Notes on Fraser, N (2000) Rethinking Recognition.
New Left Review 3, May June: 107 –120
Dave Harris
[Good and overdue criticism of identity politics
as sectarian etc, but her alternative seems pretty
idealistic. If only we could generate really
solidarity around themes like exclusions and
denial of participation! A more promising cause is
the old marxist cause of denial of
humanity?]
The recognition of difference seemed to be
emancipatory, asserting hitherto denied identities
and bringing a lateral dimension to struggles over
wealth and power. However, there is now a
different charge and struggles have led to 'ethnic
cleansing and even genocide'. Claims for the
recognition of difference now drive many of the
social conflicts, campaigns for national
sovereignty, subnational autonomy, battles around
multiculturalism, movements for international
human rights which include struggles for cultural
distinctiveness. They have become a major theme
within feminism replacing the former concern for
redistribution of resources. They now display a
wide range of aspirations from the 'patently
emancipatory to the downright reprehensible'. Why
do so many conflicts take this form, and 'cache
their claims in the idiom of recognition' (107),
especially given the decline in claims for
egalitarian redistribution.
Demands for an equitable share of resources and
wealth have not entirely disappeared, but there is
a sustained neoliberal assault on egalitarianism,
the absence of any credible model of 'feasible
socialism' and doubts about the viability of state
Keynesianism social democracy in the face of
globalisation, hence a new grammar of political
claims–making. But this is worrying, because it is
occurring because of an acceleration of
globalisation, and aggressively expanding
capitalism which is exacerbating economic
inequality, so that questions of recognition are
marginalising and displacing redistributive
struggles — 'the problem of displacement' (108),
and cultural forms are being hybridised and
paralysed by transcultural interaction and
communication, accelerated migration and global
media flows — but respectful interaction between
multicultural contexts is not developing, and
instead group identities are being simplified and
reified, and encourage 'separatism, intolerance
and chauvinism, patriarchal-ism and
authoritarianism — 'the problem of reification'.
Both problems are very serious and can actually
promote economic inequality reifiying group
identities, sanctioning violations of human rights
and freezing antagonisms. Unsurprisingly many wash
their hands of identity politics or cultural
struggles, sometimes by reprioritising class over
gender sexuality race and ethnicity. Sometimes
economism has been resurrected. Some have rejected
all minoritarian claims and insisted on majority
norms 'in the name of secularism, universalism or
republicanism'.
But these reactions are also misguided, because
not all recognition politics is pernicious some is
still emancipatory, addressing injustices that
cannot be remedied by redistribution alone.
Culture is a necessary terrain of struggle, a site
of injustice deeply connected with economic
equality, and struggles for recognition can help
the redistribution of power and wealth. Everything
depends on how recognition is approached and the
politics of recognition thought out. Struggles for
recognition must be integrated with struggles for
redistribution rather than displacing or
undermining them. There should be a full
complexity of social identities, not one that
promotes reification and separatism.
The usual approach — 'the "identity model"' starts
on the idea that identities are constructed
dialogically through mutual recognition [she says
it's hegelian but it looks like the social mirror
stuff of social interaction] — ideally each sees
the other as its equal but separate, and one
becomes an individual subject only by recognising
and being recognised by another subject, so
recognition of others becomes essential to a sense
of self, and being misrecognised is to invite
distortion of a relation to oneself and injury.
Transposed onto the cultural and political
terrain, the argument is that if groups to which
one belongs are devalued by the dominant culture
or misrecognised, this can produce an equal
distortion to the self, that repeated
stigmatisation means an internalisation of
negative self images and an unhealthy cultural
identity. The politics of recognition tries to
repair this internal self dislocation by
contesting the dominant culture's demeaning
picture and promoting new self-representations, a
new self-affirming culture which will be publicly
asserted — leading to recognition, 'an undistorted
relation to oneself' (110).
This can help recognise some of the psychological
effects of racism, sexism, colonisation and
cultural imperialism, but there are problems in
that group identities are reified, and
redistribution displaced. The latter arises
because the identity model is largely silent on
economic inequality, often with an exclusive focus
on efforts to change culture. Even if there is an
attention to maldistribution, it can still be
displaced.
