Victims' Stories and the Advancement of Human Rights

Diana Tietjens Meyers is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at University of Connecticut, Storrs; author of several books including GENDER IN THE MIRROR: CULTURAL IMAGERY AND WOMEN'S AGENCY (2002, OUP; 231 cl, 317 p LTD)

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction Chapter 1: Two Victim Paradigms and the Problem of "Impure" Victims1. Two Victim ParadigmsA. The Pathetic Victim ParadigmB. The Heroic Victim Paradigm 2. Controversial - "Impure" - VictimsA. Trafficked Sex WorkersB. Death Row Inmates3. Parameters of Innocence A. Getting Real about Innocence B. The Victim Paradigms Revisited C. Reconceiving the Innocence of Victims4. Reclaiming Victim Discourse Chapter 2: Narrative Structures, Narratives of Abuse, And Human Rights1. The Amsterdam/Bruner Account of Narrative2. Narrative Regimentation, Social Exclusion, and Truth Forfeiture 3. Hayden White's Account of Narrative and Closure 4. Spelman's Account of Normativity in a Victim's Story 5. Strejilevich's Skepticism about Normativity in Victims' Stories 6. Varieties of Moral Closure7. Moral Closure without Moral Resolution Chapter 3: Learning from Victims' Stories: The Promise and Problems of Emotional Understanding 1. Narrative Artifice: Arbitrary and Non-Rational?2. Affective Intelligence and Moral Understanding3. Scenes from a Child Soldier's Story4. Imaginative Resistance to a Child Soldier's Story5. Emotionally Understanding a Child Soldier's Story6. Humanitarianism, Human Rights, and Affective Understanding Chapter 4: Empathy and the Meanings of Human Rights in Human Lives1. Peter Goldie's Critique of Empathy2. A Conception of Empathy for Moral Philosophy3. Why Empathy Is (Isn't) a Moral PowerA. Empathy and Altruistic ActionB. Empathy and Moral Understanding4. Empathy, Embodiment, and Suffering5. A Woman in Berlin Eight Weeks in the Conquered City6. Empathy, Victims' Stories, and Human Rights Chapter 5: The Ethics and Politics of Putting Victims' Stories to Work1. The Problem of Victim Derogation and Blaming2. The Ethics of Using Victims' Stories to Promote Human RightsA. Aid and Research ProjectsB. Justice Projects3. Ethical Politics: Civil Society and Advancing Human RightsA. Ethical Practices Within Human Rights GroupsB. Ethical Relations Among Human Rights NGOs4. Concluding Reflections ReferencesIndex

The strength of Meyers's account is that it begins and ends in experience. It does not, first, take formal or theoretical human-rights standards and try to "fit" them into the experience of victims. Rather, she takes victims' experiences, as told in their own voices, and sees how human-rights norms both account for and fail to account for their stories. Indeed, her work lays the groundwork for hearing victims' stories in terms as close to their own as might be possible.