This thesis argues that international human rights are based on a problematic, tacit assumption of an ideal, or genuine, legal subject. To show this, it focuses on some of the ways in which dominant discourses are in tension with human rights’ fundamental claim to universality by ignoring multiple ways of being, affording limited modes of expression, and hence perpetuating social exclusions. Different theoretical and methodological approaches drawn from several disciplines are used to analyse this paradoxical tendency to produce exclusions in international human rights law and practice, notably Hannah Arendt’s figure of the refugee, posthumanist critiques and several non-Western critical theories, namely Black, Indigenous and decoloniality approaches. Often these approaches are used in isolation, but they can usefully inform each other; together, they help reveal how the dominant concept of subjectivity has always needed an ‘Other’, and that the ‘human’ at the heart of human rights is not a universal concept but is historically determined.

To illustrate these critical arguments, I pursue an analysis of visual discourses in the field of international human rights, with a focus on the ways in which exclusions are represented and entrenched through the visual in this context. I focus on emblematic images in the history of human rights, as well as on contemporary images used in the field by dominant actors like the United Nations and by people experiencing human rights violations. I then argue that international human rights are based on a vision-centred sensorium and certain processes of reasoning that exclude emotions, and therefore make problematic assumptions about subjects. This supports the broader claim that, due to its cultural and historical origins, the international human rights system is geared to recognize only certain subjects as genuine rights bearers and to provide remedies for certain forms of violations, while ignoring others. Finally, I consider whether and how it would be possible to embrace other forms of thinking and being in the world and to recognize different sensory experiences within the international human rights framework.