(2010) ALLEN, Amy. Recognizing Domination _ Recognition and Power in Honneth's Critical Theory

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Recognizing domination: recognition

and power in Honneths critical theoryAmy Allen

a

aDepartment of Philosophy , Dartmouth College , Hanover, USA

Published online: 19 Mar 2010.

To cite this article:Amy Allen (2010) Recognizing domination: recognition and power in Honneths

critical theory, Journal of Power, 3:1, 21-32

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Journal of Power

Vol. 3, No. 1, April 2010, 2132

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DOI: 10.1080/17540291003630338

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Recognizing domination: recognition and power in Honnethscritical theory

Amy Allen*

Department of Philosophy, Dartmouth College, Hanover, USATaylorandFrancisRPOW_A_463542.sgm10.1080/17540291003630338JournalofPower1754-0291 (print)/1754-0305 (online)Original Article2010Taylor&[email protected]

Axel Honneth frames his contribution to the tradition of critical theory as anattempt to do justice to both the structures of social domination in contemporaryWestern societies and the practical resources for their overcoming. This paperassesses how well Honneths critical theory, which centers on the notion of the

struggle for recognition, accomplishes the first of these two tasks. I argue thatHonneth has yet to offer a fully satisfactory analysis of domination because hisrecognition model is unable to make sense of modes of subordination that functionwithout producing any struggle.

Keywords: recognition; subordination; subjection; critical theory; Honneth

In the Afterword to the second German edition of his first book, Critique and Power,

Axel Honneth claims that a central problem of critical theory is that of structuring itsconceptual analysis so that it is able to comprehend both the structures of social

domination and the social resources for its practical overcoming (1991, p. xiv). On

Honneths reading of the history of the Frankfurt School, the various attempts to solvethis problem by the central figures of the first two generations remain unsatisfactory.

Honneth argues that the central text of the first generation of the Frankfurt School, theDialectic of Enlightenment (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002), fails to address this

central problem because of its vague and inadequate conception of social domination,

a conception that is modeled on the instrumental domination of nature. The analogy

between the domination of nature and social domination makes it conceptually impos-sible for Horkheimer and Adorno to understand social domination as anything other

than brute force. Hence, Horkheimer and Adorno are compelled to understand the

subordinated subject as a passive and intentionless victim of the same techniques of

domination that are aimed at nature (Honneth 1991, p. 55). This account of socialdomination thus obscures the ways in which social domination can be consensually

secured through communicative agreements between members of society, and,

conversely, the very possibility of social struggles over normative structures of

recognition.

As Honneth sees it, Habermas responds to these difficulties in the Dialectic ofEnlightenment by developing a bifurcated conception of rationality, according to

which rationality can take either instrumental or communicative form. This dual

conception of rationality corresponds to Habermas two-track theory of society, in

which society is theorized from both system and lifeworld perspectives, the former

*Email: [email protected]


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22 A. Allen

consisting of the economic and administrative subsystems that are governed by non-

normative, functionalist imperatives, and the latter consisting of the core domains ofculture, society, and personality that are governed by normatively structured commu-

nicative interactions. Honneth objects to this bifurcation. He argues that the two-track

model of society gives rise to two complementary fictions: the first, norm-free orga-

nizations of action, and the second, power-free spheres of communication (Honneth

1991, p. 298). The first fiction ignores everything that social theorists should havelearned from Foucault: namely, that power relations extend into the capillaries of the

social body. The second fiction ignores the best insights of communication theory

itself: namely, that norm-governed social interactions are crucial for the internal func-

tioning of even highly complex organizations and institutions such as administrativebureaucracies, corporations, and markets (Honneth 1991, p. 301).

Honneth frames his own contribution to the Frankfurt School tradition as an

attempt to overcome these problems. The programmatic seeds to his approach are

already spelled out clearly in The Critique of Power. The goal is to follow more reso-

lutely the communicative turn initiated by Habermas, instead of opting, as Habermashimself does, for a blend of communicative and systems theory. Simultaneously,

however, Honneth rejects Habermas fiction of a power-free sphere of communication

and aims to follow Foucault in theorizing more fully the role of power in the lifeworld.

