Right to Work-Reading Rights through Discourse on Work

Reading 'Rights' through Discourse on 'Work' Aditya Nigam Recently certain post-modernist and post-modern feminist perspectives maintain that the language of rights and justice has outlived its emancipatory potential since it is always addressed to the state and law, leading to arming of the state with more powers. While approving of the need to counter this tendency of dependence on the state to initiate changes, this article argues that popular movements nevertheless cannot do away with' the language of rights as it remains the sole language of proclaiming their subjectivity and agency. Moreover, the privileging of the particularistic nature of rights-claim in the post-modern discourse is itself paradoxically premised on a universal notion of equality for its justification. All people have a right to their own way of life, cultures and belief-systems only if we hold that no single culture or rationality can be privileged over the others.