Teoría crítica y derechos humanos: hacia un concepto crítico de víctima

Abstract

This article analyzes the dominant concept of victim. This approach aims towards building a critical concept of the victim that solves the contemporary needs and challenges found in human rights, and, as a derivation, to resist, diminish and/or normalize violence present in societies contemporary. The article deploys the arguments about the plausibility of a critical concept of victim, as the basis for a renewed human rights discourse. With this, intend to move from a notion of victim whit restricted meaning to a real and multidimensional situation of complex subjects victimized by different kinds of violence, also the concept of victim maintains though the deconstruction of the elements of a political order, self-referencing and linked to the limited idea of the spectacle of an immolated suffering body. The text starts with an etymological tracing of the various meanings of the victim together with a revision of the legal definition of victim of it. It then focuses of the major epistemological obstacles present in the dominant concept of victim, namely: (a) the political character in the determination of the victim, (b) the self-designation of the victim and its credibility correlate, and (c) the ailing body of the victim as the space of contempt.