Space-making ‘after rights’: carcerality, rights-claims, and the practice of freedom

Abstract

The paper examines the capacity to act in counter-hegemonic human rights approaches. It concerns non-liberal subjectivities like the incarcerated person that are inconceivable in their action and are assumed to be lacking in autonomy. Counter-hegemonic human rights scholars have addressed the contributions of excluded subjectivities and decolonial struggles in shaping the emancipatory function of human rights. Their scholarship also alludes to the limitations in the conceptualisation of liberal autonomy that overlooks conditions of debilitation in the carceral state. Addressing such limitations, the paper suggests turning to ‘after rights’ as a reorientation in liberal human rights critique. ‘After rights’ concerns the proximity between rights-claims and the propagation of carcerality that tether the capacity to act. The paper situates its analysis in the anti-carceral tactics within the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement that channel international solidarity and revive a Palestinian peoplehood across borders. It assesses the potential and limitations of utilising human rights as a legal discourse and a language of freedom in the movement. The paper, finally, proposes deploying anti-carceral praxis in order to foreground anti-colonial action, like that of the BDS movement, in their space-making potential as practices of freedom that surpass the liberal conceptualisation of autonomy and freedom.