‘We Are Human.’ Re-humanising Human Rights

  • Lucy Fiske
Chapter
First Online:

Abstract

This chapter draws on the works of Hannah Arendt to explore detainees’ repeated cries of ‘We are human!’ It proposes modern legal-positivist approaches to rights encourage the development of juridical systems, but leave philosophical dimensions of human rights under-theorised. It is to a moral understanding of a shared humanity that the cry ‘we are human’ speaks. The chapter challenges dominant institutionalised discourses of human rights and proposes an alternate approach less dependent on the nation-state and more focused on the human subject of human rights. Detainees recount protest as re-humanising, communicative acts.

Keywords

Human Condition Public Sphere Asylum Seeker Political Community Formal Entry 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  • Lucy Fiske
    • 1
  1. 1.University of Technology SydneySydneyAustralia

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