Recognition and the Media

R. Maia

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137310422
• eBook ISBN: 9781137310439
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

This collection examines Axel Honneth's theory of recognition and the crucial role played by the media in struggles for recognition. It brings together debates on controversial aspects of Honneth's work and a set of intriguing empirical studies including with slum-dwelling adolescents, leprosy patients and women exposed to child labor exploitation

1

Axel Honneth’s Theory of Recognition as a Research Program

This chapter contextualizes Axel Honneth’s work within the tradition of Critical Theory. I begin by briefly discussing the placement of Honneth’s project within the Frankfurt School of thought. Secondly, I present a schematic reconstruction of the major lines of Honneth’s program from his earlier writings. Finally, I show some of the major implications of Honneth’s theory on critical social research. This chapter has a survey-like nature in order to pave the way for conceptualizing what should be regarded and investigated as a struggle for recognition. Chapter 1 also outlines some controversial issues in Honneth’s program that have served as a background for my collaborators and I to craft our inquiry in connection with political communication and media studies. The final component of this chapter presents how we have organized our empirical research.

Placing Honneth within the Frankfurt School tradition

The location of Honneth within the Frankfurt School tradition is still debated. Internal currents of thought in Critical Theory have developed in different directions; there are a number of disagreements within each generation, and theories intertwine and constantly change throughout various periods of time. However, the dialogues also share some common features and maintain a certain sense of continuity (Anderson, 2011; Deranty, 2009, 2011; Petherbridge, 2011b; Renault, 2010). The attempt to locate Honneth within the Frankfurt School tradition provides a useful point of entry into the thinker’s research program, despite the unavoidable oversimplification of unifying themes and differences, along with the difficulty in addressing generational perspectives.

Although Honneth perceives himself within a broader tradition than that of Critical Theory alone, there is an agreement among scholars that his work has the features of a third generation (Anderson, 2011, p. 32; Deranty, 2009, 2011; Petherbridge, 2011b; Schmidt am Busch, 2010, p. 277). A central feature in Honneth’s program is the attempt to place the notion of conflict between social groups and social struggle at the center of social philosophy, and thus, to advance the analysis and critique of domination. His program has been seen as oriented to give greater texture to social theory – to “re-socialize” the normative theories of political justice and democracy (Kalyvas, 1999, p. 103; Zurn, 2010, p. 9). Scholars have also read Honneth’s work as an attempt to articulate domains that typically tend to be treated separately, such as critical sociology and political theory (Renault, 2010, p. 247), as well as the historical and normative branches of political theory (Deranty, 2009).

In developing his theory of recognition, Honneth takes a path that in some points is close, and in others moves away from the program set forth by the first generation of the Frankfurt School, particularly in the work of Adorno and Horkheimer, as well as Habermas during the second generation. An evocative suggestion for understanding Honneth’s program is provided by Jean-Philippe Deranty (2009, p. 350, 2011, p. 84) and Emmanuel Renault (2010, p. 241). These scholars argue that, on the one hand Honneth uses Habermas’s theory of communicative action and the view of intersubjective social integration to go against the dialectical materialism and functionalist premises of the founders of Critical Theory. Honneth, on the other hand, uses the Marxist perspective of class struggle and the experience of being subjected to domination, in order to criticize Habermas.

Early writings

Honneth attempts to develop a sociologically-oriented critique of social domination by returning to the first generation scholars of the Frankfurt School in his Critique of Power (1991). He rejects the negative understanding of modernity and the reductionist conception of reason interpreted only in terms of instrumental rationality. Honneth challenges the explanation of the cultural industry and the more general thesis of a fully administrated society that gives rise to obedient subjects passively integrated into the social order. Instead of this, he retains a basic view of the centrality of class struggle by giving it a culturalist appraisal. To the German philosopher, the reproduction and integration of society are intrinsically tied to an “ongoing cultural conflict” interpreted in terms of permanent struggle for recognition – an inspiration that is also extracted from Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory. In Joel Anderson’s words, Honneth provides an account “that emphasizes that society reproduces itself through the often-conflictive interaction of real social groups, which are themselves the products of ongoing activities of interpretation and struggle on the part of participants” (Anderson, 2011, p. 48).

The rejection of pessimistic interpretations of modernity can be seen as one important pillar in Honneth’s overall project from the outset (Deranty, 2009, pp. 378–404, 2011, pp. 60–62; Zurn, 2010, p. 7). He regards modernity as a historical evolution that also gave rise to fundamental norms of value pluralism, individual freedom, and rights. In this sense, he fully embraces Habermas’s major contributions – the intersubjective linguistic turn and a communicative theory of society. He uses these concepts to defend the argument that post-traditional society is integrated through conflicts between plural ethical values and growing demands for recognizing valid claims for individualization and different forms of life. Honneth follows Habermas’s thesis that conditions for social emancipation are not to be observable through social labor, as in the Marxist paradigm, but rather through social interaction, as in the Communicative Action paradigm. As a result, he focuses on the constraints and inequalities inherent to institutionalized social life. By broadening the view of the exploration of labor to “permanent struggles” among culturally integrated groups, Honneth seeks to develop a theoretical approach capable of apprehending a full range of social suffering.