In the first case, demeaning representations are
not seen as socially grounded, but a free-floating
discourses, not institutionalised. Misrecognition
is abstracted from its institutional matrix and
from distributive injustice, for example the links
in labour markets between androcentric norms and
the low wages of female workers, or heterosexist
norms which deemed legitimate homosexuality, and
the denial of resources and benefits to gays and
lesbians [such as? -- she specifies insurance
below]. Misrecognition is not connected to social
structural underpinnings.
In the second case cultural injustices are linked
to economic ones but the character of these links
are misunderstood — maldistribution is a secondary
effect of misrecognition, economic inequalities
are expressions of cultural hierarchies, class
oppression is a superstructural effect of cultural
devaluation, so that maldistribution can be
remedied by a politics of recognition. This is a
simple reversal of vulgar Marxism — 'vulgar
culturalism' (111). It might make more sense if
there were no relatively autonomous markets
[autonomous from cultural value patterns], a
purely cultural society as in some early
anthropology, but it is the opposite in most cases
because 'marketisation has pervaded all societies
to some degree, at least partially decoupling
economic mechanisms of distribution from cultural
patterns of value and prestige'. Markets have a
logic of their own and can generate economic
inequalities that do not just reflect identity
hierarchies [sometimes that's a good thing of
course].
Identity tends to be reified especially if the aim
is to display some 'authentic, self affirming and
self generated collective identity… [which]… puts
moral pressure on individual members to conform to
a given group culture' (112). This encourages
conformity and discourages cultural criticism
'including efforts to explore intragroup
divisions'. We end up with a 'single, drastically
simplified group identity which denies the
complexity of people's lives, the multiplicity of
their identifications and the cross pulls of their
various affiliations' [the effects of
intersectionality which CRT hastily denied or
disowned]. This leads, ironically to
misrecognition, especially of the struggles within
the group 'for the authority — and the power — to
represent it… The power of dominant fractions'. We
end with repressive forms of communitarianism,
often patriarchalism.
After assuming that identity was dialogical and
emphasising interactions with others, the approach
ends by 'valorising monologism' — 'supposing that
misrecognised people can and should construct
their identity on their own… That a group has the
right to be understood solely in its own terms —
that no one is ever justified in viewing another
subject from an external perspective or in
dissenting from another self interpretation'. This
makes cultural identity 'an auto generated auto
description, which one presents to others as an obiter
dictum' (112-3). Authentic self
representations are thus made exempt from all
possible challenges, but at the price of fostering
social interaction across differences. Separatism
and group enclaves are the result.
So this model is flawed, theoretically deficient
and politically problematic, encouraging
reification and displacement of the politics of
redistribution.
There is an alternative approach, treating
recognition 'as a question of social status',
where recognition is 'not group specific identity
but the status of individual group members as full
partners in social interaction' (113).
Misrecognition means social subordination, 'being
prevented from participating as a peer in social
life', and a politics aimed at overcoming
subordination 'by establishing the misrecognised
party as a full member of society, capable of
participating on a par with the rest'.
Institutionalised patterns of cultural values
should be seen as having effects on the relative
standing of social actors. If they constitute
actors as peers, participating on a par with one
another, we can talk about reciprocal recognition
and status equality [and the converse].
Misrecognition is not a psychic deformation, not a
cultural harm, but 'an institutionalised relation
of social subordination'. The misrecognised are
not just thought inferior, looked down upon, or
devalued, but 'denied the status of a full partner
in social interaction' as a result of
institutionalised patterns that have made them
'comparatively unworthy of respect or esteem'
(114).
Misrecognition is relayed through
institutionalised patterns not cultural
representations or discourses, social institutions
that regulate interaction — marriage laws, for
example, social welfare policies, policing
practices, all of which constitute some categories
of social actors as normative in others as
deficient or inferior. Some members of society are
denied the status of full partners in interaction.
We find such 'parity impeding values' in a number
of sites and in 'qualitatively different modes'.
(114) Misrecognition can be codified in formal
law, government policies, administrative codes of
professional practice, or can be informally
institutionalised in associational patterns,
customs or sedimented social practice. In each
case, there is institutionalised subordination and
thus injustice, and a claim for recognition is
appropriate — but one aimed at 'overcoming
subordination'rather than 'valorising group
identity', establishing the subordinated party as
a full partner. This will require social
institutions to change, specifically the values
that regulate interaction that impede parity of
participation. This should be done differently
depending on the mode in which
institutionalisation takes place — legal change,
policy change and so on.
As an example, marriage laws that deny
participation parity to gays and lesbians should
have that value pattern deinstitutionalised and
replaced with an alternative that promotes parity.
There are various options — the same recognition
of gay and lesbian unions, legalising same-sex
marriage, de-institutionalising heterosexual
marriage, decoupling entitlements like insurance
for heterosexual marriage and assigning them on
some other basis and so on.
There is no commitment to any particular type of
remedy. It may be necessary to acknowledge
distinctiveness, or to focus on dominant or
advantaged groups where their distinctiveness 'has
been falsely parading as universal' (115), or to
deconstruct the very terms which attribute
differences. The remedy must be adjusted to the
concrete arrangements. Approaches that valorise
group specificity should not be granted privilege
— we should be after universalist recognition and
'the affirmative recognition of difference' (116),
and not stop at identity but go on to
institutional remedies.
Institutionalised patterns of cultural value are
not the only obstacles to parity. Some actors will
lack the necessary resources to interact as peers,
so maldistribution is an impediment. This should
be seen as 'an analytically distinct dimension',
involving the allocation of disposable resources
to social actors. [ A note says there may be more
distinct dimensions, such as specifying political
obstacles to parity, decision-making procedures
that systematically marginalised some people, such
as 'single district winner take all electoral
rules that deny voice to quasi-permanent
minorities, or political marginalisation and
exclusion, which she says she owes to Weber's
third dimensional stratification, party].
Recognition corresponds to the status order of
society, cultural value, status groups, honour,
prestige and esteem, but distributive dimensions
correspond to the economic structure of society,
property regimes and labour markets, economic
actors or classes, and each has 'an analytically
distinct form of injustice'. For the first one,
the associated injustice is misrecognition, for
the second maldistribution. There are also
analytically distinct forms of subordination —
status subordination and economic subordination.
The status model puts the problem of recognition
within a larger social frame [a Weberian
one, she says, although a note says
she also accepts the capitalist mode of production
as a social totality, an overarching frame within
which one can situate weberian understandings
117]. Both forms are 'interimbricated' (118), not
wholly reducible to the other, although the
economic dimension can become relatively decoupled
if market areas are strongly differentiated —
economic distribution becomes partially uncoupled
from structures of prestige, so cultural value
patterns do not strictly dictate economic
allocations, nor do class inequalities reflect
status hierarchies. Apart from anything else this
means that not all distributive injustice can be
overcome by recognition [and it also ignores the
reformist capabilities of capitalism where the
market pushes equalities between say ethnic and
gender groups 'ahead' of cultural change].
The status approach has a [better] subtext —
economic issues have recognition subtexts where
value patterns originally institutionalising
labour markets can privilege activities such as
those that are called masculine or white, while
recognition issues such as judgements of aesthetic
values can have distributive implications, where
diminished access to economic resources impedes
equal participation in the production of art.
Misrecognition becomes part of a broader
understanding of inequality in contemporary
society and cannot be understood in isolation from
economic arrangements. Recognition cannot be
abstracted from distribution. Redressing injustice
involves tracing the links between status and
economic class, rather than displacing struggles
for redistribution and seeing misrecognition as
some freestanding cultural matter.
Status models also avoid reifying group identities
by focusing on 'the status of individuals as full
partners in social interaction' [not as
individualised as it sounds, perhaps because the
real interest is on 'institutionalised norms and
capacities for interaction']. (119). There is no
fixed notion of culture, no displacement onto
identity engineering when the real interest should
be social change, no valorisation of existing
group identities with its danger of essentialism
and the foreclosing of historical change. Further,
this model 'submits claims for recognition to the
democratic processes of public justification, thus
avoiding the authoritarian ... knowledges of the
politics of authenticity and valorising
transcultural interaction, as opposed to
separatism and group enclaves'.
The struggles for recognition too often assume the
guise of identity politics, but they abstract
misrecognition from its institutional matrix,
sever links with political economy, and by
propounding authentic identities, prevent
interaction across differences and enforce
'separatism conformism and intolerance'. The
unfortunate results tend to be that they 'displace
struggles for economic justice and promote
repressive forms of communitarianism'. We should
not reject the politics of recognition entirely,
because it does help millions of people fight some
sort of injustice. What we need instead is 'an
alternative politics of recognition', a
'non-identitarian politics that can remedy
misrecognition without encouraging displacement
and reification' (120) — her status model, with
its connections to economic class.
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