The cultural politics of human rights and neoliberalism

Abstract

Do human rights offer the potential to challenge neoliberalism? I argue that rather than understanding human rights as ideology, as obscuring or legitimating neoliberalism, it is more productive to see both human rights and neoliberalism as hegemonic projects. In this article I explore convergences and divergences between dominant discourses and practices of human rights and neoliberalism around key ideas ‘the state’, ‘the individual’ and ‘the nation’, to clear a space for appreciation of the cultural politics of human rights: divergences in constructions of responsibility and hierarchies of value of concrete individuals offer openings for challenging ideas and practices of neoliberalism through campaigns for human rights.