As Honneth puts it, the idea is to exploit the unrealized potential of Habermascommunicative turn, namely, the potential for an understanding of the social order as

an institutionally mediated communicative relation between culturally integrated

groups that, so long as the exercise of power is asymmetrically distributed, takes place

through the medium of social struggle (1991, p. 303). In Honneths subsequent work,this social struggle is theorized as a struggle for recognition.

By giving a more central place to the concept of social struggle than his predeces-sors have done, Honneth attempts to make better sense of the structures of social

domination in contemporary Western societies, but by grounding his account of social

struggle within the framework of the theory communicative action, he attempts tomake sense of the rational and normative resources available in society for the

practical overcoming of domination. This paper focuses on the first aspect of

Honneths two-sided project. Does Honneths critical theory, framed in terms of his

central concept of the struggle for recognition, do an adequate job of making sense ofstructures of social domination in contemporary Western societies? I will address this

question, in part, by considering a related, interpretive question: does Honneths

account of power in terms of morally motivated struggles for recognition in thelifeworld actually do justice, as Honneth aims to do, to the insights of Foucaults anal-

ysis? The answers to these two questions will turn on the relationship between powerrelations and social struggle. Until quite recently, Honneth has tended to conflate

social struggle and social domination and thus to think that by providing an account

of the former he has offered a satisfactory analysis of the latter. In a recent essay,

Recognition as Ideology(Honneth 2007a), Honneth acknowledges the possibility thatdomination might, in some cases, function so seamlessly through the mechanism of

ideological forms of recognition that it produces no signs of struggle in its targets.

In response to this worry, he modifies his account, proposing a way of distinguishing

between ideological and morally justified forms of recognition. However, I shall

argue that this modification fails to address the challenge posed by the intertwining ofrecognition and domination, an intertwining that is evident in the maintenance and

reproduction of gender subordination. Hence, thus far, Honneth has not succeeded in


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Journal of Power 23

the first task of a critical theory of society, that of comprehending existing structures

of social domination.The conflation between struggle and power relations is evident in Honneths early

programmatic statements, both in the Afterword to the second German edition of

Critique and Powerand in the Introduction to his groundbreaking second book, The

Struggle for Recognition(1995). For instance, in the former, Honneth maintains that

because he frames the central problem of critical theory as that of making sense ofexisting structures of social domination while theorizing the social resources for their

practical overcoming, the aim of critical theory can be realized only by extending the

sphere of communicative action to include the negative dimension of struggle (1991,

p. xxviii). Similarly, in the latter text, Honneth claims that the impetus for this focuson the negative dimension of struggle is the attempt to integrate the social-theoretical

insights of Foucaults historical work within the framework of a theory of communi-

cative action (1995, p. 1). The key to accomplishing this integration of Foucaults

analysis of power with the Habermasian communicative framework is the concept of

morally motivated struggle (Honneth 1995, p. 1).Honneth theorizes morally motivated struggles within society as arising from the

feeling of injustice that accompanies the violation of a legitimate expectation of recog-

nition. Drawing on the young Hegel and on the social psychology of G.H. Mead,

Honneth develops a tripartite conception of social recognition. Following Hegel,Honneth delineates three primary forms of mutual recognition love, legal rights, and

communal solidarity. Following Mead, Honneth connects these primary forms of

mutual recognition to an account of three primary forms of practical self-relation

which are, taken together, constitutive of the possibility of individual autonomy: self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem (1995, pp. 92130). Self-confidence is

fostered by intact mutual recognition in loving, familial relations; self-respect is madepossible by legal recognition; and self-esteem is grounded in membership in a cultur-

ally recognized community of value. Honneth also claims that relations of disrespect

or misrecognition can undermine each of these three forms of practical self-relation abuse and rape undermine basic self-confidence; the denial of legal rights undermines

self-respect; and the denigration of cultural forms of life undermines self-esteem

(1995, pp. 131139). Social domination takes the form of widespread instances of

disrespect and misrecognition, which in turn generates subjective feelings of humili-ation and injustice that can, under the right sorts of social conditions, generate social

struggles for the expansion of recognition.

The core of Honneths theory of recognition and of his related accounts ofsubjectivity and autonomy is his account of familial love as the ground for our basic

sense of self-confidence. Following Hegel, Honneth views familial love in particu-lar, the relationship between mother, where that term refers to the childs primary

caregiver, regardless of whether she is the childs biological mother, and child as

both temporally and conceptually prior to other forms of recognition. The experience

of love in the family enables the child to develop a fundamental level of emotionalconfidence that is the psychological pre-condition for the development of all further

attitudes of self-respect (Honneth 1995, p. 107).

