Nancy Fraser - Identity, Exclusion and Critique (Inglés)

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Identity, Exclusion, and Critique : A Response to Four Critics

Nancy Fraser European Journal of Political Theory 2007 6: 305 DOI: 10.1177/1474885107077319 The online version of this article can be found at: http://ept.sagepub.com/content/6/3/305
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article
Identity, Exclusion, and Critique

A Response to Four Critics
Nancy Fraser
New School for Social Research, USA
EJPT
European Journal of Political Theory
SAGE Publications Ltd, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore issn 1474-8851, 6(3) 305338 [DOI: 10.1177/1474885107077319]
a b s t r a c t : In this article I reply to four critics. Responding to Linda Alcoff, I contend that my original two-dimensional framework discloses the entwinement of economic and cultural strands of subordination, while also illuminating the dangers of identity politics. Responding to James Bohman, I maintain that, with the addition of the third dimension of representation, my approach illuminates the structural exclusion of the global poor, the relation between justice and democracy, and the status of comprehensive theorizing. Responding to Nikolas Kompridis, I defend a view of recognition that prioritizes the critique of institutionalized injustice. Responding to Rainer Forst, I argue that such a critique is better formulated in participation-theoretic than justification-theoretic terms. k e y w o r d s : critique, global poverty, justice, participation, recognition, redistribution, representation, structural exclusion
My contribution to Redistribution or Recognition? was Janus-faced, pointing simultaneously in two directions, one theoretical, the other political. On the one hand, I proposed a new conceptual framework for critical theory, which linked a socialtheoretical analysis of subordination to a moral-philosophical account of injustice. On the other hand, I offered a Zeitdiagnose of the present historical conjuncture and sought to intervene in it politically. These two faces were internally related. My theoretical framework encompassed both a distributive dimension, oriented to class inequalities, and a recognition dimension, oriented to status hierarchies. Thus, it made a political point. By insisting on two-dimensional conceptions of subordination and injustice, I sought to encourage a shift away from a one-sided politics of recognition, which ignored political economy, toward an integrated politics of redistribution and recognition. Each of the articles collected here concerns one face of this Janus construction. Linda Alcoff and James Bohman respond primarily to the political face: whereas Alcoff questions my critique of identity politics, Bohman claims that I neglect the structural exclusion of the global poor. In contrast, Rainer Forst and Nikolas
Contact address: Nancy Fraser, Department of Political Science, The New School for Social Research, 65 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003, USA. Email: frasern@earthlink.net
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European Journal of Political Theory 6(3) Kompridis respond primarily to the theoretical face: whereas Forst questions my participation-theoretic conception of justice, Kompridis objects more generally to its discourse-theoretical underpinnings. Each article raises an important set of challenges to my approach. While I cannot provide an extended response to every point, I shall clarify the principal stakes, both theoretical and political.
2. Identity or Status? A Rejoinder to Alcoff

Let me begin with the political face of my Janus construction, which is the primary focus of Alcoff and Bohman. At first sight, my differences with both authors seem great. Upon closer inspection, however, some apparent disagreements dissolve into semantic confusions; others turn on misapprehensions of my position; and still others stem from reliance on early formulations that have since been revised. Only by dispelling these misunderstandings can we get a handle on what remains in the way of real disagreements. In the case of Alcoff, misunderstandings loom large. Her article is premised upon the assumption that I want to separate redistribution and recognition. Yet exactly the opposite is true. Readers of Redistribution or Recognition? will recall that I diagnosed the decoupling of those two indispensable dimensions of justice as a deeply disturbing feature of the postsocialist era. Arguing that the dissociation of difference-affirming recognition struggles from egalitarian redistributive struggles is conceptually inadequate and politically disabling, I sought to foster their integration. Given that this was the central political aim of my intervention, why does Alcoff reverse my meaning? The key, I think, lies in her insistence on treating analytical distinctions as if they were substantive. Thus, Alcoff maps my distinction between redistribution and recognition directly onto real-world instances of subordination. Claiming that I align the domination of labor, the poor, and welfare claimants exclusively with maldistribution, she herself equates the oppression of women, minorities, and homosexuals exclusively with misrecognition. The result is a seemingly unbridgeable divide, as struggles against class injustices now appear to have no proper recognition dimension, while struggles against sexism, racism, and heterosexism now seem to have nothing to do with political economy. In Redistribution or Recognition?, however, I explicitly rejected those alignments. Arguing for a perspectivalist understanding of redistribution and recognition, I proposed instead to analyze all real-world instances of subordination as involving both dimensions of (in)justice. Far from separating class inequalities from status hierarchies, I developed a set of analytical distinctions for theorizing their mutual entwinement. At the same time, these distinctions supplied the conceptual basis for criticizing present-day political culture, which tends to decouple struggles for recognition from struggles for redistribution. Hardly originating with me, then, the separation of which Alcoff complains is of her own making. Another source of misunderstanding is terminological. In Alcoffs article,
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Fraser: Identity, Exclusion, and Critique semantic slippages connected with the term identity sow the seeds of conceptual confusion. An example is her repeated use of the expression identity-based struggles or movements in place of the more common identity politics. This terminology conceals a major equivocation, which subtends her entire argument. Throughout her article, she presents herself as a defender and me as a critic of identity-based struggles. But what she intends by that expression is not at all what I meant to criticize. In Alcoffs usage, the phrase identity-based struggles seems to denote a wide berth of campaigns. Among the examples she cites are struggles aimed at overcoming discrimination, such as those waged by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the major US civil rights organizations of the 1950s and 1960s; campaigns for social rights, pay equity, and access to welfare provision, such as those conducted by the National Welfare Rights Organization, the National Council of La Raza, the National Abortion Rights Action League, and the National Organization of Women; and struggles for greater political participation and representation, such as those waged by the Puerto Rican Political Action Committee. What is striking about this list, however, despite its apparent breadth, is the absence of any examples of identity politics in the usual sense. There are no instances of cultural feminism, Black nationalism, or gay identity politics, let alone instances of ethnonationalism, sectarian religious communitarianism, or patriarchal neo-traditionalism. Altogether missing, in other words, are struggles aimed at valorizing allegedly group-specific attributes or identities. Far from claiming that sort of affirmative recognition, Alcoffs identity-based struggles seek universalist recognition. Contesting institutionalized inferiorization, they seek to unburden subordinated groups of excessive ascribed and essentialized difference, often as a means to securing redistribution and/or representation. With this terminological slippage from identity politics to identity-based struggles, Alcoff misstates our differences. Skewing her account to struggles for universalist recognition, she casts me as an opponent of movements that I never criticized. Conversely, by omitting cases of identity politics proper, she fails to interrogate struggles for affirmative recognition, whose drawbacks I really did analyze. The result is a missed encounter. Failing to confront the hard cases, Alcoff never directly engages my two central arguments: first, that claims for recognition that are cast in identitarian terms are liable to devolve into repressive communitarianism; and, second, that insofar as they presuppose a false, culturalist view of society, such claims tend to occlude political economy and to displace struggles for redistribution. A fortiori, she never provides any grounds for rejecting those arguments. To compound the difficulties, Alcoff also uses the expression identity-based movements in two additional senses. Invoking a first, restricted sense, she refers specifically to movements of women, oppressed minorities, and gays and lesbians. In a second, unrestricted sense, she refers to virtually any movement that draws on or performatively constructs a shared identity. Above and beyond the equivo-
