Human Rights Discourses and Subject Formations: Tainting Queer Theory with Psychoanalysis

ABSTRACT International human rights law is a gendered discourse. This discursive terrain welcomes or (partially) rejects different subjects depending on their sex/gender identifications, manifestations and positioning. Queer theory is a piercing tool seeking to unearth the hidden hierarchies and attitudes behind the human rights talk. The queer method constantly questions the underlying intricacies of the sense we give to the world and the way we uncover our personal truth. As a contaminated method of enquiry, the analytical potential of a queer approach to human rights resides also in its openness to cross-pollination with other areas of knowledge. This paper explores the commonalities and tensions between psychoanalysis and queer theory applied to human rights law from the perspective of subject formation – a process which renders the subject of law and psychoanalysis constitutively dependent on external gendered legal norms. In both human rights and psychoanalysis, the individual is valued by virtue of being. Therefore, queer theory can benefit from theories of language and discourse, such as Lacanian psychoanalysis, to scrutinise the impact of the human rights vocabulary and grammar on subject formations. Psychoanalysis is a methodological partner of queer theory in understanding and valuing plural subject formations.