Zeitschrift für Diskursforschung/ Journal for Discourse Studies

Beyond Negative Humanism. Subjectivation, the Lived Body and Human Rights

Zusammenfassung

The social production of subjects has been a longstanding matter of scholarly dispute in the social and educational sciences. In the second half of the last century, the prominent contribution of the human sciences to the shaping of modern selves was discovered through discourse studies. By and large, this critical description of the human sciences has itself become part of such sciences, contributing to a permanent critique of its metaphysical and anti-emancipatory moments. However, in the 21st century, a visible erosion of the institution of the modern subject leads not to emancipatory transgressions of modernity but to regression into authoritarian mentalities. We suggest taking one step back, appreciating critical moments in the human sciences, and two steps forward to discover the connexion of violence and human rights in the social production of the subject.