and the construction of hemispheric defense by social movements. This suggests that a truly Latin American notion of human rights would be sociopolitical rather than legal as the major contribution of the region to discourse has been its philosophy of action and the practice of social movements inspired by this philosophy. More specifically, the article proposes a way to conceptualize human rights from a sociopolitical and Latin American perspective in such a way that it recovers the historical legacy of social struggles from a discursive perspective, relying in particular on ideas of genealogy and intertextuality and is based on the thought of Latin American, Asian, and African theorists and philosophers who have moved beyond the confines of liberalism. This article is based on Estevez, Ariadna, Human Rights and Free Trade inMexico: a Sociopolitical and Discursive Perspective (Introduction and Chapter 2), 2008, Palgrave Macmillan, reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan
Philosophers, Activists, and Radicals: a story of human rights and other scandals
Paradoxically, the political success of human rights is often taken to be its philosophical failing. From US interventions to International NGOs to indigenous movements, human rights have found a place in diverse political spaces, while being applied to disparate goals and expressed in a range of practices. This heteronomy is vital to the global appeal of human rights, but for traditional moral and political philosophy it is something of a scandal. This paper is an attempt to understand and theorize human rights on the terrain of the social actors who put them to use, particularly radical activists that have a more critical relationship to human rights. Attempting to avoid the philosophical pathology of demanding that the world reflect our conception of it, we base our reflection on the ambiguous, and potentially un-patterned, texture of human rights practice—taking seriously the idea that human rights express a relationship of power, importantly concerned with its legitimate arrangement and limitation. In both the philosophical literature and human rights activism, there seems to be a consensus on basic rights as undeniable moral principles of political legitimacy. This use of human rights is contrasted with radical social movements that reject this conception of rights as ideological and illegitimate, making specific reference to the Zapatista movement (Chiapas, Mexico) and the Landless Peasant Movement of Brazil (MST, from the Portuguese Movimento dos trabalhadores rurais Sem Terra), which are critical of the human rights discourse, but also make strategic use of the idea and offer alternative articulations of political legitimacy.
Global Studies Quarterly, 2022
How do human rights activists imagine transitional justice amid sociopolitical conflicts that surface after peace agreements? Since its inception in the 2016 peace accords, Colombia’s renewed endeavor to come to terms with its violent past has been overshadowed by massive protests and political polarization. In this article, I argue that populism, defined as a grid of intelligibility to make sense of frustrated demands and engage in politics, can help us understand the protest discourses of human rights defenders on transitional justice as they emerge from experiences with political marginalization and broken state promises. Based on interviews during six months of fieldwork in different conflict-affected regions, I contend that human rights defenders imagine transitional justice in terms of a larger political struggle that exceeds justice for past atrocities and can be described through three tropes that both resound with and challenge populism debates: truth as the frontier of political confrontation with right-wing elites, the “rights-defending victim”as a form of popular subjectivity and political underdog, and liberal overhaul of corrupted democratic institutions. Conceptually, my reconstruction of activist discourses serves a two-fold purpose: it bridges debates on transitional justice and contentious politics, and constructively challenges the ostensible incompatibility of human rights and populism. Comment les militants des droits de l’homme imaginent-ils la justice transitionnelle au coeur des conflits socio-politiques qui émergent après des accords de paix? Depuis son apparition dans les accords de paix de 2016, l’effort renouveléde la Colombie àfaire face àson passéviolent a étéassombri par des manifestations massives et une polarisation politique. Dans cet article, je soutiens que le populisme, défini comme une grille d’intelligibilitépermettant de donner un sens aux demandes frustrées et de s’engager en politique, peut nous aider àcomprendre les discours de protestation des défenseurs des droits de l’homme sur la justice transitionnelle, car ils émergent d’expériences de marginalisation politique et de promesses d’État non tenues. Je me base sur des entretiens menés pendant six mois de travail de terrain dans différentes régions affectées par des conflits et je soutiens que les défenseurs des droits de l’homme imaginent la justice transitionnelle en termes de lutte politique plus large qui dépasse la justice pour les atrocités passées et peut être décrite par trois tropes qui résonnent avec les débats sur le populisme et les défient: la véritéen tant que frontière de la confrontation politique avec les élites de droite, la «victime défendant ses droits »en tant que forme de subjectivitépolitique et de perdante politique, et la refonte libérale des institutions démocratiques corrompues. D’un point de vue conceptuel, ma reconstitution des discours des militants sert un objectif en deux volets: elle établit une passerelle entre les débats sur la justice transitionnelle et les politiques litigieuses, et elle remet en question de manière constructive l’incompatibilitéapparente entre les droits de l’homme et le populisme. ¿Cómo imaginan los activistas de derechos humanos la justicia transicional entre los conflictos sociopolíticos que surgen luego de los acuerdos de paz? Desde sus inicios en los acuerdos de paz en 2016, el empeño renovado de Colombia para asimilar su pasado violento ha sido opacado por las protestas masivas y la polarización política. En el presente artículo, sostengo que el populismo (definido como una red de inteligibilidad para que demandas frustradas cobren sentido y para participar en la política) puede ayudarnos a entender los discursos de protesta por parte de defensores de los derechos humanos sobre la justicia transicional, ya que surgen de experiencias con marginalización política y promesas estatales rotas. Con base en un trabajo de campo de seis meses con entrevistas en diferentes regiones afectadas por el conflicto, puedo afirmar que los defen- sores de los derechos humanos piensan en la justicia transicional en términos de una lucha política más grande que excede la justicia de atrocidades del pasado y que se puede describir mediante tres tropos que resuenan con los debates populistas al mismo tiempo que los desafían: la verdad como la frontera de la confrontación política con élites de derecha; la «víctima defensora de derechos»como una forma de subjetividad popular y desamparado político; la renovación liberal de las insti- tuciones democráticas corruptas. Teóricamente, mi reconstrucción de los discursos activistas cumple con un objetivo doble: conciliar los debates sobre justicia transicional y política contenciosa, y desafiar de forma constructiva la incompatibilidad evidente de los derechos humanos y el populismo.
