Writing and Righting

Literature in the Age of Human Rights

Lyndsey Stonebridge

A timely and topical work from an important literary critic
A bold and accessible argument for the moral and political value of literature in rightless times
Establishes connections between literary cultures and the development of human rights
Introduces the sub-discipline of literature and human rights to a general audience

Writing and Righting

Literature in the Age of Human Rights

Lyndsey Stonebridge

Description

A bold and accessible argument for the moral and political value of literature in rightless times.

The obvious humanity of books would seem to make literature and human rights natural allies. But what is the real connection between literature and human rights? In this short polemical book, Lyndsey Stonebridge shows how the history of human rights owes much to the creative imagining of writers. Yet, she argues, it is not enough to claim that literature is the empathetic wing of the human rights movement. At a time when human rights are so blatantly under attack, the writers we need how are the political truthtellers, the bold callers out of easy sympathy and comfortable platitudes.

Writing and Righting

Literature in the Age of Human Rights

Lyndsey Stonebridge

1:Introduction: Literature in the Endtimes (?) of Human Rights
2:Once More with Feeling
3:Experimental Human Rights: Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas
4:Words of Fire: Creative Citizenship
5:The Bewilderment of Everyday Violence: Shamima Begum, Freud, Citizenship and Law
6:Survival Time/Human Time: Hannah Arendt and Behrouz Boochani
7:Conclusion: Hannah Arendt in Baddawi
Appendix: The Hands Are Hers Yousif M. Qasmiyeh

Writing and Righting

Literature in the Age of Human Rights

Lyndsey Stonebridge

Author Information

Lyndsey Stonebridge, Professor of Humanities and Human Rights, University of Birmingham

Lyndsey Stonebridge is Interdisciplinary Professor of Humanities and Human Rights at the University of Birmingham. Her recent books include: Placeless People: Rights, Writing, and Refugees (OUP, 2018), winner of the Modernist Studies Association Best Book Prize, 2019, and The Judicial Imagination: Writing after Nuremberg (Edinburgh University Press, 2011), winner of the British Academy Rose Mary Crawshay Prize, 2014. Her other books include The Destructive Element (1998), Reading Melanie Klein (with J. Phillip, 1998), The Writing of Anxiety (2007), and British Fiction after Modernism (with M. MacKay, 2007). She is currently collaborating on a creative and interdisciplinary project with refugees and host communities in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey, Refugee Hosts. A regular broadcaster and media commentator, she has written for The New Statesman, Prospect, and The New Humanist.

Writing and Righting

Literature in the Age of Human Rights

Lyndsey Stonebridge

Reviews and Awards

"Stonebridge is an immensely gifted writer and thinker. Her new book will help to revitalise literary criticism." - Bryan Cheyette, Times Higher Education

"Pithy and powerful, this book plumbs the crucial questions of our times. If its focus is on what literature can be and do, its preoccupation is with the ethics and politics of writing in a world where liberal individualism and the pursuit of rights has tipped us into a malign logic of totalitarianism. Stripped of citizenship, millions are stripped of the right to be heard. Yet words can make injustice visible, sometimes in their intensity, even take on performative power. Stonebridge's literary ammunition comes from both history and the present, from Virginia Woolf to Kamila Shamsie, from Freud and Sartre to writers like Yousif Qasmiyeh in a refugee camp, while Hannah Arendt's philosophical force underpins her arguments. This is a passionate book, quick to read, but with a slow burn." - Lisa Appignanesi, author of Everyday Madness: On Grief, Anger, Loss and Love

"Magnificenta journey across our times, told with eloquence and depth, ideas and observations abound, opening vistas aplenty" - Philippe Sands, author of East West Street

"This slim but comprehensively researched, rigorously argued volume tackles human rights, literature, moralities, philosophy, aesthetics as well as our discourses about these in a complex, nuanced and yet completely accessible way. It makes for a challenging, thought-provoking, illuminating, and at times discomfiting read. This volume -to borrow from Stonebridge herself -is a must read for lawyers and philosophers, ideologues and academics, to thinkers, writers, teachers, readers, artists, activists, survivors and indeed each one of us who has ever lost themselves to a story that may be our own or entirely of another." - Sunny Singh, Professor of Creative Writing & Inclusion in the Arts, London Metropolitan University