Abstract
Why is it that distinct academic disciplines sometimes have a hard time understanding each other? The discussions at the law faculty of the VU University Amsterdam and the University of Amsterdam on 20 and 21 April 2017 with the authors of the book ‘The human right to dominate’ Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon - showed that legal scholars and social-political scholars have a different understanding of human rights (i.e. what human rights are). More so, social-political scholars, such as Perugini and Gordon seem to be more interested in the consequences of invoking the human rights beyond the immediate legal setting of a national or international court (i.e. what human rights do).
Highlights
Why is it that distinct academic disciplines sometimes have a hard time understanding each other? The discussions at the law faculty of the VU University Amsterdam and the University of Amsterdam on 20 and 21 April 2017 with the authors of the book ‘The human right to dominate’1 - Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon - showed that legal scholars and social-political scholars have a different understanding of human rights
Some legal scholars seemed to understand human rights primarily as those rights which are expressed in several international treaties, national constitutions and national law provisions and which generally aim to protect the citizens from the power of the state
Perugini and Gordon painfully expose the limitations of human rights discourses
Summary
The discussions at the law faculty of the VU University Amsterdam and the University of Amsterdam on 20 and 21 April 2017 with the authors of the book ‘The human right to dominate’1 - Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon - showed that legal scholars and social-political scholars have a different understanding of human rights (i.e. what human rights are). Instead of focusing on the question of whether people legitimately invoke human rights, the authors pointed at the unintended effects of the act of claiming human rights by liberal NGOs in the name of Palestinians These included the implementation of exceptional measures against these same NGO’s, and instigated processes of mirroring and inversion of human rights claims by conservative NGOs representing the interests of the Jewish settlers in the Palestinian areas. For this analysis I am indebted to Karen Zivi’s book ‘Making rights claims’ which inspired me to delve more in the performativity of rights and political struggle.[7]
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