Unconditionally human?: decolonising human rights
SOURCE: Human rights literacy: future directions
OUTPUT TYPE: Chapter in Monograph
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2019
TITLE AUTHOR(S): C.Soudien
SOURCE EDITOR(S): C.Roux, A.Becker
KEYWORDS: HUMAN RIGHTS, RACE
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 10749
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/13574
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/13574
OUTPUT TYPE: Chapter in Monograph
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2019
TITLE AUTHOR(S): C.Soudien
SOURCE EDITOR(S): C.Roux, A.Becker
KEYWORDS: HUMAN RIGHTS, RACE
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 10749
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/13574
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/13574
If you would like to obtain a copy of this Research Output, please contact Hanlie Baudin at researchoutputs@hsrc.ac.za.
Abstract
Taylor [Modern social imaginaries (p. 12). Durham: Duke University Press, 2003], in a powerful discussion of the nature of social differentiation in modernity came to the conclusion that the modern order gives no ontological status to hierarchy or any particular structure of differentiation. The point Taylor sought to make is that where whole segments of our supposedly modern society remained outside of this social imaginary (ibid.), like the French peasantry late in the nineteenth century, or women in the family, today these ideas of hierarchy are being comprehensively challenged. Taylor's summing up of where the world is today in relation to where it had been just 50 years before is not uncritical. Large problems remain both in our social imaginaries and in our political practices. Challenges to both the conceptualisation and realisation of the expanding normative order continue to present themselves. Race, gender and disability are key examples. In this essay, using Jacques Derrida's ideas of hospitality, I engage critically with Critical Race Theory and Decoloniality to argue that they open up important new insights into the politics of human rights and the dominant universalisms which characterise this politics. There remain, however, blind spots in the ways they conceptualise what it means to be human.-
Related Research Outputs:
- Religion, globalisation, and human rights
- Human rights
- Globalisation and the world of work
- Whose right it is anyway? equality, culture and conflicts of rights in South Africa
- From racial liberalism to corporate authoritarianism: the Shell affair and the assault on academic freedom in South Africa
- Socio-economic rights in the South African constitution: theory and practice
- Challenges of promoting and protecting the rights of cultural, religious and linguistic communities
- A human rights perspective on policy implementation processes: observations from the South African public service
- A human rights perspective on policy implementation processes: observations from the South African public service
- The global debate on multiculturalism and women's human rights in South Africa
- Women, culture and inequality: human rights and the feminisation of poverty in South Africa
- Concepts and standards of children's rights: some considerations of relativity and enforcement
- Concepts of childhood and the "right" treatment of children: culture, realtivity and human rights
- Whose right is it anyway?: equality and conflicts between state policy, culture and rights in South Africa
- The global debate on multiculturalism and women's human rights in South Africa
- Can there be any universal children's rights?: some considerations concerning relativity and enforcement
- Women's human rights and the "culture" of violence in South Africa
- Concept paper: awards to recognise those contributing to the celebration of the rights of cultural, religious and linguistic communities in South Africa
- Book review: Bhebe, N. & Ranger, T. (eds.) 2001. The historical dimensions of democracy and human rights in Zimbabwe. Volume 1:pre-colonial and colonial legacies. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications. 169 p. ISBN 0908307942
- Developing human rights indicators vs. value for money