In Our Time - Cultural Rights in the 20th Century

Episode Date: December 10, 1998

On the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Human Rights at the United Nations in New York, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the current status of that original declaration. Is it possible for any sort of rights to be ‘universal’? What are the implications of the ideas enshrined in that declaration - has the emphasis changed - and if so what are such rights? New thinking in this area has focused on ‘cultural rights’ but do these work alongside human rights, or do they supplant them? Has the advent of globalisation had an impact on human rights, and if so, how? At the end of the 20th century, can we look back to any progress in this area, and, if we look forward, do we see the oncoming train, or the light at the end of the human rights tunnel? With Professor Homi Bhabha, Professor in English Literature and Art, Chicago University and Visiting Professor of the Humanities, University College, London; Profesor John Gray, Professor of European Thought, London School of Economics in January 1998.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, today is the 50th anniversary of the signing of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights in New York, and we're going to attempt to discuss that in the context of globalisation,

cultural rights and rights and responsibilities. With me to do that is Professor Homi Baba, who currently holds the chair in English literature and art at Chicago University, as well as being visiting Professor of the Humanities at University College London. Last year, his book The Location of Culture, which addressed the question of ethnic minorities in the post-colonial world, was reissued. Professor John Gray is Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, and his latest book, extremely well received, is called False Dawn,

The Delusions of Global Capitalism. What shape is that universal declaration in 50 years on John Gray? Well, I think we have to remember it arose from what was the worst violation of human rights this century, namely the genocidal policies of the Nazi regime. It emerged from the Second World War. And in the 50 years since, it's really served as a standard by which governments and other organizations can be judged. And, of course, a lot of the time they're found want. But I think its significance is that it is a standard to which beleaguered individuals, communities, and even peoples can repair when they are oppressed.

Having said that, I think it's not without its own difficulties and problems. Not all of the rights which it embodies are in fact universally accepted or universally interpreted in the same ways. Can you give us some example? Well, what actually does definitely. democratic representation mean? What does freedom of the press mean? These are core rights. We all see their immense importance. But the variation in their meanings can't, I think, be written off just as a way in which backward regimes or backward cultures preserve their own backwardness. There's some genuine dispute and disagreement about what they mean in different circumstances. What's your take on this universal declaration? Do you think it's been a practicable vision and aspiration, or do you think it's been more violated against and accepted?

Well, I think it really is an aspirational document, and I think that that is what all human rights activists as well as human rights academics and lawyers acknowledge. It's aspirational. I suppose a blunt follow-up to my question, sorry, because just to refine it'll be. Has it stopped any? thing happening. Has it made the world a better place because it's there? I think it has made

the world a better place because it's there. I think there is a real problem with implementation, as John pointed out. And I think I agree with him that you cannot always blame that on people who are out of step with the document itself and the declaration itself. I think the problem really is that at this intersection where you have a convention or a declaration that is seem to be universal and international. And then you have national parties having to negotiate with it continually. You know, there is a wide open space of interpretation

and a wide open space of illusion and avoidance of it. So I think that it's great that it's there. It's a standard. It's a benchmark. It's a threshold. But we know that the implementation is very weak, quite often.

On the way to talking about cultural rights, which I know interests both of you enormously, is there such a thing? as a universal human right, given the differences and disparities between cultures, communities, nations, groups of people around the world? Well, there are, it seems to me, at least, universal human needs. I think that's very different, isn't it? It is different, but it's connected.

That's to say, I think we can identify, and people themselves would identify, at least certain evils, in the presence of which humans can't thrive. In other words, until these evils of starvation, poor medical care, tyrannous authority which can seize their liberties or their lives without recourse. Until these are abolished or greatly moderated, no human being can flourish. So a position which said there's no such thing as there are no universal values. Seems to me to be not humanly serious.

There are universal values because there are certain universal human experiences of being degraded, exploited, despised, persecuted on the negative side, and of being valued as a member of a community as having rich personal relationships and belonging to a political organization. On the other side, the difficulty comes when we move from the universal values which are, so to speak, embedded in what it means

for a human being to thrive or not to thrive and actual claims about the sort of political regime you need. And I think there certainly is a risk, at least I think there's a risk, in some Western or European or America, stances on these questions of identifying the universal conditions of human well-being with their own particular regimes. Can I just go back to the basic question with you, though, Professor Barber?

Do you think that it is possible to talk about universal rights in the sense of it really applying to everyone now? Or is it just a sort of canopy under which a certain number of people can shelter, but the wind still blows through and there are those left outside? I actually think that that is a very good description. I think that we cannot not, if we're producing such international instruments, we cannot not formulate them as universal rights. But in all the examples or instances John mentioned,

there are different cultures where a rich life, rich social lives, for instance, are amongst men and people are completely invisible, women are completely invisible, where a thriving family life consists of patriarchs. where a thriving society consists in order. And economic conditions are good, I think, of Singapore. So, you know, some people complain, but not that many. And so I think that it's very difficult to find on the ground

a universal law or a universal right, which looks like a universal in practice. I think there's a wide range of interpretations. But what you seem to me to be saying is crossing into the area of cultural rights. which is very interesting indeed. What you're saying, please, you'll correct me if I'm wrong, is that certain cultures say that women should not be seen at all

and not have any voice. For other cultures, women have an equal voice. Certain cultures say everyone must follow this religion. Other cultures say follow any religion you want or don't follow any religion if you wish to. Now, these are cultural differences. Is there a clash between cultural rights and human rights? What's the relationship there that you see?

Well, cultural rights are technically extensions of universal rights. What do they ensure? They, first of all, address minorities. Cultural rights are about minorities, and they're about protecting the ethnic, linguistic, religious, and cultural rights of minorities. The phrase is that minorities, wherever they are, should be able to enjoy their culture.

Now, having said that, I think the kind of conflict or contradiction between the universal and the particular immediately emerges. Because first of all, for human rights, you don't define the human. You have a right as a human. There's no definition of what it means to be human. However, as soon as you start talking about minorities, then you have to talk about history. You've got to talk about national histories.

You've got to talk about international histories, about groups of one kind or another legitimate or illegitimate migrants, immigrants, refugees. So immediately that notion of the, minority starts complicating the issue. Also, the notion of culture is unlike the notion of a universal. You have to say some things about culture. And cultural rights specify religion, language, right of association, and so on.

There is a sense in which it could be said that the universal human rights is wishful thinking, wishfully thinking there was a universe to which human rights can equally apply. And that's a very essential declaration to make, after the Second World War, after the trust of it. But it's never going to be any more than that. And what Homi's talking about, about cultural rights, are not only going to get in the way of it, they're going to defy it and redefine it all the time.

I mean, for instance, religious intolerance to me is religious rectitude for several other cultures. Well, without going quite that far, because I agree with pretty well everything Homi said so far, I think there are some real difficulties in the practice of cultural rights. One thing you've pointed out yourself just now, Melvin, which is that one cultural right or one interpretation of a cultural right

can clash radically with the same right, differently interpreted, or some other rights. So what one group or cultural community treats as an infringement of the dignity of their religion, say, doing things on a particular day, another group may insist upon as part of its cultural life, for example, its artistic life or its political life or its recreational life, indeed. And that's, so it abounds with conflicts. And I think I can see two other difficulties as well connected,

which is that nowadays most of us, and this is true all over the world, not just of Western societies, European societies, don't, of course, belong to single communities or single cultural groups. Most of us are hybrids. along to a number of different groups which make, and communities and cultures, which make different demands on us. And that's connected with an even deeper problem, which is perhaps so deep that it can't fully be solved, which is that which cultural grouping or community any of us belongs to is never wholly up to us. That's to say, it's always, to some extent, a matter

of ascription, a matter of how other people see us. And that can be really life and death. I mean, If you take a European example, the example of Bosnia, where I believe it's true that there was the highest intermarriage rate anywhere in the world between Muslims and Christians, despite that intermarriage and intermingling, the country has fallen apart into wars and ethnic cleansings, in which group others think you belong in may be literally a matter of life or death for you and your self-image, your view of yourself, as having, let's say, several identities belonging to several groups. having a plural identity can really count for absolutely nothing. So these aren't objections to cultural rights in my view because just as cultural rights conflict with each other, in my view, so do human rights conflict with human rights. I don't think there's anything particularly weak about cultural rights in that respect.

