Human Rights After Deleuze

This book examines the possibility of creating new ways of existing beyond human rights. Multiple socio-political crises and the dominance of neoliberal and capitalist policies have led legal and political theorists to question the emancipatory promise of human rights and to reconceptualise human rights in theory and practice. The possibility of creating new ways of existing beyond human rights has been left significantly under examined, until now. Having as its starting point the ferocious, yet brief, critique on human rights of one of the most prominent French philosophers of the 20th century, Gilles Deleuze, the book argues that Deleuzes critique is not only compatible with his broader thought but that it has the potential to give a new impetus to the current critiques of human rights, within the disciplinary borders of legal and political theory. The book draws upon Deleuzes broader thought, but also radical legal and political theory and continental philosophy. In particular, it investigates and expands on two of Deleuzes most important notions, namely those of immanence and becoming and their relation to the philosophers critique of human rights. In doing so, it argues that these two notions are capable of questioning the dominant and dogmatic position that human rights enjoy.