Rights from Below: A Critical Look at Theory & Praxis of Human Rights(Session 2)

Rights From Below: A Critical Look at the Theory and Praxis of Human Rights and the Need for a New Emancipatory Framework

Description

This graduate study group critically examines human rights by looking at the framework’s history, theory and praxis. The course will examine how rights can be ineffectual without consequent capacity to enforce them and even oppressive, as they can be used by powerful actors to entrench and extend their power (for instance, should free speech protect reach or does the latter impede the former?). The course will also examine the inherent competition of rights which require mediation by a court system that is not equally available to all actors, and whether claims of cultural and religious rights should be confined within the universality of human rights (for instance, can we accept someone’s religious right to discriminate? Is this really a cognizable right if it in fact impedes other persons’ rights?). The course will also examine the historical and political contingency of identities and how we interpellate social constructions to be natural and immutable and consequent limits on our political possibilities. We will expose the false dichotomy between civil and political rights and economic rights and understand their interplay. We will examine whether the rights framework should extend to non-human actors (corporations, nature, animals etc.) and how and whether rights should have consequent responsibilities. We will also examine democratic deficits of a rights regime, the justice gap and envision an emancipatory framework that allows for participatory democracy without majoritarian rule. The course will examine these issues in the context of the pandemic, AI, rising inequality and nationalism and climate change.

Each session will be comprised of 45 minutes of presentation and 45 minutes of student-led discussion.

Learning Objectives:

• analyze political and institutional structures of our society and the social construction of space and identity
• apply intersectional analysis of marginalization
• understand the durable and insidious effects of structural violence
• analyze and understand how equal rights superimposed on an unequal society fortifies inequality through case studies in the jurisprudence of corporate rights
• critically examine how interpellation, mediation and reification work to diffuse responsibilities and allow “good” individuals to perpetuate extreme harm
• connect theory to praxis through case studies in surveillance, public health, criminal justice and environmental justice
• understand the inherent paradoxes and limits of a rights regime and imagine a theory and praxis for rights from below

Session 2: Identities, Interpellation and Intersectionality

• the historical and political contingency of identities 
• intersectionality compounding discrimination and marginalization
• the paradox of identity- fluid, contingent, reflexive and oppositional on the one hand, the potential to mobilize and create community on the other
• interpellation and subject formation
• mediation, depersonalization and diffusing responsibility via the reification of roles 
• case studies: surveillance, policing, criminal justice 

Biography

Alexandra Arneri is a Partner at the bicoastal boutique firm Cittone Demers & Arneri LLP, where she practices complex commercial litigation and serves as outside general counsel to several media and tech companies. She has a robust and diverse pro bono practice, including having helped children who have been injured during illegal child labor, protected people on disability from losing affordable housing, stopped deceptive trade practices, helped people obtain healthcare and back wages and prevailed in asylum cases in the 9th Circuit. Alex spearheaded and advised GLAAD in its successful campaign to 

amend IMDb attribution to stop deadnaming and protect the privacy of below the line transgender artists. Alex produces and presents Gravity FM, a podcast on human rights and planetary health and co-founded Apocryphal Pictures. Alex is the Chair of the Global Witness Foundation, the US arm of Global Witness and co-founded May Kids Transform, a nonprofit teaching youth emotional resilience through mindfulness, art and yoga. Alex has an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School, an LLM concentrating in international law from NYU School of Law and a B.A./LLB from Sydney University