Óscar Romero and the Politics of Sainthood

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-291
Author(s):  
Manuel A. Vasquez ◽  
Anna L. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil War ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
The Other ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Holy See ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Face ◽  
Crisis Of Modernity ◽  
The One

In this article, we explore the debates surrounding the proposed canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero, an outspoken defender of human rights and the poor during the civil war in El Salvador, who was assassinated in March 1980 by paramilitary death squads while saying Mass. More specifically, we examine the tension between, on the one hand, local and popular understandings of Romero’s life and legacy and, on the other hand, transnational and institutional interpretations. We argue that the reluctance of the Vatican to advance Romero’s canonization process has to do with the need to domesticate and “privatize” his image. This depoliticization of Romero’s work and teachings is a part of a larger agenda of neo-Romanization, an attempt by the Holy See to redeploy a post-colonial and transnational Catholic regime in the face of the crisis of modernity and the advent of postmodern relativism. This redeployment is based on the control of local religious expressions, particularly those that advocate for a more participatory church, which have proliferated with contemporary globalization

The Catholic Church, “Politics,” and Violence: The Colombian Case

1977 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel H. Levine ◽  
Alexander W. Wilde
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Social Presence ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The Other ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

The issue of politics and the Catholic Church in Latin America, relegated until recently to nineteenth-century historians, is very much alive today. On the one hand, the church as an institution is enmeshed in public controversy over human rights with repressive regimes from Paraguay to Panama, from Brazil to Chile. When it serves as a shelter for political and social dissent, it is accused by secular authorities of engaging in a “new clericalism.” On the other hand, it has been assailed by critics within for being wed to existing political powers. These radical clergy and lay people believe that the church's social presence is inevitably political, but want to change its alliances to benefit the poor and dispossessed. Furthermore, they believe that the existing order in given situations is aform of “institutionalized violence” against which the Christian response must be “counterviolence.” Such attacks from right and left occur, paradoxically, just at a time when the Latin American church has turned with unprecedented resolve to fundamental pastoral tasks. Politics has thus become a problem just as the hierarchy can claim, with considerable justification, to have eschewedthe practice of partisanship and the pursuit of power.

scholarly journals Human Rights Education: Form, Content and Controversy

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Orend
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
North America ◽  
World Wide ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Rights Education ◽  
The Core ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
The Face ◽  
The One

Human rights education, in North America, is still developing and perhaps only in its adolescence. This is, on the one hand, quite shocking, given the foundational role such rights (supposedly) play in the core societal structures of the United States and Canada. On the other hand, the human rights movement has exploded world-wide since 1945 – rendering it in many ways a new normative world – and it is hard to think of other countries obviously doing better. To enable readers to draw comparative and intrinsic lessons, this paper examines both the form and content of human rights education in North America. The form section focuses on the modalities and availabilities of such education. The content section, by contrast, focuses on some of the "hot topics" and prominent dilemmas in contemporary North American human rights education. Emphasis is there placed on taking a principled, consistent stand in light of these latest controversies and challenges. In other words, and owing to the author’s nature as a philosopher, the content section will feature arguments highlighting the strength of a certain way of viewing and teaching human rights in the face of doubts about them and challenges to them.

3. Critiques

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Bénédicte Dembour
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Other ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
World War ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
The One ◽  
Second World

This chapter reviews six critiques of human rights, deriving from realist, utilitarian, Marxist, particularist (cultural relativist), feminist, and post-colonial theoretical perspectives. The first three critiques emerged in reaction to the (successive) French Declarations of the Rights of Man of the late eighteenth century; the last three were fully developed in reaction to the International Bill of Rights enacted after the Second World War. Each of these critiques reveals a gap between what human rights claim to be or achieve, on the one hand, and what human rights are or do in practice, on the other.