In Critique of Power, Honneth draws on Foucault to give greater attention to the role of power at the micro level of everyday interactions and to elucidate the relational structure of social domination in the lifeworld. Once again, Honneth takes an action-theoretic account of struggle and does not see social institutions as totalizing forms of power solely with disciplinary functions. He also recognizes institutions as results of social conflict and public debates that configure, maintain, and transform these institutions. To develop a reflexive critique of power, Honneth assumes that subjectivation is structurally conditioned by socialization; and, while understanding the interactions in everyday life as a realm of moral criticism, he attempts to further reconstruct the approach to practical reason based on a comprehensible theory of intersubjectivity.¹ This move allows him to conceive the social as a domain of strategic and communicative action, as well as to develop an antagonistic and normative explanation of social integration.

The theory of recognition

The Struggle for Recognition, which is considered Honneth’s mature project, develops an intersubjective and normative account of both social interaction and institutional practice. Honneth draws on Hegel’s Jena philosophy of recognition and combines it with anthropological features extracted from the work of G. H. Mead and Donald Winnicott. Beginning with the premise of radical intersubjectivity, Honneth, like Habermas (1993, p. 109, 1995, p. 199), posits that the formation process of subjectivity and socialization is deeply intersubjective and marked by vulnerability (Anderson & Honneth, 2005; Honneth, 1995, p. 262, 1996). He attempts to show that fundamental preconditions for successful subject-formation are related to three spheres of intersubjective relations of recognition – love, law, and achievement, which is a reference to Hegel’s divisions between family, state, and civil society. Honneth elucidates that individual’s subjectivity, autonomy, and agency are built in and through relations of reciprocal recognition with others in these spheres of interaction. The core idea is that specific patterns of recognition enable individuals to acquire, or obstruct individuals from acquiring, self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem; these forms of practical self-relation are interconnected and necessary for full self-realization.

The first sphere of recognition consists of primary relationships constituted by strong emotional attachments among parent–child, lovers, and friends (Honneth, 1996, p. 95). Successful affirmation of autonomy and affective bonds in this relationship of mutual recognition, while marked by permanent tension between the poles of dependency and independence, establishes the most basic conditions for subjects to develop the necessary self-confidence for engaging in social life. In The Struggle for Recognition, Honneth seems to treat the first sphere of affective relations with trans-historical anthropologic features. He makes it clear in his latter writings nevertheless that parents’ expectations of their offspring, as well as lovers’ expectations with their partners, are the result of historical development. “The recognition that what individuals reciprocally bring to this kind of relationship is loving care for the other’s well-being in light of his or her individual needs” (Honneth, 2003a, p. 139). In his recent works, Honneth further develops his explanation of the tensions and anxieties present in reciprocal affirmation of autonomy (Deranty, 2011, p. 83; Honneth, 2011, p. 394; Petherbridge, 2011b, p. 26).

The second sphere of recognition is based on the principle of universal equal rights among individuals. In Honneth’s account, legal equality, one of the most important achievements of modernity, takes the form of reciprocal recognition; it implies a cognitive attitude in which subjects reciprocally recognize each other in terms of moral accountability.² Such an attribution of moral responsibility does not designate any fixed right; rather, it is seen, following Kant and Habermas’s fundamental ideas on the centrality of moral equality, as an enabling condition for subjects to participate in the ongoing process of rational will formation in any democratic political community. For Honneth, adjudication of rights enables individuals to establish a positive self-relation and develop self-respect; in his words, “an adult subject gains the possibility of conceiving his action as a manifestation of one’s own autonomy, respected by all others, by means of legal recognition” (Honneth, 2003a, p. 194). According to this reading, the expansion of rights in modern societies means not only a political institutionalization of certain attainments or a moral victory, but also an increase in recognition of the necessary means for more complete participation of citizens in collective life. Legal recognition, therefore, is related to individuals’ self-perception as a subject with the ability of making their own decisions and responsibly expressing demands, in order to exercise rights and participate in struggles for expanding or deepening universal as well as special rights.

