Steal This Title
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
PHIL3510 2nd Essay
Does the demand for recognition raise questions of justice that cannot be met within the framework of distributive justice? What is the appropriate response to demands for recognition?
The politics of recognition identify and address perceived injustice unattended by distributive justice. The treatment of social goods as things is derived from the application of the difference principle and the distributive concept of maximising the well being of the minimum social group. Recognition writers, Charles Taylor and Nancy Fraser use differing approaches to critique the absence of equal dignity and identity within a redistributive model of justice. The demands of recognition, equal dignity and identity, raise various questions, from individual concept of self to social reconstruction, and in some instances recognition politics may have a place within the distributive framework. In the following essay, I attempt to explicate critiques from the recognition perspective in order to show how they may or may not be reconciled with distributive justice and the relevance of the concerns they raise.
From the onset two important Rawlsian concepts must be understood, both are overidden by Rawls’ first principle. Firstly the difference principle may be outlined as, let there only be inequality where that inequality benefits the least well off, where goods are distributed to the group that is worse off to maximise the well being of the people within that groups. The members of the least well off are categorised only by their economic position within society, and members may frequently enter and leave as their economic position varies. Secondly the maximum benefit to the social requirement of the lowest or worse off may be explained as a social requirement to always operate to improve the situation of the lowest living conditions. This concept explains how Rawls gears society so that in any social configuration the most acceptable result is the one in which the lowest living standards are comparably the highest. According to Rawls any society that accepts a social scenario in which the lowest conditions are lower than they need be is not a just society. It is also important to keep in mind, while examining the recognition arguments, that Rawls pre-empts a Libertarian response to his redistribution model and qualifies goods as things that an individual may not own.
Hegelian Philosophy of dialogue and subsumation evidently influences the form of recognition politics of Taylor. He stresses that social distribution is one of a dialogue and not a monologue nor a handing down of goods. Taylor argues that there would exist discriminate and irreversible power relations that would result from monologue distribution methods. These models would not result in successfully benefiting the least well off but affording opportunity for the affluent to characterise the least well off in order to maintain a norm. In a monologue approach those within the distributive framework who fail to recogne, let alone enter into, dialogue with those they are distributing to are creating a relationship that creates negative difference. The negative aspects of this relationship may come in the form of basic denial of human interaction, ie dialogue. Taylor points out problems, such as continued membership to the lowest economic class via direct affirmation of place, with redistribution stemming from the unnatural monologue relationship. This continual affectation upon a group is an indirect violation of the maxi min principle in the sense that the affirming class of citizen is disallowing the worst off group to improve. However because it is not caused by redistribution itself, the injustice is unabated. In this way Taylor argue that the redistribution model is too atomistic for the ends that it seeks; within the procedure lies an unnoticed injustice. There is a hint of communitarian argument here, but it is not an issue of the good over the right but rather Taylor highlighting the injustice that a politics of recognition may manage within a distributive framework. The issue here is that all members need to receive equal dignity from society.
One key problem with redistribution is that it merely fails to take account of the goods that it cannot distribute, of the social identities that it inadvertently misrepresents as economic goods by means of ‘shaping’ them into the model, and the gross oversight of the culturally disadvantaged. Those that are economically and by designation culturally advantaged by the models of redistribution and procedural liberalism in their respective nations are case examples of the lack of cultural identification that they now possess in capitalist democracies. Such case examples are the large numbers of Caucasian men of affluence within Western Capitalist Democracies and their crises of identity. The distributive model imports a negative identity to those it distributes to. Yet those, which it distributes from, do not receive an identity from the framework and are left atomistic. The introduction of dialogue between process and person would allow the individual to shape the process in as much as the process shapes the individual.
Taylor argues that just recognition is a vital human need and that misrecognition and nonrecognition are harmful. Harmful in the sense that misrecognition and nonrecognition leads to disabled citizens by deprecating their self image. Taylor uses three examples, women, people of colour, and those who were colonised. All three suffered and suffer from a form of misrecognition or nonrecognition, and although they may be given greater opportunities than in the past they may not be able to capitalise on those opportunities due to their deprecated sense of self due to the social misrecognition. So that distributive, social, misrecognition leads to a depreciated self-identity, which thereby limits the functionality and self worth of the individual.