This much seems plausible, and it fits well with the existing empirical literature on

child development. However, critics have charged that Honneth paints an implausible

picture of the motherchild relationship, one that ignores the undeniable asymmetricalpower relationship between the two (see Young 2007, McNay 2008). Drawing on

object-relations psychoanalysis,1Honneth claims in The Struggle for Recognitionthat


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24 A. Allen

the relationship between mother and young infant is one of a mutualdependency and

symbiotic unityin which both partners to interaction are entirely dependent on eachother for the satisfaction of their needs and are incapable of individually demarcating

themselves from each other (1995, p. 99). This stage gradually gives way to one in

which mother and child come to see each other as relatively independent that is, not

symbiotically fused entities who are nonetheless dependent on one anothers love

for their basic self-confidence. The difficulty with this story is that although it seemsundeniable that infants are absolutely dependent on their adult caregivers and perhaps

it is plausible to say that they experience themselves as symbiotically fused with those

caregivers (though this claim is controversial), it strains credulity to suggest that the

mother is absolutely dependent upon or symbiotically fused with the infant in thesame way. Although the mother may well be dependent upon the infant in some

respects for example, she relies on the infants responses to reassure herself that she

is doing a good job as a mother and she may well experience herself as symbiotically

fused with the baby in some ways for example, if she is nursing her baby, in which

case her body and her babys body form a complex and amazing unit regulated bybasic laws of supply and demand she is nevertheless an independent, autonomous

adult who can choose to give or withhold or moderate her love and care for the infant.

As Iris Marion Young puts the point:

the relationship of dependent and developing children to their care givers is notreciprocal [It] is necessary asymmetrical because the care receiver depends on thecare giver in a way that the giver does not depend on the receiver. (2007, p. 207)

This is not to say that mothers are necessarily oppressive or dominating toward their

babies though unfortunately they may act in these ways but it is to say that theyare certainly able to exercise a great deal of power over their infants, power that the

infant is not in any position to reciprocate. Hence, as Young suggests, the motherchild

relationship is fundamentally characterized by asymmetries of power, dependence,and unreciprocated labor (2007, p. 207).

For Young, this raises questions about what mutual or intersubjective recognition

could possibly mean in the sphere of parental love and care. Honneth recommends a

norm of reciprocity in the sphere of the family but, as Young notes, if the relation ofcare giving and care receiving are asymmetrical it is not apparent what this

means (2007, p. 208). At best, reciprocity in the context of a care relationship would

entail a principle of turn-taking, according to which I care for you now in thisrespect, you care for me later in that or another respect (Young 2007, p. 208). But

this is even more complicated with children, since they are generally not in a positionto care for their parents until they have reached adulthood themselves. As a result of

these worries, Young contends that Honneths theory of recognition needs to probe

the asymmetry of the caring relationship more (2007, p. 211). In his response to

Young, Honneth declines to take up this point directly. He simply asserts, contraYoung, that the original modus of care represents a reciprocal, symmetrical relation

such as is familiar to us in the context of friendship or intimate relationships, while

one-sided care and devotion represent a special case of asymmetrical care (Honneth

2007b, p. 362). It is not at all clear to me why Honneth says this, though saying it

does allow him to sidestep Youngs concern. Perhaps he is thinking of the relation-ship between spouses or adult partners as constituting the original modus of care in

the family. But if we take this phrase to refer to what is both from a temporal


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Journal of Power 25

perspective and in order of psychic importance the primary affective, caring relation-

ship that all human beings experience, then this must refer to our relationship withour primary care-giving parent, our mother. And this relationship is, as Young

rightly insists, necessarily an asymmetrical power relationship, even if it is also a

loving one.

Still, Youngs essay does not push the point quite as far as it needs to be pushed.

