Human Rights in Time: Temporalization of Human Rights in Historical Representation

Abstract

The concept of time is essential both in understanding the present meaning of human rights and in writing the history of human rights. Histories of human rights have been the subject of intense controversy, as scholars have sought the origins of human rights in vastly different moments in history. A history of human rights is a historical representation and as such is a product of a number of methodological choices, including how time is to be understood and employed in writing the history. With the past only made comprehensible in retrospect in the form of a historical narrative, the temporalization of human rights—manifested through the dichotomies of long and short time frames, continuous and discontinuous temporality as well as change and transformation—is essential in the construction of historical narratives of human rights. Temporalization pinpoints the creation of the modern concept of human rights in history and produces a particular narrative of the historical evolution of modern human rights which in turn profoundly shapes the contemporary image of human rights.