Taylor lays down working definitions for recognition, nonrecognition, and misrecognition. These definitions come largely from Hegelian Phenomenology and may be politically as such; Recognition is where one is recognised in one’s authenticity; Nonrecognition is when one is ignored; Misrecognition is when one is recognised via a false image or stereotype that serves to deny genuine recognition. Resting the recognition argument on the Hegelian dialogue Taylor formulates two concepts of recognition, one on the survival of suppressed and minority cultures within a State, and a second on individuals.
Firstly on the survival of regressive cultures within a State just recognition is necessary for the continuation of such a culture in its alien surroundings. The problem begins with the normative distinctions that are placed upon the regressive culture because it is placed in the dominant culture. A distributive framework allows for the proliferation of norms under which society compares itself and evaluates the groups, cultures, within it. This may be just if there were objective norms in which both the dominant culture and the regressive culture(s) may be equally compared, but as it stands the dominant culture has a major role in the formation of those norms and thereby has a distinct advantage. Nor does the distributive framework allow for collective goals to be pursued in a neutral state, which would deny the survival of a regressive culture within a neutral as such survival would be a collective goal for the members of such a culture. The regressive culture(s) is therefore forced into an alien mould in which it is more than likely not to survive. The attempt recognition makes to resolve this injustice is to accommodate the collective goal for the survival of a culture within a modified version of liberalism. We now have two forms of liberalism, the neutral state and the accommodating state. Walzer puts Taylor’s two types of Liberalism into a very palatable formulation.
(1) The first kind of liberalism (Liberalism 1) is committed in the strongest possible way to individual rights and, almost as a deduction from this, to a rigorously neutral state, that is, a state without cultural or religious projects or, indeed any sort of collective goals beyond the personal freedom and the physical security, welfare, and safety of its citizens.
(2) The second kind of liberalism (Liberalism 2) allows for a state committed to the survival and flourishing of a particular nation, culture, or religion, or of a (limited) set of nations, cultures, and religions – so long as the basic rights of citizens who have different commitments or no such commitments at all are protected.
Using the example of Quebec, Taylor illustrates how under the governance of Liberalism 2 a minority culture may be accommodated and within Liberalism 2 the neutral state is opted for the minority culture. Quebec would therefore be able to shape its norms within its own culturally identifiable values, such as making french a necessary course of study within the education system. Appropriate recognition by the State may be achieved and within the culturally defined state appropriate custom may be legitimised thereby working to regain positively reinforced identities of self.
For such an arrangement to work successfully Taylor builds what he calls a presumption, the claim is that all human cultures that have animated whole societies over some considerable stretch of time have something important to say to all human beings. This presumption is used as a starting point for coming to recognition of culture, of the other, via a fusion of horizons. Taylor has borrowed the phrase ‘fusion of horizons’ from Gadamer who is coming from a hermeneutic study of Hegel. Gadamer works towards a fusion of horizons in understanding the other via communication and ultimately language, by defining terms in which individuals may formulate grounds that afford them the opportunity to create subtleties of language that draw closer together the differences and variances of each other so that they may come closer to understanding the other . The fusion of horizons is the infinite outside point of the individual where the world of one may rub against the world of the other.
The example of Bellows illustrates how recognition serves to rectify cultural injustice within the distributive framework by setting up the members of a community to reflect upon their community and take stock of their members. The nonrecognition of particular members of one’s community is a large injustice that is at no point addressed by distributive means. By recognising other cultures we are able to recognise adequately our own communities and the diversity within them, and realising the multiculturalism that exists exert the necessary changes that must take affect within the social institutions, such as education, to prevent the misrecognition and nonrecognition that occurs by the omission of culturally relevant articles within a community. Taylor uses the example of African culturally specific articles in the education system of communities with African American majorities. Community reflection upon membership may rsult in appropriate changes to communal structures.
Wolf points out that the fusion of horizons may be flawed in the following ways; that the level of individual misrecognition that is highlighted by the Bellows example may still exist. In the sense that the arrogance may be defeated, no longer will Bellows make the comparison between the Zulu culture and a Euro centric culture, but the view may not change. Bellows may adopt an attitude that reconstitutes the Euro centric culture more important to the people studying because they are Europeans – perhaps honorific Europeans. The education example may close down and find that study of other cultures is not as relevant as study of our own culture, as the other finds it more relevant to study theirs. This problem is similar to one of two limitations Taylor outlines himself.
One, that we are not of a large enough starting horizon to adequately encompass others and two the possibility remains that after the expansion of our horizons we may not agree with the other.
