Inhuman Conditions: On Human Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Inhuman Conditions: On Human Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights Claudia Sadowski-Smith (bio) Inhuman Conditions: On Human Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights. By Pheng Cheah. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. 321 pp. $26.50. Inhuman Conditions makes an invaluable contribution to the growing literature on globalization and human rights. The book stands out for its cogent arguments about the relevance of hitherto marginalized humanities approaches to conceptualizations of the contemporary moment as one dominated by globalization. Cheah characterizes globalization as a process that has deepened inequities on an international scale, particularly between what the author calls the North Atlantic Space and the Postcolonial South. In Inhuman Conditions, Cheah argues for the centrality of humanities approaches to ongoing attempts to re-figure the global as human, such as those manifested in the increasingly popular discourses of cosmopolitanism and human rights. Cosmopolitanism celebrates the emergence of multilateral institutions, international law, and the surge of solidarities fueled by crossborder migration from the South to the North. Human rights discourses, which endorse self-interested actions as long as they do not deprive others of the same freedoms, also aim to become global. Both narratives highlight the obsolescence of the nation-state and of nationalism as a mode of collective consciousness, while also relying on the linkage of humanity to yet-to-be completed projects of dignity and freedom. Cheah's central [End Page 203] argument in Inhuman Conditions is that conditions of globalization may force us to rethink what it means to be human by severing the naturalized connections between concepts of humanity and these idealized notions. The book's opening chapters examine various theories of cosmopolitanism and human rights, while later portions engage expressions of globalization in Asia. The first three chapters highlight antecedents of today's cosmopolitanism that emerged in opposition to regional particularisms, examine Jürgen Habermas's extensive work on a cosmopolitanism grounded in the moral universalism of human rights, and explore cultural studies' celebration of a hybrid cosmopolitanism that results from crossborder migration and diasporic mobility. Cheah criticizes the contemporary discourses of new cosmopolitanism and hybridity for neglecting to explore the structural inequities of globalization. Discourses of hybridity tend to reduce the complexity of contemporary globalization to crossborder labor migration, while glossing over the exploitation of those who do not or cannot migrate. The result is a conceptualization of a world that has "no postcolonials left in decolonized space" (92). And Habermas's new cosmopolitanism over-idealizes the political virtues of the First World state, which depends on a high degree of economic development that is non-existent in Third World nations. These two narratives also overlook the potential role of the nation-state as an autonomous agent of economic accumulation and forget that the uneven character of globalization hampers the potential formation of mass-based global solidarities. With chapter four Cheah moves from cultural criticism to case studies of globalization in Asia. The chapter criticizes the identification of a diasporic "Chineseness" with an alternative, specifically Confucian model of modernity that may explain the Asian economic miracle. Cheah shows that the very emergence of a diasporic Chinese consciousness dates back to the arrival of European naval powers in Southeast Asia. As Chinese merchants traveling in Southeast Asia were given more permanent roles as traders and artisans, they no longer assimilated but instead formed mestizo Chinese communities that were continually replenished with new immigrants. The survival of "Chinese" identities in Southeast Asia was also facilitated by state disciplinary techniques that created segregated groups held together only by market forces. Chapter five aims to separate discourses of human rights from their supposed absolute moral force. Through engagement with Kantian theories, Cheah argues that human rights discourses express a political rather than an absolute morality, and are today contaminated by the realities of global inequity. Just as in free trade negotiations commercial interests can often override human [End Page 204] rights discourses, for example, NGOs and their discourses on human rights are susceptible to co-optation by states on both sides of the North–South divide. Chapter six examines a specific instance of human rights violations today—the situation of Filipina domestic workers in Singaporean middle-class homes. In contrast to...