The UN Guiding Principles locate human rights at the centre of the corporate social responsibility agenda and provide a substantial platform for the development of business and human rights policy and practice...The initiative gives opportunity and focus for the rethinking and reconfiguration of corporate accountability for human rights...It also presents a threat: The danger, as we see it, is that the Guiding Principles are interpreted and implemented in an uncritical way, on a “humanitarian” model of imposed expertise...The critical and radical democratic communities have tended to be, perhaps rightly, suspicious of rights talk and sceptical of any suggestion that rights and the discourse of human rights can play a progressive role...The aim of this paper is to explore these issues from a radical perspective...This paper uses insights taken from Jacques Rancière’s work to argue that there is vital critical potential in human rights...This paper uses insights taken from Jacques Rancière’s work to argue that there is vital critical potential in human rights.