A Declaration Of The Rights Of Human Beings: On the Sovereignty of Life as Surpassing the Rights of Man

Description

'A declaration of rights is indispensable in order to halt the ravages of despotism.' So wrote the revolutionary Antoine Barnave in support of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789). Sometimes playful or poetic, always provocative, Vaneigem reviews the history of bills of rights before offering his own call, with commentary, for 57 rights yet to be won in a world where the 'freedoms accorded to Man' are no longer merely 'the freedoms accorded by man to the economy'.

Born in 1934, Raoul Vaneigem is a writer and a former member of the Situationist International and is a key theorist in the worldwide Occupy movement. His works include The Book of Pleasures, A Cavalier History of Surrealism, Contributions to the Revolutionary Struggle, and the globally influential text The Revolution of Everyday Life. Liz Heron is a Scottish writer and translator living in London. Her many other translations include Artemisia: A Novel by Alexandra Lapierre; Infancy and History by Giorgio Agamben; and The Unseen by Nanni Balestrini. She has anthologized women's fiction on cities in Streets of Desire (1993); published her own short stories as Red River (1996); and her latest novel is The Hourglass (2018).

"All opponents of globalization should carry it in their luggage." --Le Monde