On Ideas about Rights

Vishnu Varatharajan is a PhD candidate at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland. His research focuses on identifying the fundamental belief systems that open up the fault lines of political polarisation in parliamentary democracies. He also works as a research officer at Global Survivors Fund, involved in mapping the status of and opportunities for reparations for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence.Meera Chakravorty, PhD is a doctoral advisor in the Department of Cultural Studies, Jain University, Bangalore. She has been a member of the State Women’s Commission, Bangalore, Karnataka. Her engagement has been with philosophy, women’s studies, cultural studies, consciousness studies, and translation projects. She has translated some award-winning literary works of renowned authors published by Sahitya Akademi (The Academy of Letters, India). She was awarded for her writing on “time” by University of Interdisciplinary studies, Paris, and John Templeton Foundation jointly. She has also been awarded for her literary work by the Tagore Cultural Centre, Bangalore.Mbuh Tennu Mbuh is Head of the English Department, The University of Bamenda, Cameroon. He is also the President of the Anglophone Cameroon Writers’ Association, ACWA. He is presently working on his fourth poetry collection, The Sins of a Patriot, and at the same time tidying up his third novel, The Inheritors of Alahmbit. He has also published short stories and plays.

• List of contributors viiIntroduction 1Vishnu Varatharajan, Meera Chakravorty, and Mbuh Tennu MbuhPART IThe health of cultural anxieties 111 The right to mental health? International law and the privatisation of anxiety 13Adam Strobeyko2 African (Igbo) ethics of rights’ discourse: Theory and practice 27Stanley Uche Anozie3 Reinventing our humanity and reclaiming our freedom to co-create a new world 41Iman IbrahimPART IIGendering rights: Many rights, single goal 714 The new “other”: The postcolonial African lesbian experience in Chinelo Okparanta’s under the Udala trees 73Blossom Ngum Fondo5 Conflict-related sexual violence: Perspectives from the Global Reparations Study 87Vishnu Varatharajan6 Rethinking pluralism and rights 100Ananta Kumar GiriPART IIICulture, philosophy, and rights 1137 On ideas about rights in thinking and writing rights: Exploring Earth’s rights 115Meera Chakravorty8 A critical Buddhist perspective on truth and rights in an unequal world: The parable of the skilled physician revisited 129Penny Ehrhardt9 Rights left out 155Karl-Julius Reubke10 Rights, liberalism, multiculturalism 171Gianluigi Segalerba11 From Kantian enlightenment to Rortyan rights: A pragmatist perspective 195Rahul Kumar MauryaIndex 204