Tag Archives: humanrights

Living “As Usual”

Posted on January 17, 2014 | Leave a comment

One of the themes of The Handmaid’s Tale that I found most compelling, but also most worrisome was Atwood’s firm assertion that people can get used to anything, given time and “a few compensations.”

Early on in the novel, Offred reminisces on the time that she spent with Luke in the early days of their affair.  She recalls how happy they were, though they thought they had problems, and remembers their complacency regarding the growing number of incidences of violence against women in the news. Prior to the rise of Gilead, no one had imagined such a state was possible- but once the Republic had formed, Offred was shocked to look back and realize just how different things had been.

“Is that how we lived then? But we lived as usual. Everyone does, most of the time. Whatever is going on is usual. Even this is usual, now. We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.” (The Handmaid’s Tale, Chapter 10)

Reading through chapter 10 a second time I was struck by Atwood’s comment that if society had changed so quickly to afford women greater rights and freedoms that it could change back just as quickly.  When I imagine the advances that have been made within my lifetime alone, I am horrified to consider the possibility that they could change, for worse and not better, just as quickly.
Human Rights and social justice are constantly making headway. Health care and access to it is improving world-wide. More and more states and countries are legalizing LGBTQIAP+ marriage, or at the very least, decriminalizing it.

But the seeds of hatred are always as present as the foundations of justice.

Violence and open, irrational hatred against LGBTQIAP+ individuals is still on the rise. First Nations women in Canada go missing and the government doesn’t seem to be too concerned. Last year I read a news story about a woman in North Dakota who’s rapist fought for custody of her child- and won.

“In a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.” (Chapter 10)

One of the things which also strikes me as ironic about Atwood’s novel (and similar dystopias that were written around the same time) is that the rise of an oppressive regime is almost always concurrent with an increase in government surveillance of civilians. Shortly after 9-11, a bombing not unlike the terrorist attack that launched the fictional Republic of Gilead in Atwood’s novel, legislation around government surveillance was amended in many countries including Canada and the United States.

Over the last couple of years, especially with the increased media attention paid to “whistle-blowers” like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden it’s become very clear just how much information different governments are privy to. But while there has been a lot of protest, there are also many who feel that being spied on by their own government is a fair trade off for being kept safe from attacks similar to those on the Twin Towers.

“Humanity is so adaptable, my mother would say. Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.” (Chapter 41)

Times change, and with the rate the world moves at today, those changes can only come faster and faster. What worries me is not that we cannot adapt to our rapidly changing world, but that, as Offred’s mother feared, we are too adaptable. Like Offred, we may move quickly from reminiscing about days when we had no problems to forgetting that we have problems of a greater scale in the present, and if we do, I fear we may fail to notice that the bath water is getting warmer, and our world is taking a turn for the worse.

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#OptimisticPostIsOptimistic

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Subtle Elitism Embedded in Van Peer’s Argument

Posted on October 21, 2013 | Leave a comment

As much as I hate to be the keener with an extra post on her ASTU blog, it looks like that’s the way things are going to pan out- because  I’m hoping the post for the next deadline will be about Obasan, so this one isn’t going to be it.  On the other hand I still have one last point to flush out about Van Peer.

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I’ve really enjoyed reading Van Peer.  As a reader, I find his assertion of the importance of literature as an agent of social change and progress very compelling, and so academically I found it very easy to jump on the Van Peer bandwagon.  But after some closer reading and consideration of the in-class discussion on the stance he takes opposing romanticism, I began to notice a more sinister logic embedded in his arguments.

Although I wrote my summary on, in part, the danger of seeing literature as an entertainer and not an educator (a challenge to educational literature being, in van Peer’s vein of logic, a challenge to social progress and the advancement of human rights) I still strongly feel that van Peer is, in spite of his focus on enlightening encapsulated cultures, an elitist at heart.  Politically, he is for disencapsulation.  Socially, he supports encapsulation to a nearly archaic degree.  The canon van Peer holds so dear is exclusive and socially stratifying, undemocratic at the core and therefore, in opposition of the advancement of true equality.

I draw my claims about van Peer’s elitism from two main aspects of his argument.  First, his protest against Romanticism.  While the romantic movement in some ways diluted the educational impact of art, it was also a democratizing force in the art world, suggesting that art and its appreciation wasn’t something exclusive to the upper classes.  While van Peer might be right to question its effect on some of the effects it had on the quality of art, that doesn’t mean its effects on society itself were negligible.  Second, van Peer’s argument for the creation of social change through literature depends on the members of the encapsulated culture being the ones to read literature and shape change.  His argument completely ignores and undermines the valuable impact of the lower, or excluded classes and cultures as shapers and creators of social change.  Even when he addresses other publications outside of the category of fiction that shape society (like The Communist Manifesto) he isn’t adressing other, unwritten factors in cultural progress.

