The Subject of Human Rights: From the Unencumbered Self to the Relational Self

The divisive character of a large part of identity politics creates enormous challenges which have yet to be satisfactorily engaged with from within human rights circles. This article addresses an area of human rights theory and practice that is in urgent need of critical attention: the prevailing human-rights-based response to identity politics, namely recognition rights that eschew social class. I shall argue that human rights has vitally important contributions to make to protecting those who are vulnerable because of their self-affirmed or imposed identities. However, I shall also argue that human rights’ engagement with identity politics is significantly limited in key areas. Human rights remains deeply influenced by an overly individualist ideal of the individual rights holder, which limits its ability to effectively engage with what I see as a key challenge of our age: identity politics wielded in divisive ways. I shall argue that what is largely missing from human rights’ engagement with identity politics is an understanding of the subject of rights as relational. I will consider specific aspects of this failure to engage with the constitutive relationality of human agency and identity, before proceeding to outline three areas in which an acknowledgement of relationality can contribute to human rights incorporating identity politics in a more effective way. My article asks the human rights community to radically rethink and begin to reshape its efforts to engage with the challenge of identity.