Human Rights and The Author

The two readings required for this blog post, Lyon and Olson’s Special Issue on Human Rights Rhetoric: Traditions of Testifying and Witnessing, and Foucault’s What is an Author? There is a set forth idea about the international rhetorical stance on what Human Rights are, and there is a focus on removing the author from the work after composition in order for the bias of the reader to not be placed on the creator, but for the words in which that composer has written will be illuminated for what they are on the page. It is important to add Foucault’s idea of a far off author into the idea’s of what Human Rights are to come across one Internationally valid definition.

            In Special Issue on Human Rights Rhetoric: Traditions of Testifying and Witnessing, it is stated that “In providing a collection of original essays by accomplished rhetoric scholars from a

variety of backgrounds, the special issue will promote and strengthen ongoing

conversations concerning communication and human rights,” (Lyon & Olson 205). This statement shows the emphasis on the works of the “accomplished” rhetorical scholars from different backgrounds around the world and their views on what human rights actually are. Each of these scholar’s ha a different view as to what the definition of human rights should be varying by the country and political climate in which they are from. By already putting emphasis on this idea of fragmented meanings the authors are already putting the screen of multiple meanings of human rights instead of just giving one definitive case in which these “undisputed” rights hold true.  One thing that they do say though that aids our thought of finding an actual undisputed meaning of Human Rights is “in addition to concerns with how rights are represented, traditions of rhetoric offer a way into discussing reception” (Lyon & Olson 204). This statement aids in the idea that discourse helps understand the many meanings we have, rather this understand leads us closer to the finish line of one definitive truth about human rights or farther away is up to the receiver of the message. Foucault states “This means that it is (writing) an interplay of signs arranged less according to its signified content than according to the very nature of the signifier,” (Foucault 905). This statement is saying that the way we view writing currently has more to do with the person who is interpreting the message than it does with the actual message that is being put forth. A common example of this happening is with the Bible. Many different people have many different views and interpretations of what the meaning of the Gospel actually is and that is why we have different denominations in Christianity. This seems to also be the reasoning that the United Nations is having a hard time keeping their “Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948),” (Lyon & Olson 204) meaning to be something that is universally recognized to hold any truth.

            Foucault in his work talks about the relationship between writing and death. He writes “Our culture has metamorphosed this idea of narrative, or writing as something designed to ward off death,” (Foucault 905). He is talking about a works ability to cut through time and preserve the ideas of someone for future generations, it is in regards to the Egyptian/Mexican ideology that you have two deaths, the first when your physical body shuts down, and the second is the last time someone says your name/remembers your existence. By having writing there is a sense that the writer will never have their second death. To counteract this idea, he writes “this relationship between writing and death is also manifested in the effacement of the writing subject’s individual characteristics. Using all the contrivances that he sets up between himself and what he writes, the writing subject cancels out the signs of his particular individuality. As a result, the mark of the writer is reduced to nothing more than the singularity of his absence; he must assume the role of the dead man in the game of writing.” (Foucault 905). This statement is saying that an author’s ideas through time will be changed and their individual ideas about what they originally wrote will most likely change over time. The same is true of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as time passes on the ideas set forth change and need to be rhetorically analyzed and changed constantly to keep up with the progressivism of the times.

Works Cited:

Foucault, Michel. “What is an Author?” The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, Third Edition. Ed. David H. Richter. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2007. 904-914.

Lyon, Arabella, and Lester C Olson. “Human Rights Rhetoric: Traditions of Testifying and Witnessing.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 41.3 (2011): 203-212.