In an important exploration of our cultural fixation with trauma and memory, the psychiatrist Patrick Bracken links it to the ‘dread brought on by a struggle with meaning’ (2002: 2). He believes that as the ‘meaningfulness of our lives is called into question’ (2002: 14) individuals respond to distress in an intensely individualized and traumatized fashion. Such a response of the vulnerable self ‘stems from a wider cultural difficulty regarding a belief in an ordered and coherent world’ (2002: 207). From this perspective the problem of meaning is experienced through a perception of disorientation and confusion. Often the attempt to find meaning in confusion leads to a preoccupation with one’s past, which is interpreted through the prism of psychology. Mobilizing memory to seek out the roots of the problem in the past has become a culturally sanctioned strategy for engaging with the difficulties we have in engaging with the problems of everyday life. That is perhaps one reason why we have become preoccupied with history and the injustices of the past.

In previous times, the quest for meaning was answered through the prism of a common culture, a shared view of the world, religion or political ideologies. Today, society appears to possess a diminished capacity to answer the question of who we are. This quest for meaning has led to an unprecedented concern with the question of identity. This preoccupation with identity has had a significant impact on popular culture, social and political life. This reorientation towards identity has had a particularly powerful influence on the sphere of politics. As Jedediah Purdy, the American social commentator remarked, ‘identity politics, based on sex, sexuality, and, mostly, race and ethnicity, suggests that politics should work not so much to give people things such as education and jobs as to give them recognition‘ (1999: 64). The growth of identity politics and the claim for recognition has had a significant influence on the way we view the past and contemporary social and political issues. Nancy Fraser argues with force that ‘questions of recognition are serving less to supplement, complicate and enrich redistributive struggles than to marginalize, eclipse and displace them’ (2000: 108). Another way of understanding this process is that the claim to be recognized becomes the frame through which socio-economic rights are affirmed. Internationally too, recognition claims constitute a warrant for legitimizing demands for putting right past wrongs. A variety of demands, from the restoration of lost lands to returning objects exhibited in museums to their place of origins, through to claims for financial compensation have been associated with the politics of recognition. This growing shift towards the politics of recognition constitutes the main subject of this essay. This development is generally perceived as part of a wider turn away from social towards cultural issues. There is little doubt that in the past two decades, the politicization of identities and culture has had a significant impact on social life. However, a closer examination of this development suggests that it represents not just a turn toward culture in general but towards one with an intense therapeutic sensibility. An orientation towards therapeutics underpins both the quest for recognition and the preoccupation with identity. Eva Moskowitz believes that ‘the identity politics of the 1960s laid the ground for America’s obsession with feelings in the 1970s’ (2001: 218). This point is echoed by Kathleen Lowney (1999) who suggests that when movements for social justice felt thwarted or rejected ‘they settled for constructing new collective identities’. She concludes that ‘agendas switched from seeking dramatic social change to forging a new psychic acceptance of self’ (1999: 23). Moskowitz and Lowney are right to stress the close relationship between the growth of identity politics and the turn towards therapeutics. However, it is not so much the case that one led to another – rather both identity politics and the therapeutic turn represent responses to the demand for meaning. And a form of meaning that frequently makes sense of life through an engagement with the rights and wrongs of the past.

The therapeutic imperative behind the expansion of the politics of recognition is often obscured by the fact that presentations of this subject tend to focus on conflicts of cultural identity. It is the controversies over historic wrongs, multiculturalism, race and competing cultural identities that dominate the public imagination. So it is not surprising that the exploration of the struggles for recognition invariably associate it with the affirmation of cultural identities. One of the most important statements on the subject, Charles Taylor’s (1994) essay on ‘The Politics of Recognition’ links the demand for recognition to the politics of multiculturalism. Yet Taylor’s own emphasis on the politics of recognition being driven by the ‘goals of self-fulfilment and self-realisation’ (1994: 30) point not just simply to culture but to the quest for identity in an intensely self-oriented form. It is evident that the politics of recognition leads not only to valorization of difference but also to the privileging of therapeutic values. It represents therapeutic claims making in the political sphere.

