"The Course of Racial Recognition," in From Ricoeur to Action

5 Chapter

The Course of Racial Recognition: A Ricoeurian Approach to Critical Race Theory

L. Sebastian Purcell

This chapter aims to further the work of critical race theory. In a broad way, as a work in critical theory, this means that it aims to combat ideological and systematic forms of oppression and domination by producing an alternative normative account of political legitimation that avoids systematically rein-forcing this oppression by ignoring the claims of politically marginalized peoples, and by undercutting the grounds for such disregard. The present chapter thus joins the ranks of those who are dissatisfi ed with the standard accounts of political liberalism, as one fi nds in the work of John Rawls (or even J ü rgen Habermas), which appeal to ‘ universal ’ criteria in attempting to fi nd grounds by which to legitimate both contemporary and future socio-political institutionalization.

In a specifi c way, as a critical work concerning racial politics, this means that this chapter hopes to provide grounds by which it might be possible both to identify and to ameliorate the oppression of racialized groups. My principle contribution to this fi eld is to produce an outline for what may be called capability recognition theory by extending the work of Paul Ricoeur for these racial concerns. I contend that while Ricoeur never broached the topic in a thematic way, his later work provides a framework for making sense of the nuanced character of the claims for recognition that racial minorities have faced. One signifi cant consequence of the present work is that it produces a solution to the cross-cutting concerns of minorities, such as raced women or queer ethnic minorities. Another is that it articulates an alternative to the dominant theories of recognition; namely, those of Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth. To anticipate, while Fraser may be under-stood to approach recognition as a normative dualist, and Honneth as a normative monist, I argue that Ricoeur produces grounds for a normative pluralism unifi ed through a second-order account of normative capability. Because the matter is complex, I begin by recalling the motivation for a

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recognition theoretic approach to politics and the role race has played in that approach.

Race, Recognition and Politics

There are, one may say, two stages to the race theoretic critique of stan-dard political theories – such as Rawls ’ s political liberalism – which pro-vide the motivations for an alternative political framework. The fi rst is a genealogical stage that reveals the way in which the classical champions of political liberalism, despite their avowals of equality for all humans, never-theless found ways to support racism and the practice of slavery. Charles Mills ’ s The Racial Contract is a classic on this score. 1 His point, much like Rousseau ’ s Discourse on Inequality , is to make use of a non-ideal/natural-ized contract to explain ‘ how an unjust, exploitative society, ruled by an oppressive government and regulated by an immoral code, comes into exis-tence ’ (Mills 1997: 5).

In general, the response of contemporary liberals is not to deny any of the points that demonstrate how classical liberalists were in fact racist, but instead to argue that in these cases what one fi nds are not grounds for aban-doning liberalism, but reasons for supposing that the aims remain to be accomplished. The point is not to suggest, as Horkheimer and Adorno argue in Dialectic of Enlightenment , that the monstrous underside of reason is made visible in racist atrocities such as the Shoah, but that any who engage in such actions were never truly committed to rationality and liberality (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002: especially Chapter 5). Despite their other differences, both Rawls and Habermas take up this same approach to modernity as an unfi nished project.

The second stage focuses on how even contemporary champions of this position, while avoiding these grossly immoral errors, nevertheless margin-alize racial concerns to such an extent that their programs may be under-stood to support the continuing dominance of white supremacy, which functions as a political ideology. 2 What is required at this stage is that pro-ponents of critical race theory produce an alternative account of political legitimating and that the normative grounds for such legitimation are sig-nifi cantly different from the positions of those whom they are criticizing. For it is only in this way that they would be able to avoid the systemic domi-nation that they understand to be a result of the standard approaches. The wager of the present chapter is that it is at this point that a recognition approach to politics is apt.


The Course of Racial Recognition 77

Two points speak especially in favour of a recognition-theoretic response to the concerns of race theorists. First, as Fraser writes of her general agree-ment with Honneth:

[b]oth of us reject the externalist stance of traditional theories that purport to judge social arrangements from on high, claiming a God ’ s-eye-view wholly independent of the society in question. (Fraser and Honneth 2003: 202) 3

The point for both Fraser and Honneth (and this point holds for Ricoeur as well) is to fi nd a normative account of political legitimation that does justice to concrete historical circumstances. As a result, recognition theory would be in a position to respond to the concerns of race theorists, espe-cially those that hold ‘ universal ’ or ‘ ideal ’ approaches to normative legiti-mation are wrong-headed in some fundamental way. The second point, and this has already been mentioned in the foregoing sentence, is that recogni-tion theory in its political dimension is explicitly normative, so that it retains grounds for social critique. 4 It is unlike at least certain construals of Michel Foucault ’ s work, which see in it no normative grounds, and hence can do no more than catalogue the history of oppression. 5 How to accommodate both these points – namely, an immanent normativity that would lead to social change (amounting to a certain kind of transcendence) – can be seen as the basic goal of recognition politics.

Famously, where Fraser and Honneth differ concerns their specifi c under-standing of the normative claims that recognition makes. Fraser defends a ‘ two-dimensional ’ conception of justice that seeks to encompass both tradi-tional claims to distributive justice and the more novel claims of recogni-tion, while Honneth prefers a normative monism, in which any normative claim one could make about distribution must be cashed out in recogni-tion-theoretic terms. Ricoeur has, to my mind, something new to offer this debate, and in particular something to offer on the status of race. So it is to his account that I now turn.

