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.
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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For more information, please contact:
AHRC Centre Co-Ordinator, Eliot College, University of
Kent, CT2 7NS. Tel: +44 (0)1227 824474/Fax: +44 (0)1227
827399, or Email centre-lgs@kent.ac.uk.