Overview

"Concrete Utopia conceptualizes the human rights project of the last two and a half centuries as a ""backward-looking"" endeavor, which, in order to move forward, must return to the utopian roots of its foundational documents. Human rightsadvance by judging the ills ofthe present world from a standpointin the future wheretheymightno longer exist-a fundamentally utopian gesture.This peculiar character of human rights makes them continually ripe for reinvention and for responding to changing world circumstances.Looking at topics such as the Auschwitz trials in Frankfurt in the mid-1960s, public outrage to the Vietnam War, the US civil rights movement and the founding of Amnesty International in 1961, this book surveys the history of human rights andhow they have beenreconceived at different points in time.It closes by sketchingthe way they maybere-envisioned for new strugglesin the 21st century. At a timewhenthe human rights project has endured criticismfor being toothless orevenforproviding a pretext for militaryinvasions, Kaleck argues that the current global crises, from inequality, to ecological collapse and the""age of pandemics,""can becounteredbyreinventinghuman rightsworkthrough feminist, decolonial and ecologicalinterventions."

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9781682194393

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“A lawyer with a reputation for punching up.” —The New Republic

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Wolfgang Kaleckis a lawyer and author who founded the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in Berlin in 2007 and is now its Secretary General. He has published several books, includingLaw versus Power(2018), which has been translated into four languages.Kaleck became known to a wider public through his work representing the whistleblowerEdward Snowden.In 2020/22, Kaleck was a visiting lecturer at the Sorensen Center for International Peace and Justice at CUNY School of Law in New York.In recognition of his human rights work, he has received several awards, including theBassiouniJustice Award and theHermannKestenPrizefrom thePEN Center Germany.

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