Güner, Remzi Orkun

The aim of my visit to the IISL is to study on my PhD dissertation. The title of my research is ‘Emerging perspectives on the concept of rights: a critique of Humanism’. It questions the potential of the concept of rights for non-essential and non-anthropocentric politics and legal strategies.  For this purpose, it aims to re-think the concept of rights beyond the Human-subject paradigm. The research stands on the critical human rights theory and its fundamental question of who the subject of human rights is. In this regard, it criticizes the engagement of human rights with liberal humanism through analyzing rights with the ‘others’ of this humanist norm. Focusing on this engagement, I analyze the concept of rights in relation to two domains: the concept’s function in political action, according to its meaning in identity-based rights claims, and the evaluation of the concept in current movements advocating rights of non-human beings. This research aims to challenge the humanist normativity related to global discourse of human rights and questions if rights can be affirmed without basing them on a Human-subject paradigm, by engaging with the conceptual tools of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Wendy Brown, and Donna J. Haraway.