LEADER 04579nam 2200709 a 450 001 9910452977403321 005 20200520144314.0 010 $a0-8014-6563-X 024 7 $a10.7591/9780801465635 035 $a(CKB)2550000001038255 035 $a(OCoLC)820123236 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebrary10629486 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000783272 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11416543 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000783272 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10751740 035 $a(PQKB)11244610 035 $a(StDuBDS)EDZ0001503876 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC3138402 035 $a(MdBmJHUP)muse28701 035 $a(DE-B1597)478482 035 $a(OCoLC)1013948714 035 $a(OCoLC)979740508 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780801465635 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL3138402 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10629486 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL681563 035 $a(OCoLC)824485431 035 $a(EXLCZ)992550000001038255 100 $a20120413d2012 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aur||||||||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aFictions of dignity$b[electronic resource] $eembodying human rights in world literature /$fElizabeth S. Anker 210 $aIthaca $cCornell University Press$d2012 215 $a1 online resource (273 p.) 300 $aBibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph 311 $a1-322-50281-1 311 $a0-8014-5136-1 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $aIntroduction : constructs by which we live -- Bodily integrity and its exclusions -- Embodying human rights : toward a phenomenology of social justice -- Constituting the liberal subject of rights : Salman Rushdie's Midnight's children -- Women's rights and the lure of self-determination in Nawal el Saadawi's Woman at point zero -- J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace : the rights of desire and the embodied lives of animals -- Arundhati Roy's "return to the things themselves" : phenomenology and the challenge of justice -- Coda : small places, close to home. 330 $aOver the past fifty years, debates about human rights have assumed an increasingly prominent place in postcolonial literature and theory. Writers from Salman Rushdie to Nawal El Saadawi have used the novel to explore both the possibilities and challenges of enacting and protecting human rights, particularly in the Global South. In Fictions of Dignity, Elizabeth S. Anker shows how the dual enabling fictions of human dignity and bodily integrity contribute to an anxiety about the body that helps to explain many of the contemporary and historical failures of human rights, revealing why and how lives are excluded from human rights protections along the lines of race, gender, class, disability, and species membership. In the process, Anker examines the vital work performed by a particular kind of narrative imagination in fostering respect for human rights. Drawing on phenomenology, Anker suggests how an embodied politics of reading might restore a vital fleshiness to the overly abstract, decorporealized subject of liberal rights.Each of the novels Anker examines approaches human rights in terms of limits and paradoxes. Rushdie's Midnight's Children addresses the obstacles to incorporating rights into a formerly colonized nation's legal culture. El Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero takes up controversies over women's freedoms in Islamic society. In Disgrace, J. M. Coetzee considers the disappointments of post-apartheid reconciliation in South Africa. And in The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy confronts an array of human rights abuses widespread in contemporary India. Each of these literary case studies further demonstrates the relevance of embodiment to both comprehending and redressing the failures of human rights, even while those narratives refuse simplistic ideals or solutions. 606 $aHuman rights in literature 606 $aSocial justice in literature 606 $aPostcolonialism in literature 606 $aLiterature, Modern$y20th century$xHistory and criticism 608 $aElectronic books. 615 0$aHuman rights in literature. 615 0$aSocial justice in literature. 615 0$aPostcolonialism in literature. 615 0$aLiterature, Modern$xHistory and criticism. 676 $a809/.933581 700 $aAnker$b Elizabeth S$g(Elizabeth Susan),$f1973-$01043476 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910452977403321 996 $aFictions of dignity$92468477 997 $aUNINA