Feed Your Mind Lecture: On the Tensions of Democracy and Human Rights: Towards a Critical Theory of Human Rights Politics
Wed. Oct. 23 12:30 PM
- Wed. Oct. 23 01:20 PM
Contact: global.college@uwinnipeg.ca
Location: 1MS25, Global College
Join us on Wednesday, October 23rd from 12:30 pm- 1:20 pm for our second Feed Your Mind lecture of the year!
On the Tensions of Democracy and Human Rights: Towards a Critical Theory of Human Rights Politics
Speaker: Dr. Matthew Hamilton, Assistant Professor, Human Rights
Beginning from the idea that the dominant theory and practice of human rights politics are inadequate in confronting the tensions between liberalism and democracy, Dr. Hamilton proposes an alternative path.
In this talk, Dr. Hamilton will turn to the work of Etienne Balibar and J.M. Bernstein to develop the framework for a critical theory of human rights.
Dr. Hamilton argues that a critical theory of human rights politics must recognize the radical potential of democratic claim-making, while also addressing the uneven access to the essential social and political resources that construct and shape what it means to be human.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Hamilton is a political theorist whose primary areas of expertise are contemporary democratic, legal, and critical theory. He completed his PhD at the University of Toronto. Dr. Hamilton's teaching interests include the history of ideas/political thought, legal/constitutional theory, human rights, genocide studies, post-colonialism, global justice, feminism, public policy, and public administration.
His work includes his dissertation and book project, Praxis and Critique: On Fugitive Politics, and his most recent publication, co-authored with Cody Trojan, is the chapter “Sovereignty as Responsibility” (Rousseau Today, Palgrave MacMillan, 2023). Dr. Hamilton's current writing projects also include a retrospective examination of Jurgen Habermas' discourse theory of law since its publication thirty years ago; developing a proposal for a Critical Theory of Human Rights by working through the connecting ideas and tensions between the diverse traditions of legal positivism (law), radical democracy, and critical theory; and an article that examines the relations between morality, democracy, and law in the work of Fuller, Hart, and Waldron towards offering a critical assessment of the existing international human rights law.
Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP to global.college@uwinnipeg.ca by Monday, October 21.