Alternatively Fraser encompasses a view of recognition politics in dichotomy with redistribution. Fraser devises a heuristic framework for dealing with injustice. She reduces all injustice to two spheres, that of redistribution and that of recognition. The former being rooted in economic concerns, while the latter rooted in cultural differences. The two spheres are then split again into two further categories of action; affirmative and transformative. So that we have a grid of four; affirmative redistribution in hand with affirmative recognition as opposed to transformative redistribution in hand with transformative recognition. I say in hand because Fraser makes it very clear that only the affirmative recognition method may work with the affirmative redistribution method and similarly with the transformative.
Firstly Fraser identifies, heuristically, three forms of injustice. The first being those injustices that may be reduced to economic dysfunction as their cause, or unequal economic distribution. Fraser takes the Marxist example of the proletariat as an identifiable group that suffers uniquely from, and only from, economically rooted injustice. She argues that the only way that this group is to overcome their injustice is to dissolve as a group. The key identifying feature of being a member of that group is being economically exploited by the bourgeois. The issue is clear to Fraser that a course of recognition and structuring of group identity would not solve the economic injustice that this group is experiencing. The only course of action is to use a distributive framework to remove the class from society.
The second group would be polarised against the economically suffering group, the example used is those who face injustices on the basis of sexual orientation. This is a group whose root of injustice lies solely on the side of recognition. That the injustices that occur to this group can be categorically defined as being formed by the derogatory conceptions and norms fevered within a liberal society. The solution accordingly is a recognition-based formula. Whereby the social norms must be changed in order to affect the hierarchy of sexuality.
The third group is reasonably one that suffers from both economic and recognition injustices. Here Fraser places the feminist debate, and uses the genealogy of feminism as a cornerstone indicator of her overarching framework of using a recognition model of justice reconciled with a redistributive model. She does this largely by drawing out the history of the feminist debate. Beginning with women’s fight for equal pay, followed by the debate of essentialism, the male gaze in modern society, and finally the contemporary resolution to pursue equal public and economic standing Fraser constructs a model that uses redistribution and recognition. The feminist continuum outlines the centring of redistribution and recognitio as the society feminism is defending itself against reacts and exposes yet another injustice on both economic and identity forms.
Fraser indicates that there are two methods of action to take in both forms of injustice. The affirmative method is to make surface changes to the liberal society in which the injustices occur. For example the strengthening of already present and mobile redistributive measures in place towards women, and affirmative action places so that women may be given a leg up in the liberal society. As opposed to a transformative model where a deconstructive dialogue takes place between the defenders of identity, eg the feminists, and the liberal society. The result is that the underlying foundations, those concepts of recognition, and the structures of the market economy are allegedly rebuilt with the identity argument in mind. The purpose of which is to exterminate the misrecognition and nonrecognition and construct a system whereby affirmative, identity improving recognition may take place, and where the redistribution model does not make up for lost ground but resets the benchmark for economic worth. For example, a society in which not only the woman may work and earn equal to a man and a man may stay at home, but also where the identity and distributive framework would see the positions interchangeable and directly related; that recognition may come only from the combination of home and work.
Fraser’s work comes under direct attack from Young firstly for its loss of detail and relevance in a reductionist theory. Young herself sets up five categories of injustice; exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence, all of which she argues have variations and distinct ties to distribution and recognition while maintaining direct links to their realities. Young outlines how the dichotomy by polarizing redistribution and recognition for heuristic purposes Fraser creates a tension between the two that does not exist in real circumstances. Fraser’s dichotomy softens the nuances of identity politics that don’t fit in either category, and begins to contort for the sake of framework.
Bibliography
Fraser, Nancy. ‘From Redistribution to Recognition / Dilemmas of Justice in a Post Colonial Age’ in Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the Post-Socialist Condition, Routledge, New York. 1997.
Fraser, Nancy. ‘Multiculturalism, Antiessentialism, and Radical Democracy: A Genealogy of the Current Impasse in Feminist Theory’ in Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the Post-Socialist Condition, Routledge, New York. 1997.
Fraser, Nancy. ‘Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition, and Participation’ in Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth Redistribution or Recognition? A Political – Philosophical Exchange, Verso, London. 2003.
Gadamer, H. Truth and Method. Continuum, London. 2004
Hegel, G. Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. By A. Miller. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 1977.
Honneth, Axel. ‘Redistribution as Recognition: A Response to Nancy Fraser’ in Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth Redistribution or Recognition? A Political – Philosophical Exchange, Verso, London. 2003.
