{"id":5196,"date":"2017-01-06T17:34:24","date_gmt":"2017-01-06T22:34:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/?p=5196"},"modified":"2019-06-08T18:41:31","modified_gmt":"2019-06-08T22:41:31","slug":"axel-honneth-and-jacques-ranciere-recognition-or-disagreement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/2017\/01\/06\/axel-honneth-and-jacques-ranciere-recognition-or-disagreement","title":{"rendered":"Axel Honneth and Jacques Ranci\u00e8re, Recognition or Disagreement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Axel Honneth and Jacques Ranci\u00e8re, <\/b>Recognition or Disagreement: A Critical Encounter on the Politics of Freedom, Equality, and Identity.<\/i><\/b>\u00a0 K. Genel and J.-P. Deranty eds. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016; 240 pages. ISBN: 978-0231177160. <\/b><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Matheson Russell, The University of Auckland.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Recognition or disagreement? Jacques Ranci\u00e8re and Axel Honneth present influential yet divergent contemporary approaches to critical theory. In <\/span>Recognition or Disagreement<\/span><\/i>, they are brought into dialogue with each other for the first time. The centerpiece of this volume is Part II, which contains three documents: (1) a short text on Honneth\u2019s theory of recognition written by Ranci\u00e8re; (2) a short text on Ranci\u00e8re\u2019s conception of political disagreement written by Honneth; and (3) the transcript of a conversation between the two in which they respond to each other\u2019s analysis of their work and press each other on points of contention. These contributions are fleshed out with two \u201cscene setting\u201d introductions written by the editors, Katia Genel and Jean-Philippe Deranty (Part I), and two supplementary essays penned by Ranci\u00e8re and Honneth (Part III). Of these latter two essays, Ranci\u00e8re\u2019s is a revised version of a piece that has already appeared in print, while Honneth\u2019s, which analyses and criticizes Hegel\u2019s conception of ethical life as a conception of freedom, is new, and serves as an accessible and useful introduction to issues explored in his recent work, <\/span>Freedom\u2019s Right<\/span><\/i> (2014).<\/span><\/p>\n

The editors of the volume arranged for the personal encounter between Honneth and Ranci\u00e8re to take place at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. Of course, neither theorist endorses the program of the original Frankfurt School without reservation. Yet, this historically poignant backdrop is entirely fitting. Both Honneth and Ranci\u00e8re retain an intellectual commitment to the legacy of critical theory, understood as the task of reflectively articulating the logic of emancipatory political struggles from the standpoint of (and in solidarity with) participants in those struggles. Their shared commitment on this point is assumed in their exchange, and it provides the common reference point for the disagreements that are explored in the book. Therefore, their disagreements centre more precisely around how the dynamic of political struggle is to be conceived, how it is motivated, what it aims at, whether it needs to be normatively grounded, and, if so, how. <\/span><\/p>\n

A variety of theoretical issues are canvassed and explored in the exchange: the role of recognition and misrecognition in social domination, the normative significance of social suffering, the conceptual relation between \u201cidentity\u201d and \u201csubjectivity,\u201d the role of normative expectations in social struggles, the historicity of \u201cequality\u201d as a political ideal, the relationship between aesthetics and politics, to name a few. Although the remarks made on each of these points are brief, they nonetheless illuminate the differences between the two thinkers with considerable force. Furthermore, at certain moments in the face-to-face exchange, one even gets the impression that genuine reflection and creative thought is taking place, especially on the part of Honneth. <\/span><\/p>\n