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European Journal of Political Theory 6(3) cation, each of these uses of identity-based movements is problematic in and of itself. The restricted use is conceptually inadequate and politically disabling. To reserve this expression for movements of women, oppressed minorities, and gays and lesbians is to imply that these movements have an exclusive or privileged relation to the politics of recognition, that they are categorically different from class struggles. From this it would follow that racism, sexism, and heterosexism are at bottom identity-based forms of subordination, rooted in relations of (mis)recognition, as opposed to relations of production. These implications are false. If we apply my perspectivalist conception, we will see that racism and sexism are two-dimensional axes of subordination, rooted simultaneously in the status order and political economy of capitalist society, while heterosexism has significant distributive consequences. To culturalize these axes of subordination is to truncate the injustices at issue, playing into the hands of those who would minimize them. A better approach is to treat maldistribution and misrecognition as analytically distinct power asymmetries, which cut across social movements. In that way, as I have noted, one can apply both perspectives of (in)justice to all social struggles. Meanwhile, Alcoffs unrestricted use of identity-based movements is equally problematic. Encompassing any movement that draws on or performatively constructs a shared identity, this usage is too broad to do any real analytical work. Every social movement mobilizes or creates an identity of some sort or another. This is so even in cases in which the movements identity is not an explicit stake of struggle, but remains, so to speak, in the background, while the express focus is something else, such as overcoming maldistribution or misrepresentation. Thus, to call a movement identity based in the unrestricted sense is effectively to state a tautology. Because this sense encompasses every conceivable social movement, it does not succeed in meaningfully distinguishing some movements from others. In whichever sense we understand it, moreover, Alcoffs terminology obfuscates normative differences among recognition claims. Writing indiscriminately of identity-based movements, she collapses the differences between universalist claims, aimed at securing equal respect for common humanity; affirmative claims, aimed at valorizing presumptive group specificity; and deconstructive claims, aimed at destabilizing symbolic oppositions that underlie existing group differentiations. The result is a loss of moral-philosophical insight. What is overlooked here is that each such claim represents an appropriate response to a different genre of misrecognition. Universalist claims respond appropriately to injustices arising from the institutionalized denial of common humanity as, for example, when the African National Congress opposed apartheid in the name of nonracial democratic citizenship. Affirmative claims represent appropriate responses to harms resulting from the institutionalized neglect of relevant differences as, for example, when feminists contested androcentric legal understandings of selfdefense that did not accommodate typical forms of womens resistance to
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Fraser: Identity, Exclusion, and Critique domestic assault. Finally, deconstructive claims are in order when an injustice results from the imposition of simple systems of binary classification on complex experiences and lived realities as, for example, when mixed-race people contest census categories that force them to choose a single line of ancestry and to deny all others. Elaborated in Redistribution or Recognition?, these distinctions enlarge our capacities of moral and political judgment. In conjunction with the principle of participatory parity, they make it possible to assess the normative validity and political warrantability of recognition claims. Enabling us to determine whether an institutionalized norm denies some people the chance to participate on a par with others, as full partners in social interaction, these distinctions help us decide whether the associated recognition claim is justified.1 Likewise, by clarifying whether a proposed reform would reduce disparities in participation, they help us determine whether the proposal is warranted. But that is not all. These distinctions allow us to pose, and answer, a key political question of the present age. Given that misrecognition is a bona fide injustice that cannot be overcome indirectly, through difference-blind struggles for redistribution, which recognition strategies are politically advisable? Which are least likely to reify group differences and displace struggles for redistribution? And which, conversely, are most susceptible to those temptations? On the importance of this question, and on the need for distinctions to answer it, Manual Castells, whom Alcoff cites in support of her view, agrees in reality with me. He usefully distinguishes movements organized to defend embattled ascriptive identities, such as negritude or femininity, from those that mobilize project identities, such as environmentalism or feminism.2 Castellss distinction bears on the question I just raised: which types of movement can best resist the tendency to reify difference and displace political economy? And his answer dovetails with my own: movements organized to valorize ascribed specificity are far more susceptible to those pathologies than those whose identity-aspect derives from a project of social transformation. The latter movements, which integrate redistribution, recognition, and representation, provide our best hope for overcoming injustice in the present constellation. That said, it is not the case, as Alcoff suggests, that I am unrelievedly hostile to affirmative recognition and unqualifiedly enamored of transformative recognition. Here, she relies on the account proposed in a 1995 article, which I explicitly revised in the 2003 book. In the early account, I maintained that transformative strategies were generally better than affirmative ones, as they are less likely to promote backlash against the beneficiaries, to reify group identities, and to encourage separatism.3 Later, however, I came to appreciate that the distinction is not absolute, but contextual. Reforms that appear to be affirmative in the abstract can have transformative effects in some contexts provided they are radically and consistently pursued. In Redistribution or Recognition?, therefore, I proposed a via media between affirmation and transformation. Inspired by Andr
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European Journal of Political Theory 6(3) Gorzs idea of nonreformist reforms, this approach advocates policies that can engage peoples identities and satisfy some of their needs as interpreted within existing frameworks of recognition and distribution, while also setting in motion a trajectory of change in which more radical reforms become practicable over time.4 Joining the practicability of affirmation with the radical thrust of transformation, this strategy effectively combines the best of both worlds. Certainly, the foregoing suggests a continuing preference for transformative recognition as a goal, while acknowledging the possible usefulness of affirmative recognition as a means. But another argument I made in Redistribution or Recognition? is expressly agnostic on this point. This second argument holds that we dont always need to decide now whether existing group distinctions should be affirmed or deconstructed. In many cases, that decision is better left to future generations. What is crucial now is that we strive to bequeath them a society in which the choice can be made freely, unconstrained by relations of domination. This requires dismantling institutionalized status hierarchies, which currently underpin existing group distinctions, thereby leaving the latter to stand or fall on their own perceived merits.5 Thus, with respect to the choice between affirmative and transformative recognition, my differences