Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Recognition is one of the most elusive and ambivalent concepts in political and social thought. In recent studies of the ambivalence of recognition (Ikäheimo et al., 2021; Lepold, 2019; McQueen, 2015), recognition has the emancipatory aspect: Recognition is a necessary condition for individual freedom by forming a social basis of self-worth, and the struggle for recognition plays the significant role in political movements for emancipation. However, recognition has a dominating aspect: The demand for recognition can be exploited as an instrument for domination, reproducing existing problematic practices and identities. For example, sweatshops induce employees to voluntarily subjugate themselves to harsh working conditions by praising the employees’ self-dedicated character and enhancing their self-worth. In recent philosophical debates, Axel Honneth has developed the most systematic theory of recognition. He discusses the problem of ambivalence in offering the concept of ideological recognition (Honneth, 2007). Honneth's argument consists of two steps. In the first step, he defines ideological recognition as distinct from misrecognition. Misrecognition occurs when addressees believe their subjective self-image is not consistent with the recognition they receive. They feel misrecognized when their self-worth is inflicted. By contrast, the addressees have “good reason to accept” ideological recognition because they attain a stronger sense of self-worth through the recognition (p. 341). However, “ideological forms of recognition suffer a second-level rationality deficit” as it encourages the addressees’ willing subjection to the dominant social order (p. 346). This suggests that ideological recognition, an issue of “second-level rationality,” is judged independently from the addressees’ subjective perspective. Ideological recognition can be defined as that accepted by the addressees from their subjective point of view, but unjustified from an objective or theoretical point of view. In the second step, Honneth proposes a substantive standard of ideological recognition, a standard of “how we can draw a distinction between justified and unjustified forms of social recognition” from an objective point of view (p. 340). According to Honneth, recognition is ideological when it maintains the addressees’ self-worth, while the evaluative promise expressed by the recognition cannot be materially instantiated. In the example above, recognizing the self-dedicated employees in the sweatshops is ideological and unjustified, for the sweatshops will not guarantee material and economic conditions for realizing the employees’ dedication to the company (not providing a minimum income level, for instance). I argue against Honneth's substantive standard, not the conceptual definition of ideological recognition itself. It is because his standard is not broad enough to capture the ideological recognition particularly observed in feminist studies. The issue is that some women demand recognition of their femininity. As long as the received recognition heightens their self-worth, they do not suffer misrecognition. However, desiring recognition for their femininity can subject women to a certain injustice. As the recent debates on epistemic injustice illustrate, recognizing feminine gender identity can result in exclusion from the epistemic community where people in everyday communication cooperate to pool information (Fricker, 2007). Examined from an objective point of view, women can suffer epistemic exclusion through the recognition they demanded for themselves. By Honneth's definition, subjectively demanded recognition of femininity should be called ideological recognition as these women are willingly subjected to the dominant gender order. Nevertheless, Honneth's standard of ideological recognition cannot be applied to the recognition of femininity because there is no lack of material means for women to realize feminine qualities. In other words, his account considers the recognition of women who voluntarily reproduce gender stereotypes as morally justified. In this respect, Honneth's account faces two problems: normative and descriptive. The former is that his account does not provide a substantive normative standard that can identify the unjustifiable ideological recognition above mentioned. The second problem is that he cannot objectively explain why the addressees of ideological recognition accept it as expressing positive qualities. Honneth (2007) claims that a sufficient account of ideology should uncover its “regulative power” (p. 344). If this is the case, an analysis of power that encourages the internalization of gender ideology is needed. This article offers an alternative account of ideological recognition called an epistemic structural account. The epistemic structural account overcomes the normative problem of Honneth's account by elaborating on the concept of epistemic trust. This concept provides the basic norm of trust that allows to identify unjustified ideological recognition through women suffer epistemic injustice as a result of recognition of their feminine qualities. account overcomes the problem by providing the concept of structural power to the issue of internalization of problematic identities. This analysis structural power is to a in it is for addressees to a as the basis of their self-worth. there have studies of trust in social and 2019; and a recent on the structural of power the concepts of epistemic trust and structural power have not with recognition. 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Source: Constellations
Author: Hiroki Narita
Institution: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,630
OpenAlex ID: W4385857357