Abstract
In a moment of good citizenship, I agreed to review Human Rights as War by Other Means (HRAWBOM). Admittedly, I was really curious as to the empirical basis of the counterfactual Jennifer Curtis asserts in her title. It was—and is—inconceivable to me that when a human rights perspective—or language, agenda, consciousness—is shared, there will be anything other than collective happiness, tranquility, and shared joy. Indeed, I think that human rights make up the stepping-stones of Utopia. Human rights cannot, at least to my mind, be anything other than the means to peace. (Admittedly, I exaggerate to make my point!)
At once, we need to consider that—as Jennifer Curtis does—whereas human rights are codified international conventions, treaties, and laws, they are subjectively experienced and locally applied and defined. I agree. Let’s take the United States as a case in point; patting ourselves on our backs for our recognition of political rights, we fail to note the extent of hunger, homelessness, and joblessness in America. These are all violations of fundamental human rights but generally Americans don’t think of them in those terms. Curtis does not address human rights issues in the United States but were she to do so, it would be consistent with the arguments she does make that we Americans have socially reconstructed human rights as individual political rights and freedoms in such a way to make the very notion of collectively shared rights and freedoms ludicrous. I would agree.
Curtis’ research is based on years of firsthand experience in Belfast during the “troubles”—years of conflict between unionists (predominately Protestant) and nationalists (predominately Catholics). Starting out as a civil rights movement, she contends that “Everyday appropriations of rights talk incorporated the logic and language of the local conflict, rather than resituating local understandings of the conflict in terms of international laws and norms” (p. 67). In other words, rights talk infused politics and often enough bloody conflict. (I was in Belfast in the summer of 1972, a few month prior to Bloody Sunday, and can attest to not only the extent of evident tragic damage to neighborhoods but also how much the British troops looked like occupiers.) Fortunately, Jennifer Curtis does not take sides in this superb analysis.
Thus, Curtis’ first thesis is a dark and worrisome one—namely that human rights claims are self-serving and contentious—that is “my house,” “my land,” “my morality,” and “my government.” Her second thesis is emancipatory and only tantalizing hinted at in the first five chapters and then developed in chapter 6.
Let me first lay out another hint using the United States as an example. Same-sex marriage is allowed in 21 U.S. states (and counting) and the District of Columbia. Let me speculate here in ways that I think are consistent with Curtis’ second thesis. Sexual identity, we can assume, is randomly distributed between rich and poor; among people with different racial and ethnic identities; among Republicans, Tea Party members, Democrats, and Socialists.
Jennifer Curtis describes the inclusiveness and openness (beginning in around 2010) in Belfast of Gay Parades, the queer community, the principled support of homosexuality by some political parties as well as of some schools, and generally an openness by the public. She concludes chapter 6, “Here we see intimations of peace, rather than war by other means” (p. 200). Yes, of course, sexual identity and choice are human rights, but can we imagine that they are the panacea to conflict over other rights, as Curtis implies? It would be great if this were the case. However, if sexual identity and sexual preference are randomly distributed in any population—as I am assuming they are—queerness may not have the emancipatory effect for people and society as a whole that she suggests it may. Rather its social significance may very well be like introversion or extraversion or left-handedness or indeed like any other randomly distributed human trait. So what if the probability of American socialists being left-handed is about the same as the probability of an American libertarian of being left-handed? It would be of no social significance. Contentiousness over “my rights,” “my property,” “my job,” and “my wealth” will not cease when, say, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
I would like to assert that what may have saved the United States from the calamities that befell Northern Ireland is that America is far more diverse than Northern Ireland, which has been polarized by unionists and nationalists (mostly defined by primal religious identities). The United States has indigenous peoples, immigrants, varied religious groups, and so forth and so on. Diversities may keep Americans from bitter conflict precisely because these many diversities are overlapping. That is, say, some white Protestants are members of the Tea Party and others members of the Green Party; some are rich; some are gay; some are homeless. In other words, our diversities may keep us from going to war with one another. Yet they do not provide for cohesion, solidarity, or a sense that we share the same basic human rights.
What may very well unite Americans (and even the world’s peoples) is a shared understanding that we are all in danger as the result of global warming. The climate and the environment are collective goods—indeed, basic human rights—in which we all have a stake. We need to cooperate to ensure that each shares and benefits from the right to a healthy environment, and without which none of us could enjoy other basic human rights—such as food and water.