Breath from Nowhere: The Silent ‘Foundation’ of Human Rights

Abstract

One is ‘with’ another who is dying. What can one do? What can one say? This article considers the claim that in this insurmountable difference, this insurpassable distance, one cannot be just; one could never say the right thing. In a contribution to ongoing debate about the foundation of human rights, what follows draws upon the work of Jacques Derrida and Maurice Blanchot to argue that an obligation to respond, rather than a reason not to respond, may be derived from this situation. This argument is pursued viaa consideration of the work of Amnesty International and it is outlined here in support of an understanding of human rights as ‘founded’ upon something other than a naÔve faith in ‘human’ commonality and in the possibility of its representation. Taking up this non-response, such an argument turns upon the undecidable difference between a silence that signifies the inexpressibility of one’s concern for the other and a ‘silence’ that ‘expresses’ no concern at all. And the claim here is that a ‘foundation’ for human rights may be traced to the impossibility of being able to tellthis difference; a difference which must therefore be, or must already have been, made.