Resumen

PALACIO, Marta. The Rights of the Faces: Human Rights, Liberalism and Exclusion. Revista de Ciencias Sociales [online]. 2006, vol.12, n.2, pp.379-389. ISSN 1315-9518.

This research questions the basis of liberalism, reflected on as a criticism based on the concepts of liberty and the western philosophy of totality, and articulated through liberal political and economic theories, which concludes with the identification of what is human based on what is legal; to be human is to be a citizen recognized by a state, and it is the law that stipulates what is human. As a consequence of this recent and final process of capitalism mixed with political liberalism, the rights of individuals are exposed to a logic of global power, vulnerable to juridic processes of exclusion undertaken by the demarcation between those who are “worthy of citizenship” and those who are not. Migrants, people without documentation, the poor, the dis-occupied, women, and children involved in slave and sexual traffic, are all faces of people from whom the title of “citizen” has been removed, and likewise the legal validity of their human rights. To assume these proposals imlies epistemalogically redefining our Latin American context, and to take on the ethical-political management of our social life based on considerations towards the “other” face as a utopical regulatory norm for social well-being and the distribution of goods and services.

Palabras clave : Derechos humanos; liberalismo; ciudadanía; exclusión; subjetividad ética; Human rights; liberalism; citizenship; exclusion; ethical subjectivity.