The Victims of History: The Real Foundation of Human Rights.
A Deconstructive Approach
José Bayardo Pérez Arce
Introduction[1]
The foundation of human rights is still an open question. While some
affirm that their very foundation lies in human nature, others argue that they
are mere political conventions. The question is quite problematic. The
naturalistic theory, i.e. the conception of human rights as inherent to human
nature or to human dignity, emphasizes both features of universality and inalienability
of human rights. In short, human rights are a transhistorical reality. Conversely,
the constructionist approach, which also includes both relativist and
pragmatist approaches, highlights the historical condition of human rights. In
this case, not the nature but both the context and the institutionality of human
rights, i.e. their reference to specific cultures and social-political
structures, are the bearers of the ‘human’ feature to human rights.
Notwithstanding the radical opposition between both approaches, four
issues emerge from such antagonism: the universality of human rights, the
question about the ‘human being’ and the meaning of human action, and the source
of the constitutive force of human rights.
The Problem of Universality
The naturalist theories postulate a transhistorical human nature as the
root of the universality of human rights. In consequence, any form of exclusion
from human rights means automatically an exclusion from the set of humanity. Conversely,
the constructivist theories outline a figure of human being historically
continuously reconstructed, and then, the universality means to participate in
this process. In any case, the issue of exclusion undermines any possibility of
‘humanity’ since the universality itself excludes the exclusion.
However, since the assumptions of naturalistic universalism are based on
a metaphysical-non-scientific conception of the world, which does not provide
any effective foundation but a theoretical or even a faith object, human rights
become “flatus vocis,” meaningless words lacking the capability to involve
those who do not share the same world vision or belief. This does not mean that
a scientific[2]
demonstration of the human nature or human dignity would be more effective,
given that from science no right can be deduced. Nonetheless, some beliefs of
religious groups may support the idea of human rights, but since beliefs are positive
statements, i.e. linguistic constructions structured as affirmation, their
capacity to enable agreements as to embrace the reality is very limited.
On the other hand, constructionism set the conditions for cultural
relativism, which enhances the influence of the context over the worldviews,
and thus it points to the contextualized powers as determinant factors for the
institution of rights and meanings. In other words, human rights may be
valuable in one culture and not in another. On the basis of such limitations,
the cultural relativists grapple with a two-faced problem. If human rights are
not valid for all, therefore these are not “human” rights at all, and then
their relevance is relative, or those who do not recognize human rights are not
human at all, and then again, there is no ‘humanity’. But, if instead, human
rights are indeed valid for all, their implementation requires a type of
‘epoché’ or even a subordination of the cultural differences. However, given
the importance conferred to both the context and the historical non-universal
determinations, to affirm any superiority of one single culture would be a
self-contradiction for cultural relativism[3].
Consequently, there is no possible universal foundation of human rights, and
therefore, there are no human rights either.
Notwithstanding, there is an
alternative to universalism and relativism: the pragmatic approach. Pragmatism,
closely related to constructivism, proposes at least two considerations about
the foundation of human rights: to consider human rights as a social-political
project, and to parenthesize the lack of foundations and just act. Although both
considerations are very persuasive in order to effectively incorporate human
rights policies into the world, i.e. to “humanize” it, they are still
dangerously counterproductive. Whereas a radical pragmatic attitude fixes the
damage but does not alter the structures that produced them, the logic of the
social-political project keeps the perspectives of universality and progress,
which arouse hope but are incapable per se of bringing justice. Even though the
universality may be a great social equalizer, in practice it tends to be
exclusive. Actually, while the future (progress) is universality’s best arouser,
the past is its fierce challenger. In other words, the idea of human rights as
a project requiring action in the present seems to solve the problem of the
foundation, since universality reaches the present from the future under the figure
of ‘project’. This approach coincides
perfectly with the cultural mainstream oriented towards the future manifested
through several psychosocial figures, namely, desires, dreams, development,
progress, et cetera. Nonetheless, the perspective of the future may be
misleading. As a perspective, the future may be promising, but its unanchored
constitution and its lack of engagement with the present make it unreliable. The
future is reliable only if it is also capable of commitment with the past. Therefore,
it is necessary to have a universality capable of comprehending the past too,
especially since progress has never been accountable to its victims.
Engagement and Practice: What We Do when We Say
Human Rights
A neutral universality, i.e. a
non-engaged universality, is as meaningless as a single word. In the
construction of a sentence, the word engages with the particular sense of the phrase,
and then the word becomes meaningful. Likewise, human rights and their
universality must be engaged with a particular sense, and to be located within
a specific frame of meaning, otherwise, as meaningless objects, they also lose
their capability to compel action. Therefore, it is necessary to find a type of
universality that, without excluding anyone, it is still capable to put at
stake itself through a specific commitment, which confers meaning to human
rights.
