A struggle for another recognition

Rancière's and Safatle's critiques of Honneth

Abstract

The purpose of this contribution is to present two critiques of Axel Honneth's theory of recognition. First, the critique made by Jacques Rancière in Recognition or Disagreement of Honnethian conceptions of "recognition" and "struggle for recognition" will be presented. It will be shown to what extent, for Rancière, such conceptions, which can be understood as "identitarian" and presuppose a notion of social relations marked by reciprocity or symmetry, would fail in the claim for "a broader form of universalism." Next, Safatle's critique of the Honnethian conception of recognition will be presented, especially based on the argumentation developed in Grande Hotel Abismo. We will try to show how Safatle, in opposition to Honneth, proposes a return to Hegel in order to defend a conception of recognition in which the "other" should not be understood merely as another consciousness-of-self endowed with its own system of interests, but as "a deeper otherness" - which would imply understanding the confrontation with the element of the indeterminate or the negative as a fundamental experience in the process of identity formation.