Recognition or Disagreement

When you rub hard stones against one another, it produces sparks and light: this is what happens with this encounter in the real between two major critical philosophers of our time, both committed to democratizing democracy, but addressing its current limits from opposite angles. A synthesis is not possible, but a commuting is immensely fruitful in order to elaborate one's own choices. The conversation is perfectly staged and commented upon by the editors Genel and Deranty. It will remain as a point of reference. -- tienne Balibar, author of Equaliberty: Political Essays What form should critical theory take today? This is the question at stake in this encounter between two of today's most influential social and political philosophers. Enacting a process of reciprocal elucidation, Axel Honneth and Jacques Ranciere recognise commonalities between their projects while debating fundamental disagreements on the method of critical theory. The editors, Katia Genel and Jean-Philippe Deranty, expertly situate this dialogue within the terrain of contemporary critical theory, producing a text that will spark new conversations in the field. -- David Owen, University of Southampton This timely and important book brings together for the first time two of the leading practitioners of what can be termed 'critical theory,' the borderland where critical approaches to social and political theory, philosophy, and other fields as dispersed as history, aesthetics, and psychology meet. In so doing, Recognition or Disagreement will help to revive critical theory as a politically engaged and philosophically rigorous intellectual endeavor that extends across disciplines, approaches, and traditions, and to renew the long but disjointed dialogue between German and French approaches to the field. Despite its modest dimensions, it is a major contribution. -- James Ingram, Associate Professor of Political Science, McMaster University After repeated failed efforts over the preceding decades to manufacture a debate or force an encounter between the putative representatives of German Critical Theory and French post-structuralism, this book may be the first to succeed at staging a genuine engagement between two preeminent figures in contemporary critical thought. This mise en sc ne ultimately produces its own m sentente - since each author says equality and recognition yet in this same hearing there is never the same understanding - but perhaps that is the book's greatest strength: to bring this dis-agreement into animacy, to attempt the distorting translation of these untranslatable terms, and in the process to allow the reader to experience the power of Ranci re and Honneth's thought. -- Samuel A. Chambers, Johns Hopkins University In this fascinating and ground-breaking exchange, the eminent thinkers Axel Honneth and Jacques Ranciere discuss the differences between their respective paradigms of recognition and disagreement. Is social struggle driven by the desire for inclusion within established democratic forms or by a more radical impulse to challenge the legitimacy of the dominant order itself? Is the task of the theorist to reveal hidden forms of social suffering or to bear witness to the agency of the oppressed in the fight for equality? As well as clarifying their differences, the thinkers converge on the shared conviction that the experience of injustice must be of paramount concern for political theorising rather than, as is more often the case nowadays, being regarded as a surprising deviation from the norm of justice. For anyone interested in the continuing encounter between French and German critical theory, this is an indispensable and thought-provoking read. -- Lois McNay, Somerville College, Oxford University