“Through a glass, darkly”: The metaphor of the lens in public discussions about the Canadian Museum for Human Rights

Abstract

Even before it has opened its doors, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) has been a topic of discussion, controversy and debate among scholars and in the media. What human rights issues should be included in the museum and how these should be represented have become fodder for public discussion and media criticism. This paper discusses some of the recent scholarship about ideas-based museums in conjunction with theories of the rhetoric of human rights in order to provide a context for a close reading of the use of the metaphor of the lens in the public debate about the CHMR. The paper suggests that the use of the lens metaphor is part of the “spectacular rhetoric” of human rights that, as argued by Wendy Hesford in Spectacular Rhetorics, “activates certain cultural and national narratives and social and political relations” (9). As such this metaphor is a restricted one that “defines the parameters of the public's engagement with key human rights issues” (Hesford 10).

References

Hesford, Wendy. Spectacular Rhetorics: Human Rights Visions, Recognitions, Feminisims. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. Print.