Got Rights? Human Rights and Contemporary Brazilian Literature

Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos states that nowadays, there is a “global hegemony of human rights as a discourse of human dignity” (2015: 22). Nonetheless, Sousa Santos observes that this hegemony is challenged by a reality of widespread human rights abuses. What then, is the value of human rights and what role does literature play in the discursive construction and the praxis of human rights? This course examines how contemporary Brazilian literature conceptualizes human rights through topics such as authoritarianism, class, race, urban space. The course also establishes connections between human rights in Brazilian and select Spanish American texts.