Critically Queer Yet Politically Affirmative Engagements with Human Rights

Year 2024, Issue: 75, 1 - 32, 06.01.2025

Remzi Orkun Güner

https://doi.org/10.26650/annales.2024.75.0001

Abstract

Considering recent queer engagements with international human rights, this article argues that emerging attempts at queering rights have often resulted in framing queer critique into the normativity of human rights. This article critiques this tendency, suggesting that queer engagement with rights can be critical yet (potentially) affirmative. It shows that queer critique, understood as non-essentialist politics, can contribute to contemporary critical human rights studies and their analyses of identity-producing functions of rights. In this way, the paper engages not only with the subject paradox of the rights discourse but also with queer responses to identity-based rights claims. I argue that queer critiques, shifting the focus from ontology to politics, encourage an affirmative engagement with framings of rights by considering identities as political claims, understanding rights not in ontological terms but as instruments for shifting temporary strategies in practice. The arena of rights, a site where debates about the definitions of human are contested, is a crucial space for deploying non-essentialist politics. In this context, the article refers to queer as a critical method in deploying rights to reduce the disciplinary effects of identities, helping us to free ourselves, our engagements with others, and politics from the eyes of the Normative.

Keywords

Human rights, identity politics, critical theory, queer theory, Michel Foucault

Ethical Statement

The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.

