Liberal ‘natural rights’ language described an underlying reality, not an aspiration

Evidence

In it Malcolm X does three things: First, he diagnoses a profound crisis of justice in race-based America and claims that it cannot be resolved by a purely domestic maneuver—that is, by the state’s formal extension of full citizenship to African Americans. Second, he defiantly asserts the humanity of African Americans quite independently of—in hostile opposition to—the American state and its political culture. Third, he proposes that justice consists in the legal conviction of America in an international court; justice is a matter of the law. This invocation of human rights by a black American citizen identifies America as the violator. The language of human rights invoked by him doesn’t make a moral appeal—at any rate, not to those who are declared to be the violators of rights—it declares a state of war and gives reasons why this war is necessary. It thus reaffirms the connection of rights discourse with war and revolution. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 691 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Rüstow’s fellow panellists at the 1957 ‘Liberalism and Colonialism’ session reacted violently to his critique of European colonialism. Yet they too sought to develop a language to pathologise postcolonial sovereignty and transform the postcolonial state into a barrier against the popular aspirations of its people – not a vehicle for their realisation. For the neoliberals, sovereignty had never been the telos of the civilising mission. Quite the opposite, their challenge was always to restrain popular sovereignty, to prevent ‘the masses’ from capturing the state and refusing the discipline imposed by the competitive market order. Freed from its relation to popular sovereignty and economic self-determination, the language of human rights offered them a means to legitimise transformative interventions and subject postcolonial states to universal standards aimed at protecting the international market. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 295 (#complicates, via linked claim)

“I would feel ashamed if I didn’t deal with the way that the world is, not simply dream of the way the world I would like it to be”: capitalist realism in a nutshell. (An unfortunate echo of Bobby Kennedy’s famous slogan: “Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.” See how, under pressure from capitalist realism, the rhetoric of mainstream liberalism has inverted.) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1547 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Human rights content results from political struggle, not nature or consensus; Human rights discourse does not exhaust political languages of the human. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 681; Rights discourse originated in war and revolution rather than moral appeal — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 691 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Rights discourse originated in war and revolution rather than moral appeal #complicates (0.82) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 691
• Human-rights language served to restrain postcolonial popular sovereignty #complicates (0.78) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 295
• Neoliberal discourse inverted liberalism’s visionary rhetoric into accommodation to the status quo #complicates (0.72) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1547