Kymlicka, Will. ‘Multiculturalism’ in Contemporary Political Philosophy, Ch 8. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 2002
Rawls, John Philosophical Review, vol. 67 (1958) pg 164-194
Rawls, John A Theory of Justice, (1999) rev ed. Oxford, Oxford University Press
Rawls, John Political Liberalism, (1996) New York, Columbia Press
Rockefeller, Steven C. ‘Comment on Taylor’ in Amy Gutman ed. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1994.
Taylor, Charles. ‘The Politics of Recognition’ in Amy Gutman ed. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1994.
Taylor, Charles Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers, Vol II, (1985) Cambridge University Press
Walzer, Michael. ‘Comment on Taylor’ in Amy Gutman ed. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1994.
Wolf, Susan. ‘Comment on Taylor’ in Amy Gutman ed. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1994.
Young, I. ‘Unruly Categories: A Critique of Nancy Fraser’s Dual Systems Theory’ New Left Review, Issue 222, March – April 1997, 147-160.
End Notes
Rawls, John A Theory of Justice, (1999) rev ed. Oxford, Oxford University Press
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Taylor, Charles. ‘The Politics of Recognition’ in Amy Gutman ed. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1994. Pg 27
Ibid. pg 27
Ibid. pg33
Ibid. pg 34
Ibid. pg 44
Ibid. pg 46
Walzer, Michael. ‘Comment on Taylor’ in Amy Gutman ed. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1994. Pg 99
Taylor, Charles. ‘The Politics of Recognition’ in Amy Gutman ed. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1994. Pg 66
Gadamer, H. Truth and Method. Continuum, London. 2004
Taylor, Charles. ‘The Politics of Recognition’ in Amy Gutman ed. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1994. Pg 67
Wolf, Susan. ‘Comment on Taylor’ in Amy Gutman ed. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1994. Pg 80
Taylor, Charles. ‘The Politics of Recognition’ in Amy Gutman ed. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1994. Pg 74
Fraser, Nancy. ‘From Redistribution to Recognition / Dilemmas of Justice in a Post Colonial Age’ in Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the Post-Socialist Condition, Routledge, New York. 1997. Pg 27
Ibid. pg 18
Ibid. pg 19
Fraser, Nancy. ‘Multiculturalism, Antiessentialism, and Radical Democracy: A Genealogy of the Current Impasse in Feminist Theory’ in Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the Post-Socialist Condition, Routledge, New York. 1997.
Fraser, Nancy. ‘Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition, and Participation’ in Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth Redistribution or Recognition? A Political – Philosophical Exchange, Verso, London. 2003. Pg 43
Ibid. pg. 56
Young, I. ‘Unruly Categories: A Critique of Nancy Fraser’s Dual Systems Theory’ New Left Review, Issue 222, March – April 1997, pg 155.
Young, I. ‘Unruly Categories: A Critique of Nancy Fraser’s Dual Systems Theory’ New Left Review, Issue 222, March – April 1997, pg 150.
The politics of recognition identify and address perceived injustice unattended by distributive justice. The treatment of social goods as things is derived from the application of the difference principle and the distributive concept of maximising the well being of the minimum social group. Recognition writers, Charles Taylor and Nancy Fraser use differing approaches to critique the absence of equal dignity and identity within a redistributive model of justice. The demands of recognition, equal dignity and identity, raise various questions, from individual concept of self to social reconstruction, and in some instances recognition politics may have a place within the distributive framework. In the following essay, I attempt to explicate critiques from the recognition perspective in order to show how they may or may not be reconciled with distributive justice and the relevance of the concerns they raise.
From the onset two important Rawlsian concepts must be understood, both are overidden by Rawls’ first principle. Firstly the difference principle may be outlined as, let there only be inequality where that inequality benefits the least well off, where goods are distributed to the group that is worse off to maximise the well being of the people within that groups. The members of the least well off are categorised only by their economic position within society, and members may frequently enter and leave as their economic position varies. Secondly the maximum benefit to the social requirement of the lowest or worse off may be explained as a social requirement to always operate to improve the situation of the lowest living conditions. This concept explains how Rawls gears society so that in any social configuration the most acceptable result is the one in which the lowest living standards are comparably the highest. According to Rawls any society that accepts a social scenario in which the lowest conditions are lower than they need be is not a just society. It is also important to keep in mind, while examining the recognition arguments, that Rawls pre-empts a Libertarian response to his redistribution model and qualifies goods as things that an individual may not own.
