In the last years of the twentieth century, political leaders the world over began to apologize for wrongs in their nations pasts. Many dismissed these apologies as mere words, cynical attempts to avoid more costly forms of reparation; others rejected them as inappropriate encroachments into politics or forms of action that belonged in personal relationships or religion. Yet, political apologies have gripped nations and provoked tremendous resistance. To understand apology s extraordinary political emergence, we have to suspend our automatic interpretations of what it means for nations to apologize and interrogate their meaning afresh. Taking the reader on a journey through apology s religious history and contemporary apologetic dramas, this book argues that the apologetic phenomenon marks a new stage in our recognition of the importance of collective responsibility, the place of ritual in addressing national wrongs, and the contribution that practices that once belonged in the religious sphere might make to contemporary politics.

Formal and informal institutions structure our social interactions by giving rise to normative expectations and patterns of collective behaviour. This collection grapples with how affect, imagination, and embodiment can operate to either constrain or enable the justice of institutions and the experiences of specific social identities. This anthology explores the myriad ways institutions work to systematically disadvantage people with particular identities whilst privileging others, and considers the legal, political, and normative interventions that might serve to promote a more just society. Taken together, the chapters represent the scope of existing research within institutional theory, affect theory, race theory, and theories of social imaginaries. Across a range of topics (human rights, racial and sexual violence, transitional justice and democratic movements) this collection critically assesses the extent to which theorists have attended to the conjoined influence of the imagination, embodiment, and affective phenomena on processes of institutional change that aim to achieve social justice. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Angelaki.

In an interview with GA1/4nther Gaus for German television in 1964, Hannah Arendt insisted that she was not a philosopher but a political theorist. Disillusioned by the cooperation of German intellectuals with the Nazis, she said farewell to philosophy when she fled the country. This book examines Arendt's ideas about thinking, acting and political responsibility, investigating the relationship between the life of the mind and the life of action that preoccupied Arendt throughout her life. By joining in the conversation between Arendt and Gaus, each contributor probes her ideas about thinking and judging and their relation to responsibility, power and violence. An insightful and intelligent treatment of the work of Hannah Arendt, this volume will appeal to a wide number of fields beyond political theory and philosophy, including law, literary studies, social anthropology and cultural history.

Formal and informal institutions structure our social interactions by giving rise to normative expectations and patterns of collective behaviour. This collection grapples with how affect, imagination, and embodiment can operate to either constrain or enable the justice of institutions and the experiences of specific social identities. This anthology explores the myriad ways institutions work to systematically disadvantage people with particular identities whilst privileging others, and considers the legal, political, and normative interventions that might serve to promote a more just society. Taken together, the chapters represent the scope of existing research within institutional theory, affect theory, race theory, and theories of social imaginaries. Across a range of topics (human rights, racial and sexual violence, transitional justice and democratic movements) this collection critically assesses the extent to which theorists have attended to the conjoined influence of the imagination, embodiment, and affective phenomena on processes of institutional change that aim to achieve social justice. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Angelaki.

Utilizing a multispecies lens and anticolonial framework, contributors to this special issue seek to reconceptualize justice to include beings beyond the human realm. The authors imagine how existing political institutions—which determine the meaning and distributions of value and power—might be formed and transformed in ways that respond to and afford justice in the lives, relations, and socialities of other-than-human beings. This institutional shift, the authors argue, would disrupt uneven fields of identity-based power, inequality, marginalization, and privilege. It would also foster practices of living together in ways that are hospitable to a broader range of subjects, both human and nonhuman, at a time of socio-ecological unraveling, threat, and instability. Essays cover a variety of topics, including the subterranean estrangement of stygofauna, slaughterhouses and factory farms, anticolonial conceptions of justice, critical plant studies, ecofeminism, and Indigenous cosmopolitics. The authors of this collection engage with methods and concepts derived from fields including cultural theory, anthropology, political theory, philosophy, art, history of science, queer/feminist theory, law, and conservation science. Contributors: Ravi Agarwal, Margaret Barbour, Danielle Celermajer, Sophie Chao, Sria Chatterjee, Janet Lawrence, Dalia Nasser, Astrida Neimanis, Susan Reid, Daniel Ruiz-Serna, Hayley Singer, Christine Winter  

The Subject of Human Rights is the first book to systematically address the "human" part of "human rights." Drawing on the finest thinking in political theory, cultural studies, history, law, anthropology, and literary studies, this volume examines how human rights-as discourse, law, and practice-shape how we understand humanity and human beings. It asks how the humanness that the human rights idea seeks to protect and promote is experienced. The essays in this volume consider how human rights norms and practices affect the way we relate to ourselves, to other people, and to the nonhuman world. They investigate what kinds of institutions and actors are subjected to human rights and are charged with respecting their demands and realizing their aspirations. And they explore how human rights shape and even create the very subjects they seek to protect. Through critical reflection on these issues, The Subject of Human Rights suggests ways in which we might reimagine the relationship between human rights and subjectivity with a view to benefiting human rights and subjects alike.

The Subject of Human Rights is the first book to systematically address the "human" part of "human rights." Drawing on the finest thinking in political theory, cultural studies, history, law, anthropology, and literary studies, this volume examines how human rights—as discourse, law, and practice—shape how we understand humanity and human beings. It asks how the humanness that the human rights idea seeks to protect and promote is experienced. The essays in this volume consider how human rights norms and practices affect the way we relate to ourselves, to other people, and to the nonhuman world. They investigate what kinds of institutions and actors are subjected to human rights and are charged with respecting their demands and realizing their aspirations. And they explore how human rights shape and even create the very subjects they seek to protect. Through critical reflection on these issues, The Subject of Human Rights suggests ways in which we might reimagine the relationship between human rights and subjectivity with a view to benefiting human rights and subjects alike.

There is an urgent need to analyze and assess how we prevent torture, against the background of a rigorous analysis of the factors that condition and sustain it. Drawing on rich empirical material from Sri Lanka and Nepal, The Prevention of Torture: An Ecological Approach interrogates the worlds that produce torture in order to propose how to bring about systemic institutional and cultural change. Critics have decried human rights approaches' failure to attend to structural factors, but this book seeks to go beyond a 'stance of criticism' to take up the positive project of reimagining human rights theory and practice. It discusses key debates in human rights and political theory, as well as the challenges that advocates face in translating situational analyses into real world interventions. Danielle Celermajer develops a new, ecological framework for mapping the worlds that produce torture, and thereby develops prevention strategies.

There is an urgent need to analyze and assess how we prevent torture, against the background of a rigorous analysis of the factors that condition and sustain it. Drawing on rich empirical material from Sri Lanka and Nepal, The Prevention of Torture: An Ecological Approach interrogates the worlds that produce torture in order to propose how to bring about systemic institutional and cultural change. Critics have decried human rights approaches' failure to attend to structural factors, but this book seeks to go beyond a 'stance of criticism' to take up the positive project of reimagining human rights theory and practice. It discusses key debates in human rights and political theory, as well as the challenges that advocates face in translating situational analyses into real world interventions. Danielle Celermajer develops a new, ecological framework for mapping the worlds that produce torture, and thereby develops prevention strategies.