"Rights War tracks how the human rights framework is weaponized against the oppressed, and it makes the case for the central place of literature in understanding this seizure of narrative control. While literary humanitarianism depoliticizes suffering and positions the reader as savior to traumatized Others, Rights War shows how contemporary fiction by women of color and Queer writers across the African diaspora engage innovative narrative paradigms to address structural inequities. It analyzes strategies set out in this literature for disarming savior victimism, which it identifies as a pernicious cultural phenomenon in which the powerful proclaim themselves saviors to and victims of those they marginalize. As the disassociation of national rights from international human rights and the disconnection of civil and political rights from social and economic rights provoke a contest of victimhood, this book offers a renewed argument for the indivisibility of rights and the social justice function of literature"--
Rights War tracks how the human rights framework is weaponized against the oppressed, and it makes the case for the central place of literature in understanding this seizure of narrative control. While literary humanitarianism depoliticizes suffering and positions the reader as savior to traumatized Others, Rights War shows how contemporary fiction by women of color and Queer writers across the African diaspora engage innovative narrative paradigms to address structural inequities. It analyzes strategies set out in this literature for disarming savior victimism, which it identifies as a pernicious cultural phenomenon in which the powerful proclaim themselves saviors to and victims of those they marginalize. As the disassociation of national rights from international human rights and the disconnection of civil and political rights from social and economic rights provoke a contest of victimhood, this book offers a renewed argument for the indivisibility of rights and the social justice function of literature.
It analyzes the cultural narratives through which imperialism, white supremacy, and misogyny appropriate rights discourse to pose at once as savior and victim. While literary humanitarianism promotes rights as a contest of victimhood and disconnects international spaces, it explores literary strategies for reimagining social justice.
Acknowledgement
Credits
Introduction: Barriers to Indivisibility and Intersectionality in Rights
Formations
Chapter 1: The Historical Arc of Institutionalized Racism and Rights in Yaa
Gyasis Homegoing and Claudia Rankines Citizen
Chapter 2: Examining Cultural Narratives of Misogynist Ethnonationalism in
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichies Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah
Chapter 3: Reimagining Literary Engagement with State Discourse on Rights in
Racially Divided Societies with Zoė Wicombs Davids Story and Mecca Jamilah
Sullivans Wolfpack
Chapter 4: Second- and Third-Generation Resistance to Neoliberal Imperialism
in Michelle Cliffs No Telephone to Heaven and Chris Abanis GraceLand
Chapter 5: Raced Configurations of Womanhood and Structures of Labor in
Jamaica Kincaids Lucy and Nicole Dennis-Benns Here Comes the Sun
Conclusion: Reading in Place: Insights from Alabamas Civil Rights Triangle
Index
Jennifer Rickel is a Professor of English at the University of Montevallo. She holds a BA in English with honors from the University of California Santa Barbara and a PhD in English from Rice University. Her research and teaching focus on contemporary literature in English, postcolonial studies, human rights, and gender and sexuality. She co-founded and co-coordinates the Peace and Justice Studies program at the University of Montevallo. She has published articles in the Journal of Narrative Theory, Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, South Atlantic Review, LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory, and Studies in the Novel.
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