Hijacking Human Rights: Neoliberalism, the New Historiography, and the End of the Third World

Abstract

Recent histories identify the 1970s as the “breakthrough” period when human rights discourse gained traction globally. However, most of the new historiographers adopt an Americo-Eurocentric perspective that disregards events and peoples in the rest of the world. For many in the Global South, the Western rediscovery of human rights looks more like retrenchment and repossession, part of a larger “roll back” of Third World agendas to decolonize the international order. The 1970s also witnessed increased airline hijackings and a reversal in the meaning of “terrorism.” Together, these forces effected a neoliberal hijacking of human rights.

Note: See published version: Copyright © 2018 Johns Hopkins University Press. Human Rights Quarterly 40 (Nov 2018) 735-75.

Keywords: human rights, international law, intellectual history, global south, neoliberalism, TWAIL, human rights history, postcolonialism