Rights in Psychoanalytic and Feminist Perspective

Authors

Renata Salecl, Institute of Criminology, University of Ljubljana

Abstract

All major philosophical schools todaytake some position on the issue of human rights. On the one hand, so-called postmodern theorists ask how we can understand the narrative of human rights when we no longer believe that its claims are true or that metanarratives are even possible. Instead of searching for first principles and metanorms, postmodernists analyze the discursive form of the notion of rights and read this form as a part of the historically limited Enlightenment project that today has lost its relevance. Neo-Kantians, on the other hand, speak in favor of the notion of human rights and try to give it a new philosophical foundation. Richard Rorty's pragmatism lies between these two positions: pragmatism is in principle critical of the notion of universal human rights, but, at the same time, it tries to preserve the institutions of legal order that were originally established on the basis of the notion of rights. Feminist legal theory finds the notion of human rights utterly problematic because of its patriarchal character. Feminists, in their critique of rights, primarily object to the notion of the Cartesian subject on which human rights are grounded. The question is, however, whether the notion of human rights is patriarchal per se, and whether it is possible to reinterpret rights in a feminist perspective.

Keywords

Human Rights Law, War, Religion and the Law

Disciplines

Human Rights Law | Law

Recommended Citation

Renata Salecl, Rights in Psychoanalytic and Feminist Perspective, 16 Cardozo L. Rev. 1121 (1995).
Available at: https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/clr/vol16/iss3/13