“Detritos Humanos”, Human Rights: The Baudelarian City and the Production of Life

Abstract

The dialogue between Charles Baudelaire’s poetry and human rights is highlighted, considering the poet’s criticism of the dehumanization of Haussmannian urbanism. This dialogue would not be built as a tribune speech, but an ethical-aesthetic thought against the belief in the universality of the right to the urbanized city, of which Paris became an emblem in the Second Empire. Contesting such universality, Baudelaire’s poetry would question the conditions of production of the city’s humanity and would present relevance for today’s reflections on the correlation between space and the right to the city, which has historically been denied to peripheral and marginalized populations.