Since the end of the cold war, the politics of recognition has been widely promoted as an enlightened alternative to previous norms of justice claims. One of the advantages claimed on its behalf is that it gives due recognition to the individual since it is directed ‘at the particular qualities that characterise people in their personal difference’ (Honneth, 1995: 122). It is also argued that individual self-determination ought to be the basis for real democracy (see ‘Zombie Categories: Interview with Ulrich Beck’ in Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002: 208). This focus on individual difference is underwritten by a premise, which regards self-affirmation as the fundamental need that society must address. Francis Fukuyama goes so far as to suggest that this quest for recognition is so profound that ‘it is one of the chief motors of the entire human historical process’ (1995: 6–7). It is interesting to note that contemporary proponents of the politics of recognition have shifted the focus of this issue from the wider philosophical field (Hobbes and Machiavelli) to the sphere of intersubjective recognition. Its core assumption is that driven by a deep psychological need, the self becomes actualized through cultural identity. One of the most powerful advocates of this thesis, the German philosopher Alex Honneth (1995) actually adopts Donald Winnicott’s object-relations theory to promote a model where psychological damage is the central problem of injustice and inequality. From this perspective the experience of exclusion above all refers to the sense of humiliation and shame that comes from not being recognized and affirmed. Thus, the focus of Honneth’s concern is the psychological damage inflicted on people by a society that fails to encourage the development of their self-confidence, self-respect and self-esteem. ‘The experience of being socially denigrated or humiliated endangers the identity of human beings, just as infection with disease endangers their physical life’ (Honneth, 1995: 135).

The association of the need for recognition with identity formation is not by itself a controversial point. However, this need is increasingly conceptualized as both an individual and a group right, thus encouraging an explosion of recognition claims. This demand for the right to be recognized also leads to the psychologization of justice. ‘The conviction that human beings have not only a deeply rooted need for recognition and acceptance but also a fundamental right to it takes many forms, but appears, perhaps most vividly, in the commonly heard plea “accept me for who I am”’, notes Hewitt (1998: 29). The demand for the right to be esteemed unites both identity based social movements and individuals concerned with their goal of self-realization. That is why raising the collective self-esteem of a particular group is frequently put forward as one of the goals of social movements. It is also prescribed as a course of action to be followed to help communities come to term with past injustices.

The politicization of identity is often presented as part of a struggle to correct hitherto unrecognized wrongs and to allow people to express themselves through the life forms appropriate to their culture. Jurgen Habermas, a leading German social theorist interprets these struggles as representing demands for the ‘recognition of lifeforms and traditions which have been marginalized’ (1993: 129). However, this interpretation tends to read history backwards and overlooks the distinct features of contemporary recognition claims. It is not past wrongs but the diminishing capacity of contemporary institutions – formal and informal – to confer and affirm identity that fuels the demand to be recognized.

The idea that past wrongs and injustices have been hidden from history, waiting to be discovered and acknowledged is premised on both an ahistorical and unsociological conceptualization of the problem. Social problems are not constructed through an archaeological excavation of the past. On the contrary, the project of excavating the past is itself motivated by the a priori perception of a problem that needs the validation of history. The sociologically naive conviction that, those who hitherto have lacked a voice now possess a new willingness to talk and confront the past represents a form of collective self-flattery. It is important to recall that the act of remembering represents an attempt to engage with the present through the idiom of the past. ‘Any act of remembering is interpretative, driven by the concerns or ideas of the present’, writes the psychiatrist Derek Summerfield (2000). And he adds, ‘what a war survivor remembers will not represent a single, definitive narrative, will skip between victim and protagonist modes, will be shaped by the context in which the telling takes place and the purpose to which it is to be put’ (2000: 429). In a same manner, concern with historical injustices is informed by the self-consciousness and cultural values of contemporary society. The intense sensitivity that society has developed towards the history of the individual and of a community is informed by the premise that the afflictions of the past shape contemporary identity.

The suggestion that in previous times people lacked the willingness or the ability to confront their past and to talk about it can be interpreted in a number of different ways. It can mean that in fact people could not confront the past to talk about it because they lacked a voice or were silenced by their oppressors. It could also mean that people did not experience the past as an issue to be confronted and therefore thought best not to talk about it. ‘Many non-Western cultures have little place for the revelation of intimate material outside the family circle and consider “active forgetting” as a normative means of coping’ (Summerfield, 2000: 429). The mechanistic counterposition of an era reluctant to face the past to the present day enlightened acknowledgment of it is a testimony to contemporary society’s self-absorption. People’s relationship to their past is mediated through culture and a system of meaning and when they talk about history they use the vocabulary provided by their culture. Today, especially in Anglo-American societies, talking is represented as a civic duty and the acknowledgement of the past has become a widely practised public ritual.

People are continually incited to confront their past as a way of reflecting on their emotions. The pressure to come to terms with the past is fuelled through popular culture, for example through reality television – Oprah Winfrey, Jerry Springer. It is also driven through public bodies, international institutions and non-governmental organizations. These institutions regard conflict as arising from trauma-induced psychological and social dysfunctionalism. Coming to terms with the past is represented as a form of healing – hence the institutionalization of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. The very process of engaging with historical injustices in this form represents an attempt to reframe identity through the recognition of the individual as part of a victimized group.

Public institutions have responded pragmatically to the demand to put right past wrongs. They have tended to make symbolic gestures whilst rejecting some compensation claims. Increasingly official bodies do not simply respond, they are far more likely to be in the forefront of creating a demand for recognition. Official policies – domestic and international – invariably promise to affirm and raise the self-esteem of the public (see Furedi, 2003).