The Hierophanic Facets of the Seraphic Hymns

Trictrac ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petru Adrian Danciu
Keyword(s):  
Mutual Recognition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Material World ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The People ◽  
Musical History ◽  
The Face ◽  
The One

Starting from the cry of the seraphim in Isaiahʹ s prophecy, this article aims to follow the rhythm of the sacred harmony, transcending the symbols of the angelic world and of the divine names, to get to the face to face meeting between man and God, just as the seraphim, reflecting their existence, stand face to face. The finality of the sacred harmony is that, during the search for God inside the human being, He reveals Himself, which is the reason for the affirmation of “I Am that I Am.” Through its hypnotic cyclicality, the profane temporality has its own musicality. Its purpose is to incubate the unsuspected potencies of the beings “caught” in the material world. Due to the fact that it belongs to the aeonic time, the divine music will exceed in harmony the mechanical musicality of profane time, dilating and temporarily cancelling it. Isaiah is witness to such revelation offering access to the heavenly concert. He is witness to divine harmonies produced by two divine singers, whose musical history is presented in our article. The seraphim accompanied the chosen people after their exodus from Egypt. The cultic use of the trumpet is related to the characteristics and behaviour of the seraphim. The seraphic music does not belong to the Creator, but its lyrics speak about the presence of the Creator in two realities, a spiritual and a material one. Only the transcendence of the divine names that are sung/cried affirms a unique reality: God. The chant-cry is a divine invocation with a double aim. On the one hand, the angels and the people affirm God’s presence and call His name and, on the other, the Creator affirms His presence through the angels or in man, the one who is His image and His likeness. The divine music does not only create, it is also a means of communion, implementing the relation of man to God and, thus, God’s connection with man. It is a relation in which both filiation and paternity disappear inside the harmony of the mutual recognition produced by music, a reality much older than Adam’s language.

Challenging Gender Hierarchies in Narratives of the Nation: Representations of Women in Zintgraff and the Battle of Mankon and Hard Choice

Imbizo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Epongse Nkealah ◽  
Olutoba Gboyega Oluwasuji
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Gender Differentiation ◽  
Hard Choice ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Gender Hierarchies ◽  
The Face ◽  
The One ◽  
Representations Of Women ◽  
Do So

Ideas of nationalisms as masculine projects dominate literary texts by African male writers. The texts mirror the ways in which gender differentiation sanctions nationalist discourses and in turn how nationalist discourses reinforce gender hierarchies. This article draws on theoretical insights from the work of Anne McClintock and Elleke Boehmer to analyse two plays: Zintgraff and the Battle of Mankon by Bole Butake and Gilbert Doho and Hard Choice by Sunnie Ododo. The article argues that women are represented in these two plays as having an ambiguous relationship to nationalism. On the one hand, women are seen actively changing the face of politics in their societies, but on the other hand, the means by which they do so reduces them to stereotypes of their gender.

Ummah’s Rights or Human Rights? Universalism, Individualism, and Islamic Ethics in the Twenty-first Century

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Luisa Frick
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Code ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Islamic Ethics ◽  
Specific Content ◽  
Societal Needs ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual

Against the background of the trend of Islamizing human rights on the one hand, as well as increasing skepticism about the compatibility of Islam and human rights on the other, I intend to analyze the potential of Islamic ethics to meet the requirements for vitalizing the idea of human rights. I will argue that the compatibility of Islam and human rights cannot be determined merely on the basis of comparing the specific content of the Islamic moral code(s) with the rights stipulated in the International Bill of Rights, but by scanning (different conceptions of) Islamic ethics for the two indispensable formal prerequisites of any human rights conception: the principle of universalism (i.e., normative equality) and individualism (i.e., the individual enjoyment of rights). In contrast to many contemporary (political) attempts to reconcile Islam and human rights due to urgent (global) societal needs, this contribution is solely committed to philosophical reasoning. Its guiding questions are “What are the conditions for deriving both universalism and individualism from Islamic ethics?” and “What axiological axioms have to be faded out or reorganized hierarchically in return?”

To Discriminate in Order to Fight Discrimination

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dolores Morondo Taramundi
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
The Other ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
European Court ◽  
Main Technique ◽  
Antidiscrimination Law ◽  
The One ◽  
Paradoxical Results ◽  
Conflicts Of Rights

This chapter analyses arguments regarding conflicts of rights in the field of antidiscrimination law, which is a troublesome and less studied area of the growing literature on conflicts of rights. Through discussion of Ladele and McFarlane v. The United Kingdom, a case before the European Court of Human Rights, the chapter examines how the construction of this kind of controversy in terms of ‘competing rights’ or ‘conflicts of rights’ seems to produce paradoxical results. Assessment of these apparent difficulties leads the discussion in two different directions. On the one hand, some troubles come to light regarding the use of the conflict of rights frame itself in the field of antidiscrimination law, particularly in relation to the main technique (‘balancing of rights’) to solve them. On the other hand, some serious consequences of the conflict of rights frame on the development of the antidiscrimination theory of the ECtHR are unearthed.