with Alcoff are not as great as she makes out. Although I am more concerned than she is about the risks surrounding difference-affirming identity claims, my reservations are neither categorial nor absolute. Alcoff also overstates our disagreements on another issue of central importance: namely, the entwinement of misrecognition with maldistribution. In this case, too, her identity language leads her astray, causing her to misunderstand my account of misrecognition as status subordination. That account is superior to the standard identity model on at least three grounds. First, the status model of misrecognition can be harnessed to a deontological theory of justice, a point to which I will return in replying to Kompridis. Second, it understands misrecognition structurally, as grounded not in interpersonal failures of mutual regard, but rather in institutionalized patterns of cultural value, which regulate social interaction in ways that impede parity of participation. Finally, by directing attention to value patterns institutionalized in political economy, the status model grasps the imbrication of maldistribution and misrecognition and thus allows for an integrated analysis of those two intertwined orders of subordination. Properly understood, this view is supported, rather than refuted, by Alcoffs examples. A case in point is her account of labor market segmentation, which represents racialized strata as ascriptive class segments that can be exploited more cheaply than majority segments. This account is useful, in my view, in part because it provides a structural explanation of the incentive for outsourcing, even in the absence of attitudinal prejudice. But far from telling against my framework, the case of ascriptive class segments is well explained by it. Located at the intersection of maldistribution and misrecognition, these formations arise when a racialized hierarchy of cultural value is institutionalized in the political economy,
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Fraser: Identity, Exclusion, and Critique specifically in transnational markets in labor power. Compounds of status and class, ascriptive class segments serve as textbook illustrations of my two-dimensional account of subordination. Why, then, does Alcoff imagine that her example constitutes an argument against me? The reason, I suspect, is that she persists in using the term identity, where status would be much more clear. She writes:
Segmentation has occurred since the inception of capitalism through identity markers . . . there are no economic mechanisms operating with complete independence from identity hierarchies; identity hierarchies [are among the factors that] determine costs, profitability, and degree of organization among the workers. (p. 261)
Add the qualification I inserted in brackets and substitute the term status for identity, and I myself could have written these sentences. Here, accordingly, is another case in which a terminological confusion magnifies or creates a disagreement. It does not follow, however, that all forms of maldistribution are as directly entwined with misrecognition as Alcoff claims. Recall the example I cited in Redistribution or Recognition? of a white male industrial worker who becomes unemployed due to a factory closing that results from a speculative corporate merger. Insisting that the resulting maldistribution is identity based, Alcoff assumes that the owners must be outsourcing production to less expensive racialized workers in the developing world. But that is not the only possibility. Consider the equally plausible scenario in which the owners shift their capital away from production altogether, to financial speculation. In that case, the resulting maldistribution is not directly tied to misrecognition. To clarify cases like this one, as well as those Alcoff envisions, one needs a two-dimensional framework that accommodates both the mutual irreducibility of status and class and the causal relations between them. In general, then, Alcoffs central claim does not stand up. It is not the case that my approach leads away from an integrated analysis of class inequality and status hierarchy. On the contrary, by conceiving distribution and recognition as two intertwined orders of subordination, this framework provides the basis for such an analysis. So far, I have concentrated on dispelling Alcoffs misunderstandings some semantic, some textual, some conceptual. Now I turn to the point of real disagreement between us, which concerns our respective diagnoses of the times. My own Zeitdiagnose foregrounds the current grammar of social conflict. Noting the relative eclipse of movements for egalitarian redistribution by identity-centered struggles for recognition, I have posited a shift in the language of political claimsmaking from redistribution to recognition. At the same time, I have noted that the rise of identity politics coincides with a broader historical development, the emergence of an aggressively marketizing neoliberalism, which is vastly exacerbating inequality on a global scale. Under these conditions, a progressive politics
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European Journal of Political Theory 6(3) centered largely on recognition cannot succeed. To the extent that it neglects political economy, such a politics cannot effectively challenge either the depredations of free-market policies or the profusion of rightwing chauvinisms that arise in their wake. In the United States, certainly, two decades of preoccupation with identitarian variants of the politics of recognition left progressive movements woefully unprepared for the dramatic alteration of the political landscape following 9/11. In my view, accordingly, a new progressive strategy is sorely needed. Alcoff rejects this Zeitdiagnose. In her view, the current left strategy is just fine as it is. That, at any rate, is how I read her intervention, which showcases emancipatory struggles that successfully integrate redistribution and recognition, as if they typified the present era. Unfortunately, however, they do not. Airbrushed out of Alcoffs picture are the rising tide of regressive chauvinisms, on the one hand, and presumptively progressive identitarian movements, on the other. Also absent is any hint of the worldwide co-opting of labor and socialdemocratic parties into the politics of the Third Way, which combines progressive recognition policies with neoliberal economic policies, often using the former to mask the latter. Nor is there any clue as to why, if emancipatory movements are already successfully integrating claims for redistribution and recognition, conservatives consistently manage to divert attention from their regressive distributive policies by playing the so-called values card. Alcoffs readers would never guess, for example, that rightwing Republicans in the United States regularly succeed in convincing working class people that the threat to their family life comes not from neoliberal economic policies, such as reduced taxes on corporations and the wealthy, diminished social-welfare and consumer protections, and very low wages and precarious employment, but rather from abortion rights and gay marriage.6 Here lies my real disagreement with Alcoff. Subscribing to a darker Zeitdiagnose than she does, I take a broader view of the tasks of critical theory. For me, it is not enough to explain the forms of social subordination that permeate our world, necessary as that task surely is. In addition, one must interrogate political culture, asking whether the extant grammar of political claimsmaking provides an adequate basis for contesting injustice in the present conjuncture. This requires that critical theorists maintain their independence from the social movements with which they sympathize. Only if we are unafraid to criticize both progressive and regressive forces can we keep faith with the young Marxs vision of critical theory as the self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age.7
2. On Political Exclusion: A Rejoinder to Bohman

Let me turn now to James Bohmans article, which also concerns the political face of my framework. Here, too, my diagnosis of the times is central, but for different reasons. In replying to Alcoff, I could appeal with no qualifications to the Zeitdiagnose that informed my contribution to Redistribution or Recognition? In
