ALL NOISY ON THE EASTERN FRONT: RECONCILING THE GLOBAL ASPIRATION OF LIBERAL FEMINIST HUMAN RIGHTS CULTURE WITH ITS WESTERN CONCEPTION

Back to Page Authors: Michelle N. Dyonisius

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Keywords: culture, feminism, human rights, postcolonialism

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Abstract: The promotion of human rights is problematic as it is simultaneously called for and resented due to its often-patronising one-size fits all application with disregard to the local cultures. This paper will particularly focus on the promotion of women’s rights especially in non-Western states. This paper argues that it is pivotal to acknowledge the particular origin of human rights as the construction of Western experience and thus its culture so that a clash between the Western and Eastern perspective on defining human rights in accordance to their respective culture can be evaded from blocking any advancement in human and women rights advocacy. Following this thesis, this essay demonstrates that the differences in cultures and the promotion of human including women rights are not necessarily incompatible. To begin with, this essay discusses the Western origin of human rights and the liberal-egalitarian as well as the liberal-feminist approach to adopt it nonetheless as universal. Then, this essay exposes their limitation in the underlying imperialistic nature, reproducing the superiority of Western liberal values which is only refuted by the non-Western states to position their own values as superior. The result is a stalemate as each is ignorant of the possibility of change. Thus, this essay suggests a postcolonial feminist analysis to understand cultures as heterogenous historical products of socio-political relations and thus mouldable to allow advocation of human including women rights.

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