Treating human rights as endlessly polyvalent masks the systemic constraints shaping them.

Evidence

Then, as today, the content of human rights was a product of political struggle. Human rights are not given by nature, and there has never been a single human rights movement capable of securing general agreement about a list of rights and their order of priority, let alone realising these rights for all. But to stop at pointing out that ‘human rights’ lacks a unitary meaning, as Susan Marks notes in a related context, is ‘silently to signal that these phenomena are isolated problems, unrelated to wider processes, tendencies and dynamics at work in the world’. By leaving unexamined the tendencies and dynamics that bring such transformations about, as Marks notes, we occlude an understanding of what would be necessary to achieve genuine change. Such ‘false contingency’ neglects the ways in which political possibilities are framed by systemic constraints. Specifically, the belief that human rights are endlessly polyvalent treats them as free-floating, disconnected form the structures of contemporary capitalism, unmoored from the historical conditions and defeats that brought them into being. It obscures the fact that not all figures of the human and of community are equally capable of ‘signifying within the text of human rights’. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 62

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to the reader’s interest in the ethics of markets and human-rights discourse; echoes Susan Marks’ false-contingency critique which recurs in critical legal studies. — connects to: The discourse of right masks domination as legitimate sovereignty and obligation. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 44; The relativism-universalism dispute obscures what really matters in human rights; Human rights become market-dependent floating signifiers of personhood — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 765 (+9 more)
• DEFINE: Introduces and names ‘false contingency’ as the analytical error of treating human rights as free-floating from capitalist structures.

Broader Connections

• The discourse of right masks domination as legitimate sovereignty and obligation. #corroborates (0.85) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 44
• Human rights become market-dependent floating signifiers of personhood #expands (0.80) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 765
• Absolute advocacy of individual rights masks hierarchies empowering its advocates #corroborates (0.80) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 662
• The relativism-universalism dispute obscures what really matters in human rights #expands (0.75)
• Neoliberals reframed human rights as instruments of market submission #exemplifies (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 120
• Neoliberals framed human rights as a tool to enforce global standards protecting private capital #exemplifies (0.75)
• Neoliberals weaponized human rights language to protect private property and market order #exemplifies (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 76
• Neoliberals embraced human rights language as interventionist enforcement of private capital rights #exemplifies (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 139
• The universality of human rights versus cultural relativism is the core civilizational divide #contradicts (0.75) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 522
• Human-rights rhetoric can relocate redress authority toward imperial overseers #exemplifies (0.75)
• Human rights could be institutionalized to shield market inequalities from politics. #exemplifies (0.70) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 368
• Human-rights discourse has replaced civilizational rhetoric as war’s legitimation #exemplifies (0.70)