The Normative Claims of Three Types of Feminist Struggles for Recognition

Abstract

If we start from a notion of critical theory as "the self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age" (as Marx put it), then we seem today to face an irony of intellectual history. For feminist thought of all types has hewed more closely to this definition than the socio-political theory arising under the banner of "the Frankfurt School" seems to have done. While the Frankfurt School tradition has historically combined both the Kantian project of an epistemological and methodological critique of the natural and human sciences with the Hegelian project of an historical-normative critique of instrumental and functionalist forms of rationality, it appears to have become distanced from determinate, concrete analyses and evaluations of contemporary social and political struggles. The project I am proposing here is an attempt to gauge the usefulness of a recent paradigm for critical theory that begins from a form of struggle particularly prevalent in the last thirty years: namely, struggles over identity and recognition. Finding Axel Honneth's recent work particularly compelling here,' I would like to see whether it can help to clarify some of the debates over the distinct normative claims proffered by universalist and difference feminists, the differential burdens of justification for these claims, and the ensuing recommendations concerning appropriate strategies for political action. In a rather programmatic form, I would like to indicate some of the fruitfulness of Honneth's model for introducing needed distinctions in these debates, while noting places where his theory needs to be modified in the light of insights generated from feminist analyses. It is important to note as a caveat that this approach to political issues of identity and recognition is not intended to comprehend struggles over the distribution of material goods, even if certain recognition struggles may require transformed distributive mechanisms for success.2 Hopefully the paradigm introduced here in outline form will not foreclose further research into the connections and tensions between recognition and distribution struggles. Overview of Ontogenesis, the Social Conditions for Healthy Self-Relation, and the Priority of Struggles Very briefly, Honneth's theory starts from an account of identity formation as an on-going, intersubjective process of struggling to gain mutual recognition from one's partners in interaction. Through this process of struggle, individuals develop three different forms of relation-to-self through three different types of social interaction: (1) self-confidence is gained in primary, affective relations, (2) self-respect in legal relations of rights, and (3) self-esteem in local communities defined by shared value orientations. These intersubjective processes of learning "to view oneself, from the normative perspective of one's partners to interaction, as their social addressee"3 are the media through which individuals become who they are, and within which social forms of life are continually maintained and reproduced.4 First, individuals can only gain healthy selfconfidence in themselves within relations of mutual recognition to primary others supported by unconditional love and affection. Without this, they cannot trust the basic stability of both their own identities and the world around them. Second, self-respect is achieved in the mutual acknowledgment of one's formal capacity for autonomous moral action. Through the universal rights and entitlements that a formal legal system accords to all members of a society,just insofar as they are members of that society, individuals are able to understand themselves as equals of other members, both required to treat others respectfully in relations of symmetrical reciprocity, and entitled to make their own decisions about how to conceive of and realize their own life plans. The third form of recognition occurs through one's valued participation in and positive contribution to a shared way of life that expresses distinctive, communally held values. …