But they do show what deep moral and political conflicts they harbor. I think in that context one has to say that the definition of a minority in the discourses of cultural rights really is quite interesting. I've been doing some work on this. First of all, minorities are largely seen as national minorities, although there is a language which relates to minorities in a universal sense. As soon as that was formulated,

immediately various countries objected and said, we want minorities who see themselves as a kind of sustained, sustaining traditional group. We do not want minorities. to leaven the social field so we get new kinds of minorities and new kinds of multiple hybrid relations. Secondly, the issue was very much that the minority should be loyal. India, for instance, very much protestants. We want you to know it responded that the very nature of the minorities should include the notion of loyalty.

That's why naturalization, that you have to live in a place for a certain amount of time to be naturalized. is has written into it, if you read the human rights documents, has written into it this notion of loyalty that they want stable minorities, so that really assimilation, as we see it as a progressive thing, can also be a very restrictive thing. It seems to me the more both of you're talking, the idea of universal human rights

is rather like trying to catch a shark with a butterfly net. I mean, do you think that this is possible, or do you think this is pietistic? Well, I mean, it is aspirational. And I think like it emerges as a cutting issue often when there is a conflict. And I think that's one of the ways in which you've got to start thinking about culture in terms of human rights. I mean, on an everyday basis when things are going swimmingly, you know, universal rights are universal. And we bow to them as we bow to a number of other pietistic things in our lives,

which also direct us in different ways. I want to come into globalization of it, but perhaps a bridge to it is this. Is it not true that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights could be interpreted as a vision of the liberal enlightenment of the 18th century, turned into 20th century almost democratic dogma, that we think this is the best way, this shall be the way that everyone ought to live, and that it has become, what we're talking about,

is a dogma of a particular section, a dogma in which I happen to believe and be included, but of only a particular, a rather small section of the world at a particular and a particularly agonized time. What do you think of that, Hamie? Well, you know, I think that liberalism is a longer history than that.

I mean, coming from India, I am quite aware of how much Bentham's work, for instance, and it was influenced by the Indian experience, or Mills' work. I mean, I'm talking now about the great canonical figures of liberalism, and I think that liberalism has a long history and a very history and a history in the lives of other.

other cultures who may not be, you know, Western groups and people. So I do think that the aspirational aspect of cultural rights does actually ring true. For instance, in the Indian emergency, it was many of the laws under which a number of people who violated the restrictive orders of the emergency found protection were actually liberal laws that had been there since British times. I mean, this is not to validate colonialism. This is just to say that it's a much more complex interchange between indigenous cultures and liberal cultures.

So I do think that liberalism has a rich history elsewhere, and I think that what you recognize for yourself as an aspirational, beneficial idea is recognized in other places. I think the conflict happens when we do not realize that liberalism has its very specific commitments. And I think that that's what really needs to be thought about. For instance, John talked about hybrid subjects and cultural hybrid in a general sense. Lawyers who work on cultural rights suggest now that the most appropriate way of thinking of the subject that has a cultural right is a hybrid subject,

neither a group nor an individual. But if you read the vast amount of work on cultural rights, people always swing either on the side of the individual or the side of the group. Liberalism needs to find a new way of mediating, you know, finding a place in between the subject, the individual subject and the group right. Well, that leads directly to John Gray's view, as I understand it, you'd express it better yourself,

that there is something almost certainly dogmatic and almost authoritarian about the Western idea of the way we should organize our politics and indeed our life, being thought of and advance as the only true model. I think particularly in the context of the history of the last decade, in which human rights, even liberal human rights, have been identified with a particular mixture of economic and political systems.

