Framing human dignity: visual jurisprudence at South Africa’s Constitutional Court
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Authors
Garnsey, Eliza
Publication Date
2016-12-01Journal Title
Australian Journal of Human Rights
ISSN
1323-238X
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Type
Article
This Version
AM
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Garnsey, E. (2016). Framing human dignity: visual jurisprudence at South Africa’s Constitutional Court. Australian Journal of Human Rights https://doi.org/10.1080/1323238x.2016.11910943
Abstract
The Constitutional Court of South Africa is a unique space by international comparison because it houses a large visual art collection developed by and for the court. The purpose of this article is to look at the connections between human dignity and art at the Constitutional Court. Is the performance of dignity in the art collection a utopian ideal, achievable objective, or unrealised potential? I argue that the art collection is a kind of visual jurisprudence which responds to, but also comprises, conceptions of human dignity as a right, a value and a touchstone of democracy — conceptions that are closely entwined with South Africa’s human rights governance, but that manifest in very different ways. At the same time that human dignity becomes realised by the spatial transformation of the site of the court, it remains in the art collection something that must ever be worked towards. This article arises out of six months of participant observation fieldwork at the Constitutional Court, conducting 54 semi-structured interviews with people involved in the collection.
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1323238x.2016.11910943
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/286538
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