ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 provides an overview of the recognition-theoretic paradigm from a postcolonial perspective, focusing on the ‘classical’ theories of recognition developed by Axel Honneth, Charles Taylor and Nancy Fraser. Postcolonial theorists have leveraged some of the heftiest charges against recognition politics, accusing it of reinforcing, rather than undermining, dominant relations of power that undercut the freedom and equality of minority groups. This postcolonial critique serves as an important reminder of the ways in which structures of domination shape understandings of difference and warns against the potential of recognition to encourage minorities to identify the social conditions that oppress them. Nevertheless, this chapter argues that the insights of recognition theory can be consonant with postcolonial aims, so long as we are willing to further reflect on the relationship between misrecognition as a source of conflict and recognition as a remedy. To this end, the chapter offers a close reading of the anti-colonial theorist Frantz Fanon’s reflections on recognition. Fanon, too, is deeply suspicious of the possibilities of reciprocal recognition in colonial contexts. However, his perceptive insights into the entanglements of misrecognition and recognition highlight the ways in which the recognition of difference is inescapably bound up with the rearticulation of political identity.
