With deft skill, Elizabeth S. Anker explores some of the most important issues of human rights by moving restlessly between literature and law. The originality of her reading lies in going beyond textual and linguistic codifications and confronting the dignity of the human person in its most urgent, embodied form. I have greatly enjoyed Anker's phenomenology of the fictions of ... Read moredignity.
Homi K. Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University The passion and commitment Anker shows in taking liberalism to task for its complicity in perpetrating the very atrocities its own human rights programmes seek to end is a vital one.
Interventions: Intl Jrnl of Postcol. Studies
In her analysis of 'the vocabulary of human rights,' Anker... interrogates the liberal/Enlightenment tradition that values the intellect over the body. She regards this preference, one that stretches from Plato to Descartes, as dismissive of corporeal and indigenous factors. Hence, imperialism emphasizes the 'barbarism' of the global south, patriarchy stresses the weakness of women's bodies to justify their suppression, society categorizes animals as unconscious `carnal being[s],' and large political bodies ignore smaller interests in implementing justice. Anker discusses four works that engage these stances.... [Readers] will be intrigued and challenged by Anker's critique. Summing Up: Highly recommended.
Choice
Fictions of Dignity is a distinctive contribution to the growing body of scholarship concerned with the relationship between human rights and novels.
Emily Hogg
New Formations
Show Less