That's to say the whole idea that what the entire world needs is what's called democratic capitalism, whatever that may be, seems to me to be an historically myopic and culturally imperialistic project. The real difficulty, which I think is as yet unsolved, is to try and take from the Western Enlightenment tradition in its many interactions, as Homey is pointed to with India and with China and with Japan and other so-called non-Western cultures, to try and take from those interactions some statement of the genuinely universal element. And I think that's extraordinarily difficult, and even if it can be done, I'm not sure that the way in which it's now being done really gets a bit. very far. Are lawyers the best people to be thinking about this? Is the model of courts?

International courts of human rights have a vital place. But can we really, do we really want to model the interactions of cultures with each other? The interactions of complex hybrid human subjects with each other on the basis of rights bearers?

Do we really want to put this right at the center of our thought, rather than having it, if you like, as a bare minimum? I'm a bit dubious about that. I don't know what home you feel. Well, I think this is very interesting because in fact,

if you think about cultural rights and how they're so difficult to implement, what they really are, and neither just rights nor needs, but obligations. And I think the language of obligation is very important. How you foster it in a society, clearly not

only through the courts, but through education, community theatre, arts, culture. I think arts and culture are very, very important in this area to explain and explore this complex hybrid way in which we live today. I think, you know, people find

literature or music, in fact, world music, transformative music, which are really mirrors to this experience. So I don't think courts are the only place. But we're talking about 50 years. I'd like to come to globalization in one second. We're talking about 50 years of human rights.

Has this declaration ever stopped any real politic? Not in my view. It's an after-the-fact recourse in the aftermath of often humanly disastrous real politic. It's a promise to do better next time. I'm sorry I did wrong. The real moving forces in the world

which commit atrocities have not been touched by it and will not be. And I think it is an aspiration, but we need to be realistic about the way states operate, but not only that, about what happens when states break down. Because when states break down, that's sometimes when some of the worst human human rights violations occur.

And also, when states need to break down, they can just hide things very well. I mean, policies of certain Western countries over the last 50 years, which have appeared to be couched, which have been couched in the grandest enlightenment and pre-enlightenment terms, their policies have often been disastrously barbarous.

Absolutely. But I do want to light a small lamp here amidst all this darkness, which I think is true if you look at the large picture. But I think rights for women. women and women's groups, all over the world, rights around questions of race post-Civil War. I think there have been substantial changes

in cultural rights in those fields. And I think that that's where it will happen in those more modest ways. There is a much greater awareness of gay rights, of access to work, access to enjoying one's culture, as the phrase has it. And I don't think we should we should just brush that off.

I think that's a very good point. I really do. And I think if I can draw a line under that and turn to globalization. Globalization is looked at as a sort of the whole planet is going to become more monstrous

or a better place. Now let's not say it's going to be something in between. Let's talk about globalization, John, which you've written about it a lot, and tell us what do you think its current dimension is

and what is its impact going to be? Well, it's best to start with what it isn't. People think of globalization in terms of homogenization, that everywhere in the world, the economy will become the same type of economy, culture will become the same type of culture, people will look at the same television programs, etc, etc. Now, there is a grain of truth of the surface level of images. There are certain brand images, certain Hollywood images that are universal. But the actual... There are certain American images which are universal to be specific. I would say that's exactly it. And in fact, often American images are represented

by Americans as being universal images, when they're very obviously, locally, and peculiarly American. What's really happening, I think, with globalization is that as the world is becoming more deeply interconnected, economically, technologically and culturally, so at the same time, these interconnections are causing, sometimes as a backlash, but sometimes in just the way they work,

they're leading to a more vivid assertion of cultural differences. Let me give one example. When a people or a cultural or community is geographically scattered throughout the world because it's been oppressed or had to be. come, go into a diaspora like the Kurds and like several other peoples, the fact that they can communicate easily with each other, not only on the internet, but can also have a satellite channel, as Asians do throughout Western Europe now,

means that they can actually affirm their culture, and if they wish to do so, resist the pressures to assimilate in the particular societies in which they live more easily than before. So, in fact, globalization isn't working across the board to produce sameness, It's working at the very same time to produce deeper differences. Do you think, I mean, to encourage the candle that you lit a few minutes ago, do you think that there's a sense of which globalization and the increase of technology, access and so on, is something which will eventually work very fiercely against the secrecy of authoritarianism?

