ABSTRACT

This book enhances critical perspectives on human rights through the lens of performance studies and argues that contemporary artistic interventions can contribute to our understanding of human rights as a critical and embodied doing.

This study is situated in the contemporary discourse of asylum and political art practices. It argues for the need to reimagine human rights as performative and embodied forms of recognition and practical honouring of our shared vulnerability and co-dependency. It contributes to the debate of theatre and migration, by understanding that contemporary asylum issues are complex and context specific, and that they do not only pertain to the refugee, migrant, asylum seeker or stateless person but also to privileged constituencies, institutional structures, forms of organisation and assembly.

The book presents a unique mixed-methods approach that focuses equally on performance analyses and on political philosophy, critical legal studies and art history – and thus speaks to a range of politically interested scholars in all four fields.

chapter |20 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|21 pages

Human rights and European bordering

chapter 2|22 pages

The Centre for Political Beauty

chapter 3|24 pages

Human rights and the politics of listening

chapter 4|27 pages

Lawrence Abu Hamdan

chapter 5|29 pages

Human rights and institutional imagination

chapter 6|25 pages

New World Summit

Envisioning statelessness

chapter |11 pages

We have work to do

Commitment to a healing labour