Toward the 'Rights of the Poor' Human Rights in Liberation Theology

In this article, the author traces the response of liberation theologians to human rights initiatives through three distinct stages over the past thirty years: from an initial avoidance of the concept, to an early critique, and then to a nuanced theological appropriation. He contends that liberation theology brings a thoroughgoing concern for the poor and an innovative methodology of historicization to the discussion of human rights. In clarifying the treatment of human rights within a specific religious movement, the author also addresses larger questions about the specific role of human rights language. To this end, the article shows how liberation theologians have grappled concretely with the divisions among different 'generations' of rights, various rights discourses, and diverse options for rights advocacy.     

“Melancholic? Naturally!”: Impulses for Cultural Transformation from Queer-Ecological Worldmaking,Activism, and Art in a Western Context

Abstract

Although ecological grief is a common psychic response to socioecological losses, there are no shared spaces to engage with it in Western cultures—a symptom of the problematic way they conceive Nature as external and subordinate to humans. Seeking subversive impulses for paradigmatic transformation, this research centers queer-identifying eco-activists and -artists, and their practices of queer-ecological worldmaking. Arts-based research and interviews reveal the potential of melancholic grieving to create an understanding of interdependencies with the more-than-human world, as well as communities for healing. Impulses toward a joint liberation entail the extension of empathy and agency to the more-than-human world.     

Fanon and Marx Revisited

ABSTRACT

On this 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth, what can we learn from Fanon’s turn to Marx over 60 years ago? This paper reviews Fanon’s active engagements with Marx throughout his work from Black Skin, White Masks to The Wretched of the Earth; from the importance of Marx’s 18th Brumaire in Fanon’s thinking, to what he calls stretching Marxian concepts. In this moment of crisis and retrogression, what can we learn from Fanon’s creative use of Marxian categories?     

Still Opting for the Poor: The Brazilian Catholic Church and the National Movement of the Street Population

Have rumors of the demise of liberation theology been greatly exaggerated? There is a prevailing belief among scholars and other observers that the Latin American Catholic Church has withdrawn from the preferential option for the poor, which had encouraged a combination of faith and activism for social justice. This article challenges that belief by means of qualitative data gathered during 8 months in Brazil that provide evidence of close connections between the Pastoral of the Street, a church program that mobilizes homeless people, and the National Movement of the Street Population (MNPR). The principal data came from 42 interviews with homeless or formerly homeless people, movement leaders, and religious sisters and lay workers in the pastoral program. Participant observation and documentary research supplemented the interviews. The findings demonstrate that the Pastoral of the Street helped to create the MNPR and continues to provide it with material and ideological support.