LuHan Gabel in The Ideas Letter:
The Japanese feminist Chizuko Ueno begins her book, The Ideology In Order to Survive, with an anecdote. In 1994, Ueno attended an international conference organized by the Japanese progressive journal Sekai and the French magazine Le Monde Diplomatique. At the end of the conference, a French speaker asked the audience: “Human rights is a concept that originated in France. Do you think it is universal?”
“This is a tricky question to answer,” Ueno thought to herself. “If we answered yes, that means ‘you people in Asia also accept this French concept.’ And it also means to acknowledge French universalism. But if we answered no, that could mean ‘Asians are such un-enlightened people who can’t even accept the concept of human rights.’”
After some pondering, however, Ueno thought of a better response: “Human rights is a special French concept. It claims to be universal, but it cannot reach the level of universality it claims, precisely because the West has had monopoly on it.”
Much has changed in the ensuing 30 years since this debate took place. I can imagine the French speaker in this story now asking herself the same question as Nicholas Bequelin does in his recent Ideas Letter piece: “Can human rights survive the decline of global Western hegemony?”
More here.
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