Reviews

Inhuman Conditions: On Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights by Pheng Cheah

aadhikari's review against another edition

5.0

The basic idea in this book is simple: philosophical conceptions that prioritize cosmopolitanism and universal human rights ignore the ways in which such discourses are operationalized within highly unequal conditions created by capitalism. As such, universalizing discourses of this kind often serve to camouflage the hegemony of the powerful (or North) over the weak (the South). Through the course of his argument Pheng Cheah demolishes the arguments of proponents of universal deliberative democracy such as Habermas, as well as superficial post-colonial scholars who seek liberation in "hybridity" such as Homi Bhabha. Pheng Cheah argues that the rights of most people in the weaker areas of the world can only be secured as part of national structures. It is refreshing to read a scholar who rehabilitates the idea of nationalism as liberatory, especially since it is currently fashionable to think that all nationalisms are necessarily oppressive.