Ricoeur on Recognition

Though I shall focus primarily on Ricoeur ’ s account of mutual recognition, two general points mark his approach to recognition as distinctive: (1) he has a second-order approach to mutual recognition, and (2) he approaches the normative claims of mutual recognition within the arc of an epistemic



account of recognition generally. 6 With respect to the fi rst point, one may note that at the heart of Ricoeur ’ s proposal is the thesis that mutual recogni-tion is to be understood as a task , and as such, as a second-order solution to the ethical demand for capability (Ricoeur 2005: 187). By ‘ second order ’ , I mean that it is a solution that proposes a way to go about fi nding concrete solutions, which are always a matter of phr ō n ē sis , and which itself may be sub-ject to revision in the process of fi nding such fi rst-order solutions. In this regard, I understand Ricoeur ’ s proposal for a theory of mutual recognition to be in line with Courtney Jung ’ s own account of the politics of indigenous peoples. Since her account might serve as a concrete example of what is intended by a ‘ second-order ’ solution to the problem of political intervention, I look briefl y to some of her central insights to situate the present argument.

In her The Moral Force of Indigenous Politics , Jung sets out an account of what she calls ‘ critical liberalism ’ , which departs from political liberalism in two ways. First, it sets out to develop an account of politics from empirical case-study rather than abstract theorizing in order to avoid the problems of false universalization that have attended the normative approaches one fi nds in Rawls or Habermas. Second, she argues that a certain kind of ‘ gestalt shift ’ is necessary in addressing the topic of social justice. She out-lines three directives in this last regard that I think are especially pertinent. ‘ First, both peasant and indigenous are more fruitfully conceived as politi-cal rather than personal identities ’ (Jung 2008: 18). This is to say it would be better to conceive of politically marginalized identities as a political achievement rather than an accident of birth , or as a fact to be accommodated either into the original position or into the domain of identities that are to be protected and conserved. Second, ‘ the modern state has played the most direct role in constituting such political identities as peasant and indige-nous through the ways in which ruling elites have used differences of wealth, skin color, culture and language to organize and control the boundaries of political membership ’ (Jung 2008: 19). This is to say that the state is not imposed ‘ from the outside ’ on a society already divided among competing claims, but that it plays a critical role in the articulation and transformation of distinct practices and identities into social categories. One might note, vis- à -vis Michael Hart and Antonio Negri, that it is important to recognize that even if some manner of political governance escapes the national state, most issues have not done so yet, if they ever will. Finally,

although individuals are indeed, to some extent, constituted by social group membership, they also play an important role in forging the groups in which they assert membership. (Jung 2008: 19)



Jung continues this point by arguing that the categories of group member-ship are transformed into political identities by activists who exploit the gap opened by a promise for rights and recognition and contemporary ills. These are the identities that come to be recognized as indigenous or peasant.

Ricoeur ’ s own approach to recognition works in much the same way. To understand how, one must understand how his normative account of mutual recognition sits within the arc of his larger epistemic analysis, which is the second distinctive point of his approach. This retrieval of mutual recogni-tion works by way of Honneth through Hegel to Hobbes in order to provide an account of how the identity of personhood ( ipse ) comes to be recog-nized. He begins this account with the phenomenological asymmetry of self and Other to be found in both Edmund Husserl ’ s work and that of Emmanuel L é vinas. His phenomenological point is that whether one starts with the ego, as Husserl does, or the Other, as L é vinas does, one neverthe-less begins with a dissymmetry between one ’ s own fi rst-person intentional states of consciousness and the lived experience of the Other ’ s conscious-ness which always remains inaccessible (Ricoeur 2005: 154). Mutual recog-nition, which is a strictly social phenomenon, thus does not aim to overcome this initial tension, but to make it a productive one . The ‘ twist ’ that he adds to this phenomenological account is that both phenomenologies must, in the end, be considered ‘ abstract ’ in a Hegelian sense. While Ricoeur appreciates Husserl ’ s Leibnitzian inspired monadology, he asserts categorically that one must begin with the plurality of intersubjective transactions (Ricoeur 2005: 186). As he argued in Oneself as Another , it is an illusion to suppose that the ego is wholly self-contained, so that solipsism can become a philosophical problem. Or, in the reverse scenario following L é vinas, it is an illusion to suppose that the Other is wholly self-contained, so the problem of transcen-dence or hypostasis may be raised as a fundamental problem. Self-Other relations, while at a certain point distinct, are themselves the result of human insight, discourse and action. They are, as Jung would argue, a social and political achievement. This point thus sets the stage for a normative recovery of recognition.

The bridge between his epistemic account of recognition and its norma-tive account is made explicitly in dialogue with Amartya Sen ’ s account of capability. A critical component of self-recognition for Ricoeur requires recognition from others, so that mutual recognition is a moment of self-recognition (Ricoeur 2005: 134). Because Ricoeur ’ s account of self-recognition is explained in terms of capabilities, it is natural that he will seek to explain mutual recognition in terms of capabilities. The normative



moment that Ricoeur introduces is that an increase in capability, and rights to those capabilities, is to be understood as defi nitive of the ethical aim, of the good life. On this score, he replaces Sen ’ s consequentialist framework with Charles Taylor ’ s account of strong evaluation. This point signals a development in Ricoeur ’ s thought. One should recall that in Oneself as Another , Ricoeur defi nes the ethical aim as ‘ aiming at the good life with and for others in just institutions ’ (Ricoeur 1992: 180). One could understand this later statement, then, as extending what was written there. My suggestion is that capability in Ricoeur ’ s later work becomes the fundamental way in which the ethical aim is to be understood. 7 This explains both why he does not return to his prior account and instead prefers to speak of capability in terms of strong evaluation, as the necessary normative backdrop presup-posed to make sense of human action (especially recognition in this case), and why he no longer speaks of social justice strictly in terms of distribution as he did in his earlier work. 8

The point of ethico-political signifi cance is that, for Ricoeur, capability as a realization of positive freedom is the normative basis for his approach to mutual recognition. One might thus say that like Honneth, he is a norma-tive monist. Still, that monism for Ricoeur is not recognition, but capability. Furthermore, because capability is to be understood as the ethical aim, this means that it is a task to be achieved. It thus orients one to fi nd possible solutions, and so functions as a second-order notion. As a result, like Fraser, Ricoeur would endorse a multiplicity of fi rst-order norms, such as distribu-tion and recognition (understood in a narrow sense), but also other possi-ble norms such as sustainability. On my reckoning, then, Ricoeur is a normative pluralist at a fi rst-order level, but a second-order monist. At the level of normative theory, then, Ricoeur differs signifi cantly from both Honneth and Fraser, but this does not prevent him from making much use of their work. In particular, having established this normative bridge from the epistemic course of recognition to the normative course, he proceeds to address the character of mutual recognition.