I don't think that that's so. I think surveillance avails itself of exactly those technologies too. I think, however, what it does achieve, and again to sort of just blow on the candle and give it a little oxygen, is that it does make you think of cultures internationally as in a process of transition and translation. I mean, I think it's largely true to say

that there is kind of American universal imperial globalism about and around in a number of images. But I think one has to ask the question from the other side, quite apart from the huge financial investment in these matters, why do Indians, why do Koreans, why do Japanese, why do Russians, you know, cleave to some of these things? It's not just that they have no choice or that it's, it's also that in their own societies, you know,

there have been various structural issues which have not enabled certain kinds of other choices to be made. So I think that it's fine to see it from the American Imperium end, but I think one has to look at the local cultures and also to see something much more interesting, which is that it's not simply sameness and difference, which is at issue here, but the two things peculiarly yoked together.

When I'm at home in Bombay, and I see MTV in its particular Indian hybrid variation and what it means for the youth culture in India, it's very different from what it means for the youth culture in the United States. For instance, trends of violence. the family is just a much more important thing in the music, in the MTV style music pop rock culture in India. A certain notion of deference to authority creeps in there too.

Very different from what you see in MTV elsewhere. So I think the cultures are becoming more alike and different at the same time. There's something less about the deepening of differences than the dissemination of differences. I think that's a very important point. It links on to your idea of deal. localisation, but could I bring this to some sort of conclusion, John, by saying, could one put forward, perhaps rather rashly, but nevertheless, could one put forward a contradiction between the claims of universality, which seem to me from what you two have been saying, almost

get in the way of the claims of local culturalism, are we doing ourselves no good at all by going around saying there's universal this and universal that? When the fact is, as you say, and I totally agree with you, one of your books, that we'll have to devise. institutions in which communities and cultural traditions are given recognition and shelter, even though they're totally different from us, they're not like us, they're not liberal, they're what we don't like, but they don't like us either. But the only way forward is to recognize each other. And this idea of there is a universal, in its aspirational way, it's aspirational way,

it's aspirational authoritarian. I think there's something very important in that, which is that if we operate with the assumption that at some future point in the history of the human species, there will be a universal consensus on, in quotes, our values. Then what we're doing is we're evading the necessity of working out some kind of modest vivendi with cultures and communities that don't accept our values. And I think it will always be true that there are these deep, radical, painful, sometimes even tragic differences in the values of different cultures and different communities.

And just one point, when globalization is associated with instability, as it is at the moment in the world, nothing to do with human rights, mainly economic instability, then cultural differences can come out in very atavistic and dark forms. I mean, the revival of the worst types of ethnic cleansing,

the worst types of political anti-Semitism in Russia, for example, show an almost 30s-like regression to stereotyping and cultural scapegoating in times of hardship. So I don't want to snuff the candle of human rights out by any means, but let's recognize

that it's in a bit of a gale at the moment, moment, really because, globally speaking, there's a tremendous amount of sheer economic and everyday instability in people's lives, which can evoke the classical human responses of scapegoating and persecution. Final word from Hamibaba. Well, I think I would want to suggest that really a universal is interesting and important to the extent to which it is continually in translation that it fails strategically, but it is there because it enables a certain kind of.

of conversation, which we wouldn't have had today had we not started from that point. I think the problem with it has been that the notion of morality has always been the notion of the equal, this culture equal to that, this right equal to that. I think we need to think much more, as John said, about negotiation, but about mutuality and rather than equality. And I think that's where we might be able to work out something more dialectic between universalism and its opposites. Well, it's a good season to express that sentiment.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Herma Barber, and John Gray. Next week, I'll be joined by Harry Evans and John Lloyd, and we will be discussing America in the 20th century. Thank you for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programs about history, science and philosophy

at BBC.com.com.uk forward slash radio 4.