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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black">Philosophy Seminars 2012</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black">The Writing and Society Research Centre
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">and Philosophy@UWS, in collaboration with the Whitlam Institute, present:</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black">Peg Birmingham</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black">Professor of Philosophy</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black">DePaul University</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black">TITLE: Revolutionary Declarations: État du droit and the droit de l’opposition</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black">DATE/TIME: Monday 03 September, 2-4pm</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black">PLACE: University of Western Sydney, Bankstown Campus, Building 3, Room 3.G.55</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F3A67"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black">ABSTRACT: More often than not the two revolutionary declarations of the eighteenth century—the US Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen—are
grouped together under what is usually referred to as “the great declarations.” I want to suggest in my lecture that this conflation of the two declarations has spawned a number of critiques, from Marx and Burke to Badiou and Wendy Brown, that dismiss the
universality of human rights as in fact nothing other than the rights of citizens understood as egoistic, bourgeois individuals who are at the beck and call of state power. Indeed, according to these critiques, it is not at all surprising that the modern rights
discourse has moved today from human rights to humanitarian rights in which the state, in the name of right, intervenes on behalf of suffering victims (not citizens) who seemingly need the protection of the more powerful sovereign state. I want to argue
here that while these critiques find a foundation in the US declaration of independence, which I argue is a declaration of the right of a new sovereign state, they miss completely the revolutionary aspect of the French declaration, specifically the 1793 version,
wherein the universal rights of man and the citizen emerge in a declaration of the right to oppose state sovereignty. In my remarks I am going to examine the difference between the “state of right” and the “right of opposition,” attempting to flesh out the
significance this difference has for thinking democracy and human rights today. </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;text-autospace:none">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black"> BIO: Peg Birmingham is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University. She is author of
<i>Hannah Arendt and Human Rights: The Predicament of Common Responsibility</i>. She is presently working on a manuscript titled
<i>Hannah Arendt and Political Glory: Bearing the Unbearable. </i></span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black"> For the entire 2012 program of the Philosophy seminar series at UWS see:
<u><a href="http://www.uws.edu.au/philosophy/philosophy@uws/events/research_seminars_2012"><span style="color:#0023E3">http://www.uws.edu.au/philosophy/philosophy@uws/events/research_seminars_2012</span></a></u> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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