Timber

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Dispute Resolution ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Forestry Sector ◽  
The Government ◽  
The One ◽  
Timber Market

During the civil war, Liberia’s forestry sector rose to prominence as Charles Taylor traded timber for arms. When the war ended, the UN’s timber sanctions remained in effect, reinforced by the Forestry Development Authority’s (FDA) domestic ban on logging. As Liberians waited for UN timber sanctions to be lifted, a burgeoning domestic timber market developed. This demand was met by artisanal loggers, more commonly referred to as pit sawyers. Out of this illicit economy emerged the Nezoun Group to provide local dispute resolution between the FDA’s tax collectors and ex-combatant pit sawyers. The Nezoun Group posed a dilemma for the government. On the one hand, the regulatory efforts of the Nezoun Group helped the FDA to tax an activity that it had banned. On the other hand, the state’s inability to contain the operations of the Nezoun Group—in open contravention of Liberian laws—highlighted the government’s capacity problems.

Empire after Liberalism: The Transatlantic Right and Identitarian War

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER VIALS
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
American Studies ◽  
White Male ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Graphic Novel ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Far Right ◽  
The One

American studies has developed excellent critiques of post-1945 imperial modes that are grounded in human rights and Enlightenment liberalism. But to fully gauge US violence in the twenty-first century, we also need to more closely consider antiliberal cultural logics. This essay traces an emergent mode of white nationalist militarism that it calls Identitarian war. It consists, on the one hand, of a formal ideology informed by Identitarian ethno-pluralism and Carl Schmitt, and, on the other, an openly violent white male “structure of feeling” embodied by the film and graphic novel 300, a key source text for the transatlantic far right.

scholarly journals The Law Challenged and the Critique of Identity with Emmanuel Levinas

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Petrilli
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Object Relation ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Orientation ◽  
New Humanism ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject

AbstractIdentity as traditionally conceived in mainstream Western thought is focused on theory, representation, knowledge, subjectivity and is centrally important in the works of Emmanuel Levinas. His critique of Western culture and corresponding notion of identity at its foundations typically raises the question of the other. Alterity in Levinas indicates existence of something on its own account, in itself independently of the subject’s will or consciousness. The objectivity of alterity tells of the impossible evasion of signs from their destiny, which is the other. The implications involved in reading the signs of the other have contributed to reorienting semiotics in the direction of semioethics. In Levinas, the I-other relation is not reducible to abstract cognitive terms, to intellectual synthesis, to the subject-object relation, but rather tells of involvement among singularities whose distinctive feature is alterity, absolute alterity. Humanism of the other is a pivotal concept in Levinas overturning the sense of Western reason. It asserts human duties over human rights. Humanism of alterity privileges encounter with the other, responsibility for the other, over tendencies of the centripetal and egocentric orders that instead exclude the other. Responsibility allows for neither rest nor peace. The “properly human” is given in the capacity for absolute otherness, unlimited responsibility, dialogical intercorporeity among differences non-indifferent to each other, it tells of the condition of vulnerability before the other, exposition to the other. The State and its laws limit responsibility for the other. Levinas signals an essential contradiction between the primordial ethical orientation and the legal order. Justice involves comparing incomparables, comparison among singularities outside identity. Consequently, justice places limitations on responsibility, on unlimited responsibility which at the same time it presupposes as its very condition of possibility. The present essay is structured around the following themes: (1) Premiss; (2) Justice, uniqueness, and love; (3) Sign and language; (4) Dialogue and alterity; (5) Semiotic materiality; (6) Globalization and the trap of identity; (7) Human rights and rights of the other: for a new humanism; (8) Ethics; (9) The World; (10) Outside the subject; (11) Responsibility and Substitution; (12) The face; (13) Fear of the other; (14) Alterity and justice; (15) Justice and proximity; (16) Literary writing; (17) Unjust justice; (18) Caring for the other.

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