If, as she suggests, we do probe more deeply this fundamental asymmetry in the struc-ture of familial love and recognition, we will discover a more fundamental concern

with Honneths account of recognition in the family. The problem has to do with

Honneths claim that the motherchild relationship is one of mutual dependence and

intersubjective recognition. To be sure, in a certain, thin, sense of the word mutual, itis true that the motherchild relationship is a mutual one. Both parties interact with

one another and act in response to the actions of the other. But this is just to say that

the motherchild relationship is a relationshipbetween two individuals. However, the

relationship cannot be mutualin any thicker, more interesting sense of that term since

one of the parties to the relationship is not yet a fully formed subject. Hence, it wouldbe strange to characterize the relationship as intersubjective. As Joel Whitebook puts

the point:

Honneths use of the term intersubjectivity [to describe the motherchild relationship]smuggles in too much content. To begin with, interaction must be distinguished fromintersubjectivity. The conflation of the two implies that subjects already exist when the

baby and the mother interact in this early phase, when the genesis of the subject is exactlywhat has to be explained. (2001, p. 279).

In response to Whitebooks criticism, Honneth has reformulated his account of

motherchild symbiosis and retracted some of his earlier claims (2001). As I see it,the central point of contention in their exchange has to do with how to conceive

properly of the childs struggleto be recognized as an independent subject, distinct

from her mother. Whitebook claims that Honneths object-relations psychoanalyticframework is incapable of doing justice to the omnipotent strivings of the infant and

as a result significantly downplays the highly conflictual nature of the childs struggle

for recognition, and the remainders of this struggle in the psyche of the adult (2001,

pp. 279280). As he sees it, there is curiously little struggle in Honneths struggle forrecognition. In reply, Honneth criticizes Whitebooks appeal to Freudian drive theory

and maintains that an object-relations approach can theorize the infants omnipotent

strivings of the child as the result of inevitable dissatisfactions that necessarily emergethrough the socialization process (2001, pp. 134135). I remain a bit skeptical about

Honneths claim on behalf of object-relations theory, but, for the purposes of thepresent paper, this is beside the point. The important point, as I see it, is not that the

lack of struggle in Honneths account of the struggle for recognition. The important

point is Honneths tendency to conflate power relations with the concept of struggle,

and to think that, by providing an analysis of the latter, he has given a satisfactoryaccount of the former.

In order to enable us to understand this conflation and why it is problematic,

consider the following example: imagine a young girl, aged five, named Elizabeth.

Elizabeth has been from birth whole-heartedly loved by her parents, and, as such, has

formed the basic coherent sense of self that Honneth refers to under the heading ofself-confidence. Indeed, Elizabeths parents constantly tell her how much they love

her and how wonderful they think she is, by saying things like you are so beautiful,


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26 A. Allen

what a sweet little girl you are, and how well-behaved you are. They also demon-

strate their love in other ways: by talking with her frequently about her day, showingher lots of physical affection, buying her stuffed animals and American Girl dolls,

encouraging her efforts as a fledgling ballerina, and so on. Lets assume that

Elizabeths parents are not consciously or intentionally aiming to foster and reinforce

pernicious gender stereotypes through their words and actions. They do not want in

fact, they may even want not to raise a daughter who is obsessed with what she lookslike (rather than her intellect, her wit, her character, her athletic prowess, and so on),

is focused on relationships rather than achievements, is docile, obedient, and aims

always to please authority figures, and is generally content to act out the demands of

normative femininity. And yet, they find themselves, for reasons that are perhaps evensomewhat mysterious to them, continually drawn to respond to Elizabeth in ways that

seem to do just that. Moreover, these ways of responding to Elizabeth are confirmed

for her in most of what she experiences in the world around her: from the traditional

image of femininity presented in fairy tales and Disney movies to the glamour girl-

power version offered by tween pop sensation Hannah Montana, to the different waysthat girls and boys are treated in her classroom at school, and so on.

To be sure, figuring out why the parents in this example persist in reinforcing

subordinating gender norms and modes of identity despite their own critical stance on

them is a challenge. But the difficult point for Honneth concerns not the parents butthe little girl, Elizabeth, for she is receiving recognition (through the vehicle of paren-

tal love) and subordinating gender ideology in a single stroke. And because Elizabeth

has been receiving love and gender subordination in a single stroke for as long as she

has been alive, and for all that time has been unable to assess that gender ideology crit-ically because she has not yet fully developed the requisite capacity for autonomy, she

is likely to form a psychic attachment to those subordinating modes of femininity thatmay prove, in adulthood, quite difficult to shake.

