Sacrificial Logic and the Inversion of Human Rights in the Political and Theological Thought of Franz Hinkelammert

Abstract

This article analyzes why, for Franz Hinkelammert, social y political relations in neoliberal society are repressive and inhibit the human rights of citizens by not permitting free access to enjoying the rights to life in a political order that is democratically capable of guaranteeing them. Control and, at times, suppression of these rights generates a perverse effect, where such rights are “inverted” through a political rationale that declares them formally but does not comply with their application. That is, in the name of human rights, human rights are denied to those most neglected and excluded by neoliberal society. One lives in submission to that “inversion of human rights,” starting from a “sacrificial logic” that intends to constitute the acceptance of some de-humanizing human rights. The political, economic and theological criticism that Hinkelammert proposes is based on the recovery of that “repressed subject” that has the possibility of overcoming the neoliberal model of society through his/her liberating praxis.