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CentreLGS Annual Lecture 2007

Thursday 26 April 2007

A lecture by Lois McNay

“The Trouble with Recognition”

Abstract: The idea of recognition has acquired renewed significance in the last decade or so as a way of denoting the increasingly central role played by identity claims in social and political conflict. As it has become more predominant, however, it has also generated much debate some of which has focused on the extent to which it invokes simplistic accounts of subjectivity and identity formation. In this lecture, I argue that the debate over recognition has become stuck in an impasse between subjectivism and objectivism. Thinkers of recognition highlight important aspects of subjectivity such as its dialogical and situated nature but these are not elaborated sufficiently in the context of a theory of power. Critics of the idea of recognition such as Nancy Fraser and Iris Marion Young have attempted to overcome these subjectivist tendencies by reconfiguring the idea of recognition in materialist terms. While such arguments are very powerful, they tend to disregard the analytical relevance of concepts of identity and subjectivity and move towards a theoretical objectivism. I argue that it is important to retain some notion of embodied subjectivity in order to explain certain important aspects of identity formation and agency and also to move beyond the subjectivist-objectivist dualism.

The CentreLGS Annual Lecture 2007 by Lois McNay was recorded. Please click on the link below to listen to the Annual Lecture.

MP3 recording - Listen Listen to the CentreLGS Annual Lecture 2007 by Lois McNay

Lois McNay is a Reader in Politics at Oxford University. Her most recent books are Gender and Agency (2000: Polity) and Against Recognition (2007:Polity). Earlier books include: Foucault and Feminism: Power, Gender and the Self (Polity Press, 1992), and Foucault: A Critical Introduction (Polity Press, 1994).

 

 

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