[afro-nets] Food for a dead-end thought

[Claudio Schuftan <claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn>]

Food for a dead-end thought
---------------------------

MORE ON THE POLITICS OF HUMAN RIGHTS


Human Rights Reader 66

A DEAD-END OPTION (Part 12 of 16)

118. A word of caution is called for at this point on the issue
of what I call "pseudo-basic intervention techniques or ap-
proaches" that many of us have advocated-for at one time or an-
other. These attempts at acting in the context of basic causes
depart from a flawed analysis of reality and have consequently
mostly failed (and are doomed to continue to fail). Among the
most prominent of these are "Multidisciplinary Approaches" to
solve the problems of the many different human rights (HR) vio-
lations. There is nothing terribly wrong with this concept, ex-
cept that it just gratuitously assumes that looking at the prob-
lem of these violations from a 'wider' multi-professional per-
spective is going to automatically lead us to the better, more
rational and egalitarian solutions.

119. The call for multidisciplinarity, for sharing paradigms
amongst the different scientific disciplines where practitioners
come from, falls under the same optic of my criticism all along.
Just by putting together brains "sowed" differently, without
considering where they are coming from ideologically, is not go-
ing to, all of a sudden, make a significant difference in the
outcome and the options chosen. They may well stay in the domain
of tackling immediate causes, only now everybody involved con-
tributing a small monodisciplinary window to the package of
(still pat) solutions proposed.

120. Multidisciplinary approaches --as opposed to a dialectical
approach-- simply most often take the social and political con-
text (i.e., the individual and institutional power relations) as
given; they therefore end up being conservative in their recom-
mendations.

121. What this boils down to is the need to reach the point
where we really get politically right in our search for solu-
tions. But, for now, doing so seems to be like the old philoso-
phical riddle of the turtle trying to finish the race: At every
instance, it has first to go half the remaining distance to the
end-line before being able to actually get there; therefore, it
never arrives.

We seem to get as far as a locked gate. The conservative ele-
ments of our ideology prevent us from trespassing or unlocking
the gate; of reaching the end-line of abolishing HR violations.

122. Nothing short of the equivalent to a second adolescent cri-
sis will allow us to take that step. Need I say it again? The
problem is a political one, and we are not living up to it.

--
Claudio Schuftan
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
mailto:claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn