Performing Human Rights: Artistic Interventions into European Asylum

This book enhances critical perspectives on human rights through the lens of performance studies and argues that contemporary artistic interventions can contribute to our understanding of human rights as a critical and embodied doing.

This study is situated in the contemporary discourse of asylum and political art practices. It argues for the need to reimagine human rights as performative and embodied forms of recognition and practical honouring of our shared vulnerability and co-dependency. It contributes to the debate of theatre and migration, by understanding that contemporary asylum issues are complex and context-specific, and that they do not only pertain to the refugee, migrant, asylum seeker or stateless person but also to privileged constituencies, institutional structures, forms of organisation and assembly.

The book presents a unique mixed-methods approach that focuses equally on performance analyses and on political philosophy, critical legal studies, and art history – and thus speaks to a range of politically interested scholars in all four fields.