Human Rights: Moral Claims and the Crisis of Hospitality

Abstract

This paper focuses on the current international refugee crisis and the ways in which it is leading to sharp symbolic and physical violence through the process of “othering.” Based on Hannah Arendt’s discussion of statelessness and the question of the right to have rights, and Giorgio Agamben’s discussion of Homo Sacer, as well as drawing on other key authors such as Judith Butler, we argue that conditions of extreme human vulnerability and dangers of totalitarianism are being radically worsened by the ethnicized and racialized denial of the other, that is, of human rights. Rather than advocating an abstract cosmopolitanism, however, without strong purchase in contemporary social life, the paper concludes by noting the need to place oneself in a position of discomfort, in order to confront the tension between particularistic attachments and universalist aspirations, between the multiplicity of laws and the ideal of a rational order common to all polities, between belief in the unity of humankind and the healthy antagonisms and tensions generated by human diversity.

Ovaj članak se fokusira na aktuelnu migrantsku međunarodnu krizu i na načine kako ona vodi simboličkom i fizičkom nasilju kroz proces konstruisanja ‘drugosti’. Oslanjajući se na argu-mentaciju Hane Arent o apatridima, i, pre svega, na pitanje o pravu na imanje prava, kao i na zaključke Đorđa Agambena iz diskusije o Homo Saceru, ali i inspirušući se drugim ključnim autorima poput Džudit Batler, u radu insistiramo na ideji da se opasnosti od totalitarizma povećavaju, a uslovi za ekstremnu ljudsku ranjivost radikalno pogoršavaju etnicističkim i ra-sijalističkim negacijama drugoga, odnosno samih ljudskih prava. Međutim, umesto da zago-varamo apstraktni kosmopolitizam, koji ne bi bio utemeljen u savremenim društvenim od-nosima, u članku branimo tezu o neophodnosti zauzimanja pozicije ‘neugodnosti’, kako bismo se suočili sa tenzijama između partikularističkih privrženosti i univerzalističkih težnji, između mnoštva zakona i ideala o zajedničkom racionalnom poretku svih politika, između verovanja u jedinstvo čovečanstva i antagonizmima koji se generišu u samoj ljudskoj različitosti.