References

• Adams TE, ‘Paradoxes of Sexuality, Gay Identity, and the Closet’ (2011) 33 Symbolic Interaction 234. google scholar
• Adler L, Gay Priori. A Queer Critical Legal Studies Approach to Law Reform (Duke University Press 2018). google scholar
• Agamben G, ‘Beyond Human Rights’ in Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare Casarino (trs), Means Without End: Notes on Politics (University of Minnesota Press 2000). google scholar
• Altman D and Symons J, Queer Wars. The New Global Polarization over Gay Rights (Polity Press 2016). google scholar
• Arendt H, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harcourt, Brace 1951). google scholar
• Badiou A, Ethics. An Essay on the Understanding Og Evil (Verso 2001). google scholar
• Balibar E, ‘“Rights of Man” and “Rights of the Citizen”: The Modern Dialectic of Equality and Freedom’ in James Swenson (tr), Etienne Balibar, Masses, Classes, Ideas. Studies on Politics and Philosophy Before and After Marx (Routledge 1994). google scholar
• Ball CA, ‘Essentialism and Universalism in Gay Rights Philosophy: Liberalism Meets Queer Theory’ (2001) 26 Law & Social Inquiry 271. google scholar
• Baxi U, The Future of Human Rights (3rd edn, Oxford University Press 2012). google scholar
• Bernini L, Queer Theories. An Introduction (Michela Baldo and Elena Basil trs, Routledge 2021). google scholar
• Bersani L, Thoughts and Things (The University of Chicago Press 2015). google scholar
• Brown W, States of Injury. Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton University Press 1995). google scholar
• ——, ‘Revaluing Critique: A Response to Kenneth Baynes’ (2000) 28 Political Theory 469. google scholar
• ——, ‘Suffering Rights as Paradoxes’ (2000) 7 Constellations 229. google scholar
• ——, Politics out of History (Princeton University Press 2001). google scholar
• ——, ‘“The Most We Can Hope For...”: Human Rights and the Politics of Fatalism’ (2004) 103 South Atlantic Quarterly 451. google scholar
• Brown W and Halley J, ‘Introduction’ in Wendy Brown and Janet Halley (eds), Left Legalism / Left Critique (Duke University Press 2002). google scholar
• Browne K and Nash CJ, ‘Queer Methods and Methodologies An Introduction’ in Kath Browne and Catherine J Nash (eds), Queer Methods and Methodologies: Intersecting Queer Theories and Social Science Research (Routledge 2010). google scholar
• Butler J, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (Routledge 1993). google scholar
• ——, ‘Imitation and Gender Subordination’ in Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale and David Halperin (eds), Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (Routledge 1993). google scholar
• ——, ‘Restaging the Universal: Hegemony and the Limits of Formalism’ in Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (Verso 2000). google scholar
• ——, Undoing Gender (Routledge 2004). google scholar
• ——, Frames of War (Verso 2009). google scholar
• ——, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (Harvard University Press 2015). google scholar
• Butler J and Athanasiou A, Dispossession: The Performative in the Political (Polity Press 2013). google scholar
• Chevallier P, ‘Michel Foucault and the Question of Rights’ in Ben Golder (ed), Colin Gordon (tr), Re-Reading Foucault: On Law, Power and Rights (Routledge 2013). google scholar
• Cohen CJ, ‘Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queen: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics’ (1997) 3 GLQ 437. google scholar
• Cossman B, ‘Queering Queer Legal Studies: An Unreconstructed Ode to Eve Sedgwick (and Others)’ (2019) 6 Critical Analysis of Law <https://cal.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cal/article/ view/32562> accessed 8 February 2024. google scholar
• Croce M, ‘Desiring What the Law Desires: A Semiotic View on the Normalization of Homosexual Sexuality’ (2018) 14 Law, Culture and the Humanities 402. google scholar
• Culbertson T and Jackson JE, ‘Proper Objects, Different Subjects and Juridical Horizons in Radical Legal Critique’ in Martha Albertson Fineman, Jack E Jackson and Adam P Romero (eds), Feminist and Queer Legal Theory: Intimate Encounters, Unfomfortable Conversations (Routledge 2010). google scholar
• Dalacoura K, ‘Homosexuality as Cultural Battleground in the Middle East: Culture and Postcolonial International Theory’ (2014) 35 Third World Quarterly 1290. google scholar
• D’Emilio J, ‘Capitalism and Gay Identity’ in Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale and David Halperin (eds), The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (Routledge 1993). google scholar
• ——, ‘Cycles of Change, Questions of Strategy: The Gay and Lesbian Movement after Fifty Years’ in Craig A Rimmerman, Kenneth D Wald and Clyde Wilcox (eds), The Politics of Gay Rights (University of Chicago Press 2000). google scholar
• Douzinas C, The End of Human Rights. Critical Legal Thought at the Turn of the Century. (Hart Publishing 2000). google scholar
