Abstract
When US and Chinese leaders refer to human rights, they invoke entirely different conceptions. Trouble follows incoherence and the normative gaps that this incoherence produces. This contribution suggests the power of semiotics to understand, analyze, and engage with both the constitution of meaning from which these collectives build and understand themselves, but also the power of law and governance to organize human activity at the most granular level. The contribution starts with a consideration of the semiosis of law, globalization, and governance. It then applies these insights to examine human rights legalities as a semiotic contestation-a system of interpenetration centered in law but structurally coupled with globalization and governance. The role of nihilism as a legal construct ends the examination. Semiotics provides a basis for navigating what appears to be incoherence built into the simultaneous infusion of multiple meanings and key terms of contemporary legal and institutional life.
Original language | English (US) |
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Title of host publication | Research Handbook on Legal Semiotics |
Publisher | Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. |
Pages | 61-85 |
Number of pages | 25 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781802207262 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781802207255 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Nov 17 2023 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- General Social Sciences