Following Honneth ’ s retrieval of Hegel ’ s accounts of recognition, Ricoeur argues that Hegel ’ s accounts of recognition must be understood as a pre-cise response to the ethico-political challenge posed by Hobbes. This chal-lenge is posed in the following question: can ‘ a political order be founded on a moral exigency that is as originary as the fear of violent death and the rational calculation that opposes vanity? ’ (Ricoeur 2005: 171). The insight to be found in Hegel ’ s early work is that it is possible to meet this challenge by converting Hobbes ’ s ‘ bellum omnium contra omnes ’ into a struggle that has its proper course. 9 Furthermore, this structural move makes it possible to



articulate how this struggle proceeds from moral motives ‘ capable of occu-pying the place held by the triad rivalry, distrust and glory in the description of the alleged state of nature in Leviathan ’ , since one can only understand the progression of the struggle under moral considerations (Ricoeur 2005: 186 – 187).

The heart of Ricoeur ’ s proposal concerning mutual recognition that fol-lows from these insights resolves into two arguments. The fi rst concerns the three stages of recognition Honneth recovers from Hegel in which Ricoeur expands on the contemporary thinker ’ s points in various ways. Critical to this expansion is the direct correlation at each stage of the identifi cation of an affect of disregard, in which one comes to understand that one is not recognized. The second aspect concerns Ricoeur ’ s own rectifi cation of the exclusive emphasis on ‘ struggle ’ through an account of peaceful experi-ences of recognition. Without this account, Ricoeur argues, ‘ the claim for affective, juridical, and social recognition, through its militant, confl ictual style, [might] end up as an indefi nite demand, a kind of “ bad infi nity ” ’ (Ricoeur 2005: 218).

It appears to me that it might be possible to retrieve this course of mutual recognition to provide an account of political intervention suitable to the concerns of critical race theorists. In order to make my case I am going to engage in a retrieval of Ricoeur ’ s account of the three aspects of mutual recognition along with his account of recognition in peaceful experiences.

Love and the Struggle for Recognition

The fi rst model of recognition concerns what Hegel in his Jena period called ‘ love ’ , and it covers a range of relations from the erotic to friends and family ties. ‘ What is at issue here ’ , Ricoeur writes, ‘ is a prejuridical degree of reciprocal recognition, where “ subjects mutually confi rm each other with regard to their concrete needs and thereby recognize each other as needy creatures ” ’ (Ricoeur 2005: 189). This neediness covers a range from infant-mother relations, which precede even ego-id type relations, to the Aristotelian need for friends announced in Book Seven of the Nicomachean Ethics , to the friendship proper to lovers who achieve a ‘ unique good ’ (Ricoeur 2005: 190).

The primary institution at work here is that of the family. This is a form of living together that is limited in scope and located structurally at the intersec-tion of conjugality and fi liation. Ricoeur focuses specifi cally on how fi liation increases the capacities of the capable human ( l ’ homme capable ), since the



course of recognition in general is just such an increase in concrete capacity. Under the heading ‘ Recognizing Oneself in One ’ s Lineage ’ , Ricoeur shows how this basic institution can make sense of one ’ s natality ( Geb ü rtigkeit ) fol-lowing Hannah Arendt, but at the same time makes claims on the future of the unfolding of erotic love through its prohibition of incest relations (Ricoeur 2005: 192). Within this context the refusal of recognition may thus be understood as a ‘ type of humiliation ’ in which the person deprived of approbation is made to feel as if nonexistent (Ricoeur 2005: 191).

The race theoretic retrieval that I suggest here is that the structure of fi li-ation, and by extension natality, cannot be understood without reference to one ’ s race and ethnicity. To fi nd oneself in one ’ s lineage is to fi nd oneself as raced . There are two points that I want to make about the character of this experience. The fi rst is that when one recognizes oneself as belonging to some number of these racialized groups, this is at the same time a recognition of neediness . This phenomenon is attested in the prevalent outcries of ‘ racial betrayal ’ . Racial passing, for example, while often tolerated by members of the same race who either cannot pass or do not pass, is often denounced as requiring too high a cost. One must sacrifi ce family ties, friendships, com-munity affi liations and numerous benefi ts associated by living with and as a member of a certain marginalized race. The African American novelist and political activist Langston Hughes in his short story ‘ Passing ’ , for example, depicts the following scene in which a son, who is passing for a white, does not even acknowledge his mother in order not to be ‘ outed ’ :

Dear Ma, I felt like a dog, passing you downtown last night and not speaking to

you. You were great, though. Didn ’ t give a sign that you even know me, let alone I was your son. If I hadn ’ t had the girl with me, Ma, we might have talked … Isn ’ t she sweet to look at, all blond and blue-eyed. We ’ re making plans [to get married] … I will take a box at the Post Offi ce for your mail … I ’ m glad there ’ s nothing to stop letters from crossing the color line. Even if we can ’ t meet often, we can write, can ’ t we, Ma? With love from your son, Jack. (Hughes 1990: 51 – 55)

What I think this case makes clear is that one has, through race, a genuine experience of neediness. There is a certain kind of wrong done both to oneself and one ’ s (at least immediate) community by passing, though it tends to be understood that passing is often the least bad option that is available.



