K. Schaffer

Personal narratives have become one of the most potent vehicles for advancing human rights claims across the world. These two contemporary domains, personal narrative and human rights, literature and international politics, are commonly understood to operate on separate planes. This study however, examines the ways these intersecting realms unfold and are enfolded in one another in ways both productive of and problematic for the achievement of social justice. Human Rights and Narrated Lives explores what happens when autobiographical narratives are produced, received, and circulated in the field of human rights. It asks how personal narratives emerge in local settings; how international rights discourse enables and constrains individual and collective subjectivities in narration; how personal narratives circulate and take on new meanings in new contexts; and how and under what conditions they feed into, affect, and are affected by the reorganizations of politics in the post cold war, postcolonial, globalizing human rights contexts. To explore these intersections, the authors attend the production, circulation, reception, and affective currents of stories in action across local, national, transnational, and global arenas. They do so by looking at five case studies: in the context of the Truth and Reconciliation processes in South Africa; the National Inquiry into the Forced Removal of Indigenous Children from their Families in Australia; activism on behalf of former 'comfort women' from South/East Asia; U. S. prison activism; and democratic reforms in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in China.

Personal narratives have become one of the most potent vehicles for advancing human rights claims across the world. These two contemporary domains, personal narrative and human rights, literature and international politics, are commonly understood to operate on separate planes. This study however, examines the ways these intersecting realms unfold and are enfolded in one another in ways both productive of and problematic for the achievement of social justice. Human Rights and Narrated Lives explores what happens when autobiographical narratives are produced, received, and circulated in the field of human rights. It asks how personal narratives emerge in local settings; how international rights discourse enables and constrains individual and collective subjectivities in narration; how personal narratives circulate and take on new meanings in new contexts; and how and under what conditions they feed into, affect, and are affected by the reorganizations of politics in the post cold war, postcolonial, globalizing human rights contexts. To explore these intersections, the authors attend the production, circulation, reception, and affective currents of stories in action across local, national, transnational, and global arenas. They do so by looking at five case studies: in the context of the Truth and Reconciliation processes in South Africa; the National Inquiry into the Forced Removal of Indigenous Children from their Families in Australia; activism on behalf of former 'comfort women' from South/East Asia; U. S. prison activism; and democratic reforms in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in China.

sine Typho," d. h. ohne Benommenheit, der sich sonst genau so verhii.lt wie der gewohnliche, vor allem aber dieselbe Atiologie hat. Nimmt man diesen Krank heiten das Symptom, nach dem sie ihren Namen tragen, so bleibt ihnen doch das Wesentliche, wodurch sie als Einheit erkannt werden, sei es in klinischer, sei es in atiologischer Hinsicht. Was bleibt aber, wenn man der cerebralen Kinderlahmung, die ja schon vorher, wie wir sahen, nur ein Symptomenkomplex war, die Lahmung nimmt 1 So gut wie iiberhaupt nichts, d. h. genau soviel, wie wenn man dem Ikterus die Gelbsucht nehmen und etwa Zustande von Hautjucken und Pulsverlang samung als "Ikterus ohne Gelbsucht" bezeichnen wollte. Hiergegen konnte eingewandt werden, daB die Dinge doch im Zentralvernensystem anders liegen. Durch diese Bezeichnung und Rubrizierung, so findet man mehrfach argumen tiert, solle eben zum Ausdruck gebracht werden, daB es im Gehirn nur von der Lokalisation abhange, welche Symptome auftreten. Das ist gewiB richtig, aber bei solchen Vergleichen kann man doch entweder nur Affektionen von gleicher Atiologie und Pathologie und verschiedener Lokalisation (und damit Symptomatik) oder solche von gleichem Sitz und verschiedener Atiologie usw."