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Fraser: Identity, Exclusion, and Critique replying to Bohman, in contrast, I need to extend that diagnosis, which I no longer consider sufficiently radical. As I now understand it, the thesis of a shift from redistribution to recognition captured one aspect of a deeper change in the circumstances of justice. I must explain this deeper change, and the effect it has had on my thinking, in order to engage the issues raised by Bohman. Put simply, my redistributionrecognition model responded to the destabilization of the social-democratic paradigm, which had shunted political claims into the redistributionist channels of the Keynesian welfare state in the decades following World War II. Writing in the 1990s, I could see that post-Fordism and postcommunism had ruptured that paradigm, releasing political conflicts over status, which had previously been relegated to the margins, mere subtexts of distributive problems. Wishing to embrace what was emancipatory in the new struggles for recognition, without minimizing the importance of distribution, I sought to integrate both dimensions in a broader theory of social justice. What I did not fully understand was that these same developments were also problematizing the Westphalian political imaginary, which had framed struggles for justice of every kind in the preceding period. As a result, I failed to grasp their full implications for the theory of justice. Today, in contrast, I maintain that an adequate theory of justice must be threedimensional. The reason for this has to do with a further shift in the grammar of political claimsmaking, beyond that from redistribution to recognition. Previously, the Westphalian framing of political space tended to go without saying, as arguments about justice were assumed to concern relations among fellow citizens, to be subject to debate within national publics, and to contemplate redress by territorial states. Focused largely on the what of justice (redistribution or recognition?), they took for granted that the who was the national citizenry. Today, however, the Westphalian frame is intensely contested. Whether the issue is immigration or indigenous land claims, global warming or the war on terror, Muslim headscarves or the terms of trade, disputes about what is owed as a matter of justice to community members now turn quickly into disputes about who should count as a member and which is the relevant community. Problematizing the Westphalian constitution of political space, such disputes raise the suggestion that justice may require decision-making in a different frame. Under these conditions, neither distribution nor recognition can be properly understood without explicit reference to the problem of the frame. Both those dimensions of justice must be resituated in relation to a third aspect of social normativity, which was neglected in my previous work. Henceforth, redistribution and recognition must be related to representation, which allows us to problematize both the division of political space into bounded polities and the decision rules operating within them. Understood in this way, representation furnishes the stage on which struggles over distribution and recognition are played out. Establishing criteria of political membership, it tells us who is included, and who excluded, from the circle of those entitled to a just distribution
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European Journal of Political Theory 6(3) and reciprocal recognition. Specifying the reach of those other dimensions, representation enables us to pose the question of the frame. Thematizing boundary-making as a vehicle of exclusion, it points to yet another class of obstacles to justice: neither economic nor cultural, but political. Representation, accordingly, constitutes a third, political dimension of justice, alongside the (economic) dimension of redistribution and the (cultural) dimension of recognition. Such, at any rate, is the thinking that has led me to revise my framework since the publication of Redistribution or Recognition?8 By incorporating the dimension of representation, I have sought to clarify forms and levels of injustice that were not adequately comprehended by my original theory. Aiming to illuminate the present conjuncture, I have drawn on the political dimension in order to conceptualize a type of meta-injustice that I call misframing. A species of misrepresentation, misframing arises when first-order disputes about justice are framed in a way that wrongly excludes some from consideration as when the national framing of distributive conflicts forecloses the claims of the global poor. Institutionalized in the Westphalian constitution of political space, this form of political injustice is now being challenged by globalization activists. Under the rubric of representation, then, my revised framework analyzes contemporary struggles over globalization as struggles against misframing.9 The incorporation of representation into my framework bears directly on two of the issues raised by Bohman: the value of comprehensive theorizing about justice and the structural exclusion of the global poor. Deeming the former incompatible with pluralism and pragmatism, Bohman rejects the very idea of comprehensive theorizing. Thus he contends that I betray my own democratic commitments by seeking an all-embracing account of injustice. Yet even as he rejects the aspiration, Bohman faults me for failing to achieve it. So he also argues that my framework fails to grasp a core inequity of the present order, the structural exclusion of the global poor. The difficulty, he contends, stems from my principle of participatory parity, which is inferior to his own notion of the democratic minimum for dealing with questions of political injustice. Understandably, Bohman directs his criticisms to the two-dimensional framework of Redistribution or Recognition? But my recent work shows that the conception of justice as participatory parity can be expanded to deal satisfactorily with the issues he raises. To respond, therefore, I shall draw on my revised theory to defend four theses: first, that the conception of justice as parity of participation affords an illuminating account of structural exclusion; second, that the three-dimensional framework of redistribution, recognition, and representation clarifies the situation of todays global poor; third, that the principle of participatory parity serves as well to clarify the relation between justice and democracy; and, fourth, that a critical theory can (and should) aspire to comprehensiveness without sacrificing its commitments to plurality and democracy. I begin with the question of structural exclusion. Alleging that this injustice eludes my framework, Bohman cites it as proof that the conception of justice as
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Fraser: Identity, Exclusion, and Critique participatory parity is incomplete. In fact, however, structural exclusion is well comprehended by my approach, in both its original and revised forms. To see why, one need only unfold the conceptual logic of the principle of participatory parity as I presented it in Redistribution or Recognition? As we saw, this principle entails that social arrangements that institutionalize obstacles to parity of participation are unjust. But anyone who is structurally excluded from participation in social interaction is eo ipso denied the possibility of participating as a peer. On my account, therefore, structural exclusion is an injustice because it represents a denial of participatory parity. As denials of parity go, moreover, it is very severe. Being excluded, after all, is considerably worse than being included but marginalized or being included in a subordinate way. Those who are marginalized or subordinated can still participate with others in social interaction, although they cannot do so as peers. Those who are excluded, by contrast, are not even in the game. On the view of justice as participatory parity, therefore, structural exclusion is a grave moral wrong. But what exactly are the excluded excluded from? In my framework, the norm of parity of participation applies broadly, across all major arenas of social interaction, including family and personal life, employment and markets, formal and informal politics, and voluntary associations in civil society.10 In principle, one can be excluded from some of these arenas and not from others. Thus, structural exclusion can take a plurality of different forms, depending on which arenas are affected. Historically, many women have lacked the standing and resources to participate in official politics, while enjoying the cultural and material prerequisites for participating meaningfully (if not fully equally) in family life. Homosexuals, in contrast, have until very recently lacked the standing to participate openly in sexual relations and family life, even in contexts where some of them have had access to decently remunerated work. In such cases, exclusion remains contained within a given sphere or subset of spheres and does not spill over into others. In other cases, however, exclusion is highly convertible, spreading freely from sphere to sphere. We need only recall the Nazi treatment of Jews to appreciate the possibility of total and radical exclusion. In such cases, a class of persons is systematically stripped of participation rights in sphere after sphere until they are denied the right to have any rights at all, including the right to exist. Such cases attest to the possibility of extreme and wholesale exclusion, a possibility that contrasts sharply with more ordinary sphere-specific exclusions, whose convertibility is far more limited.11 If exclusion can take a variety of forms, it can also be effected by a variety of means. My original framework envisioned three possibilities. In one scenario, exclusion is grounded in political economy, as when economic structures deny some categories of social actors even the minimal economic resources that are needed for marginalized or subordinated interaction. This, I take it, is what Hegel had in mind when he wrote of the rabble. In a second scenario, exclusion is rooted in the status order, as when the institutionalization of a hierarchical