• ——, Human Rights and Empire: The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism (RoutledgeCavendish 2007). google scholar
• Duggan L, ‘The New Homonormativity: The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism’ in Russ Castronovo and Dana D Nelson (eds), Materializing Democracy: Towards a Revitalized Cultural Politics (Duke University Press 2002). google scholar
• Eribon D, Returning to Reims (Michael Lucey tr, Penguin 2019). google scholar
• Evans T, The Politics of Human Rights. A Global Perspective (2nd edn, Pluto Press 2005). google scholar
• ——, Human Rights in the Global Political Perspective (Lynne Rienner Publisher 2011). google scholar
• Ewald F, ‘Norms, Discipline, and the Law’ in Robert Post (ed), Law and the Order of Culture (University of California Press 1991). google scholar
• Ferry L, The New Ecological Order (Carol Volk tr, University of Chicago Press 1995). google scholar
• Foucault M, The Will to Knowledge. Vol 1. of the History of Sexuality (Robert Hurley tr, Penguin 1979). google scholar
• ——, ‘An Ethics of Pleasure’ in Sylvere Lotringer (ed), Lysa Hocroth and John Johnston (trs), Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961-1984 (Semiotext(e) 1996). google scholar
• ——, ‘Friendship as a Way of Life’ in Paul Rabinow (ed), Robert Hurley (tr), Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, vol. 1: Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth (Allen Lane/Penguin 1997). google scholar
• ——, ‘Sex, Power, and the Politics of Identity’ in Paul Rabinow (ed), Robert Hurley (tr), Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, vol. 1: Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth (Allen Lane/Penguin 1997). google scholar
• ——, ‘Sexual Choice, Sexual Act’ in Paul Rabinow (ed), Robert Hurley (tr), Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, vol. 1: Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth (Allen Lane/Penguin 1997). google scholar
• ——, ‘The Social Triumph of the Sexual Will’ in Paul Rabinow (ed), Robert Hurley (tr), Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, vol. 1: Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth (Allen Lane/Penguin 1997). google scholar
• ——, ‘What Is Critique?’ in Sylvere Lotringer and Lysa Hocroth (eds), The Politics of Truth (Semiotext(e) 1997). google scholar
• ——, ‘Society Must Be Defended’. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76 (David Macey tr, Allen Lane 2003). google scholar
• ——, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-78 (Graham Burchell tr, Palgrave Macmillan 2007). google scholar
• ——, The Government of Self and Others: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1982-83 (Graham Burchell tr, Palgrave Macmillan 2010). google scholar
• ——, ‘Interview with Jean François and John de Wit’ in James D: Faubion and Bernard E Harcourt (eds), Stephen W Sawyer (tr), Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling. The Function of Avowal in Justice (The University of Chicago Press 2014). google scholar
• Foucault M and Simon J, ‘Danger, Crime and Rights: A Conversation between Michel Foucault and Jonathan Simon’ (2016) 0 Theory, Culture & Society 1. google scholar
• Golder B, ‘What Is an Anti-Humanist Human Right?’ (2010) 16 Social Identities 651. google scholar
• ——, ‘Foucault’s Critical (yet Ambivalent) Affirmation: Three Figures of Rights’ (2011) 20 Social & Legal Studies 283. google scholar
• ——, Foucault and the Politics of Rights (Stanford University Press 2015). google scholar
• Gottell L, ‘Queering Law: Not by Vriend’ (2002) 17 Canadian Journal of Law and Society 89. google scholar
• Grear A, ‘“Framing the Project” of International Human Rights Law: Reflections on the google scholar
• Dysfunctional “Family” of the Universal Declaration’ in Conor Gearty and Costas Douzinas (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Human Rights Law (Cambridge University Press 2012). google scholar
• Gross A, ‘Queer Theory and International Human Rights Law: Does Each Person Have a Sexual Orientation?’ (2007) 101 Proceedings of the ASIL Annual Meeting 129. google scholar
• ——, ‘Homoglobalism: The Emergence of Gay Governance’ in Dianne Otto (ed), Queering International Law: Possibilities, Alliances, Complications, Risks (Routledge 2018). google scholar
• Halley J, Split Decisions. How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism (Princeton University Press 2006). google scholar
• Halperin D, Saint Foucault. Towards a Gay Hagiography (Oxford University Press 1995). google scholar
• Ife J, Human Rights from Below: Achieving Rights through Community Development (Cambridge University Press 2012). google scholar
• Jackson S, ‘Sexual Politics: Feminist Politics, Gay Politics and the Problem of Heterosexuality’ in Terrell Carver and Veronique Mottier (eds), Politics of Sexuality: Identity, Gender, Citizenship (Routledge 1998). google scholar
• Jagose A, Queer Theory: An Introduction (New York University Press 1996). google scholar
