Identity, exclusion, and critique: A response to four critics

European Journal of Political Theory

Volumn 6, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 305-338

  Fraser, Nancy ^a  

^a NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH   (United States)

Author keywords

Critique; Global poverty; Justice; Participation; Recognition; Redistribution; Representation; Structural exclusion

Indexed keywords

EID: 38849135507     PISSN: 14748851     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1474885107077319     Document Type: Article

References (28)

1. On this point, Alcoff misunderstands my view. She claims that I distinguish one type of recognition claim, aimed at parity, from another, aimed at identity. In fact, however, I hold that all recognition claims should be judged by the single standard of parity of participation, which applies also to claims for redistribution. Thus, the parity standard applies equally to claims for universalist, affirmative, and deconstructive recognition. What distinguishes these types from one another is neither the standard by which they are judged nor the goal at which they aim. The difference lies, rather, as I noted above, in the type of obstacle to participatory parity that each confronts - hence in the type of remedy each projects as the means to parity.
2. Manuel Castells (1997) The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, vol. 2, The Power of Identity, pp. 8-11, 356-8. London: Blackwell.
3. Nancy Fraser (1995) 'From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a "Postsocialist" Age', New Left Review 212 (July/ Aug.): 68-93. Repr. in Nancy Fraser (1997) Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the 'Postsocialist' Condition. London: Routledge.
4. André Gorz (1967) Strategy for Labor: A Radical Proposal, tr. Martin A. Nicolaus and Victoria Ortiz. Boston: Beacon Press. For my use of Gorz and my later account, see Nancy Fraser (2003) 'Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics' ch. 1 of Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, at pp. 79-82. London and New York: Routledge.
5. Fraser (n. 4), pp. 81-82.
6. Here, too, Alcoff misunderstands my position. Noting my worry that recognition is displacing redistribution, she observes that I fail to express any parallel concern that redistribution could displace recognition. Seeking to explain the asymmetry, she concludes that I must value redistribution over recognition. But here she decontextualizes my argument, neglecting to see it as an intervention in a specific historical conjuncture: The rise of neoliberalism, the weakening of social egalitarian ideals, and the surge of identity politics. This is the context in which I have commended the slogan, 'No recognition without redistribution', while noting that in an earlier era of reductiveeconomistic social democracy, one might well have preferred the converse slogan, 'No redistribution without recognition'.
7. Karl Marx (1975) 'Letter to A. Ruge, September 1843', in Karl Marx: Early Writings, ed. L. Coletti, tr. Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton, p. 209. New York: Vintage Books.
8. I first elaborated this revised, three-dimensional framework in Fraser (2005) Reframing Justice: The 2004 Spinoza Lectures. Amsterdam: Van Gorcum. See also Fraser (2005) 'Reframing Justice in a Globalizing World', New Left Review 36 (Nov.-Dec.): 69-88. Fraser (2006) 'Democratic Justice in a Globalizing Age: Thematizing the Problem of the Frame', in Nathalie Karagiannis and Peter Wagner (eds) Varieties of World-Making: Beyond Globalization, pp. 193-215. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Kate Nash and Vikki Bell (forthcoming) 'The Politics of Framing: An Interview with Nancy Fraser', Theory, Culture and Society.
9. Fraser (2005, in n. 8).
10. Because access to these arenas is so fundamental for people's well-being, I construe all of them as 'spheres of justice' in which the requirement of participatory parity applies. Here I break with the common view that focuses exclusively on political participation, often understood very narrowly in terms of voting. For me, in contrast, the requirement of participatory parity applies broadly, in all the major arenas of social life.
11. Whether exclusion from one sphere converts into exclusion from others is in the end an empirical question, which depends on the character of the society in question.
12. Max Weber (1958) 'Class, Status, Party', in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, pp. 188-190, 399. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
13. Katherine C. Bond, David D. Celentano, Sukanya Phonsophakul, and Chayan Vaddhanaphuti (1997) 'Mobility and Migration: Female Commercial Sex Work and the HIV Epidemic in Northern Thailand', in Gilbert Herdt (ed.), Sexual Cultures and Migration in the Era of AIDS: Anthropological and Demographic Perspectives, pp. 185-215. New York: Oxford University Press.
14. (2004) Darwin's Nightmare, film dir. Hubert Sauper. Celluloid Dreams/ International Film Circuit.
15. James Ferguson (1999) 'Global Disconnect: Abjection and the Aftermath of Modernism', in Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt, pp. 234-54. Berkeley: University of California Press.
16. Dan La Botz (1995) Democracy in Mexico: Peasant Rebellion and Political Reform. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. June Nash (2001) Mayan Visions: The Quest for Autonomy in an Age of Globalization. London: Routledge.
17. In fact, as I shall explain shortly, in my reply to Forst, I have my own analogue of the democratic minimum in the notion of 'good enough deliberation'.
18. Kevin Olson (forthcoming) 'Participatory Parity and Democratic Justice', in Nancy Fraser, Adding Insult to Injury: Social Justice and the Politics of Recognition, ed. Kevin Olson. London: Verso. Ingrid Robeyns (2003) 'Is Nancy Fraser's Critique of Theories of Distributive Justice Justified?', Constellations 10(3): 538, repr. ibid.
19. I will return to this point in replying to Forst.
20. I made a similar argument several years ago in response to Iris Marion Young, whom I also regard as a proponent and practitioner of gratuitous pluralism. See her (1997) 'Unruly Categories: A Critique of Nancy Fraser's Dual Systems Theory', New Left Review 222(March/April): 147-60. Nancy Fraser (1997) 'A Rejoinder to Iris Young', New Left Review 223(May/ June): 126-9.
21. John Rawls (1999) A Theory of Justice, rev. edn, pp. 3-4, 263-4, 266-7. Cambridge: Belknap Press.
22. Nancy Fraser (1986) 'Toward a Discourse Ethic of Solidarity', Praxis International 5(4): 425-9. (1989a) 'Talking about Needs: Interpretive Contests as Political Conflicts in Welfare-State Societies', Ethics 99(2): 291-313. (1989b) 'Struggle over Needs: Outline of a Socialist-Feminist Critical Theory of Late-Capitalist Political Culture', in Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press and Polity Press.
23. Nancy Fraser (1991) 'Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy', in Craig Calhoun (ed.) Habermas and the Public Sphere, pp. 109-42. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; reprinted in Fraser (1997, in n. 3).
24. Forst suggests that my theory can be interpreted in two ways: As normatively monist or as normatively dualist. The first interpretation is correct. Although I conceive distribution and recognition (and now representation) as two (now three) conceptually irreducible dimensions of justice, I subsume both (all) of them under the single overarching norm of participatory parity. For me, accordingly, all injustices violate a single normative principle. Thus, my view is social-ontologically two- (now three-)dimensional, but normatively monist.
25. The phrase 'good enough deliberation' was suggested to me by Bert van den Brink (personal communication). I develop the idea in 'Who Counts? Thematizing the Question of the Frame', in Fraser (2005, in n. 8). Fraser (2006, in n. 8).
26. John Rawls (1996) Political Liberalism, pp. 29-35. New York: Columbia University Press.
27. I owe this point to Cristina Lafont (oral intervention in discussion of this exchange at session on 'Redistribution or Recognition?', Central Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association, Chicago, April 2006).
28. Special thanks to Nikolas Kompridis. Not only did he organize and guest-edit this symposium, but he also remained patient and gracious despite my slowness in preparing this response. I am grateful, too, to Amy Allen, Maria Pia Lara, and Eli Zaretsky for helpful comments on the present text.