Volume I, Dossier 1 (Fall 2004) • Contents

Human Rights, Democracy, and Islamic Law

Introduction to the Dossier
Walter D. MIGNOLO, Coordinator

Articles

The Hidden Logic of Modernity: Locke and the Inversion of Human Rights
Franz J. HINKELAMMERT

Hinkelammert, in his relentless critique of neoliberalism, argues that one of the fundamental pillars of neoliberal philosophy was John Locke’s inversion of human rights. An inversion, Hinkelammert argues, whose conclusion is to justify the violation of human rights in defense of human rights. His prime example is the War of Kosovo, as the article was written before 9/11. It is obvious, however, that Hinkelammert’s argument could be easily extended to include the war in Iraq.
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Securing the American Ethnoscape: Official Surveys and Literary Interventions
Michael J. SHAPIRO

Michael Shapiro takes on the limits of Thomas Jefferson’s concept and idea of democracy in the light of, and in the perspective from, the sector of the population that has either been marginalized or entirely left out because of the racial categorization of the modern/colonial world. Shapiro’s argument, written in the early years of the 21st century, takes a new and significant meaning after the elections of 2004 and the consequences of its outcome.
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The Dilemma of Islamic Rights Schemes
Ebrahim MOOSA

Ebrahim Moosa brings together concepts of democracy and human rights albeit not from the local histories of their conceptualization in eighteenth-century Europe (and in French, English, and German, going back to Greece and Rome) but from an-other language, Arabic, and an other mode of thought, Islam. The argument nicely complements the ones advanced by Hinkelammert and Shapiro as it points to similar dangers in the Islamic world, but also to possibilities beyond Western political theory, political economy, and ethics.
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Commentaries

Human Rights as a Contest of Meanings
Robin KIRK

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Rights between Cultures and Polities: Legal Comments on Non-legal Papers
Bartolomé CLAVERO

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