The demand for the right to be esteemed has troubled some of the theorists of recognition. Francis Fukuyama (1995) is concerned that the automatic granting of esteem avoids the making of moral choices about what deserves to be esteemed. He notes that the ‘problem with the present-day self-esteem movement is that its members ... are seldom willing to make choices concerning what should be esteemed’ (1995: 303). Nancy Fraser argues that the view ‘that everyone has an equal right to social esteem’ renders ‘meaningless the notion of esteem’ (1998: 24). However, once the right to self-realization is accepted as a defining feature of a just society, it becomes difficult to place conditions on the automatic granting of esteem to every person regardless of their specific traits, accomplishments or contributions. As Lasch (1979) concludes, the therapeutic turn towards the demand for recognition has little to do with justice but reflects a new relationship between self and society. ‘Today men seek the kind of approval that applauds not their actions but their attributes’, observes Lasch (1979: 116). Approval thus becomes an act of affirmation of self rather than an evaluation of individual achievement.

Ironically, the institutionalization of the right to recognition necessarily leads to emptying it of any moral content. Human struggles for recognition are mediated through specific historical and cultural forms. Such struggles often contain a creative dynamic of making history, enhancing self-consciousness, making moral choices, entering into dialogues and accomplishing the construction of identities organic to one’s circumstances. Struggling for recognition involves a different process to gaining recognition on demand. In the former it involves an active engagement of construction whilst in the latter it implies being acted upon by those conferring recognition. Such a right can never satisfy the craving to be recognized – it merely incites the individual for more assurances of respect. However, the very act of offering respect to those who crave it may make matters more complicated. As Richard Sennett (2003) suggests, the weak may quite rightly experience the extension of such respect as an empty gesture or worse still as ritual confirming their position of inferiority.

Group causes are often justified on the grounds that certain experiences have inflicted emotional damage on the people they represent. Historic misdeeds are held responsible for causing injury to the self today. It is frequently suggested that experiences such as slavery and the Irish potato famine have inflicted trauma on subsequent generations. It is often claimed that as a result of these experiences, people whose group has been historically victimized often suffer from low self-esteem. This argument is regularly advanced by the national campaign that aims to compensate Afro-Americans for what their ancestors had to endure. According to one supporter of this campaign, ‘slavery fostered low self-esteem among blacks that has led to today’s high teen-pregnancy and crime rates’ (see Brewington, 2002). This linkage between low self-esteem and group identity is pursued by a variety of interest groups, who argue that racism and discrimination cause target groups to feel bad about themselves. For example, it is argued that denigrating images of Native Americans prohibits the development of the ‘strong self-esteem needed to compete in society’ (see Ward, 2000). In the United States, it is alleged that the low level of self-esteem of Hispanics and Native Americans accounts for these groups’ relatively poor performance in school.

The proposition that certain groups suffer from a collective state of low self-esteem is grounded in the so-called damage theory of personality (for a discussion of ‘damage’ theory, see Moskowitz, 2001: 180–93). According to this theory, the experience of racism and oppression permanently damages the psyches of the victim, consigning them to a permanent state of low self-esteem. Gradually, the diagnosis that some experiences are damaging to the psyche and result in the lowering of self-esteem of certain groups has expanded beyond the confines of racism and oppression. Communities that are blighted by poverty and unemployment are often portrayed as suffering from a self-esteem deficit. President Bush’s welfare-to-work partnership was designed to lead to ‘more independence, more self-esteem, and more joy and hope’ (Bush, 2002).

The self-esteem deficit is often presented as a condition that transcends the individual and afflicts entire generations and communities. According to one account, school children who turn to drugs come from families ‘with generations of lack of self-esteem’ (Smithers, 2002).

The assumption that people’s self esteem is linked to a group’s historic experience and identity is at first sight a puzzling one. The emotional state of the self is very much bound up with individual subjectivity. Indeed, experience suggests that the very orientation towards the self tends to distance individuals from wider networks and communities. Concern with the self or the level of a person’s self-esteem tends to individualize problems. So how does this trend toward the individualization of social experience reconcile itself with the identity of a group? Hewitt (1998: 96) believes that the ‘answer may lie partly in the current ascendancy of feelings and emotional well-being in the culture as a whole’. Therapeutic culture does not merely influence individual behaviour. It also provides the cultural idiom through which groups can make sense of their predicament. The recasting of identity through the vocabulary of emotion influences individuals and groups alike. As Hewitt remarks, ‘the myth of self-esteem draws into its orbit even those who might be suspicious of it, because discourse about emotions exerts a profound cultural gravity on the thoughts and words of everyone’ (1998: 96).

The impact of therapeutic ideals on the cultural understanding of the self is not confined to the sphere of individual identity. In a culture where nations heal, communities are traumat...