Recognition And Ambivalence

Recognition is one of the most debated concepts in contemporary social and political thought. Its proponents, such as Axel Honneth, hold that to be recognized by others is a basic human need that is central to forming an identity, and the denial of recognition deprives individuals and communities of something essential for their flourishing. Yet critics including Judith Butler have questioned whether recognition is implicated in structures of domination, arguing that the desire to be recognized can motivative individuals to accept their assigned place in the social order by conforming to oppressive norms or obeying repressive institutions. Is there a way to break this impasse? Recognition and Ambivalence brings together leading scholars in social and political philosophy to develop new perspectives on recognition and its role in social life. It begins with a debate between Honneth and Butler, the first sustained engagement between these two major thinkers on this subject. Contributions from both proponents and critics of theories of recognition further reflect upon and clarify the problems and challenges involved in theorizing the concept and its normative desirability. Together, they explore different routes toward a critical theory of recognition, departing from wholly positive or negative views to ask whether it is an essentially ambivalent phenomenon. Featuring original, systematic work in the philosophy of recognition, this book also provides a useful orientation to the key debates on this important topic.

This book brings together leading scholars in social and political philosophy to develop new perspectives on recognition and its role in social life. It begins with a debate between Axel Honneth and Judith Butler, the first sustained engagement between these two major thinkers on this subject.

An investigation into the complex processes of "becoming a girl."

'Part-detective story, part-cultural snapshot . . . all bound by Gibson's pin-sharp prose' Arena -------------- THE FIRST NOVEL IN THE BLUE ANT TRILIOGY - READ ZERO HISTORY AND SPOOK COUNTRY FOR MORE Cayce Pollard has a new job. She's been offered a special project: track down the makers of an addictive online film that's lighting up the internet. Hunting the source will take her to Tokyo and Moscow and put her in the sights of Japanese hackers and Russian Mafia. She's up against those who want to control the film, to own it - who figure breaking the law is just another business strategy. The kind of people who relish turning the hunter into the hunted . . . A gripping spy thriller by William Gibson, bestselling author of Neuromancer. Part prophesy, part satire, Pattern Recognition skewers the absurdity of modern life with the lightest and most engaging of touches. Readers of Neal Stephenson, Ray Bradbury and Iain M. Banks won't be able to put this book down. -------------- 'Fast, witty and cleverly politicized' Guardian 'A big novel, full of bold ideas . . . races along like an expert thriller' GQ 'Dangerously hip. Its dialogue and characterization will amaze you. A wonderfully detailed, reckless journey of espionage and lies' USA Today 'A compelling, humane story with a sympathetic heroine searching for meaning and consolation in a post-everything world' Daily Telegraph 'Electric, profound. Gibson's descriptions of Tokyo, Russia and London are surreally spot-on' Financial Times

In Considering Emma Goldman Clare Hemmings examines the significance of the anarchist activist and thinker for contemporary feminist politics. Rather than attempting to resolve the tensions and problems that Goldman's thinking about race, gender, and sexuality pose for feminist thought, Hemmings embraces them, finding them to be helpful in formulating a new queer feminist praxis. Mining three overlapping archives—Goldman's own writings, her historical and theoretical legacy, and an imaginative archive that responds creatively to gaps in those archives —Hemmings shows how serious engagement with Goldman's political ambivalences opens up larger questions surrounding feminist historiography, affect, fantasy, and knowledge production. Moreover, she explores her personal affinity for Goldman to illuminate the role that affective investment plays in shaping feminist storytelling. By considering Goldman in all her contradictions and complexity, Hemmings presents a queer feminist response to the ambivalences that also saturate contemporary queer feminist race theories.

In our wired world, visual images of military conflict and political strife are ubiquitous. Far less obvious, far more elusive, is how we see such images, how witnessing military violence and suffering affects us. Distant Wars Visible brings a new perspective to such enduring questions about conflict photography and other forms of visual advocacy, whether in support of U.S. military objectives or in critique of the nation at war. At the book’s center is what author Wendy Kozol calls an analytic of ambivalence—a critical approach to the tensions between spectacle and empathy provoked by gazing at military atrocities and trauma. Through this approach, Distant Wars Visible uses key concepts such as the politics of recoil, the notion of looking elsewhere, skeptical documents, and ethical spectatorship to examine multiple visual cultural practices depicting war, on and off the battlefield, from the 1999 NATO bombings in Kosovo to the present. Kozol’s analysis draws from collections of family photographs, human rights photography, independent film production, photojournalism, and other examples of war’s visual culture, as well as extensive visual evidence of the ways in which U.S. militarism operates to maintain geopolitical dominance—from Fallujah and Abu Ghraib to the most recent drone strikes in Pakistan. Throughout, Kozol reveals how factors such as gender, race, and sexuality construct competing visualizations of identity in a range of media from graphic narrative and film to conflict photography and battlefield souvenirs—and how contingencies and contradictions in visual culture shape the politics and ethics of witnessing.

While post- and decolonial theorists have thoroughly debunked the idea of historical progress as a Eurocentric, imperialist, and neocolonialist fallacy, many of the most prominent contemporary thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School—Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Rainer Forst—have defended ideas of progress, development, and modernity and have even made such ideas central to their normative claims. Can the Frankfurt School's goal of radical social change survive this critique? And what would a decolonized critical theory look like? Amy Allen fractures critical theory from within by dispensing with its progressive reading of history while retaining its notion of progress as a political imperative, so eloquently defended by Adorno. Critical theory, according to Allen, is the best resource we have for achieving emancipatory social goals. In reimagining a decolonized critical theory after the end of progress, she rescues it from oblivion and gives it a future.

Revolutionary Recognition represents a major contribution to contemporary political theory. It argues that human emancipation is only possible in a society characterised by 'mutual recognition'. In present-day political theory, the term 'recognition' has become popular and widely discussed, but has become synonymous with reformist scenarios, such as social democratic politics and the politics of identity. Richard Gunn and Adrian Wilding undertake a comprehensive critique of existing understandings of recognition, particularly those of Axel Honneth and Charles Taylor, returning 'recognition' to its original meaning in the work of Hegel and Marx, and showing how mutual recognition has revolutionary rather than merely reformist implications. Gunn's and Wilding's work is unapologetically political and introduces a new principle – 'mutual recognition' – around which radical politics can organise. This book is a ground-breaking contribution to left wing theory and is relevant as both a scholarly text and a rallying cry to the Left.