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European Journal of Political Theory 6(3) pattern of cultural value denies some the chance even for second-class participation in some arenas. This is how Max Weber understood the situation of ethnically constituted pariah groups.12 In a third scenario, exclusion arises from the combined operation of culture and political economy, as when status hierarchies map onto class differentials to prevent some actors from participating at all in mainstream arenas of social interaction. This, I submit, is the situation of some indigenous peoples in settler societies, as well as of Romany people in East/ Central Europe. To my mind, this account remains insightful as far as it goes. With the incorporation of representation, however, it can be extended to encompass two more possibilities. In one additional scenario, exclusion is grounded in the political constitution of society, as when the architecture of political space denies some people the chance to have even a marginal say in disputes about justice. This is the situation of undocumented immigrants in many countries. In a second additional scenario, exclusion is rooted jointly in all three dimensions of social ordering, as when economic, cultural, and political structures work together to obstruct participation. This, I shall argue shortly, is the situation of todays global poor. First, however, I want to consider what it would take to overcome structural exclusion. In my framework, the general formula for remedying injustice is removing institutionalized obstacles to participation. This formula applies as much to exclusion as to subordination. Granted, dismantling obstacles that prevent participation altogether is not the same thing as assuring full parity of participation. On the contrary, it is conceivable that in overcoming structural exclusion, one could end up with social subordination, which remains a violation of justice. Nevertheless, on my analysis, that would be a step in the right direction. As already noted, moreover, my framework distinguishes affirmative from transformative remedies for injustice. This distinction applies here as well. Wherever exclusion is grounded deeply, in basic societal structures, only deep restructuring will suffice to overcome it. In cases of economically rooted exclusion, what is needed is transformative redistribution, which alters the basic structures of the political economy. In culturally rooted cases, what is required is transformative recognition, which restructures the status order. In cases of politically rooted exclusion, what is needed is transformative representation, which reframes the constitution of political space. In mixed cases, finally, what is needed is some transformative combination of redistribution, recognition, and representation. Contra Bohman, then, the view of justice as participatory parity does afford an account of structural exclusion. Comprehending multiple arenas and sources of exclusion, my framework provides a broad but differentiated view of this injustice, while also accommodating transformative strategies for overcoming it. But does this approach clarify the situation of the global poor? My second thesis is that the three-dimensional framework of redistribution, recognition, and representation affords what is needed for this purpose: a differentiated view of the many types and levels of exclusion that afflict diverse populations in contexts of
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Fraser: Identity, Exclusion, and Critique accelerated globalization. Central here are exclusions that arise transnationally, when processes that operate at different scales intersect as, for example, when global economic forces converge with local status hierarchies, on the one hand, and with national political structures, on the other. With its sensitivity to frames and to questions of scale, my framework illuminates such exclusions. One example is the sexual enslavement of girls sold by impoverished parents to Thai brothels, a case in which gender status hierarchies intersect with the collapse of rural farming economies in the wake of a regional banking crisis sparked by a global speculative currency run, as well as with a shift in transnational sex tourism toward child prostitution in the wake of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic.13 Another example, documented in the film Darwins Nightmare, is the devastation of Tanzanian shore communities as a result of the introduction of large-scale, transnational-corporate perch fishing in Lake Victoria, a case in which post-Cold War structural adjustment policies, forcing developmental states to open their economies to foreign direct investment on terms dictated by transnational capital, intersect with ethno-racial stigmatization and political voicelessness.14 The result, in both cases, is a vicious circle of transnationally rooted exclusions, which spread unhindered from one arena of social interaction to another. In still other cases, by contrast, those suffering from global poverty retain capacities for (subordinated) participation in some arenas witness the situation of former copper miners in Zambia who, despite having been disconnected involuntarily from the official production circuits of the global economy, still manage to exercise political voice at the national level.15 What none of the excluded can do, however, is make efficacious claims against the offshore architects of their dispossession. As I noted, that option is foreclosed by the Westphalian gerrymandering of political space, which channels the claims of the global poor into the domestic political arenas of relatively powerless, if not wholly failed, states. The effect is to misframe disputes about justice, as well as to insulate transnational malefactors from critique and control. Among those shielded from the reach of justice are more powerful predator states and transnational private powers, including foreign investors and creditors, international currency speculators, and transnational corporations. Also protected are the governance structures of the global economy, which set exploitative terms of interaction and then exempt them from democratic control. Finally, the Westphalian frame is self-insulating, as the architecture of the interstate system excludes democratic decision-making on framing questions. But the absence of formal institutional channels of democratic transnational politics does not mean the absence of all contestation. Rather, some segments of the global poor have organized resistance to transnationally rooted exclusions in ways that are well illuminated by my framework. Consider the case of the Zapatistas. Mobilizing impoverished peasants and indigenous people, their movement linked claims against despotic local elites and a corrupt, authoritarian federal government to claims against transnational corporate predation, the US-