My second point is that even for whites one has an experience of this neediness, but it is attested precisely by the absence of a felt racial need . In our contemporary world, other people are raced, white people are just people. This is a basic expression of what race theorists have for some time called white supremacy . While this term may be identifi ed by most people with ‘ Coloured ’ signs and the Ku Klux Klan, Charles Mills makes clear that the use of the term is analogous to the feminist rehabilitation of ‘ patriarchy ’ , since it is meant to convey both the privilege whites enjoy as well as the sys-tem of ideology used to support this privilege. 10 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva ’ s sociological work shows quite clearly that the form this ideology takes, in the USA at least, is what may be called ‘ colour-blind racism ’ . There are clear rhetorical markers that indicate use of this ideology, which keeps at bay the realization that most whites still do not actively socialize with members of other races and that they do not support policies such as affi rmative action because they do not support their own interests. Familiar tropes include: ‘ The past is the past ’ and ‘ I didn ’ t own any slaves ’ . For example, Sara, a student at a southern university in the US, used this last storyline to express her view on government intervention on behalf of blacks:

Hmm [ long exhalation ], maybe just — Well, I don ’ t know ‘ cause it seems like people are always wondering if, you know, do we, like do we as white people owe people as black something their ancestors were, you know, treated so badly. But then, I mean, it wasn ’ t really us that did that, so I don ’ t know . I mean, I think that the race or that culture should, you know, be paid back for something in some way. But I don ’ t think that … I don ’ t know [ laughs ]. 11

While it is true that most whites living today do not profi t directly from slav-ery, this student forgets that the last Jim Crow laws were only abolished in the 1970s, and she conveniently overlooks the legacy of these racial prac-tices. Her racial demographic does not suffer from the well-documented socio-economic disadvantages blacks and Hispanics face in the US, and while she considers herself non-racist, she opposes any form of political intervention that would seek to ameliorate these socio-economic conditions.

To be clear, my point at this level of recognition is that the lack of racial affi liation most Whites experience is just their specifi c form of racial neediness . This is part of the diffi culty they continue to exhibit in comprehending racial matters and why they think it is suffi cient to declare themselves non-racist rather than anti-racist. Whites should acknowledge that they benefi t from



White privilege, and then dedicate themselves to its eradication, rather than declare themselves non-racist. Yet, this last point broaches the juridical point in recognition, so it is to this matter that I want to turn now.

The Struggle for Recognition on the Juridical Plane

On the juridical plane, the struggle for recognition enriches human capa-bility through successively ‘ enlarging the sphere of rights recognized as belonging to persons ’ (Ricoeur 2005: 200). Human dignity appears here as ‘ the capacity to assert claims ’ , primarily in response to grievances (Ricoeur 2005: 201). What justice is, in short, is understood as a task to be accom-plished historically and politically through the institutionalization of human rights. To put the aim in a line: there simply is no other political sense to human capacity apart from its realization in human rights and the concrete human institutions that support those protections.Ricoeur argues that there are two principle forms of this enlargement:

on the one hand, on the plane of an enumeration of personal rights defi ned by their content; on the other, on the plane of the attribution of these rights to new categories of individuals or groups. (Ricoeur 2005: 199)

The enumeration of personal rights divides into civil, political and social rights. Honneth provides the following defi nition of these categories:

The fi rst category refers to negative rights that protect a person ’ s life, liberty, and property from unauthorized state interference; the second category refers to the positive rights guaranteeing a person the opportu-nity to participate in the processes of public will-formation; the third cat-egory, fi nally, refers to the similarly positive rights that ensure a person ’ s fair share in the distribution of basic goods. (Honneth 1995: 115)

Whether the enlargement of rights concerns any among this enumeration or the development of new categories of rights, the vehicle for these changes emerges from the affect of indignation, which results from experiences of disregard. Following the categories of enumerated rights, one may say that denial of civil rights is itself experienced as a certain kind of humiliation, the denial of political rights is experienced as a kind of frustration and the denial of social rights is experienced as exclusion (Ricoeur 2005: 200). Yet,


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beyond these experiences there are other forms of indignation that are the sources of new forms of struggle for rights (one might think of animal rights and ecosystem rights as examples).

The retrieval that I have in mind at this level for critical recognition the-ory was already broached in the neediness of racial self-recognition: the amelioration of race relations. To be clear, there is a matter of social esteem that exceeds the juridical plane of recognition, but there is also the concern of addressing racial relations in their political and institutional dimension. On this plane, I fi nd that Sally Haslanger ’ s work on race and gender (each of which makes parallel claims) to be particularly instructive. Famously, her defi nition of racialized groups is as follows:

A group G is racialized relative to context C iff df members of G are (all and only) those:

i) who are observed or imagined to have certain bodily features pre-sumed in C to be evidence of ancestral links to a certain geographical region (or regions);

ii) whose having (or being imagined to have) these features marks them within the context of the background ideology in C as appropriately occupying certain kinds of social position that are in fact either sub-ordinate or privileged (and so motivates and justifi es their occupa-tion such as position); and

iii) whose satisfying (i) and (ii) plays (or would play) a role in their sys-tematic subordination or privilege in C, i.e., who are along some dimen-sion systematically subordinated or privileged in C, and satisfying (i) and (ii) plays (or would play) a role in that dimension of privilege or subordination. (Haslanger 2000: 44)

I fi nd Haslanger ’ s defi nition insightful with respect to the aims of critical recognition theory since it is not a description of raced people, but a prescriptive account of who ought to be considered raced for the pur-poses of rectifying existing political institutions, and specifi cally for expanding the enumeration of rights afforded raced people. Because this matter has been the source of much recent debate in what has vari-ously been called the ‘ politics of difference ’ or ‘ identity politics ’ , I pause here to spell out two points: (a) how this account resolves two central concerns with so-called ‘ cross-cutting ’ identities, and (b) how this solu-tion is just a specifi c instance of Ricoeur ’ s general second-order approach to recognition.



