From “human rights” to “life rights”

Walter D. Mignolo

doi:10.1017/CBO9781139227124.013

9 - From “human rights” to “life rights”

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014

Walter D. Mignolo

Edited by

Costas Douzinas and

Conor Gearty

Show author details

Walter D. Mignolo: Affiliation:
Duke University
Costas Douzinas: Affiliation:
Birkbeck, University of London
Conor Gearty: Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science

Book contents

Get access

Summary

The limits of the “Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen” and the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”

The 500 years of “rights” (from Rights of the People, to the Rights of Man and of the Citizen to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) is a history entrenched in the imaginary of western modernity. It is, in other words, only half of the story. The other half is the history of coloniality, the darker side of modernity. I have made this argument elsewhere. Here I will focus on the future more than on the past. The strong thesis is that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was not only a Euro-American and North Atlantic invention, it was an invention to correct the errors and mistakes of a handful of Western European states and the United States. I quote:

On September 28, 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt, former First Lady and delegate of the United Nations, delivered a speech entitled, “The Struggle for Human Rights.” This speech was delivered at the Sorbonne in Paris, to an audience of thousands of French citizens and delegates of the United Nations. “The Struggle for Human Rights” dealt with the struggle toward universal acceptance of human rights from those states that were considered, by the United Nations and Roosevelt, non-compliant. Those non-compliant states consisted of the USSR, Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, and other member states who had refused to accept the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, thus denying every human being fundamental rights and freedoms. This declaration was written with the intent to unify all nations through common terms and principles surrounding the issues of human rights and freedoms. Roosevelt felt that she must persuade those non-compliant countries to come to an understanding of the fundamental principles agreed upon by the United Nations through the means of establishing unification with her democratic audience.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Meanings of Rights
The Philosophy and Social Theory of Human Rights
, pp. 161 - 180

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139227124.013 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barreto, José-Manuel (ed.), Human Rights from a Third-World Perspective: Critique, History and International Law (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013)Google Scholar

Greer, Margaret, Mignolo, Walter and Quilligan, Maureen, Rereading the Black Legend. The Discourse of Race and Religion in the Renaissance Empires (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2008)Google Scholar

Osamu, Nishitani, “Anthrōpos and Humanitas: Two Western Concepts of “‘Human Beings,’” Translation, Biopolitics, Colonial Difference, (ed.) Sakai, Naoki and Solomon, Jon (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2006)Google Scholar

Douzinas, Costas “Seven Theses on Human Rights: The Idea of Humanity,” Critical Legal Thinking (May 2013)

Wynter, Sylvia’s canonical text on this issue, “Towards the Sociogenetic Principle: Fanon, the Puzzle of Conscious Experience and What does it mean to be Black,” in National Identity and Sociopolitical Change, (ed.) Mercedes Durán-Cogan and Antonio Gómez-Moriana (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1999)Google Scholar

Barreto, J.M., ‘Conquest, Independence and Decolonisation’, in Barreto, J.M. (ed.), Human Rights from a Third-World Perspective: Critique, History and International Law (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012)Google Scholar

Mutua, Mako, Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique (Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002)CrossRef Google Scholar

Grear, Anna, “Challenging Corporate ‘Humanity’: Legal Disembodiment, Embodiment and Human Rights,” Human Rights Law Review 7(3) (2007), 1–33CrossRef Google Scholar

Douzinas, Costas, Human Rights and Empire: The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism (Oxford and New York: Routledge–Cavendish, 2007)Google Scholar

Williams, Eric, Slavery and Capitalism [1944] (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994)Google Scholar

Sen, Amartya, Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor, 2000)Google Scholar

Rose, Nikolas, The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power and Subjectivity in the 21st Century (Princeton University Press, 2006)Google Scholar

Hinkelammert, Franz, “The Hidden Logic of Modernity: Locke’s Inversion of Human Rights,” Worlds and Knowledges Otherwise, 1(1) (2004), 1–27Google Scholar

Mignolo, Walter, “The Splendors and Miseries of ‘Science’: Coloniality, Geopolitics of Knowledge and Epistemic Pluriversality,” in de Sousa Santos, Boaventura (ed.), Cognitive Justice in a Global World: Prudent Knowledges for a Decent Life (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2007)Google Scholar

Book contents

9 - From “human rights” to “life rights”

Summary

Access options

References

Save book to Kindle

Save book to Dropbox

Save book to Google Drive