What do we learn from the encounter? First, some possibly surprising points of agreement:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Ranci\u00e8re (as well as Honneth) is willing to frame his theoretical position in the language of recognition. Although Deranty provides evidence in his introduction that the theme of recognition has played a role in Ranci\u00e8re\u2019s work stretching back to the 1970s (36-40), Ranci\u00e8re\u2019s willingness in the present day to offer what he calls \u201ca kind of \u2018Ranci\u00e8rean\u2019 conception of the theory of recognition\u201d is noteworthy. (95) What this \u201cRanci\u00e8rean\u201d theory of recognition amounts to, however, we shall consider shortly.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
      \n
    1. Ranci\u00e8re and Honneth agree that struggles \u201cfor\u201d recognition are just as often struggles \u201cagainst\u201d recognition, a fight to liberate ourselves from established categories of identification, <\/span>i.e.<\/span><\/i>, acts of \u201cdis-identification.\u201d (92; cf. 108f.) The struggle for recognition is thus best framed as a struggle for \u201c<\/span>another form <\/span><\/i>of recognition: a redistribution of the places, the identities, and the parts.\u201d (90) They agree, in other words, that it is more precise to speak of \u201cstruggles <\/span>over <\/span><\/i>recognition\u201d rather than merely of \u201cstruggles <\/span>for <\/span><\/i>recognition.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
        \n
      1. Both Honneth and Ranci\u00e8re find it useful to analyze the structures of social domination in aesthetic as well as discursive terms. Notably, Honneth explicitly accepts Ranci\u00e8re\u2019s basic characterization of the normative order of recognition (\u201cthe police\u201d) as equally an aesthetic order, as a \u201cdistribution of the sensible\u201d: \u201cour way of perceiving the world, of being able to see what \u2018is the case\u2019 in the social order, is structured by the pregiven political categories and normative principles that allow justification of inequalities and asymmetries.\u201d (116f.) Our interpretative relation to the world is thus an aesthetic relation, and vice versa. The question of the struggle for recognition, then, is a question of different <\/span>ways of seeing <\/span><\/i>just as much as it is a question of offering reinterpretations or arguments.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Now to the points of divergence and disagreement. <\/span><\/p>\n

        Honneth believes that a critical theory must, among other things, elucidate (i) the psychological motivations of social struggles, which he locates in experiences of \u201csuffering\u201d (128), and (ii) the normative grounds that legitimate these struggles, which he connects to the social conditions for \u201cself-realization\u201d or \u201cundistorted self-relationship.\u201d (109) From Honneth\u2019s perspective, Ranci\u00e8re\u2019s conception of politics remains ungrounded, since it fails to account for (i) the <\/span>desire <\/span><\/i>for equality it apparently presupposes (123), and (ii) the <\/span>normative force <\/span><\/i>of \u201csocial equality\u201d itself as a political ideal. (102f.)<\/span><\/p>\n

        For his part, Ranci\u00e8re not only rejects Honneth\u2019s responses to (i) and (ii), he also questions whether a critical theory must fulfill these tasks at all. <\/span><\/p>\n

        (i) Ranci\u00e8re is skeptical of the possibility of developing an anthropology that identifies basic human desires and needs: \u201cI don\u2019t know what human beings desire in general.\u201d (111) Furthermore, he regards social suffering as a dubious basis for a political theory, since suffering is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for political struggles. (126) But, more to the point, what characterizes politics is not so much the struggle to end suffering as the conflict over <\/span>what <\/span><\/i>suffering and <\/span>whose <\/span><\/i>suffering will count as an injustice. (127)<\/span><\/p>\n

        (ii) Ranci\u00e8re rejects the idea that politics can be given normative grounding in terms of \u201cgood\u201d self-relations or reconciled social relationships. This supposes the possibility of a situation in which the recognitional needs of all are satisfied within a well-ordered community\u2014a good Hegelian thesis, even if it is presented only as a \u201cregulative idea.\u201d (110) Ranci\u00e8re does not deny that a well-ordered community could be established, but he regards such a vision as thoroughly anti-political (and anti-democratic)\u2014indeed, he claims, politics is \u201cendangered\u201d by the ethical orientation of Honneth. (87) To see why, we have to trace the distinction Ranci\u00e8re makes between social struggles that aim to overcome \u201csocial pathologies\u201d (<\/span>i.e.<\/span><\/i>, deficiencies in relation to a certain idea of normality) and social struggles that are \u201cpolitical.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

