a conversation continues...
a friend published a post about human rights. a topic i have been thinking about since friday night. i said then that i wondered about the basis for human rights, something about which zizek writes. he questions the logic that underpins the language of human rights with which we have grown very familiar, stressing that 'human rights' and 'freedom' are not solid concepts upon which to base or place our political hopes. human rights may be a secularised version of new testament theology, with god (and love) removed as a foundational principle. what logic, then, holds them together and how can this be manipulated?
it's not the campaign for human rights that i am uncomfortable with so much as the language of demand. a word which makes me think of supply and demand...and the cultural logic of late capitalism. it's a question of language and self-expression. the aspects of the pride march that i am uncomfortable with relate to that. how we can be present in the world without reducing ourselves and the selves of others to slogan and spin? how can we mean what we say and say what we mean?
at the pride march yesterday i saw a number of slogans:
YAY 4 GAY!
JESUS IS A FAG.
RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE BREEDS HOMOPHOBIA.
SODOMY ROCKS!
THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH [HELL]. THE GIFT OF GOD IS ETERNAL LIFE [HEAVEN] THROUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD.
LOVE IS A HUMAN RIGHT.
THE MEN OF SODOM WERE WICKED AND SINNERS BEFORE THE LORD EXCEEDINGLY. WOE UNTO THEM!
I FUCK LIKE A BEAST!
some of these struck me as funny, some as strange, some as provocative... some i recoiled from, others i was drawn to... but mostly i was struck by how the texture and tone of language was smudged into headline.
...we are more than the labels we wear...
...we are more than the labels pinned upon us...
of all of these slogans, i one i was most drawn to was LOVE IS A HUMAN RIGHT. maybe LOVE would have been more thoughtful and provocative still...then it would have been expressed as a verb as well as a noun...as something given and received, rather than simply a subject for a human rights campaign...as a rite in which we can all participate...as something flourishing in pink on black...
it's something about being human...
it's something about taking care with our words...
it's something about justice...
it's something about humility...
it's something about 'tell all the truth but tell it slant'...
it's something about 'us', not 'us and them'...
it's something about poetry as protest...
it's something about why my phd matters so much to me...
it's something about trying to get it right...
