Abstract
In this chapter, I trace a brief history of the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Rights from its early incarnation to the present, marking the various ways in which its language has resonated and has been reshaped. I analyze this history through the lens of what Fredric Jameson has called the “world space of multinational capital,” demonstrating how this space determined from the outset how rights discourse was formulated, how this space continues to construct conceptual categories of villains and victims, and, most importantly, how it has selectively silenced and emphasized what constitutes rights abuse. First, I argue that the politics of decolonization played a fundamental role in shaping rights discourse in the post-war years; then I show how the neoliberal politics of the 1980s helped construct rights discourse in the 1990s; finally, I examine a range of critical analyses of the language of human rights in the post-9/11 era.