‘Postcolonial’ critics like to emphasise the insensitivity of liberalism to its own limitation: in defending human rights, it tends to impose its own version of them onto others. However, the self-reflexive sensitivity to one’s own limitation can only emerge against the background of the notions of autonomy and rationality promoted by liberalism. One can, of course, argue that, in a way, the Western situation is even worse because in it oppression itself is obliterated and masked as free choice. (What are you complaining for? YOU chose to do this.) Our freedom of choice effectively often functions as a mere formal gesture of consent to our own oppression and exploitation. However, Hegel’s lesson that form matters is important here: form has an autonomy and efficiency of its own. So when we compare a Third World woman, forced to undergo clitoridectomy or promised in marriage as a small child, with the First World woman ‘free to choose’ painful cosmetic surgery, the form of freedom matters – it opens up a space for critical reflection.