Accordingly, to find the criteria
adequate to what has been said above, it will be necessary to analyze four
issues to elucidate the relevance of the coherence between discourse, practice
and theory; and why not any discourse, practice or theory are appropriate for
human rights. In other words, the four issues try to answer the question: what we
are doing when we say ‘human rights’?
The first issue starts from the institutionalized statements, namely,
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Two facts are very
suggestive, the absence of any definition of the ‘human being’ and the
linguistic nature of its protection. Although the reluctance to provide any
definition of the human being is very understandable in practical terms, the
fact is deeply eloquent. To provide a definition would have entailed the
possibility of exclusion, and notwithstanding the long list of rights conferred
to the human being, that undefined ‘entity’, none of the rights say anything
about the right-bearer’s identity.
The second fact is correlated to the first one. The UDHR is definitely a
form of protection. Both the structure of the document and the constructions of
the sentences reflect clearly the intentionality of protection. The scripture
is static; it is neither a system nor a process. Actually, as a set of signs
called scripture, it only points to ‘nobody’. The use of ‘everyone’, ‘no one’,
‘all’, is an exercise of universality reluctant to be engaged with anyone
unwilling to be engaged. The use of affirmations and negations for doing the
same negative activity –the protection-, refers to the status conferred by
Lacan to the ‘no’ (the negation, the refusal, the resistance) as the inaugural
moment of freedom. In short, the language used is a language for
saying-not-saying. The assertions of the UDHR ‘say’ the rights in order to
protect the human being, and at the same time, they point to the human being
without saying it.
To preserve the human being, it must be (not)said, but to (not)say the
human being, it must be preserved. In consequence, human rights are the ban of
(not)saying the human being. The ban of defining the latter, and the negation
of its negation, i.e. the ban of not acting to preserve what cannot be said.
The second issue refers to the ‘practice’ of human rights, or more
specifically, the action realized when the expression ‘human rights’ is used,
and the subsequent effects and sense produced. According to Wittgenstein’s
language games theory, words are meaningless per se, and it is through the uses
or ‘games’ of a language that this may be learned. The practice provides the
concrete meaning of the words within a specific context, and then, also enables
the sense of the sentences. Thus, meaning is not a metaphysical essence but praxis,
and the latter establishes the difference between the lack of meaning of human
rights or their effectiveness in the world. For example, to identify directly human
rights with the UDHR statements risks to reduce them to a bureaucratic practice.
This practice is based on a binary system of compliance/non compliance, focused
on identifying victims and offenders, for finally trying to fix the present
(reparation) and to predict the future (recommendation). Even though this type
of practice highlights the urgency of the present –and the pain of the suffering
worth it-, it tends to introduce individuals into the logic of the
‘administered world’ (Horkheimer), a world in which everything is regulated.
The rights established to protect the human being become its definition, and
even determine the form of its relationships. Indeed, to vindicate the personal
own value requires claiming the respect of the rights: out of the system there
is no human being. This is a shrewd strategy for ratifying a system by assuming
what the individual needs or wants and by dissolving the necessity of other
relations, in short, the individual become unary (Dufour), unidimensional
(Marcuse). In this way, the individual finds the source of its rights in the
system or in itself, but there is no reason for including others, excepting the
rules of the system. Released from any duty towards others, the individual
becomes sacred, untouchable, and can address its life to whatever it wants, on
condition that it has to respect the rules for keeping order. Universality
became the right to be individual, or using the language of the cultural mainstream,
the right to be ‘unique’, but definitely, this praxis does not enable the
universality, but self-centered individuality. The praxis required for
universality must be eccentric, that is, that removes the self-centeredness
from the right-bearer and refers it to others.
The third issue set the question for the framework of the meaning or the
ideology. Human action is more than behavior. Whereas behavior corresponds to
the field of the observable activity, reactions and manners, the action comprehends
the ideological dimension (Martín-Baró), i.e. the way to understand, feel and
interact with the world according to set of values, relationships and the
conflicts produced by their divergences. Succinctly, behavior focuses on acts
and causal relations, while action highlights interactions and meaning
relations. If the first describes the world, the second re-invents it. Thus,
for human rights to be not a mere description of the human being, but conditions
of possibility of its meaningful existence, they must be conceived as a human
action, and subsequently, as bearers of an ideology that works like their
framework of meaning. Nonetheless, not any ideology or referent of meaning is
suitable for the foundation of human rights. Given the relevance of both universality
and interaction, the referent of meaning has to be able to articulate and
support relationships of non-exclusion and, at the same time, to compel
committed action.
The last issue is the subjective dimension of the ethical feature of ‘human
rights practice’. The peculiarity of this approach lies in the assumption of
the situation of the human being in the twenty-first century: there is not a
total consensus about what human rights are, and even sometimes, perhaps a
subject has no clear idea about them. Some other terms like democracy, love,
peacebuilding, are in the same situation: a time in which the subjects cannot
say what the things are, especially those important for social life or
existential meaning. Like an inverted anomia, in which even though the subject
is able to name, it cannot identify the object to be named. In this situation,
ethics works not as the application of a right/wrong framework, but as a
determination of truth within a relationship of loyalty. Aware of the situation
of relative powerlessness, the subject puts itself at stake, not as mere self-determination
but as self-determination-in-relation-to events that break the meaninglessness
of the administered world. Some examples of these unexpected, terrible or
encouraging events are: genocides, a girl standing in front of a tank, a
protest march, whatever cannot be predicted or ruled by the system. On the
other hand, an action realized within the framework of loyalty to those events
constitutes the subject as an authentic actor, and not a mere reproducer of the
status quo. Clearly this does not guarantee the subject is doing right, but is a
signal that he is really acting, beyond himself and beyond the system, and
acting even if the loyalty entails the experience of being broken. In other words, under this perspective, the
ethical dimension of the ‘practice of human rights’ involves responsibility and
loyalty, loyalty not to oneself but to the event that introduces a break into
the administered world.
This analysis outlines a set of necessary criteria to determine the
foundation of human rights. Given that the universality without engagement
standardizes all and, in neglecting the differences, it also ignores the
injustices committed, it is also necessary to find another type of
universality. Therefore, if the foundation of human rights must relate to the
universality defined according to a double ban, namely, the ban of the
exclusion and the ban of (not)saying the human being, that universality is a
“negative universality”.
Victims and exclusion: the real foundation
Once determined the negative
universality as the type of universality required to found human rights, the next
step is to elucidate the particular element that such universality has to be
engaged with. This process of engagement, which confers meaning to human rights
by providing them a specific meaning framework or referent, is the transition
from theory to concrete. However, this return to concrete raises the question
about how to conciliate universal and particular, or even more, how a
particular can enable universality. Given the explicit engaged nature of the negative
universality, the respective response to the last question may not be
speculative but concrete.
When Walter Benjamin on his Theses on the Philosophy of the History
affirms: “there is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a
document of barbarism”, he points to a universal fact: the universality of the
suffering concretized in the victims of history.
Indeed, the victims of history (‘history’
as the symbol of the world ruled, organized, developed and narrated by the ‘winners’)
are universal. Since every culture has produced victims, and since these
victims have been excluded from history and the promises of happiness and justice,
and often have been released to oblivion, the victims of history are the
universal concrete, the excluded particular that can break the mechanisms of
exclusion. Even though the ‘executioners’ are also a universal presence, they do
not enable universality because unlike the victims, executioners produce
exclusion.
If defining the human being is
forbidden in order to make possible the universality of ‘humanity’, the victims
of history must be protected by such a ban even more. Attempting to represent
the victims threatens them, their memory, and the debt of justice that humanity
has with them. In fact, since any form of representation is susceptible to
become an empty expression, a substitution or replacement, or a pretension of
authorized power over of the victims, the act of saying (defining) the victims
of history entails their deletion. In terms of time, to define the victims of
history means to enclose them in the past, to put away them from the present,
and to deny them the future, or even ingenuously believe that there will be no
more victims in the future. Furthermore, the mere presence of the victims of
history, a presence under the form of absence-that-should-be-presence, denies
any pretension of totalizing authorized power, any attempt to justify a
self-made individual dissociated from others, any promise of future without
assumption of the past, any self-centered constitution of the subject or the
society. The debt of justice is still open, and such debt configures the form
of the negative universality as a relationship based on responsibility, loyalty
and justice: memory.
Memory preserves the victims of
history from a second death, the hermeneutical death, i.e. to make them
meaningless. Even though the term ‘victims’ may be manipulated, no one can
vindicate the authority to be on their side. The victims are reluctant to
power, defy the system, and always demand a relationship of responsibility, a
common responsibility. Capable of the most horrible things such the Rwanda’s
genocide, Auschwitz, Acteal, tortures and racism, the human being is always a
darkly ambiguous entity. To be a human being entails to participate in that
destructive potential, which also involves a common responsibility. In
consequence, the distinctive feature of the universality enabled by the victims
of history is not the guilt, which is another psychosocial form that keeps the
individual dissociated and self-centered, but the responsibility. Human rights
are an act of memory, the responsibility of and from the memory.
On the other hand, the endless response demanded by the victims overcomes
the reductive bureaucratic and procedural approaches over human rights –certain
practices that convert human rights issues in a type of procedural ‘balance
process’- and keeps justice as a permanent task in the history. Notoriously,
this approach turns human rights issues into an unsolvable situation, and
precisely from such unsolvable feature along with the status of reality of the
victims (they are not virtual objects or hypothetical situations) arises the
force to compel the compliance of human rights. In paraphrasing the words of
Theodor W. Adorno, this is a new categorical imperative: “Auschwitz… Rwanda…
Acteal… torture… discrimination… eviction would not repeat itself”.
Nonetheless, the negative
universality entails a third ban yet, the ban of any individualistic
vindication of the status of victim. The condition of victim is not decided but
enforced; it is not attainable by power of freedom. To arrogate oneself the
condition of victim is an act of power, which often derives into a
self-institution as a judge or executioner. Conversely, the victims are
universal, in the sense that their condition is not suitable to privatization,
they always refer to someone else. Among the victims there is no place for an
economy of suffering, namely, comparisons, weighing and ‘pricing of sufferings’.
In consequence, for the reasons mentioned above, the winners’ system, nowadays
the neoliberal system, cannot deal with them.
In synthesis, the foundation of human
rights is not, and cannot be, neither a theory nor a speculative object, but
the concrete and real victims of history. They make human rights meaningful and
enable a ‘practice’ capable of breaking the meaningless of the administered
world. Additionally, they also challenge every culture and theory in providing
an effective sense of responsibility and justice, and even more, they defy
human beings for being more than their own dark side. Much more than the rights
of property and freedom, the victims of history are the real source of force of
every historical movement related to human rights.
Conclusion
The victims of history are the real foundation of human rights. Any
other foundation based on an abstract object, a rescindable political
agreement, or on a necessary but insufficient personal conviction, sooner or
later result in exclusion, injustice and ultimately, in negation of human
rights. Paradoxically, those who were considered or ‘made’ less than humans are
those who preserve humanity and keep it as such.
Accordingly, the issue of the ‘practice’ of human rights revealed the
relevance of engagement and the threat of meaninglessness. Both of them make
clear the incompatibility of human rights with a self-centered human being
dissociated from others, and with any institution and ‘practice’ of human
rights unengaged with the victims of history. Therefore, for being meaningful,
human rights entail a relationship of responsibility and loyalty to the memory
of the victims. This specific form of engagement means to fight against
exclusion, to protect other human beings, and to realize the act of memory. In
this way, since every culture has their own victims and has produced victims,
human rights can be also a universal project, a project of memory in which
those who were excepted and excluded from humanity enable the future for all
human beings.
In conclusion, the excepted and excluded –and not a theory- that seem to
touch tangentially our world, because they are always in the margins, are the
same that confer sense and meaning to human rights from their very core.
References
Adorno, Th.
W. (2005 ). Dialéctica negativa. La jerga
de la autenticidad. Madrid: Akal.
Arednt, H.
(1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem. A report
on the banality of evil. New York: The Viking Press.
Arendt, H.
(1994). Essays in Understanding. New
York: Harcourt Brace & Company.
Benjamin, W.
(2010). Obras, libro I/vol.2. Madrid:
Abada editores.
Birmingham,
P. (2006). Hannah Arendt and human
rights. The predicament of Common Responsibility. Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press.
Girard, R.
(1972). La violence et le sacré.
Paris: Grasset.
Horkheimer,
M. (1982). La nostalgia del totalmente
Altro. Brescia: Queriniana.
Martín-Baró,
I. (2005). Acción e ideología. Psicología
social desde Centroamérica. El Salvador: UCA editores.
Reyes Mate,
M. (2003). Memoria de Auschwitz.
Actualidad moral y política. Madrid: Trotta.
Wittgenstein,
L. (2001). Philosophical investigations.
United Kingdom: Blackwell.
[1] For reasons of language limits I
will adopt in this paper the following assumptions: ‘subject’, ‘individual’ and
‘human being’ will be taken as “it” instead of “s/he”.
[2] “Science” according to the
hegemonic natural sciences model.
[3] At this point, since the
no-imposition is the politically correct basic attitude of the mainstream
culture, one can wonder if this means that logic really shapes our knowledge,
or if our knowledge is shaped by politics.
bien dicho!!!
ResponderEliminar