After the Critique of Rights: For a Radical Democratic Theory and Practice of Human Rights

The critique of human rights has proliferated in critical legal thinking over recent years, making it clear that we can no longer uncritically approach human rights in their liberal form. In this article I assert that after the critique of rights one way human rights may be productively re-engaged in radical politics is by drawing from the radical democratic tradition. Radical democratic thought provides plausible resources to rework the shortcomings of liberal human rights, and allows human rights to be brought within the purview of a wider political project adopting a critical approach to current relations of power. Building upon previous re-engagements with rights using radical democratic thought, I return to the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe to explore how human rights may be thought as an antagonistic hegemonic activity within a critical relation to power, a concept which is fundamentally futural, and may emerge as one site for work towards radical and plural democracy. I also assert, via Judith Butler's model of cultural translation, that a radical democratic practice of human rights may be advanced which resonates with and builds upon already existing activism, thereby holding possibilities to persuade those who remain sceptical as to radical re-engagements with rights.

Confusing Culture and Politics: Ulster Scots Culture and Music

In Northern Ireland of the mid-1990s, many were caught off-guard by the comet-like arrival of a previously unarticulated Ulster Scots identity, replete with its own folk traditions. The article exploits the author’s position as Traditional Arts Officer of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland from 1998 until 2003 to offer an auto-ethnographic reflection on the literature on cultural politics in Northern Ireland since the outbreak of the Troubles, informed by extensive fieldwork with arts administrators and with contemporary Ulster Scots musicians. The article gives a close reading and historical contextualisation of the Ulster-Scots musical revue On Eagle's Wing, which was developed during this period. The article uses the concept of "suture" articulated by Lacan and developed by Laclau, Mouffe, and Žižek to explain both the potential for Ulster Scots culture to enter political discourse out of a seeming vacuum and its subsequent difficulties, offering an original interpretation of the role of culture in the contemporary trajectory of Northern Ireland politics.

Dangerously empty? Hegemony and the construction of the Irish entrepreneur

In this article we build on Jones and Spicer's (2009) conceptualization of the entrepreneur as an empty signifier. We explore the function of the signifier 'entrepreneurship' within a social context marked by crisis: Ireland 2007-2010. In doing so, we show how its articulation by government acted to legitimize the continuation of market logics and, relatedly, the existing political status quo. Theoretically, we demonstrate the usefulness of Laclau and Mouffe's conception of hegemony, which shares a Lacanian legacy with Jones and Spicer. This helps us to understand the contradictory nature of the signifier of the entrepreneur in Irish political and social discourse, along with its relationship to the reproduction of political hegemony.