Colloque

Pour un diagnostique socio-historique de la reconnaissance identitaire

Craig Ireland

Membre a labase

Craig Ireland

Résumé de la communication

Concerns about recognition, along with such cognate terms as "difference" and "exclusion," while admittedly subversive in the 1970s, have now been safely institutionalised since at least the 1980s when it comes to issues of social justice. This holds no less for academic discourse than for mainstream politics or for what has been dubbed the "new social movements." After all, as Chiapello and Boltanski rightly remind us, the co-opting mechanisms of the dominant socio- economic order ought not to be underestimated. But however paradigmatic their newly found status and however normalised (or co-opted) their claims, recognition issues are nevertheless beset by continuing conflicts. The debates on recognition versus redistribution come to mind here, as does also the endless subdivision of groups into yet more molecular groupuscules conflictually competing among one another. Rather than perpetuate such debates, I propose that we address a more fundamental conflict within the very logic of recognition itself, namely, the conflict between that to which recognition claims aspire, and the socio-historical preconditions for such aspirations. To this end, I will first distill from various takes on recognition one of their common denominators, namely, the problem of addressee. I will then, in a second move, stress the importance of historicising this common denominator as a prelude to better assessing the ontemporary role of recognition in furthering social justice.