        Ranci\u00e8re\u2019s assumption is that the self-conceptions and normative expectations of recognition that we internalize through socialization are the mechanisms by which \u201cthe police order\u201d is reproduced. If, with Honneth, we understand the struggle for recognition to be driven by a sense of violation of our identity claims, then we have an inherently conservative theory of recognition, one that merely works to reaffirm and realize the normative expectations already embedded within the social order. On this point, Ranci\u00e8re echoes the skepticism of Foucauldian theorists such as Judith Butler, Lois McNay, and Amy Allen, who regard struggles for recognition to be profoundly ambivalent as struggles to overcome domination. <\/span><\/p>\n

        The alternative that Ranci\u00e8re develops locates the \u201cmotor\u201d of emancipatory political struggles elsewhere. Fundamentally, Ranci\u00e8re locates the \u201cprinciple\u201d or \u201cpower\u201d that disrupts the reproduction of existing patterns or expectations of recognition in the ability of subjects to construct a new way of seeing the world, one in which they appear as equal participants within the sphere of social interaction, even though they are supposed to be unqualified or incompetent to participate. On this model, political conflict occurs when the existing normative order of recognition (\u201cthe police order\u201d) comes into tension with a \u201cdifferent logic,\u201d namely an assumption of equality (\u201cthe egalitarian principle\u201d or \u201cdemocratic principle\u201d), <\/span>i.e.<\/span><\/i>, the presupposition of the equal capacity to participate in ruling. What results is a \u201cdisagreement\u201d or simply \u201cpolitics.\u201d The \u201cconstruction\u201d or \u201cinvention\u201d of the political subject has effects when it is made the basis of a certain kind of speech act\u2013an \u201cenunciation\u201d that introduces the speaker as someone who shares with their interlocutor \u201cthe capacity to discuss common affairs.\u201d (93) In this way, a presumption of equality is made the basis of political action, and these political actions have consequences for the social order itself which, in Ranci\u00e8re\u2019s terms, is \u201cinscribed\u201d by the effects of equality. (125)<\/span><\/p>\n

        What is fascinating about this \u201cRanci\u00e8rean\u201d conception of politics is that in a curious way it affirms what deliberative democrats and critical theorists such as Rainer Forst say about equal participation in discourse: that it is the \u201cmaster dimension of justice.\u201d (FTF, 301) Of all forms of recognition, the most fundamental, from a political point of view, is the recognition of our status as \u201cspeaking beings,\u201d as beings to whom others \u201cowe appropriate justifications\u201d and who \u201cco-determine the structures of production and distribution which determine their lives.\u201d (<\/span>Ibid.<\/span><\/i>, 300-1) Similarly, Ranci\u00e8re articulates a \u201cdemocratic principle,\u201d (112) which is the principle of the participation in decision-making by those who are concerned by collective decisions. (118)<\/span><\/p>\n

        However, unlike Forst, who seeks to demonstrate a basic \u201cright to justification\u201d as the normative ground of his theory of justice, Ranci\u00e8re\u2019s \u201cdemocratic principle\u201d is not presented as a \u201cnormative ground\u201d or \u201cdemand of justice\u201d at all. Rather, the equal capacity to discuss common affairs is that which is <\/span>assumed <\/span><\/i>by speakers on the basis of which it makes sense for them to engage in debate with opponents as peers, despite the prevailing assumption of inequality (<\/span>i.e.<\/span><\/i>, the assumption that they have no right or competence to engage as peers). The \u201cassumption of equality\u201d or \u201cdemocratic principle\u201d is therefore not a <\/span>telos<\/span><\/i> or regulative ideal, but more like a pragmatic presupposition. Equality is the <\/span>conditio sine qua non<\/span><\/i> of politics, not its <\/span>conditio per quam. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