The third sphere of recognition is based on the principle of “achievement” and is related to social esteem. According to Honneth, to have esteem for one another symmetrically means to attribute value to the individuals’ specific properties, abilities, and unique contributions to society. In Honneth’s reading of modernity, the redefinition of the notion of honor gave rise to two opposing processes: while the legal standing and equal dignity of individuals becomes universalized, social standing, that is, individuals’ contributions to shared praxis, becomes “meritocratized.”³ Since in post-traditional societies social esteem becomes detached from a group’s status and the ultimate goals of a society are no longer linked to any substantial normative grounding, but become rather “abstractly defined” (Honneth, 2003c, p. 206) and “always open and porous” (Honneth, 2003c, p. 207), the capitalist division of labor gave rise to further horizontal competition to generate more symmetrical relationships. Symmetrical solidarity in this context does not mean “equal” solidarity, but valorization of the other’s singular abilities and traits seen as significant for the realization of shared goals, within the system of social division of labor (Honneth, 2003a, p. 142, 2011, p. 409).⁴

Although one may assume, by reading The Struggle for Recognition, that the moral grammar of the third sphere would encompass claims for recognition of cultural identities,⁵ Honneth clarifies in his later works that he speaks of “contributions” within the system of economic exchange (Honneth, 2003a, p. 141, 2011, p. 406). Individuals develop self-esteem according to his or her achievement as a “productive citizen.” Thus, struggles for social esteem are better understood as conflicts to challenge and renegotiate symbolic cultural worlds that define representations and valuation of working spaces, status, professions, and activities necessary for society’s material reproduction. Since what counts as relevant contributions to societal ends depends on dominant interpretations within the standards of social hierarchy, individuals who seek to expand opportunities to be estimated for their particular abilities engage in a struggle to change “how to interpret and evaluate” their own accomplishments. They seek to amplify public conceptions of what is seen as necessary for societal cooperation and material reproduction.

To summarize, in Honneth’s program, subjects are perceived from three perspectives: as beings with particular needs, as beings with equal respect and autonomy comparable to all others in a political community, and as beings with unique contributions to society. The sphere of legal recognition, based on abstract universality, grants each subject the degree of autonomy and self-respect required to articulate individual aims. However, the spheres of primary relations and social relations, involve a practical self-relation regarding the concrete particularities of a person, and are necessary for developing and sustaining self-confidence and self-esteem. All these dimensions are seen as important for positive self-development.

Implications of Honneth’s program on critical social and political theory

As has been constantly noted, Honneth’s overall project has evolved with great consistency from the outset towards realizing major purposes of critical theory (Anderson, 2011; Deranty, 2009, 2011; Petherbridge, 2011b). In such a program, the recognition ideals are not to be seen as an abstract theoretical construct. Contrary to this perspective, they should be seen as “counterfactual ideals,” potentially present in everyday interactions. The principles of recognition provide a normative horizon for identifying and challenging distinct forms of power and social injustices in the pre-scientific realm in order to enable emancipatory practices.

Honneth seeks to anchor his normative model of recognition through anthropological arguments (formulated as intersubjective recognition in terms of “practical self-relations”), as well as through historical arguments (formulated in terms of a “formal concept of ethical life”). Honneth stresses that the principles of recognition, while empirically confirmed along the course of history by real struggles that were aimed at securing basic conditions for individual self-realization and self-determination, are to be understood in the formal sense only.⁶ These principles are not related to any particular substantive notion of the “good life.” He explains that his “formal conception of ethical life,” once seen as a “weak, formal anthropology” (Honneth, 2007d, p. 42) indicates only “general behavior” related to “autonomy” and “self-realization” “in the most neutral sense possible” (Honneth, 2002, p. 515). Importantly, he remarks that content should be provided by a plurality of groups aspiring for recognition; and outcomes should be left open to specific struggles seeking to attain the fundamental conditions for individual self-realization and self-determination in particular socio-cultural contexts.

For our purposes, it should be stressed that Honneth preserves the central goal of Critical Theory – which is to identify and advance the emancipatory impulses that are explicitly and implicitly present in social reality (the principle of “transcendence within immanence”). The principles of recognition are meant to provide a critical yardstick (as expectations for recognition) for individuals in the realm of everyday interactions to identify and challenge “actually existing” social pathologies, along with interlocking oppressive institutional arrangements and cultural social meanings. In this case, a brief reference to Habermas’s program helps to further clarify the specificities of Honneth’s program for critical social research. Habermas aims at explaining the general and formal conditions for reaching an understanding through language.⁷ The goal is not only to provide a comprehensive theory of rationality embedded in the intersubjective stru...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  Axel Honneths Theory of Recognition as a Research Program
• Part I  Mass Media: A Site of Struggle
• Part II  Struggle Through Social Network Sites
• Part III  Struggle, Media and the Dynamics of Political Cultural Change
• Conclusion
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index