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European Journal of Political Theory 6(3) dominated North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) pact, and the nondemocratic governance structures of global capitalism. The result was a powerful strategy for contesting multiple sources and levels of exclusion. Thus, the Zapatistas combined a redistribution struggle against dispossession from communal lands, a recognition struggle against a neocolonial ethnoracial hierarchy, and a representation struggle against exclusion from political decision-making at several different levels. At the local level, they sought to replace quasi-feudal subjection with communal self-government. At the national level, they contested the effective exclusion of indigenous peasant communities from Mexican citizenship. At the regional level, they protested popular exclusion from the design and creation of NAFTA. At the global level, they contested meta-injustices of misframing and convened a transnational public conversation about how to frame questions of justice in a globalizing world a discussion that has since been continued in the meetings of the World Social Forum.16 With its several dimensions and multiple levels, the Zapatista movement is well parsed by a tripartite conception of justice that is sensitive to injustices of misframing. Pace Bohman, then, my approach generates a powerful account of the various levels and layers of exclusion that afflict the global poor. Encompassing first-order exclusions from domestic arenas of social interaction, it also conceptualizes metaexclusions that result from the misframing of first-order harms. Clarifying as well exclusions that are rooted transnationally, at the intersection of multi-scaled processes, my revised framework illuminates the moral stakes and political strategies of contemporary struggles over globalization. But does this framework afford an adequate view of the relation between justice and democracy? My third thesis is that the principle of participatory parity discloses the internal conceptual structure of this relation. In Redistribution or Recognition? I argued that this principle must be applied dialogically, through democratic processes of public debate. In such debates, participants argue about whether existing social arrangements impede parity of participation and about whether proposed alternatives would foster it. For me, accordingly, participatory parity serves as an idiom of public contestation and deliberation about questions of justice. More strongly, it represents the principal idiom of public reason, the preferred language for conducting democratic political argumentation on issues of distribution, recognition, and representation. In general, then, I situate my approach within the family of theories of democratic justice. For me, in other words, justice is not an externally imposed requirement, determined over the heads of those whom it obligates. Rather, it binds only insofar as its addressees can also regard themselves as its authors. Yet if justice implies democracy, the converse is equally true. Democratic deliberation yields legitimate outcomes if and only if the interlocutors can participate as peers hence, only in the absence of structural injustice. Thus, the principle of participatory parity clarifies the dialectical character of the relation between justice and democracy. Disclosing that each presupposes the other, it reveals that these two
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Fraser: Identity, Exclusion, and Critique fundamental concepts stand in an internal relation of reciprocal co-implication. It follows that Bohman is mistaken to present his notion of the democratic minimum as an alternative to the principle of participatory parity. In actuality, these two ideas do not operate on the same level. Whereas participatory parity is a principle of justice, the democratic minimum is a transitional strategy for achieving justice under non-ideal conditions. To my knowledge, Bohman has not proposed a conception of justice comparable to mine. Yet he and I agree, I think, that a society that successfully achieves the democratic minimum may still be far from having achieved justice. At its best, the democratic minimum may get the excluded sufficiently far into the political game as to assure them a voice in ongoing arguments about social justice, which is a very good thing, to be sure. But it does not assure that their voices count equally in political debates, as the principle of participatory parity requires. Thus, the two notions are not at all comparable. Far from regarding it as a rival, I understand Bohmans idea as a promising example of a nonreformist reform, one that is perfectly compatible with the conception of justice as participatory parity.17 Bohman is also mistaken in treating my framework as antithetical to the capability model of justice. Thanks to some recent exchanges with Ingrid Robeyns and Kevin Olson, I have come to see that the principle of participatory parity operates in the evaluative space of capabilities, as Amartya Sen would say, because it assesses social arrangements in terms of the degree to which they assure people the capability to participate fully, as peers, in social life.18 Contra Bohman, then, my framework belongs to the family of capability approaches. Nevertheless, it differs importantly from some other members of that family. For one thing, my variant is comparative, as it focuses on the relative capabilities for participation of different agents; thus, it belongs to the deontological tradition of justice as fairness, rather than to the Aristotelian teleological tradition. For another, my approach focuses chiefly on capabilities for social interaction, rather than on capabilities for individual functionings; thus, it highlights the social character of social life. Next, my approach leaves open the question, participation in what? Assuming that arenas of participation and types of interaction are historically variable and open-ended, I do not seek to enumerate once and for all a list of basic capabilities or functionings. Finally, as already noted, my approach mandates that capabilities be assessed dialogically, through fair and inclusive political debate; effectively, then, it marries the substantive orientation of the capability approach to the democratic proceduralism of discourse ethics.19 What I have said so far, in support of my first three theses, serves to buttress my fourth thesis too: comprehensive theorizing need not be at odds with plurality, democracy, and pragmatism. In revising my framework to incorporate a third, political dimension of justice, I have effectively upheld the spirit of Bohmans commitment to plurality, without abandoning my own commitment to comprehensive theorizing. As I see it, all theorizing worthy of the name aspires to comprehensiveness in the sense of encompassing the whole range of phenomena within
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European Journal of Political Theory 6(3) its domain. Thus, if and when the theorist discovers that something important is not adequately dealt with, it becomes incumbent on her to revise her theory. Let me distinguish this sort of pluralism, which I shall call responsible pluralism in the service of comprehensiveness, from another sort, which I shall call gratuitous pluralism. Pluralism is gratuitous, as opposed to responsible, when it violates the rule of conceptual parsimony. That rule holds that we should prefer a framework that can account for the phenomena in question with as few basic categories as possible. Assuming that pluralism should be responsible, as opposed to gratuitous, critical theorists should not renounce comprehensive theorizing. Rather, they should infuse it with the spirit of fallibilism and openness to new evidence.20 It was in this spirit of responsible pluralism in the service of comprehensiveness that I argued in Redistribution or Recognition? that Axel Honneths recognition monism could not account for all the forms and mechanisms of injustice in contemporary society, while a perspectival dualism of redistribution and recognition could. Although I still hold to the first part of this thesis (on the inadequacy of recognition monism), I have since changed my mind about the second (on the adequacy of redistributionrecognition dualism). I now maintain, in the same spirit of responsible pluralism, that a three-dimensional framework is both necessary and sufficient for critical theory. In principle, of course, this claim could turn out to be wrong, in which case I would need to revise my framework yet again. But nothing that Bohman says here convinces me that I need to do so now. This brings me to a final point, about the relation of theory to public-sphere political debate. Here I find myself in agreement with Bohman. I, too, endorse the Deweyan view of the critic as a reflective participant and the pragmatic norm of practical verification. And I, too, regard my theorizing as an effort to articulate commitments and enrich the pool of reasons available in public justification (p. 274). In my view, however, none of this requires me to drop the aspiration to theoretical comprehensiveness, even if the latter can never be fully realized. On the contrary, I maintain that critical theorists can best contribute to democratic processes of social emancipation by thinking as deeply, reflectively, and comprehensively as they are able.
3. The Priority of Justice: A Rejoinder to Kompridis

So far I have been focusing on the political face of my framework. Now, however, as I take up the articles of Nikolas Kompridis and Rainer Forst, I turn to the theoretical face. What are at stake here are the philosophical underpinnings of critical theory, especially its normative foundations and what Forst calls its social ontology. The issues divide into two streams. In one stream, which Ill call intraparadigmatic, the fundamental objectives of critical theory are taken as settled; and the primary question is: in what terms should the theory be formulated in order best to fulfill those objectives? In the second stream, which Ill call extraparadigmatic, the very aims of critical theory are in dispute.