Hegelian Philosophy of dialogue and subsumation evidently influences the form of recognition politics of Taylor. He stresses that social distribution is one of a dialogue and not a monologue nor a handing down of goods. Taylor argues that there would exist discriminate and irreversible power relations that would result from monologue distribution methods. These models would not result in successfully benefiting the least well off but affording opportunity for the affluent to characterise the least well off in order to maintain a norm. In a monologue approach those within the distributive framework who fail to recogne, let alone enter into, dialogue with those they are distributing to are creating a relationship that creates negative difference. The negative aspects of this relationship may come in the form of basic denial of human interaction, ie dialogue. Taylor points out problems, such as continued membership to the lowest economic class via direct affirmation of place, with redistribution stemming from the unnatural monologue relationship. This continual affectation upon a group is an indirect violation of the maxi min principle in the sense that the affirming class of citizen is disallowing the worst off group to improve. However because it is not caused by redistribution itself, the injustice is unabated. In this way Taylor argue that the redistribution model is too atomistic for the ends that it seeks; within the procedure lies an unnoticed injustice. There is a hint of communitarian argument here, but it is not an issue of the good over the right but rather Taylor highlighting the injustice that a politics of recognition may manage within a distributive framework. The issue here is that all members need to receive equal dignity from society.
One key problem with redistribution is that it merely fails to take account of the goods that it cannot distribute, of the social identities that it inadvertently misrepresents as economic goods by means of ‘shaping’ them into the model, and the gross oversight of the culturally disadvantaged. Those that are economically and by designation culturally advantaged by the models of redistribution and procedural liberalism in their respective nations are case examples of the lack of cultural identification that they now possess in capitalist democracies. Such case examples are the large numbers of Caucasian men of affluence within Western Capitalist Democracies and their crises of identity. The distributive model imports a negative identity to those it distributes to. Yet those, which it distributes from, do not receive an identity from the framework and are left atomistic. The introduction of dialogue between process and person would allow the individual to shape the process in as much as the process shapes the individual.
Taylor argues that just recognition is a vital human need and that misrecognition and nonrecognition are harmful. Harmful in the sense that misrecognition and nonrecognition leads to disabled citizens by deprecating their self image. Taylor uses three examples, women, people of colour, and those who were colonised. All three suffered and suffer from a form of misrecognition or nonrecognition, and although they may be given greater opportunities than in the past they may not be able to capitalise on those opportunities due to their deprecated sense of self due to the social misrecognition. So that distributive, social, misrecognition leads to a depreciated self-identity, which thereby limits the functionality and self worth of the individual.
Taylor lays down working definitions for recognition, nonrecognition, and misrecognition. These definitions come largely from Hegelian Phenomenology and may be politically as such; Recognition is where one is recognised in one’s authenticity; Nonrecognition is when one is ignored; Misrecognition is when one is recognised via a false image or stereotype that serves to deny genuine recognition. Resting the recognition argument on the Hegelian dialogue Taylor formulates two concepts of recognition, one on the survival of suppressed and minority cultures within a State, and a second on individuals.
Firstly on the survival of regressive cultures within a State just recognition is necessary for the continuation of such a culture in its alien surroundings. The problem begins with the normative distinctions that are placed upon the regressive culture because it is placed in the dominant culture. A distributive framework allows for the proliferation of norms under which society compares itself and evaluates the groups, cultures, within it. This may be just if there were objective norms in which both the dominant culture and the regressive culture(s) may be equally compared, but as it stands the dominant culture has a major role in the formation of those norms and thereby has a distinct advantage. Nor does the distributive framework allow for collective goals to be pursued in a neutral state, which would deny the survival of a regressive culture within a neutral as such survival would be a collective goal for the members of such a culture. The regressive culture(s) is therefore forced into an alien mould in which it is more than likely not to survive. The attempt recognition makes to resolve this injustice is to accommodate the collective goal for the survival of a culture within a modified version of liberalism. We now have two forms of liberalism, the neutral state and the accommodating state. Walzer puts Taylor’s two types of Liberalism into a very palatable formulation.
(1) The first kind of liberalism (Liberalism 1) is committed in the strongest possible way to individual rights and, almost as a deduction from this, to a rigorously neutral state, that is, a state without cultural or religious projects or, indeed any sort of collective goals beyond the personal freedom and the physical security, welfare, and safety of its citizens.
(2) The second kind of liberalism (Liberalism 2) allows for a state committed to the survival and flourishing of a particular nation, culture, or religion, or of a (limited) set of nations, cultures, and religions – so long as the basic rights of citizens who have different commitments or no such commitments at all are protected.
