The Modes of Human Rights Literature

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. The Dream of a Culture Without Borders

   • Michael Galchinsky

   Pages 1-25

3. Lament as Transitional Justice

   • Michael Galchinsky

   Pages 27-52

4. Laughter and the Subjected Subject

   • Michael Galchinsky

   Pages 53-82

5. Towards a Global Civil Culture

   • Michael Galchinsky

   Pages 83-112

6. Back Matter

   Pages 113-132

   PDF

This sophisticated book argues that human rights literature both helps the persecuted to cope with their trauma and serves as the foundation for a cosmopolitan ethos of universal civility—a culture without borders. Michael Galchinsky maintains that, no matter how many treaties there are, a rights-respecting world will not truly exist until people everywhere can imagine it. The Modes of Human Rights Literature describes four major forms of human rights literature: protest, testimony, lament, and laughter to reveal how such works give common symbolic forms to widely held sociopolitical emotions.

• Human Rights Literature
• Global public sphere
• cultural sociology
• international law
• communications theory

“The Modes of Human Rights Literature is an ideal text for students of human rights exploring the ways in which literature and the arts both reflect and refract the quest for human rights. For scholars, it provides a compelling synthesis of commentaries on how culture informs universal human values, engenders empathy, and encourages and enables concern for ‘others’ who are different, distant, or otherwise outside our sphere of immediate personal concern.” (Noam Schimmel, Human Rights Review, Vol. 19, 2018)

“Galchinsky combines the lawyer’s flair for categories with the literary critic’s sensitivity to textual complexity. The result is an extraordinary work, reaching across centuries and continents, offering us new yet historically grounded frames for reading novels, poetry, and life-writing. Erudite yet admirably clear and accessible, this is a book I will return to again and again in my own research and teaching about post-conflict cultures.” (Zoe Norridge, Senior Lecturer in English and Comparative Literature, King’s College London, UK)

“Galchinsky’s book provides a novel account of the role of literature in the struggle for recognition and advancement of human rights. Theoretically well informed, yet accessible and engaging in style, the book is a sophisticated and original contribution to the current, broadly leftist discourse of human rights.” (Peter Goodrich, Professor of Law and Director, Program in Law and Humanities, Cardozo School of Law, USA)

“Galchinsky examines how laughter and lament might provide an affective grounding for a larger culture of human rights. Reading across divides of literary form and geopolitical context through an approach of ‘affective formalism,’ he highlights the extra-judicial contributions of cultural production to a shared, global civil society.” (Alexandra Schultheis Moore, Associate Professor of English, University of North Carolina, USA)

• Georgia State University, Atlanta, USA

  Michael Galchinsky

Michael Galchinsky is Professor of English, an affiliate of the Center for Human Rights and Democracy at Georgia State University, and a Fellow at the Yale University Center for Cultural Sociology, USA. He writes on human rights literature, international human rights law, and Jewish studies.

Policies and ethics