I begin with the ethico-political concern. A common criticism of identity politics is that identity-based programs suffer from dangerous forms of unfounded essentialism and group think. In hoping to protect the identi-ties and rights of politically marginalized peoples, proponents of identity politics may in fact impede social justice. Jung makes the point that this approach ‘ deprives group members of the political means to contest the norms and boundaries of their own cultural and religious groups ’ (Jung 2008: 14). One cannot assume that because a group is politically marginal-ized (e.g. African Americans) they are all of agreement about their own aims. Failure to account for such internal dissensus may thus lead to exac-erbated problems. While Hispanic men might benefi t from a certain policy, it may further marginalize or disenfranchise Hispanic women. Can the present account avoid such problems?

The second cross-cutting concern is more theoretical in nature. Alain Badiou ’ s critique of the ethics (and by extension politics) of Alterity makes the point that

[i]nfi nite Alterity is quite simply what there is . Any experience at all is the infi nite deployment of infi nite differences. Even the apparently refl exive experience of myself is by no means the intuition of a unity by a labyrinth of differentiations, and Rimbaud was certainly not wrong when he said: ‘ I am another ’ . There are as many differences, say, between a Chinese peas-ant and a young Norwegian professional as between myself and anybody at all, including myself. (Badiou 2001: 25 – 26)

This is to say that at a purely descriptive level, differences are as many as one would like. Focusing on these differences thus has the political result of infi nitely fracturing groups that could otherwise be joined together to intervene for political change. Celebrating the banality of infi nite differ-ence thus has the serious consequence of debilitating political action, which requires some form of unity. How can the present approach account for such necessary unity?

In response to these objections, I note the following. Haslanger has been clear on numerous occasions that there just is no solution to the ‘ commonal-ity problem ’ , which tries to fi nd some set of properties that defi ne all and only women (understood as a gender construction) or members of raced groups. Instead, she argues that a ‘ primary concern of feminist and antira-cist theorizing is to give an account of the social world that will assist us in the general struggle for justice ’ (Haslanger 2003 – 2004: 6). The above account of racialized groups as precisely those members who are subordinated along



some dimension, then, is stipulative rather than descriptive. If a person is not so subordinated, and hence not in need of political protections, then that person will not be included in the group. In response to Badiou ’ s concerns, then, the formation of such political identities is the political task. They are not given, but achieved. The struggle for recognition in these cases thus con-sists in the struggle to achieve recognition for such identities by the appropri-ate forms of institutional protections, such as the establishment of new rights, but also, perhaps, redistribution of existing material goods. The achievement of such an aim may be understood as an achievement of new capabilities, and so the goal is of a piece with Ricoeur ’ s capabilities approach to recogni-tion theory. It is for this reason that I do not think that the present approach amounts to a return to identity politics, but rather a taking up of what was benefi cial in that program into a broader recognition-theoretic program.

With respect to the ethico-political concern, the response is that just as there is no general solution to the problem of commonalities, so there is no general solution to the concerns of those who are marginalized within mar-ginalized groups. For example, the problems facing lesbian Latinas, such as Gloria Anazald ú a, are not the sum of problems facing homosexual indi-viduals, women and Hispanics. 12 The proposal is that the ethico-political task here is to form such identities as part of the struggle for recognition. Their recognition, and the required fi rst-order solutions, constitute a politi-cal goal. My point is similar to Antonio Gramsci ’ s account of hegemony. As he argued that hegemony is a process, that it is the formation of a collective will and political associations out of the divergent groups (infi nitely diver-gent) that exist descriptively in a society, so the present account argues that the struggle for recognition may be understood to include within its arc the formation of politically adequate racial identities. 13 Finally, this point may be said to hold mutatis mutandis for accommodating the concerns of multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and even Linda Alcoff ’ s ‘ ethnoracial ’ groups. 14 What I take her work and the thoughtful responses of her critics to be engaged in is a task of working out just which identities need to be formed for which political purposes. 15 It may be understood as the requisite fi rst-order work required to achieve the second-order aim of increased capability.

Mutual Recognition as Social Esteem

The third form of recognition is the point at which Ricoeur broaches the more familiar concerns of the politics of recognition, though one must remain aware that this point makes up only one moment in the trajectory



of his thought. Even at this stage, Ricoeur ’ s basic concern is not with politics proper, but with social esteem, which is distinct from the self-respect one fi nds on the judicial plane and from the self-confi dence one fi nds in the family (Ricoeur 2005: 202). Furthermore, this is a kind of esteem that, while not comprehensible without juridical and familial structures, is neverthe-less irreducible to these. This irreducibility thus poses three questions for refl ective thought: ‘ What new normative demand is this social esteem sup-posed to satisfy? What kinds of confl ict attach to mediations on the postju-ridical level? What personal capacities correlate with these forms of mutual recognition? ’ (Ricoeur 2005: 202; my emphasis).

While this dimension of recognition is one that Ricoeur retrieves from Honneth, he nevertheless departs from Honneth ’ s thought quite widely. For Honneth, the basic way in which these three questions are answered is through ‘ the existence of a horizon of values common to the subjects con-cerned ’ (Ricoeur 2005: 202). The task, as Honneth understands it, is thus to fi nd a way in which one may achieve social esteem within this shared horizon of values. Such solidarity is an aim that Ricoeur appears to fi nd too limiting, since it does not adequately address to his mind the multiple ways in which social esteem is made possible or denied.