Using the example of Quebec, Taylor illustrates how under the governance of Liberalism 2 a minority culture may be accommodated and within Liberalism 2 the neutral state is opted for the minority culture. Quebec would therefore be able to shape its norms within its own culturally identifiable values, such as making french a necessary course of study within the education system. Appropriate recognition by the State may be achieved and within the culturally defined state appropriate custom may be legitimised thereby working to regain positively reinforced identities of self.
For such an arrangement to work successfully Taylor builds what he calls a presumption, the claim is that all human cultures that have animated whole societies over some considerable stretch of time have something important to say to all human beings. This presumption is used as a starting point for coming to recognition of culture, of the other, via a fusion of horizons. Taylor has borrowed the phrase ‘fusion of horizons’ from Gadamer who is coming from a hermeneutic study of Hegel. Gadamer works towards a fusion of horizons in understanding the other via communication and ultimately language, by defining terms in which individuals may formulate grounds that afford them the opportunity to create subtleties of language that draw closer together the differences and variances of each other so that they may come closer to understanding the other . The fusion of horizons is the infinite outside point of the individual where the world of one may rub against the world of the other.
The example of Bellows illustrates how recognition serves to rectify cultural injustice within the distributive framework by setting up the members of a community to reflect upon their community and take stock of their members. The nonrecognition of particular members of one’s community is a large injustice that is at no point addressed by distributive means. By recognising other cultures we are able to recognise adequately our own communities and the diversity within them, and realising the multiculturalism that exists exert the necessary changes that must take affect within the social institutions, such as education, to prevent the misrecognition and nonrecognition that occurs by the omission of culturally relevant articles within a community. Taylor uses the example of African culturally specific articles in the education system of communities with African American majorities. Community reflection upon membership may rsult in appropriate changes to communal structures.
Wolf points out that the fusion of horizons may be flawed in the following ways; that the level of individual misrecognition that is highlighted by the Bellows example may still exist. In the sense that the arrogance may be defeated, no longer will Bellows make the comparison between the Zulu culture and a Euro centric culture, but the view may not change. Bellows may adopt an attitude that reconstitutes the Euro centric culture more important to the people studying because they are Europeans – perhaps honorific Europeans. The education example may close down and find that study of other cultures is not as relevant as study of our own culture, as the other finds it more relevant to study theirs. This problem is similar to one of two limitations Taylor outlines himself.
One, that we are not of a large enough starting horizon to adequately encompass others and two the possibility remains that after the expansion of our horizons we may not agree with the other.
Alternatively Fraser encompasses a view of recognition politics in dichotomy with redistribution. Fraser devises a heuristic framework for dealing with injustice. She reduces all injustice to two spheres, that of redistribution and that of recognition. The former being rooted in economic concerns, while the latter rooted in cultural differences. The two spheres are then split again into two further categories of action; affirmative and transformative. So that we have a grid of four; affirmative redistribution in hand with affirmative recognition as opposed to transformative redistribution in hand with transformative recognition. I say in hand because Fraser makes it very clear that only the affirmative recognition method may work with the affirmative redistribution method and similarly with the transformative.
Firstly Fraser identifies, heuristically, three forms of injustice. The first being those injustices that may be reduced to economic dysfunction as their cause, or unequal economic distribution. Fraser takes the Marxist example of the proletariat as an identifiable group that suffers uniquely from, and only from, economically rooted injustice. She argues that the only way that this group is to overcome their injustice is to dissolve as a group. The key identifying feature of being a member of that group is being economically exploited by the bourgeois. The issue is clear to Fraser that a course of recognition and structuring of group identity would not solve the economic injustice that this group is experiencing. The only course of action is to use a distributive framework to remove the class from society.
The second group would be polarised against the economically suffering group, the example used is those who face injustices on the basis of sexual orientation. This is a group whose root of injustice lies solely on the side of recognition. That the injustices that occur to this group can be categorically defined as being formed by the derogatory conceptions and norms fevered within a liberal society. The solution accordingly is a recognition-based formula. Whereby the social norms must be changed in order to affect the hierarchy of sexuality.
