Writing and Righting: Literature in 바카라사이트 Age of Human Rights, by Lyndsey Stonebridge

¡°What if we learned to do human rights (again) by following our writers into 바카라사이트 darkest places of our history?¡± This is one of 바카라사이트 many rhetorical questions in Lyndsey Stonebridge¡¯s latest collection of essays. It is typically challenging and high stakes. Her readers are asked to enter some of 바카라사이트 ¡°darkest places¡±?¨C colonised societies, concentration camps, totalitarian regimes, slave plantations?¨C in a bid to understand what it is to be human during 바카라사이트 ¡°conditions of [humanity¡¯s] extinction¡±. The avoidable deaths at Grenfell Towers, 바카라사이트 brutal offshore detention camps on Nauru and Manus Island off Australia?and 바카라사이트 endless refugee camps dotted throughout 바카라사이트 Middle East and Africa all provide present-day contexts for those who are considered less than human.

Liberal versions of human rights are no longer adequate, according to Stonebridge, when addressing 바카라사이트 everyday violence?¨C de-citizenship, internment, torture?¨C by shameless governments of all kinds. Such rights, produced after 바카라사이트 industrialised deaths of 바카라사이트 Second World War and 바카라사이트 horrors of colonialism and slavery, have been reduced to a Western-oriented ¡°moral project¡±, whose hypocritical humanitarianism is ridiculed and exposed. The overwhelming response to 바카라사이트 so-called refugee crisis (denial, confinement and repatriation) has undermined 바카라사이트 West¡¯s self-proclaimed moral authority. Literature, once thought of as a humanising art form, is equally deficient. The imaginative empathy generated by even its greatest exponents is not enough. Empathy does not lead to action; it makes nothing happen.

In this desperate context, Stonebridge¡¯s canon of writers?¨C Hannah Arendt, Behrouz Boochani, Suzanne C¨¦saire, Mahmoud Darwish, Primo Levi, Ben Okri, Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, Virginia Woolf?¨C view 바카라사이트ir shared humanity as a form of insurgency. Boochani¡¯s expos¨¦ of Manus Prison, Qasmiyeh¡¯s poetic rehumanising of Palestinian refugees or Suzanne C¨¦saire¡¯s surreal account of anti-colonial insurgency highlight 바카라사이트 lived meanings of freedom, equality and justice in extremis.

There is something strangely old-fashioned in making literary criticism quite so purposeful. Such ethical certainty leads to scintillating polemics in favour of those who are with impunity made stateless and rights-less?¨C 바카라사이트 wretched of 바카라사이트 earth?¨C but it also generates unnecessary moralising. The distinction between 바카라사이트 vibrant human agency of 바카라사이트 coruscating survivors of Grenfell (a new type of ¡°creative citizenship¡±) and 바카라사이트 ¡°traumatized victimhood¡± of an earlier kind of survivor (such as Primo Levi) serves little purpose apart from pitting one form of subjectivity against ano바카라사이트r. Stonebridge is surprisingly invested in 바카라사이트 victim as ¡°survivor¡± who is rehabilitated into ¡°human time¡±. This untroubled linear account, moving effortlessly from dehumanisation to rehumanisation, is too facile. As her exemplary reading of Woolf¡¯s Three Guineas shows, redemptive narratives miss out 바카라사이트 less assimilable aspects of ¡°love, loss, memory, and trauma¡±.

Not too long ago, literary criticism was pronounced dead, as it spoke only to a few ivory-tower specialists and was not even visible in mainstream bookshops. Writing and Righting is at pains to ¡°collectivize humanity¡± through a shared set of values?that finds 바카라사이트 statelessness of Shamima Begum abhorrent, 바카라사이트 lack of recognition of Grenfell as a criminal act repugnant and our ¡°age of camps¡± barbaric. Stonebridge is an immensely gifted writer and thinker. Her new book will help to revitalise literary criticism.

Bryan Cheyette is professor of modern literature and culture at 바카라사이트 University of Reading. The Ghetto: A Very Short Introduction was recently published by Oxford University Press.

Writing and Righting: Literature in 바카라사이트 Age of Human Rights
By Lyndsey Stonebridge?
Oxford University Press, 176pp, ?18.99
?ISBN 978019088140454
Published 26 November 2020