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Fraser: Identity, Exclusion, and Critique In what follows, I begin with the second, extra-paradigmatic stream of questioning, in which I locate Kompridiss concerns. Reading him as challenging my understanding of critical theory, I compare the latters merits with those of some other possibilities, hinted at in Kompridiss article. Here I consider the question: is there a defensible and desirable alternative to my view that critical theory should prioritize the critique of institutionalized injustice? Turning next to the intra-paradigmatic stream of questioning, I examine the principal issues between Forst and myself. Premised on a shared understanding of critical theory, these issues concern the best way to realize a project we jointly espouse. Here, accordingly, I weigh the relative merits of our respective answers to the following question: with which social-theoretical and normative conceptions can one best fashion a critical theory of institutionalized injustice for the present era? Nikolas Kompridis contends that the central issue in Redistribution or Recognition? is the meaning of recognition. Rejecting both Honneths identitarian account of that concept and my own status model, Kompridis maintains that neither of those interpretations captures the full meaning of recognition. In his view, recognition belongs exclusively neither to the realm of justice nor to that of self-realization. An essentially contested concept, its meaning cannot be reduced to a single normative idea. For Kompridis, accordingly, the alternatives debated in Redistribution or Recognition? present a false antithesis. Far from wishing to contribute to that debate, he seeks to displace it in favor of a different set of questions. This larger, extra-paradigmatic agenda informs Kompridiss more specific objections to my approach for example, his contention that I am so focused on justifying recognition claims relative to existing protocols of public reason that I neglect the disclosive role of language in articulating subjective suffering. This criticism and others like it point not only to another understanding of recognition but also to a different conception of critical theory, not primarily focused on critiquing institutionalized injustice. Yet the nature of Kompridiss alternative remains unclear. At some points, he suggests that recognition implicates both justice and self-realization, thereby insinuating the need for a synthesis of Honneth and myself. At other points, however, he contends that recognition is best understood as a matter of freedom in the Foucauldian sense, as it concerns how we govern ourselves. At still other points, though, he alleges that any attempt to reduce such a rich and contested concept to a normatively monistic interpretation is inherently misguided. Then again, finally, he maintains that recognition is the focus of aspirations that are so intrinsically problematic that critical theorists would do better to question the concept than to accord it any normative validity. As I see it, each of these four claims about recognition entails a different standard and model of critique. Yet all of them reject the premise, central to my approach, that a critical theory should accord priority to the critique of institutionalized injustice. In what follows, therefore, I shall examine each of Kompridiss claims about recognition with a view to determining whether it affords a viable
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European Journal of Political Theory 6(3) alternative to that justice-theoretic conception. For the sake of argument, I shall assume the following thin definition of critical theory, which I take to be noncontroversial: a theory is critical, as opposed to traditional, only if it is guided by a practical, emancipatory interest in unmasking domination. Supposing this definition to be sufficiently neutral to serve as a benchmark, I shall ask whether any of the alternatives intimated by Kompridis better satisfies its provisions than the approach I elaborated in Redistribution or Recognition? In this way, by comparing them with some other possibilities, I shall attempt to defend both my status model of recognition and my focus on institutionalized injustice against Kompridiss objections. My strategy, I must add, will be dialectical. Borrowing a leaf from Hegel, I shall treat each of Kompridiss claims about recognition as a stage of thought, which leads when probed to an impasse and so gives way to the next. Beginning with the most radical, rejectionist view and proceeding in order of increasing proximity to the status model, the sequence reveals the latters comparative strengths in step-by-step fashion. The end result will be to demonstrate the conceptual priority of the justice-theoretic understanding of recognition and, by extension, of critical theory. Defending the thesis that justice is the first virtue of recognition, I shall argue that it is only by imagining the overcoming of misrecognition as a genre of institutionalized injustice that we can conceive any positive form of recognition that can be considered a good beyond justice. Let me begin, accordingly, with Kompridiss most radical claim about recognition and, by implication, about critical theory. The claim here is that the desire for recognition is inherently unrealizable and self-defeating. In fact, so deeply problematic is this craving that critical theorists should treat it, not as an emancipatory aspiration, but as a vehicle of normalization and thus as an object of critique. Forswearing any effort to distinguish good from bad forms of recognition, they should abandon such mainstream therapeutic concerns and question the yearning for recognition. Read this way, as a recognition sceptic, Kompridis invites the thought that a genuinely critical theory would deconstruct, rather than reconstruct, recognition. Kompridis himself stops short of such a conclusion. Yet its implications are worth examining for heuristic purposes. As I see it, the argument just sketched runs up against two objections, one conceptual, the other political. Conceptually, the claim that the craving for recognition is inherently self-defeating is question begging. It assumes what needs first to be shown: namely, that the desire for recognition is best analyzed as a wish to be regarded and valued by others as one really is, which means, in effect, as one regards and values oneself. Certainly, if this is what is meant by recognition, then recognition is neither possible nor desirable and the most radical thesis would be right: we should jettison recognition as a normative category of critical theory. In fact, however, recognition need not be interpreted in this way. Another (non-identitarian) possibility is the one I proposed in Redistribution or Recognition?: that we understand claims for recognition as protests against status subordination hence, as claims for justice. In that case,
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Fraser: Identity, Exclusion, and Critique such claims would point to the need for institutional change, specifically to the need to deinstitutionalize hierarchical patterns of cultural value and to replace them with patterns that foster participatory parity. Understood in this way, claims for recognition are no more self-defeating than other types of justice claims, including claims for redistribution and representation. Granted, they will not lead to perfect justice, even in the best-case scenario; and they may well miscarry in practice. But that is hardly a reason for critical theorists to eschew the category of recognition, which corresponds on this interpretation to a bona fide genre of subordination not reducible to distributive injustice. Absent a functional equivalent, able to expose such subordination, recognition remains indispensable to any critical theory that seeks to unmask domination. Politically, moreover, the proposal to jettison recognition presupposes a gods eye view from which the theorist presumes to invalidate whole social movements in a single stroke. Premised on an authoritarian and elitist view of critical theory, it treats those who struggle for recognition as simple dupes. Thus, it fails to strike a proper balance between independence from and sympathy with struggling subjects. A better, more democratic approach would identify the emancipatory kernel of their aspirations and reconstruct their claims accordingly. Following this path in Redistribution or Recognition?, I reconstructed recognition claims as aiming to overcome status hierarchy. The point was to discern the legitimate core of identitarian social protest in order to separate the wheat from the chaff. Although it is disdained by Kompridis, this interest in distinguishing better from worse recognition claims is indispensable to any critical theory with a practical, emancipatory intent. On both counts, then, political as well as conceptual, the proposal to equate recognition with normalization fails to yield a defensible view of critical theory as a practically motivated inquiry aimed at unmasking domination. It is fortunate, therefore, that this proposal is not the one closest to Kompridiss heart. A more likely candidate for that position is his second, less radical suggestion that recognition claims are unobjectionable in principle but so multifarious and contested that any normatively monistic account of them is bound to be reductive and inadequate. On this view, misrecognition covers a multitude of sins, including violations of justice, impediments to self-realization, fetters on freedom, and so on. Thus, every attempt to associate recognition exclusively with one single normative category can at best capture only part of the story. Also doomed are efforts to subsume all of recognitions many facets within a single comprehensive account. For one thing, the various parts are at odds with one another; like Webers polytheism of values, they cannot be harmoniously reconciled or lexically ranked. For another, recognitions meanings continue to unfold historically in novel and unpredictable ways; thus, they cannot be definitively enumerated once and for all. It follows that critical theorists should abandon efforts to conceptualize recognition along normatively monistic lines. Instead, they should treat it as an essentially contested concept, whose meaning will never be settled. Although Kompridis may not subscribe to its full implications, this view, too,
