ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the way in which understanding human rights as human rights to come requires re-engagement with the ontological foundations of rights in order to expose and reposition the relationship between rights, sovereignty and vulnerability. The idea of paradox is by no means unusual in or alien to discussion of human rights. Rather, the paradoxical nature of human rights is a steady theme in critical commentary on rights. It is clear from the above that human rights to come provides a vehicle for reimagining vulnerability as a source of critique, to draw attention to experiences of alterity and inequality. Realigning human rights towards the ends of radical social transformation in the practice of human rights to come requires re-engagement with the current ontological underpinnings of human rights, namely the sovereign subject of rights.
