Dignity and Disgrace in Law and Literature

The Preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) mentions the concept of dignity before human rights and the rule of law. What, then, is the connection between dignity and the very idea of law, both generally and specifically in the form of human rights? Dignity appears to be a contested concept; it is more often than not used as a container concept in that it is formulated as a negative as well as a positive right and at the same time referred to in terms of a foundational value for human rights. Contradiction? Tautology? In this paper I aim to explore J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and other literary renderings of (in)dignity, inspired by Joseph Slaughter’s views on the Bildungsroman as a process of self-realization as developed in his Human Rights. Inc., and connect these to the requirements of dignity in law (i.e. the integrity of the legal process and the dignity of the act of judging), by means of the concepts of narrative and voice in order to point to the ways in which the humanities can contribute to our understanding of human rights.