The abstract universality of rights discourse enables its expansion to excluded groups

Evidence

The Mexican delegate’s optimism seems to challenge the oft-heard critique of the abstraction of human rights discourse, its indifference to the particularity that it is the stuff of lived experience. On the contrary, it seemed to be precisely because the universal human inscribed in the texts of human rights is abstract that it has proved so capable of expanding to include those who were once excluded. From this perspective, both the subjects and borders of rights are structurally in flux, and so the language of human rights can always be taken up by new excluded subjects to affirm their inclusion in the category of humanity. Such a strategy – what the French philosopher Jacques Rancière calls ‘verifying equality’ – entails seizing and taking seriously what is often dismissed as a groundless claim (that all human beings are born free and equal in rights, for instance) and using it to stage a dispute. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 228

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Rancière’s ‘verifying equality’ — seizing a groundless universal claim and using it to stage a dispute — key concept for the human-rights-vs-neoliberalism debate.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing human-rights discourse literature — the abstraction critique (Marx on rights) versus the pragmatic use-of-rights position echoes the competence/performance tension in Communication as Culture. — connects to: Legal language can function as democratic liberation for excluded groups; Multicultural citizenship reconciles universal rights with minority particularistic claims — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 830; Large groups require abstract norms that conflict with small-group personal relations — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 3193 (+7 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: This reframes the standard objection that human rights are ‘abstract and therefore empty’ into their exact opposite: abstraction is what gives rights their expansive, recombinatory political power.

Broader Connections

• Legal language can function as democratic liberation for excluded groups #corroborates (0.90)
• Multicultural citizenship reconciles universal rights with minority particularistic claims #corroborates (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 830
• Large groups require abstract norms that conflict with small-group personal relations #qualifies (0.72) — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 3193