Philosophy 03

“The idea of human rights, in other words, may carry within itself the agenda of a kind of social Darwinism […].”

Quote: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (2004): „Righting Wrongs“, in: The South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 103 (2/3), pp. 523-581, p. 524. Picture: Robert Crc - Subversive festival media, FAL, Wikimedia, Creative Commons.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (*1942) is an Indian-American literary scholar and a central thinker of postcolonial theories.

In this quote, Spivak criticizes the idea of civilization and progress inherent in the concept of human rights. She shows that human rights imply a logic of the strongest: human rights suggest that white Europeans, thanks to their supposed civilization, were able to bring forth human rights that black people were denied for a long time and that these "others" now have to be taught. With her critique, Spivak shows that this image persists to this day, although it has long been shown that the supposed European civilization implied colonization, exploitation, enslavement and oppression of Black people, the consequences of which continue to this day.

*Sarah de Jong (2022): Writing rights: suturing Spivak’s postcolonial and de Sousa San-tos’ decolonial thought. Postcolonial Studies, 25(1), p. 89–107. *Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (2004): Righting Wrongs. The South Atlantic Quarterly, Volume 103, Number 2/3, pp. 523-581, p. 524.

2004