The general point is this: on the basic Freudian picture of subject formation that

Honneth accepts, in order to receive the recognition that the child needs in order tosurvive, she must capitulate to the superior power and authority of the parent, who

stands in for the normative demands of society. The child must accept and internalize

these authority relations regardless of whether they are legitimate, and before she is in

a position to judge or critically assess their legitimacy. Indeed, she must capitulate tothis power in order to become autonomous, thus, in order to be in a position to assess

critically its legitimacy. But because she is getting gender subordination and love and

recognition at the same time, the subordination produces no struggle. Conversely,later in life, supposing she wishes to struggle against gender subordination, she may

find herself strangely and persistently attached to those very gender norms and modesof identity that she rationally and reflexively rejects. To paraphrase Foucault, she may

find herself unable to eradicate the gender fascism in her head (2000, p. 108).

The process of the subject being formed through an attachment to subordinating

modes of recognition is one that Judith Butler (1997) has analyzed, followingNietzsche, Althusser, and Foucault, under the term subjection. Butlers basic

argument is as follows. Human beings need recognition to render our lives socially

intelligible and hence livable. This need is so strong that the developing child will

accept recognition on whatever terms it is offered to her, even if those terms require

her to accept and become attached to a subordinating mode of identity. Social ordersstructured by relations of domination exploit that fundamental desire for recognition,

offering it to individuals only on the condition that they accept and become attached


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Journal of Power 27

to their own subordination in the process. Not only that, becoming a competent subject

requires that we disavow this primary dependency and our attachment to it. As Butlerputs it:

A childs love is prior to judgment and decision; a child tended and nourished in a good

enough way will love, and only later stand a chance of discriminating among those heor she loves. This is to say, not that the child loves blindly (since from early on there isdiscernment and knowingness of an important kind), but only that if the child is to

persist in a psychic and social sense, there must be dependency and the formation ofattachment: there is no possibility of not loving, where love is bound up with the require-ments for life. The child does not know to what he/she attaches; yet the infant as well asthe child must attach in order to persist in and as itself. No subject can emerge withoutthis attachment, formed in dependency, but no subject, in the course of its formation, canever afford fully to see it. This attachment in its primary forms must both come to beand be denied. (1997, p. 8)

There are two important points here, both of which have potentially serious

consequences for Honneths account of recognition. First, that the child requires the

recognition of the other for her own psychic survival, and that recognition is conferredthrough radical dependency and subordination. Second, because dependency and

subordination are constitutive of subjectivity, the fully developed subject must deny

and disavow and, in so doing, re-enact that very subordination (Butler 1997, p. 9).

As I have argued elsewhere, Butlers theory of subjection moves too quickly fromthe fact of primary dependency to the inevitability of subordination (Allen 2005, 2008,

chap. 4). I think that this is due to her conflation of dependency with power and power

with subordination.2On the basis of this conflation, she makes the quite general claim

that to desire the conditions of ones subordination is thus required to persist as

oneself (Butler 1997, p. 9). But this seems entirely too strong. If the story that shetells is compelling, it motivates a much weaker, but still quite interesting and impor-

tant, claim, namely, that desiring the conditions of ones dependency is required to

persist as oneself even when that dependency takes the form of subordination. In other

words, Butler does not distinguish between the actual subordination of the subject andthe vulnerability to subordination that is inherent in the process of subjection, as a

result of the situation of primary dependency and the childs deep-seated need for

recognition. Nevertheless, even this weaker reading of Butlers notion of subjection

presents a serious challenge to Honneths account of recognition. The claim that recog-

nition and subordination often come together in a single stroke raises questions about

the normative status of recognition itself.3

And Butlers claim about the necessarydisavowal of our primary dependency even perhaps especially? when that depen-

dency takes the form of subordination raises questions about whether we can ever be

in a position to make a clear distinction between subordinating and non-subordinatingforms of identity, since we have always already been formed as subjects in a way that

attaches us to our identities, whether they are subordinating or not.

