Far from being pre-political, “universal Human Rights” designate the precise space of politicization proper: what they amount to is the right to universality as such, the right of a political agent to assert its radical non-coincidence with itself (in its particular identity), to posit itself – precisely insofar as it is the “surnumerary” one, the “part with no part,” the one without a proper place in the social edifice – as an agent of universality of the Social as such. The paradox is thus a very precise one, and symmetrical to the paradox of universal human rights as the rights of those reduced to inhumanity: at the very moment when we try to conceive political rights of citizens without the reference to universal “meta-political” Human Rights, we lose politics itself, i.e., we reduce politics to a “post-political” play of negotiation of particular interests. - What, then, happens to Human Rights when they are reduced to the rights of homo sacer, of those excluded from the political community, reduced to “bare life” – i.e., when they become of no use, since they are the rights of those who, precisely, have no rights, are treated as inhuman?

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