From ambivalence to vulnerability: Recognition and the subject

Abstract

Recent writings on recognition and ambivalence highlight the limits of narrowly dyadic and teleological accounts of recognition. In this article, I extend the work on ambivalent recognition by proffering a conception of recognition as vulnerable. I emphasise the need to come to know the self as part of the journey toward recognition and to interrogate the role of the privileged in the dance of recognition. I illustrate vulnerable recognition with reference to literature that highlights this more complicated reading of recognition in practice, including calls for white settlers to come to understand the way settler culture shapes relations with others and Indigenous refusal of recognition. I maintain that a vulnerable and processual conception of recognition takes seriously the demand to re-cognise or to ‘know again’, which is at the heart of Hegel's agonistic account of recognition. A vulnerable conception of recognition enables us to better understand our interconnectedness and the place we occupy in particular histories and structures, with their ongoing legacies of privilege and oppression.