Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T19:17:06.063Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Enabling Fictions and Novel Subjects: The Bildungsroman and International Human Rights Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Joseph R. Slaughter
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

With adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, the United Nations conscripted, almost by default, the historically Euronationalist forms of the Bildungsroman and natural law to legitimate its vision of a new international order. This essay elaborates the conceptual vocabulary, deep narrative grammar, and humanist social vision that normative human rights law and the idealist Bildungsroman share in their cooperative efforts to articulate, normalize, and realize a world founded on the fundamental dignity and equality of what both the UDHR and early theorists of the novel term “the free and full development of the human personality.” Historically, formally, and ideologically, they are mutually enabling and complicit fictions: each projects, in advance of administrative structures comparable to those of the nation-state, an image of human personality and sociality that ratifies (and makes legible) the other's idealistic vision of the proper relations between individual and society. (JRS)

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 121 , Issue 5 , October 2006 , pp. 1405 - 1423
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Abel, Elizabeth, Hirsch, Marianne, and Langland, Elizabeth. Introduction. The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development. Ed. Abel, Hirsch, and Langland, . Hanover: UP of New England, 1983. 3–19.Google Scholar
Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. 1995. Trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics. Ed. David E. Wellbery. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. 1983. Rev. ed. London: Verso, 1991.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun. “Comparison and the Circulation of Forms.” Plenary Address. Amer. Compar. Lit. Assn. Annual Conf. Ann Arbor. 17 Apr. 2004.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. 1951. Rev. ed. New York: Harcourt, 1973.Google Scholar
Arias, Arturo. After the Bombs. 1979. Trans. Asa Zatz. Willimantic: Curbstone, 1990.Google Scholar
Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. 1946. Trans. Willard Trask. Garden City: Doubleday, 1957.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, M. M. “The Bildungsroman and Its Significance in the History of Realism: Toward a Historical Typology of the Novel.” Trans. Vern W. McGee. “Speech Genres” and Other Late Essays. Ed. Emerson, Caryl and 8 Michael Holquist. Slavic Ser. Austin: U of Texas P, 1986. 10–59.Google Scholar
Balibar, Etienne. “Citizen Subject.” Trans. James B. Swenson, Jr. Who Comes after the Subject? Ed. Nancy, Jean-Luc. New York: Routledge, 1991. 33–57.Google Scholar
Bandele-Thomas, 'Biyi. The Sympathetic Undertaker and Other Dreams. Oxford: Heinemann, 1993.Google Scholar
Baxi, Upendra. The Future of Human Rights. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2002.Google Scholar
Benabou, Marcel. To Write on Tamara? 2002. Trans. Steven Randall. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2004.Google Scholar
Beti, Mongo. Mission to Kala. 1957. Trans. Peter Green. London: Heinemann Educ., 1964.Google Scholar
Bloch, Ernst. Natural Law and Human Dignity. 1961. Trans. Dennis J. Schmidt. Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought. Ed. Thomas McCarthy. Cambridge: MIT P, 1986.Google Scholar
Braendlin, Bonnie Hoover. “Bildung in Ethnic Women Writers.” Denver Quarterly 17.4 (1983): 75–87.Google Scholar
Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights: An Authoritative Text, with Essays in Criticism. Ed. Sale, William M. Jr. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1972.Google Scholar
Brown, Wendy. “Suffering the Paradoxes of Rights.” Left Legalism / Left Critique. Ed. Halley, Janet E. Durham: Duke UP, 2002. 420–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bunch, Charlotte. “Transforming Human Rights from a Feminist Perspective.” Women's Rights, Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives. Ed. Peters, Julie Stone and Wolper, Andrea. New York: Routledge, 1995. 11–17.Google Scholar
Bunch, Charlotte. “Women's Rights as Human Rights: Toward a Revision of Human Rights.” Human Rights Quarterly 12 (1990): 486–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, Judith. “Universality in Culture.” Comparative Political Culture in the Age of Globalization: An Introductory Anthology. Ed. Jung, Hwa Yol. Lanham: Lexington, 2002. 357–62.Google Scholar
Casanova, Pascale. The World Republic of Letters. 1999. Trans. M. B. DeBevoise. Convergences: Inventories of the Present. Ed. Edward W. Said. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2004.Google Scholar
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Cheah, Pheng. Spectral Nationality: Passages of Freedom from Kant to Postcolonial Literatures of Liberation. New York: Columbia UP, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cocalis, Susan L. “The Transformation of Bildung from an Image to an Ideal.” Monatshefte: Für deutschen Unterricht, deutsche Sprache und Literatur 70 (1978): 399–414.Google Scholar
Cohen, Stanley, and Seu, Bruna. “Knowing Enough Not to Feel Too Much: Emotional Thinking about Human Rights Appeals.” Truth Claims: Representation and Human Rights. Ed. Bradley, Mark Philip and Studies, Patrice Petro. New Directions in Intl. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2002. 187–201.Google Scholar
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. United Nations Office at Geneva. 29 May 2006 <http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/cat.htm>..>Google Scholar
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. United Nations Office at Geneva. 29 May 2006 <http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/cedaw.htm>..>Google Scholar
Cornell, Drucilla. “Bodily Integrity and the Right to Abortion.” Identities, Politics, and Rights. Ed. Sarat, Austin and in Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought, Thomas R. Kearns. Amherst Ser. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1995. 21–84.Google Scholar
Cornell, Drucilla. Just Cause: Freedom, Identity, and Rights. Lanham: Rowman, 2000.Google Scholar
Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions. London: Women's, 1988.Google Scholar
Declaration on the Right to Development. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. United Nations Office at Geneva. 29 May 2006 <http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/rtd.htm>..>Google Scholar
Dilthey, Wilhelm. Poetry and Experience. Ed. Rudolf A. Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi. 1910. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1985. Vol. 5 of Selected Works.Google Scholar
Donnelly, Jack. Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1989.Google Scholar
Douzinas, Costas. The End of Human Rights: Critical Legal Thought at the Turn of the Century. Oxford: Hart, 2000.Google Scholar
Douzinas, Costas. “Human Rights, Humanism, and Desire.” Angelaki 6.3 (2001): 183–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dow, Unity. Juggling Truths. North Melbourne, Austral.: Sinifex, 2003.Google Scholar
Drinan, Robert F. The Mobilization of Shame: A World View of Human Rights. New Haven: Yale UP, 2001.Google Scholar
Edgell, Zee. Beka Lamb. Caribbean Writers Ser. 26. London: Heinemann, 1982.Google Scholar
Felski, Rita. Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1989.Google Scholar
Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1957.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gadamer, Hans Georg. Truth and Method. Trans. Garrett Barden and John Cumming. New York: Seabury, 1975.Google Scholar
Gilmore, Leigh. The Limits of Autobiography: Trauma and Testimony. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goethe Johann Wolfgang, Goethe. Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Travels. 1824. Trans. Thomas Carlyle. Vol. 2. London: Chapman, 1894. 2 vols.Google Scholar
Gourevitch, Philip. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. New York: Farrar, 1998.Google Scholar
Gramsci, Antonio. Selections for the Prison Notebooks. Trans. and ed. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: Intl., 1971.Google Scholar
Gunesekera, Romesh. Reef. London: Granta, 1994.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. 1962. Trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence. Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought. Cambridge: MIT P, 1991.Google Scholar
Hamad, Turki al-. Adama. 1998. Trans. Robin Bray. Saint Paul: Ruminator, 2003.Google Scholar
Harlow, Barbara. Barred: Women, Writing, and Political Detention. Hanover: UP of New England, 1992.Google Scholar
