I want to argue here that we need a way of rethinking the politics of recognition in a way that can help to solve, or at least mitigate, the problems of displacement and reification. This means conceptualizing struggles for recognition so that they can be integrated with struggles for redistribution, rather than displacing and undermining them. It also means developing an account of recognition that can accommodate the full complexity of social identities, instead of one that promotes reification and separatism. Here, I propose such a rethinking of recognition.
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Recent political developments have led to the change of the nature of political struggles, from those demanding redistribution to those which aim for recognition.
Problem of displacement - questions of recog. have not supplemented redistributive strugges, but have rather replaced them.
Problem of reification - questions of recogn. have not led to promote respectful interaction, but rather have encouraged separatism, intolerance, authoritarianism, and the dramatic simplication and reificaiton of group identities.
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Identity model
>Hegel
- identity constructed dialogically, through process of mutual recognition
- recognition designates an ideal reciprocal relation between subjects
- each sees the other as equal and separate
- constitutive for subjectivity - requires recognition by and of another subject
- necessary for a sense of self - without which one suffers a distortion of one's relation to one's self
- Proponents of identity model of recognition
- To belong to devalued group is to be misrecognized by dom. culture
- Encounters with stigmatized gaze of culturally dom. other - internalize negative self-images, prevented from dev. healthy identity of their own
- Aim is for members to reject such images and join collectively to produce self-affirming culture of their own.
BUT! such equations of pol. of recogn. with id pol. encourages the reification of group identities
Displacing Redistribution
- Identity model posits misrecognition as free-floating harm
- Currents
c1. Ignore dist., focus on culture exclusively
c2. Appreciate seriousness of maldist.
c.1
- roots of injustice located in demeaning representations, not socially grounded
- free-floating discourses, not inst.zed significations and norms
- obsfuscate connections - strip them of social-structural underpinnings, equate it with distorted identity
c.2
- appreciates link between cultural and economic injustice, but regards the latter as being det. by the former
- maldistribution is a secondary effect of cultural hierarchies
class oppression is the result of classism
- merely the reverse of vulgar economism
- if 'purely culture' society existed - eco. inequality would be seamlessly fused with cultural hierarchy
- resolution of the latter would resolve the former
- in market based society - eco. mechanisms of dist. partially decoupled from cultural patterns of value and prestige
- neither wholly constrained by culture not subordinated to it
Reification of Identity
- Stressing need to elaborate, display authentic, self-affirming, self-generated collective identity
- places moral pressure on ind. members to conform to given group culture
- dissidence and experimentation are discouraged
- Result is simplified group-identity, denies complexity of lives, multiplicity of identifications, cross-pulls
- Serves as vehicle for misrecognition - obscures the politics of cultural identification, struggles within group for the authority to represent it
- Denies own Hegelian premises
- Implicitly denies dialogical identity formation, valorizes monologism
- Makes cultural identity auto-generated, auto-description
- Denies others are justified in viewing subjects from outside, dissenting form self-interpretation
Misrecognition as Status Subordination
Recognition as a question of social status
- what is lacking recog. is not specific group identity - the status of ind. group members as full partners in social interaction
- not misrecognition of identity leading to its deformation - but social subordination is the issue
- overcome by establishing misrecognized party as full member of society
Examination of inst. patterns of cultural value
- effects on the relative standing of social actors
- when such patterns constitute actors as peers - reciprocal recognition and status equality
- when such patterns constitute actors as inferior, excluded, wholly other, simply invisible - misrecognition and status subordination
Misrecognition
- not psychic deformation, free-standing cultural harm
- institutionalized relation of public subordination
- not simply looked down upon but denied status of full partner in social interaction
- not through feel floating representations - but rather thru institutionalized patterns
- the workings of social institutions that regulate interaction according to party-impeding cultural norms
ex. marriage laws - exclude same-sex partnerships are illegitimate, perverse
social-welfare policies - stigmatize single motehrs as sexually irresponsible scroungers
policing practices - associate certain races with criminality
- interactions are regulated by patterns that constitute certain categories are normative and other as deficient, inferior
In complex, differentiated societies
- values are institutionalized in a plurality of sites, in qualitatively different modes
- core of injustice remains the same - some social actors are consituted as less than full members
- overcoming subordination - calls for the deinstitutionalization of patterns of cultural value which impede parity, replace them with those that foster it
Ex. institutionalization of heterosexism
- root of injustice in marriage law which institutes these values
- redress requires deinstitutionalizationg
- "one way would be to grant the same recognition to gay and lesbian unions as heterosexual unions currently enjoy"
- either by decoupling marriage with entitlements, or by expanding marriage
- in principle, both would promote sexual parity and redress this instance of misrecognition
Enabling Parity
- may require unburdening subordinated parties with excessive distinctness, or acknowledging unaccounted for distinctiveness
- or focus being shifted to dominant groups, which have falsely been parading as universal
- desconstruct the terms in which attributed differences are elaborated
- doesn't accord a priori privilege to approaches which valorize group specificity
- "allows in principle for what we might call universalist recognition, and deconstructive recognition, as well as for the affirmative recognition of difference"
Addressing Maldistribution
Equal participation is also impeded when some actors lack the necessary resources to interact with others as peers
- Two dimensions of social justice - recognition and distribution (at least) - refer to distinct aspect of the social order
- Recognition - refers to the constitution by socially entrenched patterns of cultural value of defined categories of social actors
- Distribution - refers to the economic structure of society - constitution by property regimes, labor markets, of economically defined categories of actors, classes, distinguished by differential endowment of resources
Maldistribution - economic structure of society deprives actors of the resources needed for full participation
- Subordination is ecomic, rather than based on status and is rooted in the structural features of the economic system
Larger Social Frame
- Encompasses both social and economic forms of social ordering
- Two forms are interimbricated in all societies - in capitalist soc., neither is reducible to the other
- Relative decoupling of economic dimension - as in marketized areas in which strategic action predominates, from cultural dimension - as in non-marketized arenas in which value-regulated interaction predominates
Uncoupling is only relative
- Two dimensions interact causally with each other
- Distribution issues have recognition subtexts, and vice versa
- Result can be vicious circle of subordination - status order and economic structure interpenetrate and reinforce each other
Summary:
With attention to distribution, avoids short-circuting the complexity of links between status order and economic structure
- not all economic injustice can be overcome by recognition alone
Avoids reifying group identities
- avoids hypostatizing culture and substituting indentity-engineering for social change
- by refusing to privilege remedies which valorize existing group identities, avoids essentializing current configurations, foreclosing change
By emphasizing participation parity
- avoids authoritarian monologism of politics of authenticity - submits claims for recognition to democratic processes of public justification
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