ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of the book. The book explores the possibilities for human rights and radical politics and to spur on the project to utilise human rights as a tool to work towards radical social transformation. It considers human rights as a concept that has been tied to problematic discourses and relations of power in their dominant or mainstream history. The book also considers how the approach of human rights to come must involve a reappraisal of rights as a politico-legal activity, of what is involved in the everyday use of human rights. It explores the way in which the sovereign subject traditionally central to human rights is problematic but, in addition, is also defined by a paradox; this subject possesses rights as a sovereign individual only to the extent that s/he is in fact vulnerable to being injured by external forces acting upon her/him.