So even if, on Honneths account, the child engages in a genuinely difficult and

conflictual struggle to be recognized as an independent being, this is not actually the

same as fully accounting for the way that power relations figure in the process of thedevelopment of the subject through recognition. As Lois McNay puts the point

(speaking here about recognition theories in general, Honneths theory included):

[P]roblematic aspects to the reproduction of subjectivity that pertain to the pervasiveand insidious nature of social domination are underplayed [in the literature on


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28 A. Allen

recognition]. This is achieved through the disconnection of an understanding ofsubject formation from an analysis of power relations, with the consequence that theidea of recognition fails to grasp some important dimensions to the reproduction ofsocial inequalities. (2008, p. 8)

Building on McNays point, I would say this: subordinating norms, practices, and modesof identity can be and, in the case of gender norms, often are passed along from

parent to child with little or no struggle. And it is this fact, so crucial for understanding

the maintenance, reproduction, and stubborn persistence of gender subordination in

contemporary Western societies that is obscured by Honneths conflation of powerrelations with the concept of struggle.

In his recent essay, Recognition as Ideology, Honneth goes some way, but ulti-

mately not far enough, toward acknowledging and responding to this difficulty.

Although he insists that it would be unfair to accuse him of having ignored the nega-

tive phenomena of subjection and domination from the very beginning, he nonethelessadmits that because he defined recognition as the antithesis of relations of disrespect

and domination in a society, the concept enjoyed a certain presumption of innocence

such that recognition itself could never come under suspicion of functioning as a

means of domination (Honneth 2007a, p. 325). This presumption of innocence comesunder pressure, however, when one acknowledges Butlers point that forms of recog-

nition may contribute to the reproduction of relations of domination by encouraging

individuals to subject themselves to social demands in order to receive the recognition

that they crave. Honneth seems to acknowledge implicitly the importance of distin-

guishing power relations from social struggle, and also the difficulty that this posesfor his model, when he writes:

as long as we have no empirical evidence that the concerned parties themselves expe-rience particular practices of recognition as being repressive, constricting or as fosteringstereotypes, it is extremely difficult to distinguish between ideological and justifiedforms of recognition in any reasonable way. (2007a, p. 327)

In other words, if recognition works through subjection the way that Butler (and Alth-

usser, who is Honneths main point of reference in this essay) suggests, then it is

unlikely to set off a struggle. But as long as the subordinated individuals themselvesare not struggling against a particular form of recognition, then how are we to know

whether that form is, in fact, subordinating?

Honneth attempts to respond to this worry by linking recognition to rationality.First, he makes the conceptual argument that the normativecharacter of recognition is

tied to its rationalcharacter. The core of the concept of recognition, for Honneth, isnormative rather than epistemic: it refers to the affirmation of positive qualities of

human subjects or groups (2007a, p. 329). Moreover, Honneth insists, recognitional

stances have an unambiguously positive character inasmuch as they permit the

addressee to identify with his or her own qualities and thus to achieve a greater degreeof autonomy (2007a, p. 330). Hence, he rules out the possibility that recognition per

se could be a form of domination or sovereign power.4The issue, rather, is how to

distinguish between ideological and justified forms of recognition. Honneths initial

suggestion is to link the attribution of recognition to a moderate form of value realism

bolstered by a strong claim about historical progress. As he puts it: we shouldunderstand recognition as a reaction with which we respond rationally to evaluative

qualities we have learned to perceive in human subjects to the degree that we have


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Journal of Power 29

been integrated into the second nature of our life-world (Honneth 2007a, p. 336). In

other words, to grant recognition to an individual or a group is to not to confer apositive social status on them; rather, it is to perceive correctly, as the result of an

historical learning process, that individual or group is deserving of recognition.

Because it is tied to historical learning processes, it is possible for recognition to take

a rational and morally justified form.

Although this conceptual argument provides an effective response to those criticswho suspect that recognition is per se subordinating, it still does not address the

question of how to distinguish justified from ideological forms of recognition. Since

recognition is, ex hypothesi, being granted in cases of ideological recognition, the

concept of recognition itself cannot do the necessary normative work here. Nor,however, is it clear that the concept of rationality can do all the necessary work, for

