Human Rights in the 21st Century: Take a Walk on the Dark Side

This article unpacks three normative claims on which the human rights project is based and exposes the dark side of the project. The author examines the larger context within which human rights has taken shape, and critiques the claim that human rights is part of modernity's narrative of progress; interrogates the assumption that human rights are universal, challenging its dehistoricised, neutral, and inclusive claims; and unpacks the atomised, insular liberal subject on which the human rights project is based and its correlating assumptions about the 'Other' who needs to be cabined or contained lest she destabilises or undermines this subject. The author makes some tentative proposals as to how we can engage with human rights once its dark side is exposed.