First, Hollenbach insists on a common language of human rights arrived at through practical reason, even though he knows how difficult it is to make this claim. His proposal is compelling because he begins by offering his experience of encountering African theorists’ concerns about universal human rights as well as support for rights talk among African activists. The former argued that liberal rights paradigms were at odds with African communitarian culture, while the latter contended that to protect Africans from oppression today, when people in power can employ cultural arguments to avoid addressing abuses. Seeing the difficulty, he nonetheless relies on the realities of oppression to insist on the need for rights.
Rights for Hollenbach are rooted in the reality of human persons who are marked by consciousness and self-transcendence. Human beings in themselves constitute an “ought” and practical reason can allow diverse people to affirm this and to see human rights as necessary for liberation. But which rights? The United Nations Declaration on Human Rights provides a reasonable list. Though even today there is not total agreement, Hollenbach follows Lisa Sowle Cahill in emphasizing agreement over divergence (Hollenbach 2024, 194). Practical reason has allowed diverse people to work (and argue) together to advance human rights. Though deeply aware of the complexity of the project, Hollenbach is not willing to let it go. Too much is at stake.
However, Hollenbach also gives due attention to cultural contexts in which the practices he contends violate human rights are accepted. For instance, in his discussion of female circumcision (or female genital mutilation), he shows a deep awareness of internal cultural debates. While sympathetic to the condemnation of the practice by groups like Amnesty International and philosophers like Martha Nussbaum, he nonetheless listens to African women who defend the practice and claim the rite can be a celebration of women’s dignity and the resulting scar can function as a sign of female identity and power (Hollenbach 2024, 188). While acknowledging the difficulty most outside the culture would have in accepting this view, he seems to agree with Schweder that “having true respect for human beings calls for having genuine respect for the way they have come to imagine human flourishing” (Hollenbach 2024, 189).
Still, significantly, Hollenbach argues that while such practices affirmed by participants may not call for coercive intervention, they nonetheless require substantial intervention via education, dialogue, and accompaniment of local leaders. While those who oppose the practice as at odds with human dignity ought not impose their views, they might still “work for cultural transformation alongside the women who are seeking change in African societies” (Hollenbach 2024, 188). In Hollenbach’s account, female circumcision is distinguished from rape as a weapon of war, which has no justification, and requires coercive intervention.
How might Hollenbach’s framework be used to address women’s issues today?
The move to tolerance of pluralism on some women’s issues is somewhat worrisome from a feminist perspective. Family is often a realm where diverse cultural practices are tolerated. This makes sense at some level because issues of sex, gender, and relationships are deeply personal and communal. In this realm, people are least likely to want outside interference. Yet feminists have long insisted that these spaces cannot be sealed off from critique. Traditional family practices and abuses (for example, women denied the right to education or work, physical discipline of children, incest, child sexual abuse, marital rape, abortion) have often been defended as matters of privacy or culture. Out of concern for the most vulnerable, feminists have insisted on questioning what goes on “behind closed doors,” knowing that the suffering of the most vulnerable is too often invisible and tolerated.
This willingness to challenge moral issues in the private realm remains crucial today. As Hollenbach notes, “African peoples deserve the respect of being treated as persons who are fully capable of evaluating their existing cultural practices” (Hollenbach 2024, 198). For them, as for any other peoples who question cultural norms, “the capacity to imagine that life can be different is a key element of the human capacity for self-transcendence and rationality” (Hollenbach 2024, 198). The key is to respect both freedom and self-transcendence by using non-coercive means.
The work of African women theologians underlines just how important it is to take up the non-coercive work to which Hollenbach points, as they have often pointed out that cultural practices—even those defended by male intellectuals and female practitioners—can be oppressive to women. In Léocadie Lushombo’s recent book, A Christian and African Ethic of Women’s Political Participation (2022), Lushombo weaves together wisdom from African Traditional Religion and Christian theology while employing a feminist critique of both traditions in order to provide a liberating ethic for African women. Though her main concern is women’s political agency, she notes that Denis Mukwege (the Congolese doctor and Nobel Peace Prize winner who directs the Panzi Hospital in Eastern Congo) identifies three forms of “Rape with Extreme Violence” or REV: gang rape, intentional sexually transmitted disease, and genital mutilation (Lushombo 2022, 53). Following this interpretation, female circumcision can be seen as sexual violence.
Lushombo herself understands the social prevalence of sexual violence as part of the “anthropological poverty” African women face, noting that “the more women are abused, the more they are anthropologically impoverished, and less they participate in society” (Lushombo 2022, 54). She holds that when women are “reduced to feeling less than human by the atrocities of slavery, colonization, or rape used as a weapon of war—or by any cultural tradition that programs her to believe she is merely a subordinate helper of a man-these cultures need to be transformed” (Lushombo 2022, 56). To be sure, African women are divided on the particular question of how female circumcision functions, but African feminist theologians view gendered cultural practices like this through a critical lens, seeing what others may miss, even as they continue to walk with women who think differently. A.E. Orobator offers a similar take on polygamy in his essay “Eating from Many Pots: Polygamy Reconsidered” in Concilium (2016/2, 27-35), presenting both a feminist critique and a dialogical response.
David Hollenbach gives us a great gift in his complex framework for human rights that is helpful for those working for women’s rights today. Without giving up on rights arrived at via practical reasons, he calls people to listen deeply to how others understand their lives and advocates for non-coercive, dialogical interventions in most cases. African feminist theologians might suggest more cultural critique and urgency is needed on issues affecting the lives of women. Regardless, being a part of the women’s rights movement today requires attention to the crucial work of encounter, accompaniment, and slow cultural change.