Honneth admits that ideological modes of recognition, in order to be effective, must

be prima facie rational, else they would fail to motivate their addressees to accept

them. Honneth maintains that in order to count as a credible candidate for an ideolog-

ical form of recognition, such a recognition structure would have to meet three condi-tions. First, it would have to give positive expression to the value of a subject or

group of subjects, which is just to say that blatantly negative, discriminatory, or

exclusionary systems of belief are quite obviously not modes of recognition, ideolog-

ical, or otherwise (Honneth 2007a, p. 337). Second, these recognition structures mustbe credible in the sense that their addressees must have some reason to identify with

them (Honneth 2007a, p. 338). Honneth ties the notion of credibility to his earlier

claim about historical progress when he writes, ideological forms of recognition can

only employ value-statements that use the evaluative vocabulary of the present. Bycontrast, statements praising evaluative qualities that have come to be discredited will

not be credible in the eyes of the addressees (Honneth 2007a, p. 338).5

Third, in orderto function ideologically, systems of belief and structures of recognition must be

contrastive, which means that they must pick out something unique and distinctive

about the individual or group in question (Honneth 2007a, pp. 339340). If ideologi-cal forms of recognition meet these three conditions, however, it is clear that they

cannot be easily dismissed as simply irrational. Rather, these systems of belief

mobilize evaluative reasons possessing sufficient power to convince under given

circumstances in order to motivate their addressees rationally to apply these reasonsto themselves (Honneth 2007a, p. 340). In short, even ideological modes of recogni-

tion operate within a historical space of reasons (Honneth 2007a, p. 340).

Nevertheless, Honneth maintains that there is an irrational kernel to all merelyideological forms of recognition (2007a, p. 328), and that this can be discerned via a

distinction between the evaluative promise of a recognition structure and its mate-rial fulfillment (2007a, pp. 346347). A social structure of recognition is unjustified

or ideological, for Honneth, when it holds out the promise of recognition to certain

individuals and at the same time materially denies or undermines the possibility of the

fulfillment of that promise. Such a mode of recognition is not irrational at the mostbasic, symbolic level, for it draws on evaluative reasons that are extant within the

social world and it strikes its addressees as positive, credible, and contrastive. But it

is, according to Honneth, irrational at a second level, inasmuch as the evaluative

symbolic content of the recognition order is at odds with the material structure of the

social world, because the institutional practices required for truly realizing the newlyaccentuated value are not delivered in the act of recognition (2007a, p. 346). As an

example, Honneth offers the contemporary employee who is encouraged to think of


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himself as an entrepreneur of his own labor power, but who is at the same time

systematically denied by the neo-liberal economic order the higher degrees ofindividuality and initiative that such a self-conception presupposes. In this case, the

substantial gap between the evaluative promise held out by the notion of the corporate

worker as flexible entrepreneur and the fragile material reality of corporate employees

in the age of global, neo-liberal capitalism suggests that this mode of recognition is

ideological.However, it is difficult to see how Honneths distinction between the evaluative

promise and material fulfillment of a recognition structure helps in the case of

Elizabeth. Here, there seems to be no gap at all between the evaluative promise held

out by the system of beliefs of normative femininity and their material fulfillment. Onthe contrary, women who conform to the norms of feminine beauty, docility, and

nurturing reap substantial material and economic rewards for doing so, primarily

through marriage to wealthy men. And women who deviate substantially from those

norms sustain high material (economic and, in some cases, physical) costs. Perhaps

Honneth would respond by insisting that normative femininity does not meet the threeconditions that he specifies, thus, that it is not even a credible candidate for an

ideological form of recognition. It seems clear to me that the system of beliefs that

grants girls and women recognition for their conformity to normative femininity is

both positive it confers positive value upon its addressees and contrastive itmarks them out as distinctive. Thus, if Honneth wanted to make this case, he would

have to do so by arguing that, in the wake of the second wave feminist movement,

such modes of recognition are no longer credible. Now, if we take the claim that

normative femininity is not a credible mode of evaluation as an empirical claim, itseems to me that it is clearly false. Many people, including many women, in advanced

Western societies quite plainly find the demands of normative femininity to beperfectly credible. This is evident as soon as one dips ones pinky toe into the vast

ocean of American popular culture. If, however, Honneth were to make this claim in

a normative sense that the addressees of such claims ought notview them as credible then he seems to me to be begging the very question he is trying to answer here,

which concerns which systems of belief and patterns of recognition we should take to

be ideological.