Living Anarchism. José Peirats and the Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalist Movement
Teatro. Revista de estudios escénicos, 2023
Anarchism is probably one of the most difficult topics for historians. Other ideologies, such as communism and fascism, had provoked tremendous cataclysms during the European twentieth century. In the popular mind liberalism had not provoked such tremendous radical transformations. But precisely because this ideology did not carry these radical connotations, it has been relatively easy for social scientists to depict the historical process by which liberalism had been considered as the ‘less dangerous’ of all western ideologies. By contrast, anarchism is not an ideology fascinated with power, such as communism and fascism. Nor has anarchism been described as a non-conflict society, such as liberalism. The main reason why it is not easy to write about anarchism is because its footprint on earth is not as easy to track down as liberalism, communism and fascism. Anarchism, as Ealham makes us understand implicitly through all this book, is more related with the soul of the people.
The present volume examines the role of Latin Americanist and Iberian cultural critique in the debates on human rights, and focuses on some of the obstacles and challenges that both its theory and practice confront today. The essays address those issues in four interrelated areas: 1) The struggle for a language that represents (problematically or not) human rights violations in international and domestic laws; 2) The issue of gender and human rights, especially the violation of the rights of women and children; 3) The competing tensions between different kinds of rights discourses; and 4) The need to reconsider cultural and economic rights as part of the human rights debate.
Millennium, 2019
How can we study the politics of human rights activism in violent social conflicts? International Relations scholarship has long neglected the ambiguous political relationships between human rights activism and violent social conflicts. Addressing this gap requires new research methodologies that place the focus not on the normative or legal dimensions of human rights, but in how their usage constitutes the political. In this article I argue that using post-foundational discourse theory makes visible ‘politics-as-ruptures’ that locate the political function of human rights activism precisely in the resistance to representations of violence in conflict discourses. I analyse this political function by asking how activists translate human rights norms, transform conflict discourses, and thereby contest power relations. As examples, the article presents three types of discursive politics that I studied in Colombia. These examples point out further pathways to pose empirical questions about the roles of human rights activism in transforming social conflicts. ¿Cómo podemos estudiar la política del activismo en favor de los derechos humanos en los conflictos sociales de carácter violento? Los estudios académicos sobre relaciones internacionales han desatendido, desde hace mucho tiempo, las ambiguas relaciones políticas existentes entre el activismo en favor de los derechos humanos y los conflictos sociales de carácter violento. Para solucionar este problema, se haría necesario implementar nuevas metodologías de investigación que se centren, no tanto en las dimensiones normativas o jurídicas de los derechos humanos, sino en la manera en que su uso adquiere un carácter político. En este artículo se argumenta, por tanto, que el uso de la teoría posfundacional del discurso visibiliza las "políticas como forma de ruptura" que ubican la función política del activismo en favor de los derechos humanos dentro del ámbito de la resistencia respecto a las representaciones de violencia en los discursos referentes al conflicto. De esta manera se hace un análisis a fondo de esta función de la política planteando la cuestión de cómo los activistas interpretan las normas sobre derechos humanos, transforman los discursos del conflicto y, en consecuencia, refutan las relaciones de poder. El artículo presenta, a modo de ejemplos, tres tipos de políticas discursivas que he tenido la ocasión de investigar en Colombia; ejemplos que muestran otros caminos posibles para el examen empírico de los diferentes papeles del activismo en favor de los derechos humanos, visto como agente importante en la transformación de los conflictos.