Alston in Alabama

Abstract

Abstract Starting from Alston’s visit in the United States as Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, this chapter interrogates that moment as an illustration of what it means to engage in international human rights work in the world today. It thus foregrounds a notion of human rights praxis as distinct from human rights law or theory. That notion of a praxis is tested against well-known critiques of human rights, namely their tendency to engage in politics without saying so and, more specifically, of not having much to say of substance about fundamental economic inequality. The praxis of human rights, as illustrated by Alston’s own work, is both vulnerable to these critiques and an implicit response to them. The chapter shows how to engage in human rights is simultaneously to performatively construct one’s authority to do so whilst insisting on human rights’ relevance. This brings Alston dangerously close to taking on fundamental questions of political organization that under a liberal view of rights might be thought off-limits and render his own authority precarious. Yet the chapter suggests that in the best of cases a considered and strategically informed praxis of human rights can make the best of bad situations, elevate the debate, and recapture some of the original indignation about injustice that goes at the heart of human rights. It does so both thanks to and despite the contradictions of rights discourse.