In short, van Peer isn’t writing from an inclusive perspective of society, but an exclusive one.  He isn’t writing a narrative from the perspective of the excluded as well as the encapsulated members of a society, but one from a strictly elitist perspective.  His words claim social progress, but it’s a progress that exists in legislation alone, not in thought or culture, and the bias of his argument shows that.  In van Peer’s article, there is no mention of the revolution of the masses and its impact on society after the industrial revolution.  There is no mention of the suffragettes or the Civil Rights Movement.  Van Peer spins a pretty narrative about Hard Times and how literature shaped the thoughts of the upper classes and says absolutely nothing about the lower classes.  The lower classes are as voiceless in van Peer as they are in the encapsulated worlds he writes of.  And that’s not really indicative of progress, is it?

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How We Expand Horizons

Posted on October 12, 2013 | Leave a comment

Both Martha Nussbaum and Willie Van Peer offer valuable insights when they elaborate on the ways in which literature allows us as readers to view the world around us more complexly.  In Democratic Citizenship and the Narrative Imagination Nussbaum posits that a literary education from early childhood onward provides a reader with the tools required to view the people around them as “spacious and deep, with qualitative differences from oneself as well as hidden places worthy of respect”.  In a similar vein, Van Peer, in Literature, Imagination and Human Rights asserts that literature creates societal change on a much larger scale, prompting greater discussion about what it means to be human and thereby encouraging encapsulated cultures, that is, people groups with firmly defined and exclusive boundaries, to extend the definition of “human” to peoples they previously excluded.

Both argue that literature prompts people to expand their horizons.  Nussbaum even goes so far as to suggest that literature, among not only the arts but also a great many other disciplines, uniquely shapes minds and broadens thought.  As an avid reader myself, my first inclination is to agree with them.

However, I struggle to simply accept the claim that literature is the most basic, essential eye-opener.  I have two objections to this claim.  First, that the language of literature is, in and of itself, a factor in creating and preserving encapsulation.  Second, that the open-mindedness purveyed through literature cannot find its solitary source in literature, leaving open the question as to where the writer of a book received the idea that their definition of “human” was limited.

Language, particularly written language, has a limited, though ever increasing, sphere of influence.  (I know that language is used by all humans, but the words we use are in and of themselves exclusive).  Language itself is a huge factor in encapsulation.  The language of literature is exclusive to those who are literate, and often, in the case of the authoritative cannon that Van Peer centers his argument around, exclusive to those with an advanced degree of literacy and access to books.

One of my favourite books is A Room With A View by E.M. Forster.  When it comes to whether or not the man was sexist or truly open minded, all bets are off, but he had a lot to say about viewing women as complex individuals at a time when they were not typically seen in so advanced a light.  In one of my favourite scenes in the novel, one character is forced, not by literature, but by the words of his fiance as she breaks off their engagement to acknowledge that she is not, perhaps, as different from him as he’d imagined.

“But to Cecil, now that he was about to lose her, she seemed each moment more desirable. He looked at her, instead of through her, for the first time since they were engaged. From a Leonardo she had become a living woman, with mysteries and forces of her own, with qualities that even eluded art.”

So how and where did Cecil recieve the wisdom that encouraged him to see Lucy as a human as much as himself?  And more interestingly, where did Forster find this notion?  Although, by 1908 the idea that women were as human and complex as men was a fairly common concept, it’s source could not exclusively be literature.  Something had to have prompted the first writer of a book on the subject to put pen to paper, something that wasn’t simply another book.

I would argue, that literature does not instill in readers the notion that our concept of humanity is limited, but rather that it is one of many things that may awaken us to the knowledge of this limitation, a knowledge which is innate in all of us.  Literature, though an effective tool for expanding our horizons, and an enjoyable one at that, is by no means the only method or the best.

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What Happens When Laws are Just but Unconstitutional?

Posted on October 4, 2013 | Leave a comment

When Martin Luther King penned his Letter From The Birmingham Jail there was little question on anybodies mind as to the inequality of people of colour and Caucasian individuals in the United States.  There were those in favour of the inequality and those opposed to it, but no one would call into question that the country discriminated against non-whites.  Race disparity was plainly visible in the world the Americans of the cold-war era found themselves in, from schools and drinking fountains to the courts and the voting booths.

So when the Voting Rights Act was instated, as the first legislation of the American government that focused on amending the effect of the prior laws regarding voting rather than changing their intent it made sense in its social context.  Though the bill was uncommon in form and intent as well as uncommon in that it was a legislation on voting made at the federal level rather than at the state level, it served an incontestable purpose: ensuring that the inalienable American right of equality was preserved at the voting booths.

This past June, a section of the Voting Rights Act was overturned.  The section in question required that election changes in nine states (including Louisiana and Texas) gain approval by the American Justice Department prior to enactment.  Chief Justice John Roberts, among others, suggests that due to recent voter turnout statistics in these states showing that a larger percentage of ethnic minorities attending the voting booths, these states can no longer be subjected to extra scrutiny under the VRA.  Any claims and complaints issued by individual members of these states against the state government will be dealt with on a case by case basis by the courts.

