Constellations of Human Rights

This article explores the production of human rights discourse by examining the organization and social actors involved in its construction. The author proposes a triad constellation configuration for situating the varied engagements of human rights by different constituencies at the United Nations level: dominant understandings, counterpublic approaches, and social praxis. Dominant understandings are affiliated with the Western-legal apparatus, counterpublic approaches embrace antiracist and feminist epistemologies, and social praxis is about the mediation between the first two constellations. This article argues that the social praxis constellation is where the discourse of human rights can be inventive and dynamic because an envisioning of human rights moves beyond the rubric of civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights.