OPINION Human Rights Activism and the Politics of Smell and Noise * Marieke Borren Talking about ‘the rights of those who have no rights,’ Jacques Rancière argues that those groups who have no full rights – including ‘illegal’ immigrants and sec- ond-class citizens, primarily, in his examples, women and workers – should act as if they are already part of the ‘we’ of the people, and act as if they already have those rights they formally cannot claim, rather than wait for these rights to be given them. He describes such practices of claiming human rights and democratic agency as ‘making visible what had [formerly] no business being seen, and mak[ing] heard a discourse where once there was only place for noise.’ 1 However, are the struggles for human rights of those with a precarious legal standing only legitimate if the latter have a ‘good story’ to tell? And what counts as a good story, and who decides about it, for that matter? In other words: who has the authority to tell ‘noise’ from ‘discourse’, on what grounds? For me, these questions were provoked when I was working as a postdoctoral fel- low at the University of Pretoria and closely witnessed the #MustFall student pro- tests evolving in South Africa in late 2015. The protests had kicked off when a student poured human excrements over the statue of British colonialist and min- ing tycoon Cecile John Rhodes at the campus of the University of Cape Town on March 10 of that year, wearing a banner stating Exhibit White Arrogance. Through- out the country, mostly black and colored students of the so-called ‘Born Free’ generation, growing up after the transition from Apartheid to democracy, subse- quently started mobilizing around a number of causes. Using the slogan #Must- Fall, they demanded the decolonization of curriculums and campuses, the trans- formation of the language policy at those universities that still prescribed Afri- kaans as the medium of instruction, the freezing of the announced tuition fee hikes or even the right to free tertiary education, and an end to the near-universal practice of outsourcing cleaning tasks at South African universities. The almost entirely peaceful though noisy rallies (students everywhere engaged in toyi toyi, the typically South African protest songs and dances that were developed under Apartheid) provoked euphoric reactions in the liberal media. On October 23, the triumphant headlines of Mail & Guardian, South Africa’s quality newspaper, read: * This article has been written with the support of postdoctoral funding by the University of Pretoria, South Africa. 1 Jacques Rancière, Dis-agreement: Politics and Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 30. On ‘the rights of those who have no rights,’ also see Jacques Rancière, ‘Who is the Subject of the Rights of Man?,’ South Atlantic Quarterly 2/3 (2004): 297-310. 4 Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy 2017 (46) 1 doi: 10.5553/NJLP/221307132017046001002 Dit artikel uit Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy is gepubliceerd door Boom juridisch en is bestemd voor anonieme bezoeker