Victims’ Stories and the Advancement of Human Rights by Diana Tietjens Meyers

Excerpt

“There has been ample philosophical discussion,” Diana Tietjens Meyers writes in the introduction to Victims’ Stories and the Advancement of Human Rights, “of some issues that victims’ stories raise – for example, respect for victims, their standing to speak and credibility, and their need to reconstruct their selfhood and agency” (3). In short, human rights advocates – a term left largely undefined here – have found various uses in the idea that people suffering from abuses should utilize their voices as part of pushing for social or political change. This has occurred not just, she contends, at the philosophical level, but also at a pragmatic one. Throughout her work, Tietjens Meyers grapples with questions that, while perhaps simple in many contexts, becomes problematic when speaking or writing to or about people who have suffered. When should people use their voices, and when does the expectation that they should do so cause more trauma? Who can and should speak when those who have suffered cannot themselves? How does peoples’ construction of self and other influence our perception? Is the idea of giving voice itself exploitative in contexts where people do not wish to speak? …