My opinions are fairly divided on the matter.  Intellectually, I understand that there are several legitimate claims that can be made against the VRA, not the least of which is its outdated status.  If recent statistics show that voter turn out has improved in states in the south, then they cannot possibly be held to the current level of scrutiny they are under.  The amount of power this lends to the federal government in a federation such as the USA is unconstitutional.

I recognise, of course, that it is no small thing to call the constitution of a great nation into question.  But one (perhaps heretical) question has plagued me since I began regarding law and society at the start of this school year: if laws are unconstitutional but just, then what is wrong?  Is the law wrong and the constitution to be followed?  Or is the constitution inherently flawed and therefore deserving abandonment?  Though the power of a constitution is perhaps not worth calling into question over one law, how many laws must challenge its authority before it falls?  I am willing to respect a constitution so long as it upholds the justice of the people it serves.  But when it no longer serves even that simple purpose, it no longer serves any purpose worth serving.  Order, safety, and even democracy are petty things to consider when the equality of human beings is at stake.  For true democracy cannot exist in an unequal society, and when democracy crumbles, safety and order are never far in its wake.

Fighting a constitution with a long history of upholding injustice may be an uphill battle, but in the words of Atticus Finch, in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird: “Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to win.”

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Are Human Rights the New God?

Posted on September 19, 2013 | 1 comment

Let’s be frank here. Academia, at least the most verbal parts of it, is really clear about how it feels when it comes to “God” (God with a capital “G,” you know, the theistic, PKG (all Powerful, Knowledgeable and Good), Biblical kind of God), especially when that God is being used to justify committing atrocities in order to advance a person, government or countries aims and status in the world- we don’t like him and we can’t stand it when his name is bandied about as an explanation for why this country went to war or that government decided to pass laws which separated children from their parents. Our unmistakable intellectual and emotional bias against God leaves the fraction of our population with professing beliefs in a higher deity of any sort sheepishly hanging their heads and remaining categorically quiet as we list off the crimes committed in the name of this God.

But there was a time when things were quite different- when God was the primary motivation for all action and thought, the explanation for war and justification for interventions. Everyone, from intellectual to court jester stood in awe of this God or kept their opinions to well to themselves- the idea of challenging God was preposterous. God was used to suit their purposes, not the other way around, and everyone was pretty content.
Reading the UDHR I am reminded, perhaps oddly, of another document that defined the discourse of its day and age- Inter Caetera.

Inter Caetera (a papal bull released in 1493) granted the Spanish possession of the New World, provided that they agreed to convert the locals to Catholicism. It defined future dialogue regarding Spanish takeover in the Americas in that regardless of whether a man took issue with the behaviour of the Spanish in the New World or supported it, he defended his opinion based on whether or not the Spanish were going to successfully convert the locals. When Las Casas recommended a change in Spanish policy it was because what they were doing was wrong in the eyes of God, and therefore were not inn agreement with the decrees of Inter Caetera. And when in response people argued that the actions taken in the New World were in the best interest of advancing the kingdom of God, they were asserting that they had been complying with the decrees of Inter Caetera. No one asked themselves if complying with God’s objectives and principles was important- God was important and that was the end of it. Regardless of what you thought or argued God stood for, he stood for something and it was important you stand there with him.

God is history, as far as many thinkers in the Twenty-first century are concerned. We’re all about Human Rights now. Human Rights justify going to war. Human rights justify the enlargement of the American nuclear weapons arsenal. Human Rights get violated and we drop bombs in response. Nobody sits around asking if Human Rights are good- of course they are! How could we ever argue against Human Rights? But we can use the UDHR to argue against military action in defence of Human Rights when that action jeopardizes the safety of civilians overseas. Both good and bad are done in the name of our inalienable rights as humans. Wars are waged and wars are prevented, and all the while people exploit the UDHR for their own personal gain. We all agree that Human Rights are good, but what happens when they go the way of God, becoming defunct, something that the academics of tomorrow will laugh at?

Generations from now, people may scoff. They may sit around and try to be fair to our primitive ways of thought. Maybe they’ll read about the war in Syria and say to themselves “it really couldn’t have been helped though, could it? They just didn’t know any better. They honestly believed that they were doing the right thing, rabbiting on about the importance of human rights and such.”

Please don’t misunderstand- I’m one hundred percent in favour of the UDHR and our inalienable rights. But any argument that can’t be debated is no argument at all. The UDHR kind of plays the God card in it’s own sense- it’s virtually impossible to disagree with, but vague enough that people can exploit it for their own aims. It’s all too easy to imagine the people looking back on us the same way we look back on the Spaniards taking over the Americas and saying to themselves “My God, I can’t believe they were such self-centred idiots.”

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