Instead, Ricoeur proposes to explore social esteem under three headings: orders of recognition, economies of standing and what might be best called minority concerns. In developing his account of orders of recognition, Ricoeur follows Jean-Marc Ferry to address ‘ the development of a concept of identity at the juncture of the lived experience of intersubjectivity and sociability organized into a system ’ (Ricoeur 2005: 203). This identity is investigated through the organized mediations that constitute our world, specifi cally through the socio-economic, socio-political, and socio-cultural spheres, and as a result specifi es how social esteem is possible in each sphere. Ricoeur ’ s investigation of economies of standing thus complements this fi rst dimension, since it concerns ‘ the problems connected with the plurality of structural mediations in relation to public esteem ’ (Ricoeur 2005: 204; my emphasis). Here recognition is broached through the methods of justifi cation for the evaluation of social standing. It is the plurality of meth-ods of justifi cation that accounts for the multiple ways in which a person can achieve social esteem. Yet, and at this point one fi nds the negative moment of disregard, these tests themselves may be corrupted, or, more problematically, one might fi nd that there are not appropriate standards for justifi cation (Ricoeur 2005: 209). The capacity that emerges in the struggle for recognition, then, is that which can be established through the ability to appear recognized in different social worlds, with different stan-



dards for evaluation. Under the third heading, the concern for Ricoeur ‘ is the recognition of a distinct identity for culturally underprivileged minori-ties. Hence, it is a question of identity, but on a collective level and in a temporal dimension ’ (Ricoeur 2005: 213). In this case the demand for equality is not simply a matter of social esteem, but self-esteem as well. Following Charles Taylor, Ricoeur argues that a critical aspect of disrespect at this level is ‘ the internalization of this image in the form of self-deprecia-tion ’ (Ricoeur 2005: 214). Such victimization is only made possible by

the collapse of social hierarchies that placed honor at the apex of values of esteem and . . . by the promotion of the modern notion of dignity, along with its corollary, the egalitarian form of recognition. (Ricoeur 2005: 214)

Taylor ’ s patient argument shows that one in fact encounters two opposed principles of universal equality: one stemming from the universal claim to human reasonability, another from a distinctly Rousseauian discourse on identity and authenticity. This latter kind thus requires ‘ a kind of legitimacy distinct from that invested in the constitution and the associated notion of constitutional rights ’ (Ricoeur 2005: 215).

The retrieval that I propose at this level of analysis departs from what I fi nd to be defi cient in Taylor ’ s account of marginalized recognition. I think that he is wrong to fi nger internalized self-depreciation as the key incident of disregard for social esteem. Franz Fanon ’ s experience, captured in the line ‘ Look, a Negro! ’ is more adequate (Fanon 1967: 109). The sense of reifi cation that he articulates here is not a form of Kantian reifi cation, such that he feels that he is treated as a means rather than as an end in itself. Instead, his point is that one feels that one ’ s subjectivity is limited . This sense of limitation is not a feeling of anxiety provoked by a meditation on one ’ s own death and fi nitude, but a limitation in social esteem . ‘ I tell you, I was walled in: No exception was made for my refi ned manners, or my knowl-edge of literature, or my understanding of the quantum theory ’ (Fanon 1967: 117). In response to Sartre ’ s statements in Orph é e Noir , Fanon discovers,

it is not I who make a meaning for myself, but it is the meaning that was already there, pre-existing, waiting for me. It is not out of my bad nigger ’ s misery, my bad nigger ’ s teeth, my bad nigger ’ s hunger that I will shape a torch with which to burn down the world, but it is the torch that was already there, waiting for that turn of history. (Fanon 1967: 134)



In other equally Ricoeurian terms, one might say that the form of disrespect encountered at the level of social esteem is a kind of narrative reifi cation . One fi nds that as a person of a certain race, one only has so many options in the world – a number of options distinctively fewer than those available to whites. One is esteemed as a black medical doctor, or as a Hispanic phi-losopher, but one cannot be simply a medical doctor or a philosopher. The point is analogous to one often made by feminists: women are esteemed principally in terms of their beauty, whatever else they manage to accomplish.

The kind of legitimacy, the kind of social esteem that is sought at this level must certainly be distinct from the political legitimacy of constitutions, and it may be formulated at a second order in terms of an increase of self-es-teem. Yet, more specifi cally, one may say that the aim is to produce a kind of social liberation, one in which marginalized races may achieve broader forms of esteem through a widening of the narratives used to make sense of their actions.

Recognition and States of Peace

Turning to Ricoeur ’ s fi nal form of recognition, one must bear in mind that Ricoeur ’ s central motivation in identifying states of peace is to avoid an infi nite demand for recognition that would function as a kind of Hegelian ‘ bad infi nity ’ (Ricoeur 2005, 218). The struggle for recognition, he fears, would become such a bad infi nity if there were not, along the way, momen-tary victories, momentary states of peace. Since the struggle for recognition always looks to reform some kind of institution, these states of peace cannot take institutional form. Ricoeur thus undertakes an analysis of the gift in order to fi nd a model of reciprocity, which, even if exceptional, may serve as a counterpoint to the otherwise endless struggle for recognition. This solution, it must be stressed, is a symbolic rejoinder to the three orders of mutual recognition; it is not (by design) an institutional solution.

Because this is a symbolic solution, the theoretical opening is to be found in the symbolic character of social esteem itself (Ricoeur 2005: 202). This insight paves the way for Ricoeur ’ s refl ection on the gift as a model for a state of peace. He begins with a refl ection on agape, which places on hold the possibility of a gift without a requirement for return. He then turns to a discussion of the enigma of the obligation for return explicitly. Finally, Ricoeur shifts to a discussion of mutual relations in gift exchange by shift-ing the level of analysis from that ‘ above social agents and their transaction ’



to that ‘ between those who exchange gifts ’ (Ricoeur 2005: 232). Following Marcel H é naff ’ s work, this shift in analysis enables Ricoeur to return to the possibility of a gift without requirement for return – a good reciprocity. By focusing on the act of giving, Ricoeur is able to redress the triad ‘ give, receive, give in return ’ by placing the accent on the middle term rather than on the fi nal one as Marcel Mauss does (Ricoeur 2005: 243). What enables one to distinguish good and bad reciprocity, as a result, turns on how the gift is received. Is the gift received with gratitude or not? In French, which Ricoeur notes is a peculiarity of the language, when one speaks of this kind of gratitude, one says ‘ reconnaissance ’ . The gift, then, may serve as a form of peaceful recognition if there is gratitude in the exchange. Furthermore, when such a gift is given (and received) it may be marked by its ceremonial character, which serves to distinguish it from everyday life (Ricoeur 2005: 244). The result is that it may bring to light the limits of the justice of equivalence which are operative in quotidian exchanges. The fes-tive atmosphere of a ceremonious gift, much like the pardon, may thus provide a non-institutional form of reciprocity.

