"Human
Rights in Translation: Intercultural Pathways" conference at Saint Louis University's Center for Intercultural
Studies, St. Louis, March 31--April 1, 2016.
When
defining human rights, we often invoke certain beliefs--deemed to be
universal--on which such rights are based: dignity inherent to every person,
common humanity, and natural state of liberty. However, the norms and values of
many cultures are incommensurable, or even incompatible, with these
"universal" principles.
One
way out of this quandary, rooted in the concept of organic wholeness of
humanity, has been to call for a convergence of world cultures around the
universal idea of human rights, presumed to be shared by all people at a
"deeper" level. The problem with this view is that homogenizing world
cultures implies eradicating their diversity, in itself a denial of the right
to uphold one's culture. Another solution has been to acknowledge the cultural
differences in interpreting human rights, and to treat them as mere variations
of the basic, universal set of standards. This approach necessitates drawing a
line beyond which the universal would be invalidated by the local, a
problematic undertaking at best. Both methods tend to assume timeless
universality, and thus run the risk of ahistoricism.
The goal of
this conference is to encourage reflection on the intercultural translation of
human rights. Instead of using such
rights as yardsticks to measure diverse cultures on compliance with them, we
welcome papers that translate the differences
between cultures through the prism of human rights, illuminating
different cognitive contexts that produce different meanings of rights,
identifying spaces of intercultural crossing where differences can coexist, and
offering usable narratives and metaphors that
could serve as interfaces between distinct cultures. Ideally, these
translations should view human rights not as an integral and finite goal but as
a dynamic process of trying to achieve them.
Proposals
should include: a one-page abstract of the paper, with a title and name of the
author; the author's brief curriculum vitae; postal address; email address; and
phone number. Complete proposals should
be emailed as attachments in MS Word to: Mary Bokern at bokernmp@slu.edu with a
subject line "Human Rights in Translation"." The deadline for
submissions is December 1, 2015.
