(University of the Free State, 2014) Kistner, Ulrike
Confronted by the charge of depoliticisation levelled at human rights frameworks and
interventions, I investigate the possibility of a politics of human rights at the core of
democratic politics. In doing so, I am guided by Hannah Arendt’s reconstitutive critique,
and Claude Lefort’s analysis of political modernity, which could be seen to converge
in a justification of a ‘politics of human rights’ and, even more specifically, of ‘the
political’ of human rights. Central in this regard is Arendt’s postulation of “the Right
to have rights”, which would meet the criteria for “equaliberty” (Balibar), a symbolic
division (Lefort), and intensive universality (Balibar), which, in turn, circumscribe the
concept of ‘the political’.