In his book, Robert Meister criticizes Human Rights Discourse that has developed after World War Two and continues to rule a mainstream discussion today. The author discusses critical defects of this paradigm and supports his arguments with the relevant works from various areas of knowledge: from psychoanalysis to religion to political analysis. Besides, he analyzes historical examples of injustice from two perspectives: as a dichotomy of a native and a settler, characteristic of anticolonial struggle and a triad of a perpetrator, a victim, and a beneficiary, which is relevant to class struggle.
The key postulate of Human Rights Discourse, which the author believes is flawed, is the “never again” assumption, which means that if people remember past evils, they will not let them happen again. However, the memory of past evils does not ensure the beginning of the new era of justice. The fact that it is “unthinkable” to wish the annihilation of the whole nation does not necessarily mean that it will never happen again in the future. What is more important, argues Meister, this paradigm serves as “a strategy for making justice less urgent” (Meister 314). Thus, the author believes that “Judeo-Christian compassion is not enough” as it only substitutes justice for victims (Meister 314). As a paradigm, Human Rights Discourse lacks resources to achieve greater justice for humanity.
Meister seeks to find other tools that exist outside Human Rights Discourse and doubts about the end of “prophetic policies”, as announced by this mainstream paradigm. To reinforce his point, he brings an example of Islam, where prophecy is declared as “the sole remaining successor to both revolution and its humanitarian alternative” (Meister 314). In this way, Meister emphasizes that Human Rights Discourse is not the ultimate paradigm and something new will come after it. However, he is not in the position to predict what the new discourse will look like.
Work cited:
Meister, Robert. “After Evil: A Politics of Human Rights”. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Print.
