UNIVERSAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY: SERENADE CHAFIK AND THE LANGUAGE OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Scholars of human rights often note the paradoxical premise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948): “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” yet these rights require implementation and monitoring in order to exist. Furthermore, although human rights discourses are premised on a universally recognizable, abstract set of ethical norms, these norms nonetheless need to be enforced as laws by specific states. The period that has witnessed the emergence of human rights as the governing language of emancipatory politics has also witnessed a wealth of autobiographical writing that articulates resistance to oppression and injustice with reference to universal rights. How then do these autobiographical accounts negotiate the paradox of human rights? This article approaches this question through a focus on Egyptian-French feminist Sérénade Chafik’s 2003 autobiography Répudiation, which chronicles the author’s legal struggle in France to gain custody of her Egyptian-born daughter. The goal is to understand how “rights” are established in literary testimony, to illustrate how the territories of France and Egypt figure in the author’s search for a just social order, and to think through how autobiography registers the limitations of a human rights readership community.

EVRENSEL OTOBİYOGRAFİ: SERENADE CHAFIK VE İNSAN HAKLARININ DİLİ

İnsan hakları araştırmacıları sıklıkla İnsan Hakları Evrensel Bildirisi (1948)’nin çelişkili varsayımına dikkat çekerler: “bütün insanlar hür, haysiyet ve haklar bakımından eşit doğarlar,” ancak bu hakların var olmaları için uygulamaya konulmaları ve gözetim altında tutulmaları gerekir. Ayrıca, her ne kadar insan hakları söylemleri evrensel bir bağlamda tanınabilir, soyut bir takım etik normları varsaysa da bu normların yine de belirli devletler tarafından hukuki anlamda yürürlüğe konmaları gerekir. İnsan haklarının özgürlükçü politikaların ana söylemine dönüştüğü dönem aynı zamanda zengin bir otobiyografi yazımına da tanıklık etmiştir. Bu yazımda zulme veya adaletsizliğe karşı duruşların dili evrensel haklara referansla şekillenir. Peki bu otobiyografiler insan haklarının çelişkileri ile nasıl başa çıkarlar? Bu makale bu soruya Mısır doğumlu Fransız feminist Sérénade Chafik’in 2003 yılında kaleme aldığı ve Mısır’da yaşayan kızının velayeti için Fransa’da yürüttüğü çabaları anlattığı otobiyografisi Répudiation’a odaklanarak yaklaşır. Makalenin amacı, “hakların” edebi bir tanıklıkta nasıl şekillendiğini, Fransa ve Mısır’ın yazarın adaletli bir toplumsal düzen arayışında oynadıkları rollerini, ve otobiyografinin bir insan hakları-bazlı okuyucu topluluğunun sınırları ile ilgili farkındalığının nasıl dile döküldüğünü anlamaktır.

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