ABSTRACT
The making of human rights norms and standards, and even values, remains a dialectical process of inclusion and exclusion. The order of inclusions at the same time demarcates the zones of exclusion. The famed enunciation of the historic human right to selfdetermination excludes the right of secession from actually existing nation-state formations, no matter how imperially constituted. Various constructions of human rights hierarchies testify to the exclusionary prowess of human rights textualities and intertextuality. The agenda of human rights still in the making, such as the human rights of indigenous peoples, the human right to sexual orientation and conduct, and the human rights of peoples with disability, more than fifty years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights testifies to some originary practices of exclusion in the very production of international, regional, and national human rights norms and standards. The politics of exclusion in the making of human rights cuts deeper than the exigencies of politics of intergovernmental desire in the making of human rights may suggest.
