Cherif Bassiouni

This is a study of the various forms of contemporary slave-practices, not limited to sexual trafficking. Working from human rights studies, I show how present-day slavery and chattel practices correspond to what J.-F. Lyotard aptly defined as a "differend," which above all consists in the extreme difficulty confronting an injured party or class in bringing its condition to light within the received (juridical or economic) lexicon of the institutions supposed to hear the crime, and thereupon to provide some aid or resolution to the wrong(s) committed.