Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2008
Rights
Abstract
The human rights corpus is a bundle of pathologies of choice and substance. But these pathologies are ideologically driven and inhere in the human rights movement because of the political choices and biases that are part of the cultural universe of human rights. In particular, the corpus is captive to thin notions of human rights that tend not to challenge deeply embedded social and economic assumptions and systems. The historical narrative of the human rights movement closely parallels the hegemonic rise of the West and hence the movement’s imprisonment in an intellectual project that casts the human being in the narrow idiom of the traditional rights discourse.
Publication Title
Buffalo Law Review
First Page
1027
Last Page
1034
Recommended Citation
Makau Mutua,
Human Rights and Powerlessness: Pathologies of Choice and Substance,
56
Buff. L. Rev.
1027
(2008).
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/journal_articles/582