Human Rights

• Agamben: not the biggest fan of human rights

  • totalitarian regiemes aren't going to follow the Geneva Convesntions and they fail to stop people from being brutalized
  • a concept that creates new oppertunities for imperialistic regiemes all around the world
• human rights used as a smoke screen to hide true intentions about invading a country and starting a war (Agamben)

  • U.S. and Iraq in 2003
  • Russia and Ukraine in 2022
• true political motivations obscured when we dangle human rights in front of people - ends up preventing us from talking about other issues that are also important (ie. income inequality)
• rights are tied up in the assumption that the government will protect them; which connects rights to biopolitics
• how quick people are to suspend peoples human rights as soon as they're labeled an enemy of the state
• concentration campls - masterclass on how to create a subhuman class on whom Hitler could do whatever he wanted to with no legal repercussions
• what exactly are you taking from someone when you force them into something like a concentration camp?
• zoe - private life

  bias - public, political life

  *both necessary for a free life

  **when taken, someone is forced into a state of being alive but dead (purgatory); are part of the political discussion but have no representation or ability to participate
• state of emergency - state gets absolute power

  • constitution like human rights in that it makes people feel good but when push comes to shove its a state of exception?
• human rights were not substantive enough either philosophically or practically to deal with statelessness