For the concerns of critical recognition theory, I think that one can fi nd a number of experiences that satisfy this kind of reciprocity, though I shall focus on one in particular. Haslanger is again my guide here. While she writes that the goal of racial politics is to produce non-problematic ethnici-ties, along the lines of Irish and Italian ethnicities in the US, she also touches on the character of mixed racial relations. Of particular importance here is the way in which she addresses how her adoption (along with her white husband Steven Yablo) of two African American children has changed the racial identity , not racial group, of her family to what might justifi ably be called ‘ mixed ’ (Haslanger 2005: 265 – 289). To begin, I note that she has adopted children, so like Ricoeur ’ s accent on the act of reception, it is not diffi cult to understand adoption under the model of a gift. Beyond this point Haslanger makes a case that in order to be a good parent, which one might think of as expressing gratitude, she has come to signifi cantly change her own racial perception. In her account she details a number of changes that disrupt her racial identity. To begin with, she notes how her own ‘ imag-inary body ’ changes in response to her spontaneous identifi cation with her children ’ s bodies as she cares for them. Because she has maintained a fully open adoption, she regularly meets with the biological parents of her chil-dren, so that she has a kind of extended Black family. Third, she notices changes in her own physical presence among others: ‘ whose faces do I fi rst notice in a group? With whom do I make eye contact? Next to whom do I sit? How close do I stand to others in conversation? ’ (Haslanger 2005: 280).



Her own sense of beauty is shifted against the somatic normative image that privileges White bodies. She engages in cultural rituals common to African Americans. For example, she notes all the struggles she encountered in learning simply how to manage her daughter ’ s hair. Even her sense of com-munity has changed, since she no longer feels comfortable ‘ in an all-White setting ’ (Haslanger 2005: 282). In a reasonable way, one could claim that Haslanger has crossed the colour line through her family ’ s racial identity.

What Haslanger ’ s case shows, and I think that interracial marriage has a similar effect, is a way in which reciprocal racial recognition might be estab-lished. Clearly this is no general or institutional solution. One cannot require that in order to ameliorate race relations, all couples adopt chil-dren of another race, or that all racial minorities marry outside their race. Yet, like Ricoeur ’ s account of moments of peace, I think one can fi nd here an exceptional case of peace, without which the general struggle for recog-nition might seem fruitless. Furthermore, I note, Haslanger ’ s case illustrates quite clearly what is intended by ‘ state of peace ’ for Ricoeur. It will be recalled that the course of recognition, even in its epistemic dimension, aims not to abolish the self-other relation, but to make that tension produc-tive. Here the case is the same. Surely, Haslanger and her children continue to live through racial relations. Now she even has new racial tensions with Whites. Yet, one may say that these tensions have become productive ones, as her changed sense of self and family membership attests. It would seem to serve as an example, then, of a momentary victory in a course of contin-ued racial struggle.

Recognition, Redistribution or Capability?

The foregoing sections on racial recognition considered successively through the models of love, law, social esteem and experiences of peace are the fruit that a capability recognition-theoretic approach to race can yield. At each of the three initial stages, I have identifi ed not only a way in which progress in recognition is to be achieved, but forms of disregard that are experienced affectively, and which signal the need for ameliorating recogni-tion relations. Furthermore, I have suggested a way in which reciprocal rela-tions of recognition might be established in exceptional cases, though the basic tension operative between self and Other can never be fully overcome. Beyond demonstrating how a certain approach to recognition theory can establish a political program that addresses the concerns of race theorists, two further consequences may be understood to follow from the foregoing.



First, because the present approach to recognition theory is normatively grounded in a second-order aim, namely capability, it has a distinctive way of addressing well-known cross-cutting concerns. Identities, especially racial identities, are here not taken as given but as a task that is achieved precisely through political struggle. Because this struggle is oriented normatively by an ethical aim, namely an increase in capability, it both avoids the essential-ist trap of supposing that all members of a minority group have the same sets of concerns and the trap of political inaction which results from an attempt to respect infi nitely many differences. Political action remains pos-sible because one is only able to ameliorate the plight of racial minorities by struggling for fi rst-order goods, such as recognition, redistribution or what-ever else might be required. Just as the recognition of indigenous peoples is to be understood as a political achievement, so too is that of raced and ethnic minorities.

A second consequence of the foregoing was that in specifying the frame-work for this approach to the concerns of race theorists, it was necessary to outline Ricoeur ’ s distinctive contribution to the current debates in recog-nition politics. I have argued that Ricoeur ’ s approach to recognition is unique because when he addresses its normative dimension, he opts for a second-order monism to be understood in terms of capabilities. This means that with respect to the difference between Fraser and Honneth, who conduct their debate at a fi rst-order level, Ricoeur proposes some-thing quite novel. Unlike Honneth, he seeks to retain a precise role for recognition as a dimension of capability, so that distributive claims remain important in their own right. Unlike Fraser, Ricoeur remains open to a plurality of norms that would ‘ fi ll-out ’ what is intended by capability at a fi rst-order level. Specifi cally, it seems to me that he would endorse sustain-ability as a normative claim that is distinct from both recognition and redistribution, but which would be important for the goal of ‘ living with and for others in just institutions ’ . 16 It is not clear to me how Fraser would address this topic, though I surmise that Honneth would attempt to broach the topic through his broadly normative account of recognition. 17 Here, one wonders whether his claims for recognition have met their useful limit. At least it is not immediately clear how sustainability is to be understood with respect to the three social spheres of recognition – namely, the famil-ial, legal and that of social esteem. 18

The present account thus holds some promise for making sense of the competing claims to recognition, and their various forms of institutionaliza-tion. Yet, what may be perhaps most valuable in Ricoeur ’ s approach to rec-ognition is his second-order aim, which has not been fully explored here.



