<TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textcase="02">Fictions of Dignity</TitleText> <Subtitle textcase="02">Embodying Human Rights in World Literature</Subtitle>

Cornell University Press cornell@onixsuite.com 20130525 eng

COM.ONIXSUITE.9780801451362 03 01 Cornell University Press 01 GCOI 80140100858040 02 0801451361 03 9780801451362 15 9780801451362 59 BB <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textcase="02">Fictions of Dignity</TitleText> <Subtitle textcase="02">Embodying Human Rights in World Literature</Subtitle> 1 A01 Anker, Elizabeth S. Elizabeth S. Anker Elizabeth S. Anker is Assistant Professor of English at Cornell University. 01 eng 272 00 272 03 LIT008020 DSBH5 10 LIT004220 10 POL035010 24 Internet Literature / Britain and Ireland 24 Internet Literature / General and World 24 Internet Comparative Literature 24 Internet Literary Theory and Criticism 24 Internet Political Science / Human Rights 24 Internet Law 01 01 01 Over 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. 02 Elizabeth S. Anker examines human rights in the narrative imagination and, in the process, makes a compelling case for literature as a uniquely valuable point of entry into theoretical discussions of human rights. 04 Introduction: Constructs by Which We Live 1. Bodily Integrity and Its Exclusions 2. Embodying Human Rights: Toward a Phenomenology of Social Justice 3. Constituting the Liberal Subject of Rights: Salman Rushdie's Midnight’s Children 4. Women’s Rights and the Lure of Self-Determination in Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero 5. J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace: The Rights of Desire and the Embodied Lives of Animals 6. Arundhati Roy’s "Return to the Things Themselves": Phenomenology and the Challenge of Justice Coda: Small Places, Close to Home Notes Works Cited Index 08 "With deft skill, Elizabeth S. Anker explores some of the most important issues of human rights by moving restlessly between literature and law. The originality of her reading lies in going beyond textual and linguistic codifications and confronting the dignity of the human person in its most urgent, embodied form. I have greatly enjoyed Anker's phenomenology of the fictions of dignity."—Homi K. Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University 08 "Fictions of Dignity mounts a defense of literature and the literary for thinking about human rights thickly—over and against what Elizabeth S. Anker considers the thinness of legal language and interpretation. It offers a compelling account of why culture matters."—Joseph Slaughter, Columbia University, author of Human Rights, Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law 04 03 72 01 http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/resources/titles/80140100858040/images/80140100858040L.jpg 07 03 72 01 http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/resources/titles/80140100858040/images/80140100858040S.jpg http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100858040 Cornell University Press 01 02 2021862 Cornell University Press Ithaca US 04 20121127 01 WORLD 01 9.25 in 02 6.13 in 08 19 oz 07 2021862 CUP Services http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu 02 CA MX US BV AL AD AM AU AT AZ BY BA BG HR CY CZ DK EE FO FI GE DE GI GR HM HU IS IE MK IT PS KZ LV LI LT LU UM MT MC ME NL NZ NO PG PL PT RO RU SM AX SK SI ES SJ SE CH TR UA GB VA 02 Y 20 28 01 02 s 02 45.00 USD 06 5013546051314 NBN International http://www.nbninternational.com 02 BV AL AD AM AT AZ BY BE BA BG HR CY CZ DK EE FO FI FR GE DE GI GR HM HU IS IE MK IT PS KZ LV LI LT UM MT MD MC ME NL NO PL PT RO RU SM AX SK SI ES SJ SE CH TR UA GB VA AU CA JP MX US NZ PG 02 Y 20 28 01 02 s 02 27.95 GBP