The Effluent Eye: Narratives for Decolonial Right-Making

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Why human rights dont work

In The Effluent Eye, Rosemary J. Jolly argues for the decolonization of human rights, attributing their failure not simply to state and institutional malfeasance but to the very concept of human rights as anthropocentricand, therefore, fatally shortsighted. In an engaging mix of literary and cultural criticism, Indigenous and Black critique, and substantive forays into the medical humanities, Jolly proposes right-making in the demise of human rights.

Using what she calls an effluent eye, Jolly draws on Fifth Wave structural public health to confront the concept of human rightsone of the most powerful and widely entrenched liberal ideas. She builds on Indigenous sovereignty work from authors such as Robin Wall Kimmerer, Leanne Betsamosake Simpson, and Mark Rifkin as well as the littoral development in Black studies from Christine Sharpe, Saidiya Hartman, and Tiffany Lethabo Kingto to engage decolonial thinking on a range of urgent topics such as pandemic history and grief; gender-based violence and sexual assault; and the connections between colonial capitalism and substance abuse, the Anthropocene, and climate change.

Combining witnessed experience with an array of decolonial texts, Jolly argues for an effluent form of reading that begins with the understanding that the granting of rights to individuals is meaningless in a world compromised by pollution, poverty, and successive pandemics.

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Author Bio

Rosemary J. Jolly is Weiss Chair of the Humanities and professor of comparative literature, English, bioethics, womens studies, and African studies at Penn State. She is author of, most recently, Cultured Violence: Narrative, Social Suffering, and Engendering Human Rights in Contemporary South Africa.