What normative basis there is for Ricoeur ’ s account of capability is some-thing that has only been outlined in the foregoing, and its relation to his account of ethics that one fi nds in Oneself as Another has only been broached here. One might want to know, for example, how one should adjudicate competing normative claims, how is one to make sense of the demands for redistribution which at points clash with the demands for recognition. Furthermore, one might want to know the scope for these normative claims. Presumably, Ricoeur ’ s concerns are not restricted only to the nation-state, so how would he broach the concerns of globalization, and the rise of so-called ‘ intermestic ’ concerns, such as immigration? If the present chapter, then, has made some headway on the specifi c matter of racial recognition, the possibilities that remain for thought, the fruit that calls for more intellectual labour, concern the prospect of developing this norma-tive frame more fully, as well as a systematic political philosophy adequate to this second-order insight.

Notes

1 Despite the fact that these matters have been in print for some time, one fi nds that even scholars on these fi gures are often little acquainted with the extent of the racist commitments of the proponents of human equality. It seems, then, that a review of some of the best work on this matter is in order. Two absolutely indis-pensible works on this matter are Mills (1993) and Outlaw (1996). Additionally, one should not overlook Bernasconi ’ s work (2001; 2003). Additionally, I suggest the excellent anthology What White Looks Like: African-American Philosophers on the Whiteness Question , ed. George Yancy (2004), for a review of numerous more spe-cifi c points, such as the character of G. F. W. Hegel ’ s racism. Finally, for those looking beyond the English speaking work, Dussel ’ s The Invention of the Americas (1995) has an excellent account of many of these matters. Also his É tica de la Lib-eraci ó n en la Edad de la Globalizaci ó n y la Exclusi ó n (1988) begins with a catalogue of some of the grossest racial commitments of ethical and political philosophers, including present philosophers.

2 For an example of this form of critique, one could again see the work by Charles Mills. In essay form, I recommend ‘ Rawls on Race/Race in Rawls ’ (2009).

3 Honneth makes almost the same statement in the same collected work (Fraser and Honneth 2003: 238).

4 This is a point raised on the fi rst page of Redistribution or Recognition? (Fraser and Honneth 2003) and equally on the fi rst page of Honneth ’ s The Struggle for Recogni-tion (Honneth 1995).

5 This is, at least, Honneth ’ s construal in his Critique of Power: Refl ective Stages in a Critical Social Theory (Honneth 1993).

6 In fact I think that a full account of capability recognition theory must address all three dimensions of recognition that Ricoeur identifi es. Of specifi c concern



for me is the way in which Ricoeur uncritically accepts a temporal account of recognition as determinative for his study, and excludes spatial considerations. These last ones, in my estimation, prove indispensable for global considerations of recognition. Yet, because the present essay is not a book-length study, I shall only focus on this last section and omit any discussion of the other aspects of recognition.

7 This is not to say that he utterly rejects what he thought before, but that he broad-ens his earlier notions through this later account.

8 It will be noted that in Oneself as Another , Ricoeur speaks entirely of justice in terms of distribution. See in particular the discussion in the third section of the seventh study. While in The Course of Recognition he does not hesitate to write: ‘ [w]hat is at stake is a new defi nition of social justice centered on the idea of “ rights to certain capacities ” ’ (Ricoeur 2005: 144).

9 While Hobbes does speak of the war of all against all in Leviathan , the Latin phrase is from his text De Cive , edited and translated as Hobbes: On the Citizen (1998: preface, § 14).

10 I am thinking here specifi cally of Mills ’ s arguments in his article ‘ Racial Exploita-tion and the Wages of Whiteness ’ (Yancy 2004: 30 – 32). This point is nevertheless more systematically explored in his The Racial Contract (Mills 1997).

11 As quoted in Bonila-Silva (2006: 80; my emphasis). It must be noted that Bonila-Silva is quoting from an interview in the 1997 Survey of Social Attitudes of Col-lege Students, which is based on a 627-person sample set (451 were white), and ten per cent were randomly interviewed.

12 I have in mind the problems Anazald ú a raises in her duly famous Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (Anazald ú a 1999).

13 On this matter, one could consult Gramsci (1971). I have in mind in particular the section entitled ‘ The Problem of Political Leadership in the Formation and Development of the Nation and the Modern State in Italy ’ .

14 For Linda Mart í n Alcoff ’ s position on ‘ ethnorace ’ , see her article ‘ Latinos Beyond the Binary ’ (Alcoff 2009: 112 – 128).

15 For a response to Alcoff ’ s position, see Shelby ’ s ‘ Racism, Identity, and Latinos: A Comment on Alcoff ’ (Shelby 2009: 129 – 136).

16 See Brian Treanor ’ s ‘ Turn Around and Step Forward: Ideology and Utopia in the Environmental Movement ’ in this book, where he provides an indication of the way in which Ricoeur ’ s work remains normatively open to notions such as sustain-ability.

17 Even Fraser ’ s recent Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World (Fraser 2009) does not clearly indicate where ecological concerns might fi t into her normative framework. She does broach the topic as one of many trans-national concerns, but does little to address it thematically.

18 In response to Fraser ’ s criticisms, Honneth argues that redistribution can be accommodated to just these three spheres in Redistribution or Recognition? (Fraser and Honneth 2003: 137).


"The Course of Racial Recognition," in From Ricoeur to Action

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