Abstract
This chapter focuses on the individual subject of the HR text. HR literature is concerned with the destruction of the subject. Such a destruction of the subject is mapped out in the theme of the unmaking of bodies. Looking at the HR torture novel in particular the chapter identifies abject embodiment as the primary mode of destroying the human subject. Debasement follows as the tortured loses all sense of time, place and self. The tortured is also tormented by the threat to the family and social circle. By pointing to grief and fear as the dominant codes informing this schema, the HR novel offers an entirely new view of sustaining relationships and subjectivity-through-empathy of the subject. Attempting proximate grief goes some way toward empathetic understanding and the minimal building of a sense of self.
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Nayar, P.K. (2016). Unmade Subjects: Embodiment. In: Human Rights and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50432-6_2
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