Hirsch, Marianne. “The Novel of Formation as Genre: Between Great Expectations and Lost Illusions.” Genre 12.3 (1979): 293–311.Google Scholar
Hope, Christopher. A Separate Development. Johannesburg: Ravan, 1980.Google Scholar
Humboldt, Wilhelm von. Humanist without Portfolio: An Anthology of the Writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt. Trans. Marianne Cowan. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1963.Google Scholar
Humboldt, Wilhelm von. Linguistic Variability and Intellectual Development. 1836. Trans. Frithjof A. Raven. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1971.Google Scholar
Humboldt, Wilhelm von. Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluß auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts. Darmstadt, Ger.: Claassen, 1949.Google Scholar
Humphrey, John P. “The Magna Carta of Mankind.” Human Rights. Ed. Davies, Peter. New York: Routledge, 1988. 31–39.Google Scholar
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. United Nations Office at Geneva. 29 May 2006 <http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/ccpr.htrn>..>Google Scholar
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. United Nations Office at Geneva. 29 May 2006 <http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/cescr.htm>..>Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. “On Literary and Cultural Import-Substitution in the Third World: The Case of the Testimonio.” Margins 1 (1993): 11–34. Rpt. in The Real Thing: Testimonial Discourse and Latin America. Ed. Georg M. Gugelberger. Durham: Duke UP, 1996. 172–91.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism.” Social Text 15.3 (1986): 65–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, M. Glen. “A Magna Carta for Mankind: Writing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A History of Its Creation and Implementation, 1948–1998. Ed. UNESCO. Paris: UNESCO, 1998. 19–75.Google Scholar
Keenan, Thomas. Fables of Responsibility: Aberrations and Predicaments in Ethics and Politics. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997.Google Scholar
Keenan, Thomas. “Mobilizing Shame.” South Atlantic Quarterly 103 (2004): 435–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kermode, Frank. The Sense of an Ending. New York: Oxford UP, 1966.Google Scholar
King, Adele. Rereading Camara Laye. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2002.Google Scholar
Kontje, Todd Curtis. The German Bildungsroman: History of a National Genre. Columbia: Camden, 1993.Google Scholar
Laclau, Ernesto, and Mouffe, Chantal. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso, 1985.Google Scholar
Laferrière, Dany. Dining with the Dictator. Toronto: Coach House, 1994.Google Scholar
Lauren, Paul Gordon. The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen. Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1998.Google Scholar
Lloyd, David. Anomalous States: Irish Writing and the Post-colonial Moment. Dublin: Lilliput, 1993.Google Scholar
Lloyd, David. “Arnold, Ferguson, Schiller: Aesthetic Culture and the Politics of Aesthetics.” Cultural Critique 2 (1985–86): 137–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lukács, Georg. Goethe and His Age. 1947. Trans. Robert Anchor. London: Merlin, 1968. Trans. of Goethe und seine Zeit. Bern: Francke, 1947.Google Scholar
Lukács, Georg. The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature. 1920. Trans. Anna Bostock. Cambridge: MIT P, 1971.Google Scholar
Maran, Rita. Torture: The Role of Ideology in the French-Algerian War. New York: Praeger, 1989.Google Scholar
Maritain, Jacques. The Rights of Man and Natural Law. Trans. Doris C. Anson. New York: Scribner's, 1943.Google Scholar
Markandaya, Kamala. Nectar in a Sieve. New York: Day, 1954.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. 1867. Trans. Ben Fowkes. Vol. 1. New York: Vintage, 1977.Google Scholar
Maslan, Susan. “The Anti-human: Man and Citizen before the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.” South Atlantic Quarterly 103 (2004): 357–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minden, Michael. “The Place of Inheritance in the Bildungsroman: Agathon, Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre, and Der Nachsommer.” Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman. Ed. Hardin, James. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1991. 254–92.Google Scholar
