on Human Rights

Human rights is the ethical language of our time; a secular groping for a universality that simply does not exist. As a language through which to express something, a need, a yearning, a struggle, it need not be problematic, but as an expression of something that is somehow ‘out there’, a fact of nature that we have discovered through the application of reason to the world, it is worse than useless. What does it mean to say that the human rights of Palestinians, or the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, are being systematically abused? So the Israelis or the US government have no 'right' to do that - so what? What have we learned? What have we gained? What possible illumination has been cast on the problem that is of any use whatsoever? The problem as ever is, and always will be, a fundamental question of power. At their most political, intelligent proponents of human rights talk would suggest that the language of human rights can be used to oppose power, by providing a standard that those in power at least nominally profess to share by which their behaviour can be held to account. But this is to misunderstand the issue. Where this would work the struggle against power has already yielded some results, for example in the legal systems of the countries of the developed world. This is why in the second example, the legality of what is happening in Guantanamo Bay can, at least theoretically, be questioned in an American court. This is important when we consider the first example; there is simply no mechanism through which the Palestinians can wage their struggle other than through violence. Violence is political expression; it is a language of resistance. Claiming human rights means nothing; creating human rights, that on the other hand is everything.