Angel Castiñeira
Equality of Human Rights [ANGEL CASTIÑEIRA] This writing deals with the right of equality. After emphasising the unquestionable emancipating commitment of this right, considering that it is a way of overcoming the discrimination in an universalist perspective, the author alludes two periods, referring to the contents of equality. The first one, the liberal period, is based on a formal or abstract equality while the second, that can be called «socialist», is based on the research of a material and effective equality. The historical determination of the right of equality does not finish after this two periods, both framed in what the author calls «the politics of universalism», but deeply continues during the last decades of our century under the name of «politics of difference». This politics asks for a distinctive recognition of the unique identity of every individual, group or culture of each nation. Denying the evolution, just to maintain a concept of equality based on the politics of universalism, involves the practice of certain subtle forms of domination and equalisation.