After truth, after shame … after information politics? Rethinking the epistemologies of human rights in the digital-authoritarian conjuncture

Abstract

Since the contemporary, mainstream human rights movement rose to prominence in the late-1970s, both knowing about and doing human rights has been marked by a very particular mode of activism, information politics, which mobilises ‘brute' facts with the aim of shaming governments into reform. However, this article suggests that the global rise of the far-right has intertwined with reactionary forms of digital culture, engendering both the retreat of shame as an operative concept in global affairs and nourished a growing ‘post-truth' suspicion of facts. The article theorises this problem as a conjunctural shift that represents both a political and epistemological crisis for human rights. Following the lead of debates within Science and Technology Studies (STS) and media studies, I contend that the present conjuncture requires us to consider what comes after information politics by re-imagining its epistemological basis. The article brings together Donna Haraway's theoretical work on ‘Situated Knowledges', with Maurizio Lazzarato’s political epistemology to develop a more perspectival, combative approach to human rights knowledge-making. I argue this epistemic framework is able not only to navigate key problems posed by the digital-authoritarian present but also to address many issues with information politics identified by earlier critics.