Abstract

This article is a comparison between two main trends of the contemporary critique of the discourse of human rights: the post-colonialist one, represented here by Spivak, Kapur and Baxi; on the other hand, the post-Althusserian one, represented by Rancière and Zizek. For both these theoretical trends, the re-evaluation of the discourse and practice of human rights takes the form of an internal critique, whose goal is not the rejection of human rights but their reshaping or re-founding. On its part, the post-colonialist intervention directs its attack against the double fallacy or non-coincidence that sustains the traditional discourse of human rights: the non-identity between the formal object of human rights and their actual bearers , and the non-identity between the position of enunciation of the discourse of human rights and those in the name of which it is being proffered. While perfectly aware of these two tensions, the post-Althusserian trend will argue instead that these fallacies have a more dialectical nature: they are at the same time the conditions of possibility and impossibility of the discourse and practice of human rights. Even more, contrary to the post-colonialist attempt to suture these inconsistencies, the post-Althusserians will argue that they are to be saved as the very disclosure of the space in which a politics of human rights can take place