On the genealogy of human rights: an essay on nostalgia nostalgia

Abstract

This article engages with the special issue's theme of human rights and utopia through examining recent scholarship on the history of human rights. Taking Samuel Moyn's The Last Utopia as an example of a genealogical approach to writing the history of human rights, the article argues that such an approach provides a helpful and productive political orientation towards the present that consists in an ambivalent attitude towards nostalgia (and utopia).

Keywords:

• human rights
• genealogy
• utopia
• nostalgia
• Samuel Moyn
• Michel Foucault