Images of fear in political philosophy and fairy tales

Linking private abuse to political violence in human rights discourse

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12923263
AutoresMarina Calloni (0000-0001-6312-7074, University of Milano-Bicocca, autor de correspondencia)
Año2016
Volumen12
Número1
Páginas67-89
Fecha de publicación2016-01-04
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of International Political Theory (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1755-0882 • E-ISSN: 1755-1722
EditorialSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1755088215612230
OpenAlexW2231944423
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas23

Human rights can be understood as formal norms related to existing legislations as well as the result of public reasoning, when claims of validity coming from the bottom up are politically juridified. Yet, where does the “significance” of human rights come from? Does the “feeling” toward the violation of human dignity rise only from the mobilization of radical spheres in the public space, or does it have origin in other places, like in the intimacy of the household? In order to understand ex negativo the genealogy of the “sense” of the violation of human rights as a counter-factual allegation that immanently refers to daily life experiences, this article considers the interaction between sentiment of fear and pretense of human rights, comparing images and imaginaries of modern political theory with the stories of traditional folk/fairy tales. Namely, philosophical representations of terror and literary narratives of monsters have a common “private” genealogy, as it shines through the hidden relationship existing between imagination, imaginary, and fantasy. Therefore, the character of the “wolf,” as politically conceptualized by Thomas Hobbes and fictionally represented in fairy tales, will be taken as a conceptual and figurative medium, able to underline the semantics of violence. My thesis is that fantastic narratives implicitly evoke forms of violation of human rights that political philosophy has denied for centuries because of the incapacity to conceptualize unspeakable offenses. Fairy tales tell the truth, albeit under camouflaged “bodies”: they are a disguised reminder of the perdurance of domestic violence in the household, seamlessly perpetuated against women and children over centuries. Any criticism toward the abuse of human rights should not forget the heuristic significance of fairy tales and the place where they seem to be peacefully narrated to children: within the domestic space of the family

Aesthetics · Art · Dignity · Human rights · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · The Imaginary · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Law · Philosophy · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Psychology · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought