Human Rights Critique and the Global South: A Hermeneutical Reading of Makau Mutua and Boaventura de Sousa Santos

Abstract

The human rights project has reached an epistemological, legal, and moral crossroad. The multidimensionality of this stalemate invites for critical conversation(s) on the credibility, authority, and moral legitimacy of human rights (Langford, 2018). This study outlines two of these conversations considering the human rights crisis. The first conversation is authored by Portuguese scholar and decolonial thinker Boaventura de Sousa Santos in the book Epistemologies of the south: Justice against epistemicide (2014). The second conversation is presented by Kenyan American legal scholar Makau Mutua in his book Human Rights: A political and cultural critique (2002). Inspired by a Ricoeurian hermeneutical approach, this thesis indulges in one institutional, and one epistemological critique of the human rights project. To investigate Mutua and Santos’ understandings and criticisms, this project follows a three-step method of Critical Hermeneutics (Phillips & Brown, 1993). Critical Hermeneutics practices interpretation of text in three moments. 1) Social-Historical Moment, 2) the Formal Moment 3) Interpretation – Re-interpretation Moment. The samples are re-vitalized through meticulous application of Standpoint theory (Harding) counter-hegemonic approaches to human rights (Baxi), and globally informed scholarship (Darian-Smith & McCarty, 2016). In doing so, the study makes further inquiry on 1) practical examples of the critiques presented in the samples 2) the authorial voices intersecting with the text and possible implications this can have for an intersubjective understanding of the samples. The conclusion demonstrates that criticizing human rights is a complex, multi-faceted endeavor. The multiplicity of this rests on a series of social, political, historical, legal, epistemological, and moral inquiries that demands attention when talking about, or against, human rights. Concluding reflections establishes that these samples are deeply valuable for the effect they have on human rights students from the Global South who may feel that human rights have become a forlorn project.