Kanishka Chowdhury – författare

This book offers a materialist critique of mainstream human rights discourse in the period following 9/11, examining literary works, critical histories, international declarations, government statutes, NGO manifestos, and a documentary film. The author points out some of the contradictions that emerge in contemporary rights language when material relations are not sufficiently perceived or acknowledged, and he directs attention to the role of some rights talk in maintaining and managing the accelerated global project of capital accumulation. Even as rights discourse points to injustices—for example, injustices related to labor, gender, the citizen’s relationship to the state, or the movement of refugees—it can simultaneously maintain systems of oppression. By constructing subjects who are aligned to the interests of capital, by emphasizing individual “empowerment,” and/or by containing social disenchantment, it reinforces the process of wealth accumulation, supports neoliberal ideologies, and diminishes the possibility of real transformation through collective struggle.

This book offers a materialist critique of mainstream human rights discourse in the period following 9/11, examining literary works, critical histories, international declarations, government statutes, NGO manifestos, and a documentary film. The author points out some of the contradictions that emerge in contemporary rights language when material relations are not sufficiently perceived or acknowledged, and he directs attention to the role of some rights talk in maintaining and managing the accelerated global project of capital accumulation. Even as rights discourse points to injustices—for example, injustices related to labor, gender, the citizen’s relationship to the state, or the movement of refugees—it can simultaneously maintain systems of oppression. By constructing subjects who are aligned to the interests of capital, by emphasizing individual “empowerment,” and/or by containing social disenchantment, it reinforces the process of wealth accumulation, supports neoliberal ideologies, and diminishes the possibility of real transformation through collective struggle.

This book examines both border policies and oppositional narratives of “the border,” 2011–2021, demonstrating that the term designates not merely a line of territorial control but also a set of social relations shaped by persistent, racially differentiated colonial structures and, more recently, by neoliberal modes of accumulation. These relations are shown to determine access to wealth and/or resources and to enable the management of labor, the extraction of surplus, and the accumulation of capital. Discussion in the book is informed by the history of these policies and by the critical literature on borders. Various cultural texts focusing on two border zones—the US–Mexico and the EU–Southern Mediterranean—are analyzed: specifically, two novels, two films, and two murals examined in conjunction with amusic video. A path to a borderless future is suggested: an abolitionist refusal of border rules with an insistence on the necessity of abolition.