• Kapur R, ‘The (Im)Possibility of Queering Human Rights Law’ in Dianne Otto (ed), Queering International Law: Possibilities, Alliances, Complications, Risks (Routledge 2018). google scholar
• Kennedy DW, ‘The International Human Rights Regime:Still Part of the Problem?’ in Rob Dickinson and others (eds), Examining Critical Perspectives on Human Rights (Cambridge University Press 2012). google scholar
• Kerruish V, Jurisprudence as Ideology (Routledge 1992). google scholar
• Kirsch MH, Queer Theory and Social Change (Routledge 2000). google scholar
• Langlois AJ, ‘Queer Rights?’ (2017) 71 Australian Journal of International Affairs 241. google scholar
• ——, ‘International Political Theory and LGBTQ Rights’ in Chris Brown and Robyn Eckersley (eds), Anthony J Langlois, The Oxford Handbook of International Political Theory (Oxford University Press 2018) <https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/28084/chapter/212153414> accessed 7 February 2024. google scholar
• Marx K, ‘On the Jewish Question’ in Robert C Tucker (ed), Thomas B Bottomore (tr), The MarxEngels Reader (2nd edn, W W Norton & Company 1978). google scholar
• Massad JA, Desiring Arabs (The University of Chicago Press 2007). google scholar
• Mertus J, ‘The Rejection of Human Rights Framings. the Case of LGBT Advocacy in the US’ (2007) 29 Human Rights Quarterly 1036. google scholar
• Mohr RD, ‘The Perils of Postmodernity for Gay Rights’ (1995) 8 Canadian Journal of Law and Society 5. google scholar
• Moyn S, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2010). google scholar
• Mutua M, Human Rights: A Political & Cultural Critique (University of Pennsylvania Press 2002). google scholar
• Otto D, ‘Lost in Translation: Re-Scripting the Sexed Subjects of International HUman Rights Law’ in Anne Orford (ed), International Law and Its Others (Cambridge University Press 2009). google scholar
• ——, ‘Introduction: Embracing Queer Quriosity’ in Dianne Otto (ed), Queering International Law: Possibilities, Alliances, Complicities, Risks (Routledge 2018). google scholar
• Patton P, ‘Foucault, Critique, and Rights’ (2005) 6 Critical Horizons 267. google scholar
• Pendas DO, ‘Toward a New Politics? On the Recent Historiography of Human Rights’ (2012) 21 Contemporary European History 95. google scholar
• Peterson VS and Parisi L, ‘Are Women Human? It’s Not an Academic Question’ in Tony Evans (ed), Human Rights Fifty Years On. A Reappraisal (Manchester University Press 1998). google scholar
• Puar JK, Terrorist Assemblages. Homonationalism in Queer Times (Duke University Press 2007). google scholar
• ——, ‘Rethinking Homonationalism’ (2013) 45 International Journal of Middle East Studies 336. google scholar
• Rahman M, ‘Queer Rights and the Triangulation of Western Exceptionalism’ (2014) 13 Journal of Human Rights 274. google scholar
• Rancière J, ‘Who Is the Subject of the Rights of Man’ (2004) 103 South Atlantic Quarterly 297. google scholar
• Rao R, Third World Protest. Between Home and the World (Oxford University Press 2010). google scholar
• ——, ‘Global Homocapitalism’ (2015) 194 Radical Philosophy 38. google scholar
• Scott JW, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Harvard University Press 1996). google scholar
• Sedgwick EK, Epistemology of the Closet. google scholar
• Siisiainen L, ‘Foucault and Gay Counter-Conduct’ (2016) 30 Global Society 301. google scholar
• Slaughter JR, ‘Hijacking Human Rights: Neoliberalism, the New Historiography, and the End of the Third World’ (2018) 40 Human Rights Quarterly 735. google scholar
• Spivak GC, Outside in the Teaching Machine (Routledge 2009). google scholar
• Stammers N, Human Rights and Social Movements (Pluto Press 2009). google scholar
• Stychin CF, Law’s Desire. Sexuality and the Limits of Justice (Routledge 1995). google scholar
• Sullivan N, A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory (New York University Press 2003). google scholar
• Thoreson RR, ‘Queering Human Rights: The Yogyakarta Principles and the Norm That Dare Not Speak Its Name’ (2009) 8 Journal of Human Rights 323. google scholar
• Warner M, ‘Introduction’ in Michael Warner (ed), Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory (University of Minnesota Press 1993). google scholar
• Whyte J, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism (Verso 2019). google scholar
• Zeidan S, ‘’The Remote Control of the “I” We Assume Wants to Come out: Sexuality and Governance in the Arab World.’ in Oishik Sirca and Dipika Jain (eds), New Intimacies, Old Desires: Law, Culture and Queer Politics in Neoliberal Times (Zubaan 2017). google scholar
• Zivi K, ‘Feminism and the Politics of Rights: A Qualified Defense of Identity-Based Rights Claiming’ (2005) 1 Politics & Gender 377. google scholar
• ——, ‘Rights and the Politics of Performativity’ in Terrell Carver and Samuel A Chambers (eds), Judith Butler’s Precarious Politics: Critical Encounters (Routledge 2008). google scholar
• ——, Making Rights Claims: A Practice of Democratic Citizenship (Oxford University Press 2012). google scholar