FROM REDISTRIBUTION TO RECOGNITION TO APPLICATION?

by Emily Blake

In “From Redistribution to Recognition?,” Nancy Fraser states her goal of developing this critical theory of recognition that can be coherently combined with social politics of equality. Fraser’s critical theory of recognition identifies and combines social politics of equality, raising the question of how we should view the eclipse of a socialist imaginary centered on terms such as ‘interest,’ ‘exploitation,’ and ‘redistribution.' This is rooted in a “struggle for recognition,” a paradigmatic form of political conflict in the late twentieth century. Demands for “recognition of difference” mobilized under the banners of nationality, ethnicity, ‘race’, gender, and sexuality in a moment which Fraser frames as the “decentering of class” (70). In these “‘post-socialist’ conflicts, group identity supplants class interest as the chief medium of political mobilization”. In this form of supplanting exploitation as the fundamental injustice, cultural domination is prioritized in discussing remedies in cultural recognition. Fraser connects “two political problematics that are currently dissociated from one other” in pursuit of articulating recognition and redistribution in a way that allows us to “arrive at a critical theoretical framework” (69). In the pursuit of addressing injustice, Fraser proposes a vocabulary and approach that suggests a form of categorization, with redistribution being a remedy for class-based injustice and recognition as a remedy for cultural/ symbolic injustice. Redistribution is framed as a remedy for socioeconomic injustices including exploitation and economic marginalization “ rooted in the political- economic structure of society” (70). The other end of this dual categorization includes recognition as a remedy for symbolic injustice, forms of cultural domination “rooted in social patterns of representation, interpretation, and communication” (70).

Fraser discusses socialism and deconstruction, which neither endorses nor rejects an identity politics approach in terms of remedying injustice. This is crucial in terms of addressing the United States’ current failed attempts at the liberal welfare state and mainstream multiculturalism. Fraser argues the existing configuration of the aforementioned welfare state is generating “perverse effects” (93). Working under the assumption that justice today requires both redistribution and recognition, Fraser emphasizes the importance of theorizing ways economic disadvantage and cultural disrespect operate in conjunction with one another and clarify the political dilemmas that arise when an attempt is made to combat both injustices simultaneously. Fraser’s analysis does the crucial job of advocating for a critical theory that does not simply endorse or reject identity politics, but advocates for “transformative remedies” with the potential to “reduce social inequality without creating stigmatized classes of vulnerable people perceived as beneficiaries of special largesse” (85). However, the expressed need for a critical approach to recognition does not produce a solution or form of application. Within the redistribution-recognition dichotomy is the limit to applying Fraser’s critical theory in tangible ways. By recognizing and emphasizing the existence of intersectionality in the “real world,” Fraser posits that cultural and economic domination and forms of injustice often overlap, therefore we must question whether a two-pronged, separate approach to the redistribution-recognition dilemma could be applied. 

Fraser importantly considers the compounding effects of intersectional disadvantage in her note that “no one is a member of only one such collectivity. And people who are subordinated along one axis of social division may well be dominant along another” (92). In proposing her suggestion, Fraser posits these real-world facets of identity and cultural domination that conclude “political economy and culture are mutually intertwined, as are injustices of distribution and recognition,” “thus we may doubt whether there exist any pure collectivities of this sort” (75). Keeping in mind Fraser argues some modes of social differentiation, such as sexuality, do not have roots that lie in the political economy, Fraser acknowledges and provides contradictions to the remedies within a redistribution-recognition binary. In this way, Fraser thoroughly unpacks injustice and corresponding remedies, but questions remain on the real life applicability of a redistribution-recognition dichotomy spoken about in the abstract. 