A second, and, I think, deeper problem emerges when we consider Honneths claimthat all modes of recognition, whether ideological or not, operate within the space of

reasons. The worry is that, by maintaining that recognition operates in the space of

reasons, Honneth has already missed the full force of Butlers critique of subjection.Her point is the Nietzschean and Freudian one that the child who is subjected to a

particular recognition order (e.g., the recognition order that demands that individualssubmit to established gender norms) is not yet operating in the space of reasons. The

child accedes to the demands of the existing social order and assimilates existing

patterns of recognition in order to enter that space. Thus, it is not sufficient to

acknowledge, as Honneth does in this essay, the Foucaultian point that the powerexercised by ideological forms of recognition is productive and not repressive (2007a,

p. 342). Honneth glosses this point as follows, by promising social recognition for the

subjective demonstration of certain abilities, needs, and desires, [ideological forms of

recognition] engender a willingness to adopt a web of practices and modes of behavior

that suit the reproduction of social domination (2007a, p. 342). This is correct, but itdoes not go far enough, for the Foucaultian and Butlerian point is that such a willing-

ness is engendered in individuals as a condition of their becoming subjects and enter-


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Journal of Power 31

ing the space of reasons in the first place. Failing to appreciate this leaves Honneth

unable to diagnose how the attachment to gender norms that are pernicious and subor-dinating operates beneath the level of reasons and is, as such, often impervious to ratio-

nal critique. When it comes to unmasking the complex structures of gender

subordination in contemporary Western societies, Honneths critical theory is, to

borrow a phrase from Nancy Fraser (1989), not quite critical enough.

In conclusion, even if we accept that Honneth has given us a satisfactory analysisof the conflictual nature of the struggle in the struggle for recognition that is a crucial

part of the formation of every subject, he has not thereby given us a satisfactory anal-

ysis of power and the role that it plays in subject formation. The challenging insight

of Butlers analysis of subjection, drawing on the very Foucaultian account thatHonneth claims to want to integrate into his normative recognition framework, is that

power can and often does operate relatively seamlessly, without leaving any struggle

in its wake. Honneth tries to address this worry with his distinction between the eval-

uative promise of a structure of recognition and its material fulfillment, but this

response is problematic. And his appeal to the space of reasons as a way out of thisproblem suggests that he misses the genuine force of Butlers challenge, which has to

do with our affective, pre-rational attachments to modes of subordination and our

tendency to disavow that very attachment. Such attachments operate below the level

of reasons and critical, reflexive reason is, as a result, often powerless against them.In order to illuminate the structures of social domination that plague contemporary

Western democracies, critical theory will have to grapple more fundamentally with

the problem of subjection than Honneth has yet done.

AcknowledgmentThe author wishes to thank Clarissa Hayward for her thought-provoking comments on a muchearlier version of this paper.

Notes

1. For criticisms of Honneths reliance on object-relations psychoanalysis, see McNay (2008,pp. 132148) and Whitebook (2001). Honneth defends his use of object-relations theory inHonneth (2007c).

2. One could argue, as Rainer Forst suggested to me in conversation, that Butler is simplyusing the term subordination in a neutral sense, as a synonym for dependency. However,the term subordination has, in English, a decidedly negative connotation, and so it seems

unlikely to me that it has this neutral meaning for Butler.3. Similar questions are raised, though in a different way and with reference to the political

question of the recognition of religious minorities, in Forst (2007).4. For two very different arguments to this effect, see Markell (2003) and Oliver (2001).5. Here Honneth offers what seems to me to be the very problematic example of praising a

woman for being a good housewife. He suggests that such an act would not be credible tothe woman because it appeals to a mode of evaluation that has been thoroughly discredited.It is not clear to me, however, that there is widespread, let alone universal, agreement onwhether this being a good housewife is an appropriate term of praise. This is especially thecase in the USA, though I suspect that, outside of academic and professional circles, thesame could be said of Germany.

Notes on contributor

Amy Allen is Parents Distinguished Research Professor in the humanities and professor ofphilosophy at Dartmouth College in Hanover, USA. She is the author of The power of feminist


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theory: domination, resistance, solidarity (Westview Press, 1999) and The Politics of OurSelves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory(Columbia UniversityPress, 2008), and the series editor ofNew Directions in Critical Theory(Columbia UniversityPress). She is currently working on a new book manuscript, tentatively entitled The Force of

Reason, which focuses on the relationship between power and reason in the Frankfurt Schooltradition of critical theory.

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(2010) ALLEN, Amy. Recognizing Domination _ Recognition and Power in Honneth's Critical Theory