        At the same time, Ranci\u00e8re stresses that political struggles are not a question of demanding affirmation of an existing property or capacity of the speaker, <\/span>e.g.<\/span><\/i>, their moral autonomy or equality as persons. Rather, politics involves a <\/span>construction <\/span><\/i>of the subject as a competent speaker, a construction which demonstrates or validates itself only in the act of \u201csubjectivization,\u201d <\/span>i.e.<\/span><\/i>, in the act of enunciation, in the performance of acting as a subject who discusses common affairs. \u201cIt\u2019s a matter not only of claiming this capacity but of asserting it by enacting it.\u201d (93) In short, the equality of the speaker as a participant is <\/span>enacted <\/span><\/i>or <\/span>performed <\/span><\/i>by them in their very act of speaking out of an assumption of equality. This is what Ranci\u00e8re calls \u201cthe method of equality.\u201d (133-55)<\/span><\/p>\n

        For Honneth, the idea of recognition serves as an \u201cethical telos\u201d: a normative framework that must be presupposed as the horizon of justice, however \u201cformally\u201d it is conceived. For Ranci\u00e8re, by contrast, recognition can never be set up as a <\/span>telos<\/span><\/i>, and the logic of political struggle cannot be understood teleologically as an attempt to approximate an ideal of mutual recognition, whether understood as an ideal of \u201cequality\u201d or in some other way. Instead, Ranci\u00e8re\u2019s approach is an attempt to \u201cthink equality, not as a kind of dream in the future, but as the power that is already at work in our relations.\u201d (95) His conception of politics is experimental, rather than teleological. (124) This is a radical point of view, and it clearly places him at odds with the left Hegelian tradition of critical theory as understood by Honneth, which requires \u201ca sociological account of the condition of the society\u2019s state of consciousness or its desire for emancipation.\u201d (DR, 64) <\/span><\/p>\n

        As such, the critical confrontation between Ranci\u00e8re and Honneth takes the form of a <\/span>m\u00e9sentente <\/span><\/i>(\u201cdisagreement\u201d in Ranci\u00e8re\u2019s sense): it is not simply a clash between conflicting theoretical assertions, but a torsion caused by a <\/span>misalignment <\/span><\/i>of languages, metaphors, and ways of seeing, being, and acting. (83) Their dispute cannot be settled by tallying up the score for each side and declaring a winner. Yet that is not to say that such disputes are without consequences. Following the publication of this book, it will be fascinating to see how the disagreement over recognition between Ranci\u00e8re and Honneth inscribes its effects within the self-conception of critical theory. <\/span><\/p>\n

        Additional Works Cited <\/b><\/p>\n

        Forst, Rainer. (2007), \u201cFirst Things First: Redistribution, Recognition and Justification,\u201d <\/span>European Journal of Political Theory<\/span><\/i>, 6:3: 291-304.<\/span><\/p>\n

        Honneth, Axel. (2007), <\/span>Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory<\/span><\/i> (Cambridge; Malden, MA: Polity Press).<\/span><\/p>\n

        Honneth, Axel. (2014), <\/span>Freedom\u2019s Right: The Social Foundations of Democratic Life<\/span><\/i> (New York: Columbia University Press). <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        Axel Honneth and Jacques Ranci\u00e8re, Recognition or Disagreement: A Critical Encounter on the Politics of Freedom, Equality, and Identity.\u00a0 K. Genel and J.-P. Deranty eds. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016; 240 pages. ISBN: 978-0231177160. Reviewed by Matheson Russell, The University of Auckland. Recognition or disagreement? Jacques Ranci\u00e8re and Axel Honneth present influential yet divergent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[41,115],"class_list":["post-5196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-critical-theory","tag-ranciere","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 09:58:53","action":"Draft","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5196"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6947,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5196\/revisions\/6947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}