The third group is reasonably one that suffers from both economic and recognition injustices. Here Fraser places the feminist debate, and uses the genealogy of feminism as a cornerstone indicator of her overarching framework of using a recognition model of justice reconciled with a redistributive model. She does this largely by drawing out the history of the feminist debate. Beginning with women’s fight for equal pay, followed by the debate of essentialism, the male gaze in modern society, and finally the contemporary resolution to pursue equal public and economic standing Fraser constructs a model that uses redistribution and recognition. The feminist continuum outlines the centring of redistribution and recognitio as the society feminism is defending itself against reacts and exposes yet another injustice on both economic and identity forms.
Fraser indicates that there are two methods of action to take in both forms of injustice. The affirmative method is to make surface changes to the liberal society in which the injustices occur. For example the strengthening of already present and mobile redistributive measures in place towards women, and affirmative action places so that women may be given a leg up in the liberal society. As opposed to a transformative model where a deconstructive dialogue takes place between the defenders of identity, eg the feminists, and the liberal society. The result is that the underlying foundations, those concepts of recognition, and the structures of the market economy are allegedly rebuilt with the identity argument in mind. The purpose of which is to exterminate the misrecognition and nonrecognition and construct a system whereby affirmative, identity improving recognition may take place, and where the redistribution model does not make up for lost ground but resets the benchmark for economic worth. For example, a society in which not only the woman may work and earn equal to a man and a man may stay at home, but also where the identity and distributive framework would see the positions interchangeable and directly related; that recognition may come only from the combination of home and work.
Fraser’s work comes under direct attack from Young firstly for its loss of detail and relevance in a reductionist theory. Young herself sets up five categories of injustice; exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence, all of which she argues have variations and distinct ties to distribution and recognition while maintaining direct links to their realities. Young outlines how the dichotomy by polarizing redistribution and recognition for heuristic purposes Fraser creates a tension between the two that does not exist in real circumstances. Fraser’s dichotomy softens the nuances of identity politics that don’t fit in either category, and begins to contort for the sake of framework.
Bibliography
Fraser, Nancy. ‘From Redistribution to Recognition / Dilemmas of Justice in a Post Colonial Age’ in Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the Post-Socialist Condition, Routledge, New York. 1997.
Fraser, Nancy. ‘Multiculturalism, Antiessentialism, and Radical Democracy: A Genealogy of the Current Impasse in Feminist Theory’ in Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the Post-Socialist Condition, Routledge, New York. 1997.
Fraser, Nancy. ‘Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition, and Participation’ in Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth Redistribution or Recognition? A Political – Philosophical Exchange, Verso, London. 2003.
Gadamer, H. Truth and Method. Continuum, London. 2004
Hegel, G. Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. By A. Miller. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 1977.
Honneth, Axel. ‘Redistribution as Recognition: A Response to Nancy Fraser’ in Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth Redistribution or Recognition? A Political – Philosophical Exchange, Verso, London. 2003.
Kymlicka, Will. ‘Multiculturalism’ in Contemporary Political Philosophy, Ch 8. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 2002
Rawls, John Philosophical Review, vol. 67 (1958) pg 164-194
Rawls, John A Theory of Justice, (1999) rev ed. Oxford, Oxford University Press
Rawls, John Political Liberalism, (1996) New York, Columbia Press
Rockefeller, Steven C. ‘Comment on Taylor’ in Amy Gutman ed. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1994.
Taylor, Charles. ‘The Politics of Recognition’ in Amy Gutman ed. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1994.
Taylor, Charles Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers, Vol II, (1985) Cambridge University Press
Walzer, Michael. ‘Comment on Taylor’ in Amy Gutman ed. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1994.
Wolf, Susan. ‘Comment on Taylor’ in Amy Gutman ed. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1994.
Young, I. ‘Unruly Categories: A Critique of Nancy Fraser’s Dual Systems Theory’ New Left Review, Issue 222, March – April 1997, 147-160.
End Notes
Rawls, John A Theory of Justice, (1999) rev ed. Oxford, Oxford University Press
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Taylor, Charles. ‘The Politics of Recognition’ in Amy Gutman ed. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1994. Pg 27
Ibid. pg 27
Ibid. pg33
Ibid. pg 34
Ibid. pg 44
Ibid. pg 46
Walzer, Michael. ‘Comment on Taylor’ in Amy Gutman ed. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1994. Pg 99
Taylor, Charles. ‘The Politics of Recognition’ in Amy Gutman ed. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1994. Pg 66
Gadamer, H. Truth and Method. Continuum, London. 2004
Taylor, Charles. ‘The Politics of Recognition’ in Amy Gutman ed. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1994. Pg 67
Wolf, Susan. ‘Comment on Taylor’ in Amy Gutman ed. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1994. Pg 80
Taylor, Charles. ‘The Politics of Recognition’ in Amy Gutman ed. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1994. Pg 74
Fraser, Nancy. ‘From Redistribution to Recognition / Dilemmas of Justice in a Post Colonial Age’ in Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the Post-Socialist Condition, Routledge, New York. 1997. Pg 27
Ibid. pg 18
Ibid. pg 19
Fraser, Nancy. ‘Multiculturalism, Antiessentialism, and Radical Democracy: A Genealogy of the Current Impasse in Feminist Theory’ in Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the Post-Socialist Condition, Routledge, New York. 1997.
