Equaliberty and Human Rights: a Critical Endeavour

Abstract

This study aims to bring together the destructive and constructive dimension of the critical approach vis-à-vis human rights. As such it aims on one hand to reformulate aspects of the critique of the critical legal and political scholarship, whilst attempting to not give up the language of rights entirely to mainstream liberal discourse. What this paper argues is that the language or rights encompasses the regulatory idea of social transformation against structures of domination that should be in the forefront of any critical legal and political debate. Alongside the reformulation of some aspects of the ‘destructive’ dimension of critical thought, this study aims to bring forward a proposition that based on the original problematization of French philosopher Étienne Balibar attempts to offer an alternative view that goes past the current fragmentation of human rights and most importantly the distinction between freedom and equality. The concept of equaliberty rejects the separation between freedom and equality, the separation between the legal and the real, as well as the confusion between the two forms of property and the two forms of solidarity. The present study’s constructive dimension lies with the examination of the implications for law and politics that the introduction of the concept of equaliberty can bring about for the way we discuss human rights today.