ABSTRACT
This chapter takes up Jessica Benjamin’s theory of recognition to reframe disgust experiences as intersubjective processes in which selfhood is struggled for and meaning-making happens. The chapter moves through an exposition of the central aspects of Benjamin’s approach to recognition, including an overview of Benjamin’s work in relationship to G. W. F Hegel’s master–slave dialectic. From this, the chapter analyzes disgust as a struggle for recognition. The chapter demonstrates that by reframing disgust via the concept of recognition, it becomes possible to analyze disgust as a subject–subject encounter. It thereby becomes conceivable to imagine more than one active subject in the encounter. In this reformulation, even those that that are named “disgusting object” can be understood as active subjects in a disgust encounter. Accordingly, this chapter also explores the position of the “disgusting” subject by using Jean-Paul Sartre’s work on the concept of the look to analyze this position. In particular, the discussion examines the impact that a “look of disgust” could have on a subject to ask—“What does being seen as disgusting mean for me?” The author suggests that what the look of disgust reveals is that I do not only exist “for-myself,” but also “for-the-other.”
