| This dissertation analyzes a set of contemporary works that have all been conceived, produced, and circulated in frameworks of international concern as advocates work to popularize narratives representing grave injustices, thereby strengthening the basis for international response to African conflicts characterized by massive human rights violations. All of the feature advocacy literature examined here---Kony 2012 (documentary), Johnny Mad Dog (a film), Johnny Chien Mechant (a novel), What is the What (a novel), and Ruined (a play)---intersect with a variety of institutional and organizational efforts seeking recognition for victims---ones that can be translated into means of support, protection, and redress. This study traces the life of these particular works, their relationships to such organizational efforts, and the ways they contribute to advancing a social project central to human rights culture: developing in the audience or readers a sense of civic duty attached to common membership in the "international community." These representations support the central project of human rights, but also highlight the political complexity of undertaking such a project in the face of radical inequalities and the history of interventionism sanctioned by empire in the name of humanitarianism and aid of African subjects. A central argument in this study is that one must understand these works in the context of emerging patterns in "international civil society." The popularity of these works, and the interpretations of conflict they promote, can be read as an important index of emerging norms in human rights, particularly the 2005 United Nations initiative, the Responsibility to Protect, which has sought to redefine state sovereignty with greater emphasis on its responsibilities toward citizens. Drawing from the insights of philosophy, reception theory, cultural anthropology, and postcolonial critique, this study highlights a series of salient ethical and political complexities involved in these projects of gaining recognition for victims, including the possibilities and limits tied to the concept of an international community---a group with transnational solidarities faithful to human rights principles---envisioned as a limitation on state power. |