Throughout “From Redistribution to Recognition?,” Fraser addresses the commonly intersectional elements of injustices, yet, her discussion of remedies operate within the strict binary categorization of recognition and redistribution. This facet of Fraser’s thorough yet deeply theoretical analysis evokes a question of its applicability: Should we orient our understanding of redistribution and recognition to be inherently intersectional and intertwined? Meaning, can there be redistribution without recognition? Given that Fraser offers complications throughout the text that emphasize the murkiness of the distinct redistribution-recognition binary, there is a sense that there’s a limit to the application of a remedy which treats issues separately. In the “real world,” which Fraser references throughout, we see how individuals don’t experience slices of misrecognition or injustice, but these dilemmas which Fraser splits into a binary are experienced wholly. 

Overall, the ways in which Fraser discusses socioeconomic and cultural injustice are true and important, yet the limit to the application is most affected by the murky nature of a redistribution-recognition binary. Therefore, the limit to the application of “From Redistribution to Recognition?,” lies not within a lack of breadth of Fraser’s analysis of our social, political, and economic world, but more so in the ways people actually experience recognition/misrecognition within this framework of intersectionality. Fraser emphasizes the impact of identity intersections, yet her redistribution-recognition dilemma continues to work only within a produced binary categorization. 

Within her matrix of four political orientations, Fraser proposes for transformation redistribution (socialism) and transformation recognition (deconstruction) to posit a meaningful form of addressing injustices considering “the redistribution-recognition dilemma is real” and cannot “be wholly dissolved or resolved” (92). Fraser provides a definition of transformative solutions, but the potential of those remedies’ impacts remain in an abstract sense. Throughout this text, Fraser continues to complicate the redistribution-recognition dilemma by alluding to a murky middle ground between binary remedies for socioeconomic and cultural/ symbolic injustices. This leads one to wonder what falls in the middle, as “they may suffer both socioeconomic maldistribution and cultural misrecognition in forms where neither of these injustices has an indirect effect of the other, but where both are primary and co-original” (78). Fraser problematizes some of the scenarios she brings up in “From Redistribution to Recognition?” especially in regards to treating race and gender as separate, where “affirmative redistribution fails to engage the deep level at which the political economy is racialized” (90). By including an example how “the racialized division of exploitable and surplus labour, nor the racialized division of menial and non-menial occupations within paid labour”(90) remains unattacked within a remedy deriving from a redistribution-recognition binary, Fraser produces a sense of murkiness in whether this dichotomy can be applied in reality. 

Fraser expressed that “it is difficult to see how feminists and anti-racists can pursue redistribution and recognition simultaneously” (82), however, the lack of applicability of treating injustices in a separate, distinct binary complicates whether this statement applies to the real world. One example of this in everyday life would be affirmative action. Affirmative action works to remedy a cultural/ symbolic injustice of racial discrimination, yet also addresses a socioeconomic form of diasdvantage that is supported by hundreds of years of economic oppression of racial minorities. When trying to apply a redistribution-recognition framework to treat symbolic/ cultural and socioeconomic injustices that compound on one another, real world forms of remedying racial disparity and producing anti-racist solutions complicates the notion that these issues can be treated within a redstribution-recognition framework. In this way, issues of racial injustice can be examined under the critical theory Fraser articulates, but can a solution be specifically applied?

Fraser proposes “socialism in the economy plus deconstruction in the culture” to best “finesse” the redistribution-recognition dilemma (91). Therefore Fraser acknowledges the limit of the dichotomy, proposes a solution in the abstract, but the question still remains of whether one remedy resulting out of this binary can be applied to “real life.” Fraser aptly describes the failures of modern U.S. attempts at the liberal welfare state and multiculturalism in the earlier parts of this text, proposing elements of deconstruction as a possible solution. However, the question of how we can conceptualize deconstruction into actionable items remains. Fraser acknowledges on page 89, complicating some of her earlier points, that how we can “finesse” the redistribution-recognition dilemma remains an issue in regards to identity issues that transcend the socioeconomic versus cultural divide, as is the case with the previous example of affirmative action and remedies towards racial justice. Fraser complicates her dual categorization by asking when, in regards to issues such as race and gender where socioeconomic politics would combine with cultural politics, does this combination really finesse the redistribution-recognition dilemma?