[SydPhil] REMINDER: Peg Birmingham on the Right of State and the Right to Opposition - Mon 3 Sep, 2-4pm

[Dimitris Vardoulakis]

Philosophy Seminars 2012
The Writing and Society Research Centre and Philosophy at UWS, in collaboration with the Whitlam Institute, present:

Peg Birmingham
Professor of Philosophy
DePaul University

TITLE: Revolutionary Declarations: État du droit and the droit de l'opposition

DATE/TIME: Monday 03 September, 2-4pm

PLACE: University of Western Sydney, Bankstown Campus, Building 3, Room 3.G.55

ABSTRACT: More often than not the two revolutionary declarations of the eighteenth century-the US Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen-are grouped together under what is usually referred to as "the great declarations."  I want to suggest in my lecture that this conflation of the two declarations has spawned a number of critiques, from Marx and Burke to Badiou and Wendy Brown, that dismiss the universality of human rights as in fact nothing other than the rights of citizens understood as egoistic, bourgeois individuals who are at the beck and call of state power. Indeed, according to these critiques, it is not at all surprising that the modern rights discourse has moved today from human rights to humanitarian rights in which the state, in the name of right, intervenes on behalf of suffering victims (not citizens) who seemingly need the protection of the more powerful sovereign state.   I want to argue here that while these critiques find a foundation in the US declaration of independence, which I argue is a declaration of the right of a new sovereign state, they miss completely the revolutionary aspect of the French declaration, specifically the 1793 version, wherein the universal rights of man and the citizen emerge in a declaration of the right to oppose state sovereignty.   In my remarks I am going to examine the difference between the "state of right" and the "right of opposition," attempting to flesh out the significance this difference has for thinking democracy and human rights today.
 BIO: Peg Birmingham is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University.  She is author of Hannah Arendt and Human Rights: The Predicament of Common Responsibility.  She is presently working on a manuscript titled Hannah Arendt and Political Glory: Bearing the Unbearable.
 For the entire 2012 program of the Philosophy seminar series at UWS see: http://www.uws.edu.au/philosophy/philosophy@uws/events/research_seminars_2012
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