Fraser, Nancy. ‘Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition, and Participation’ in Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth Redistribution or Recognition? A Political – Philosophical Exchange, Verso, London. 2003. Pg 43
Ibid. pg. 56
Young, I. ‘Unruly Categories: A Critique of Nancy Fraser’s Dual Systems Theory’ New Left Review, Issue 222, March – April 1997, pg 155.
Young, I. ‘Unruly Categories: A Critique of Nancy Fraser’s Dual Systems Theory’ New Left Review, Issue 222, March – April 1997, pg 150.
Labels: essay, fraser, philosophy, rawls, taylor
¶ 2:44 pm 0 Comments
script
#!/bin/sh
if [ $# -ne 3 ]
then
echo "You must provide arguments to the script. 1 is the subnet, 2 is the start address, 3 is the end address."
exit
fi
PREFIX=$1
SUFFIXSTART=$2
SUFFIXEND=`expr $3 + 1`
while [ $SUFFIXSTART -ne $SUFFIXEND ]
do
ADDR="${PREFIX}.${SUFFIXSTART}"
ping -c1 ${ADDR} > /dev/null
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
echo "$ADDR is up!"
else
echo "$ADDR is down!"
fi
SUFFIXSTART=`expr $SUFFIXSTART + 1`
done ¶ 2:35 pm 0 Comments
if [ $# -ne 3 ]
then
echo "You must provide arguments to the script. 1 is the subnet, 2 is the start address, 3 is the end address."
exit
fi
PREFIX=$1
SUFFIXSTART=$2
SUFFIXEND=`expr $3 + 1`
while [ $SUFFIXSTART -ne $SUFFIXEND ]
do
ADDR="${PREFIX}.${SUFFIXSTART}"
ping -c1 ${ADDR} > /dev/null
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
echo "$ADDR is up!"
else
echo "$ADDR is down!"
fi
SUFFIXSTART=`expr $SUFFIXSTART + 1`
done ¶ 2:35 pm 0 Comments
Monday, June 11, 2007
slipping right into that tv screen. i said it, tells him right to his face, gun in hand, you keep sipping on that and i'll keep sipping on this. then he slipped right into to it and out of this. right in their. so holographic so hologramic. i kept flicking the channels trying to find somthing different but they all had that white fuzz and white noise. i was expecting colour. turn the volume down and the brightness off i still got no colour to correct but i seem him in there turning a solid state of green. and pale. maybe if i go in too. go in after him and see what's the fuss all about. then i might get it get it five to one give it a go. never seen the other side. now i got something to do somewhere to go. at least i'm spending quality time
¶ 12:22 am 0 Comments
Sunday, June 10, 2007
missing ground
they just steal the lines from the backing track of some disco ballad pulled out of the two dollar vinyl bin in a sceney back alley garage record store that possibly only the neighbourhood cats know about. rip it right on out of there, recontextualise and act cool like no one could ever know. and at first find a fleeting compliment and then having time to constitute a reliable story of chance and incidence repeat such with aplomb and gain applause for your attributes to tell a good yarn and to have led such an interesting life. go on and make the whole appropriation gig your thingl, kike you have found anew way to express yourself through fellow artist and a communing with history. and then as you've sold yourself and find some comfort in money, take that time off, ploy your artistic sensibility and take pleasure in the wealthier, finer side, of the aquarian dish. taste the foreign delicacy, explore the unknown nether regions of the cold south and high northerly breezes flood your hair, let it be known, that nothing less than pure transendance of all things unworthy of godlike sense has passed through you complete body soul and mind. your every emotion wells up swells and blows a load of creativity into your very own back pocket. it gets hard to sit on so much wad on so much wad but when you get up to stand and standing is what you must do so much falls to the floor don't scoop don't bend don't get down on your knees.
¶ 11:38 pm 0 Comments