Moretti, Franco. The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture. 1987. Trans. Albert Sbragia. Rev. ed. London: Verso, 2000.Google Scholar
Morgan, Ellen. “Humanbecoming: Form and Focus in the Neo-feminist Novel.” Images of Women in Fiction: Feminist Perspectives. Ed. Cornillon, Susan Koppelman. Bowling Green: Popular-Bowling Green U, 1972. 183–205.Google Scholar
Morsink, Johannes. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting, and Intent. Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mutua, Makau. Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique. Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parra, Parra Teresa de. Mama Blanca's Memoirs. 1929. Trans. Harriet D. Onis. Trans. rev. Frederick H. Fornoff. Ed. Doris Sommer. Critical ed. Pittsburgh Eds. of Latin Amer. Lit. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1993.Google Scholar
Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich. How Gertrude Teaches Her Children: Pestalozzi's Educational Writings. Trans. Lucy E. Holland. Ed. Daniel N. Robinson. Significant Contributions to the History of Psychology, 1750–1920. Washington: U Pubs. of Amer., 1977.Google Scholar
Pollis, Adamantia, and Schwab, Peter. “Human Rights: A Western Construct with Limited Applicability.” Human Rights: Cultural and Ideological Perspectives. Ed. Pollis, and Schwab, . New York: Praeger, 1979. 1–18.Google Scholar
Puttenham, George. The Arte of English Poesie, 1589. English Linguistics, 1500–1800—A Collection of Facsimile Reprints. Ed. R. C. Alston. Menston, Eng.: Scolar, 1968.Google Scholar
Redfield, Marc. Phantom Formations: Aesthetic Ideology and the Bildungsroman. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roosevelt, Eleanor. “The Promise of Human Rights.” Foreign Affairs 26 (1948): 470–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. New York: Random, 1997.Google Scholar
Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Knopf, 1993.Google Scholar
Sammons, Jeffrey L. “The Mystery of the Missing Bildungsroman; or, What Happened to Wilhelm Meister's Legacy?” Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture 14.2 (1981): 229–46.Google Scholar
Schaffer, Kay, and Smith, Sidonie. Human Rights and Narrated Lives: The Ethics of Recognition. New York: Palgrave, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scholes, Robert E., and Kellogg, Robert. The Nature of Narrative. New York: Oxford UP, 1966.Google Scholar
Schwarz, Roberto. Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture. Trans. John Gledson. Critical Studies in Latin Amer. Culture. Ed. James Dunkerley, Jean Franco, and John King. London: Verso, 1992.Google Scholar
Slaughter, Joseph. “Clef à Roman: Some Uses of Human Rights and the Bildungsroman.” Politics and Culture 4.3 (2003). 19 May 2006 <http://aspen.conncoll.edu/politicsandculture/page.cfm?key=244>.Google Scholar
Slaughter, Joseph. “A Question of Narration: The Voice in International Human Rights Law.” Human Rights Quarterly 19 (1997): 406–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, John H. The Spirit and Its Letter: Traces of Rhetoric in Hegel's Philosophy of Bildung Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Righting Wrongs.” Human Rights, Human Wrongs: Oxford Amnesty Lectures, 2001. Ed. Owen, Nicholas. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. 168–227.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992.Google Scholar
United Nations. Third Session, Proceedings of the Third Social and Humanitarian Committee. New York: United Nations, 1948.Google Scholar
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. United Nations Office at Geneva. 19 May 2006 <http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/>..>Google Scholar
Vargas Llosa, Mario. The Storyteller. 1987. Trans. Helen Lane. New York: Farrar, 1989.Google Scholar
Vondung, Klaus. “Unity through Bildung: A German Dream of Perfection.” Independent Journal of Philosophy 5–6 (1988): 47–55.Google Scholar
Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. Berkeley: U of California P, 1957.Google Scholar
Walter O., Weyrauch “On Definitions, Tautologies, and Ethnocentrism in Regard to Universal Human Rights.” Human Rights. Ed. Pollack, Ervin H. Buffalo: Stewart, 1971. 198–201.Google Scholar
Witte, W. “Alien Corn—the ‘Bildungsroman’: Not for Export?” German Life and Letters 33.1 (1979): 87–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zobel, Joseph. Black Shack Alley. 1950. Trans. Keith Q. Warner. Washington: Three Continents, 1980.Google Scholar