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CHAPTER FIFTEEN Breaking Cycles of Inequality: Critical Theory, Human Rights, and Family In/justice Berta Esperanza Hernandez-Truyol People have the right to be equal whenever difference makes them inferior, but they also have the right to be different whenever equality jeopardizes their identity. -Boaventura De Sousa Santos For feminists to sign on to [a whole network ofliberal concepts-rights, interests, contracts, individualism, representative government, negative liberty] may be to obscure rather than to illuminate a vision of politics, citizenship, and "the good life." ... Feminist scholars have revealed the inegalitarianism behind the myth of equal opportunity. -Mary G. Dietz It has frequently been acknowledged by those concerned with real equality of opportunity that the family presents a problem.... Disparity [exists] within the family, ... its gender structure is itself a major obstacle to equality of opportunity .... So much of the social construction of gender takes place in the family. -Susan Moller akin THE 1997 CELEBRATION of the tenth anniversary of Critical Race Theory commemorated the birth of a movement that, at its core, is committed to humanitarian conceptions ofpersonhood.! These conceptions transcend the limitations of current equality doctrine.2 The human-rights norms that further these conceptions were first articulated comprehensively in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a revolutionary document that embraces a plethora ofindividual rights that are central to personhood-not only civil and political rights but also social, economic, cultural, and solidarity rights. This chapter posits that a co-celebration of the CRT enterprise on its tenth anniversary and the Universal Declaration on the fiftieth anniversary ofits adoption is an appropriate event to mark the commencement of work that aspires to break global and local cycles ofinequality.3 This work would seek both to "globalize a localism" and "localize a globalism ."4 By globalizing a localism, I mean a venture that takes the exciting, but to date domestic, critical theory movement global by using domestic critical theory to develop and transform the context, meaning, and application ofinternational human-rights norms. 346 BREAKING CYCLES OF INEQUALITY The "localizing a globalism" aspect of this proposal entails the simultaneous utilization oftheoretical and substantive dimensions of human-rights norms to develop and transform the context, meaning, and reach of domestic critical discourses. This chapter takes the first steps in these complementary directions by exploring the relationships of CRT to international law and, more specifically, to human-rights law. The basic goals of this project are to globalize critical theory and localize humanrights norms concerning personhood in order to redefine notions of participation so that all people, wherever located, can exercise rights of full citizenship. The globalization of domestic critical theory seeks to reconstruct human-rights norms to render them more inclusive. Simultaneously, localizing international human-rights norms and principles into domestic critical discourse may bring about a paradigm shift in which the United States' language of citizenship and equality comes to incorporate international human-rights notions ofpersonhood and human dignity. Beyond the State Because of their common aspirations for liberation and justice, human-rights and critical theories can provide opportunities for mutual enrichment. For instance, critical theoretical movements that address subaltern communities in the United States have flourished in the past fifteen years. These movements parallel significant human-rights developments regarding individual rights and, more recently, the rights of marginalized groups (indigenous /First Nations peoples, women, children ) and the rights of peripheral states in the worldwide sphere. Like international human-rights discourses, critical theoretical movements engage notions of dignity and rights in relation to the state, but they go beyond statism. Human-rights law is an important component of a project of liberation because in its short formal existence it has effectively reconstituted the doctrine of sovereignty, that formerly omnipotent power ofthe state to do as it wished with its subjects wherever they might be and even with anyone who found himselfor herselfwithin its territorial jurisdiction. Human-rights law is revolutionary from a statist perspective in that it renders individuals subjects, rather than just objects, of international law. Human-rights norms demand accountability for the state's treatment of all people within its jurisdiction -citizens and non-citizens alike. No one would any longer dispute, for example, that sovereignty cannot and will not shield a state from accountability for human-rights violations such as genocide, torture, or apartheid. Moreover, the concept ofaccountability may be extended to sectors of society, hitherto viewed as "private," that effectively regulate their members if these sectors erect barriers to personhood with respect to some oftheir less powerful...

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