Recognition and critique: an interview with Judith Butler

Abstract

In the interview Butler introduces a far broader range of thinkers dealing with the issues relating to the concept of recognition than the existing mainstream focus on the work of Axel Honneth, Nancy Fraser, and Charles Taylor. Butler specifically points out that ‘recognition’ becomes a problem for those who have been expelled from the structures and vocabularies of political representation. To Butler, there are schemes of recognition that determine who will be regarded as a subject worthy of recognition. She terms this ‘differential distribution of recognizability’. The scene of recognition is set by the existing norms and powers, and the subject does not operate independently of what can become an object of recognition. On the other hand, she also points out that without substantial forms of recognition, our lives are at risk. Butler also relates the schemes of recognition to the act of critique. She does so by explaining that the schemes of recognition that establish who will and will not be ‘recognizable’ always have to be considered critically. According to Butler, the task of critique involves establishing a distance from any naturalized version of those contingent and exclusionary schemes – in other words, establishing a reflective distance to the scenes of recognition. Critique becomes a way of challenging the foreclosure of ‘reality’.