Rethinking Human Rights: a counter-epistemological endeavor

Abstract

As the past has shown and the present insists on reminding us, the hegemonic and ‘universal’ conception of human rights has repeatedly failed to recognize the importance of attempting a dialogue with subaltern understandings of human dignity. In what follows, this work aims to debate whether rethinking human rights could be one of the paths towards understanding the muting of subaltern conceptions of human dignity. Nevertheless, to recognize the epistemic violence performed by the hegemonic conception of human rights is insufficient. In other words, it is not enough to understand the muting of subaltern knowledge. It is necessary to activate these multiple understandings and to challenge the understanding of human rights as a consensus. In order to do so, human rights must be re-defined as counterhegemonic and, therefore, as Santos (2015) argues, be feminist, decolonial and anticapitalist.