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European Journal of Political Theory 6(3) merits scrutiny. Reminiscent of James Bohmans allegation that comprehensive theorizing cannot do justice to the inherent plurality of modes of injustice, it is subject to related objections. First, the view that recognition cannot be comprehensively theorized is objectionably aprioristic. Giving away the game at the outset, it forecloses the chance to develop a viable theory of recognition by settling for a pluralism that could be gratuitous. Second, the view that recognition is too inherently indeterminate to be theorized is hard to square with critical theorys emancipatory intent. Counseling the theorist to throw up her hands in the face of an unruly multiplicity of meanings, it positions her as an impotent observer of an endless, irresolvable contest into which she can offer no insight. Implying, too, that any account of recognition is as good as any other, it replaces the wholesale negativity of the previous view with an equally wholesale, and disabling, indifference. Finally, and most important, this view overlooks another, more promising strategy, aimed at elaborating an account of recognition as one dimension among others of a comprehensive theory of justice. Focused on those aspects that pertain to justice, such an account need not claim to encompass every facet of recognition. What it must do, however, is establish the conceptual priority of the justice-related aspects over the others. To pursue this possibility, consider another, less problematic interpretation of the thesis that recognition is essentially contested. Suppose this thesis is meant to endorse the democratic view that it is up to the participants themselves to determine the meaning of recognition. In that case the critical theorist would have to concern herself with the fairness (or lack thereof) of the terms on which their contest is waged. Do all concerned have equal chances to participate fully, as peers, in the struggle to define what will count as recognition? Or are some of them excluded or marginalized as a consequence of unjust social arrangements? Clearly, this democratic view leaves open the precise content of the norms of recognition. But unless it interrogates the terms of the contestation that will settle that content, it does not deserve to be called a critical theory. To merit that title it must be prepared to do the hard social-theoretical work of exposing structural obstacles to fair participation. In principle, however, these can include institutionalized relations of recognition, which deprive some potential participants of the status of peers. If the critical theorist is to identify these impediments to a fair contest over the meaning of recognition, she must already possess a general, justice-theoretic notion of misrecognition. And that notion, of misrecognition as status subordination, must enjoy conceptual priority over the other, more specific meanings that emerge from the struggle, which may or may not be justice-related. Elaborated in Redistribution and Recognition?, this account offers the only way I can see to connect Kompridiss interest in valorizing contestation over recognitions meaning with critical theorys emancipatory aims. Without it, his second thesis about recognition fails to express the sort of practical interest in overcoming domination that distinguishes critical from traditional theory. The same is true for the third claim I attributed to Kompridis: namely, that
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Fraser: Identity, Exclusion, and Critique recognition is at bottom a matter of freedom. Contradicting both the view of recognition as normalization and the view of its meaning as essentially contested, this claim offers a positively valued, normatively monistic account of that concept. Yet the freedom-theoretic conception of recognition incorporates features of those previous views, especially a dislike of normalization and a fondness for contestation. Associated by Kompridis with James Tullys quasi-Foucauldian perspective, it values the struggle over recognition above the end to which the struggle aspires. On this view, recognition achieved coerces and constrains, even when it is reciprocal, while the struggle to achieve it is a practice of freedom. Thus, critical theorists should de-teleologize recognition, valorizing the freedomincarnating process over the freedom-limiting result. Despite its interest in promoting freedom, this view fails to generate a framework that is adequate for that purpose. The problem is that the only ideal of freedom that can be acceptable to a critical theory is an ideal of equal freedom. Social arrangements that enhance the freedom of some by restricting the freedom of others are unacceptable, as are arrangements that enable some to exercise their freedom at the expense of the freedom of others. Thus, a struggle over recognition cannot be considered a bona fide expression of freedom unless the antagonists are equally empowered to exercise their freedom in and through it. Failing that, the contest is better described as an exercise in domination. Like the previous view, therefore, this one must interrogate the terms on which struggles over recognition proceed. Asking whether social arrangements enable all to participate as peers, it must expose structural impediments to equal freedom, including those inhering in institutionalized relations of recognition. Thus, this view too must prioritize questions of justice in order to sustain its emancipatory intent. What appeared at first to be an independent rival view turns out on closer inspection to be parasitic on the justice-theoretic view. In general, then, the view of recognition as freedom maintains its critical-theoretical bona fides only insofar as it presupposes the view of recognition as a dimension of justice in the sense of participatory parity. Let me pause to recap my reasoning to this point. So far, in discussing three of Kompridiss claims about recognition, I have returned again and again to a single point: while the status model does not capture every meaning of recognition, it is the interpretation critical theorists should prioritize so as to forward their emancipatory aims. Focused on status subordination as a genre of institutionalized domination, this model is justice-theoretic. As such, it is conceptually prior to other interpretations in the following sense: it is only by imagining the overcoming of misrecognition as a genre of institutionalized injustice that we can conceive any positive form of recognition that can be considered a good beyond justice. It follows, to paraphrase John Rawls, that critical theorists should regard justice as the first virtue of recognition where first means not necessarily the highest virtue but the one that secures the enabling conditions for all of the others.21 Seen this way, as a justice-theoretic conception, the status model does
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European Journal of Political Theory 6(3) not so much exclude other meanings of recognition as set constraints on how they may be legitimately construed and pursued. Prioritizing justice, it rules out interpretations of recognition that require or promote institutionalized disparities of participation. The thesis that justice is the first virtue of recognition bears as well on the fourth alternative hinted at in Kompridiss article namely, that recognition implicates both justice and self-realization. The least radical of his various suggestions, this claim implies that critical theorists should seek to combine Honneths concern for self-realization with my concern for justice. Now, however, we can discern the specific form such a combination must take: critical theory must prioritize the critique of institutionalized injustice in order to open a space for legitimate forms of self-realization. Treating justice as the first virtue, it must seek to equalize the conditions under which various interpretations of human flourishing are formulated, debated, and pursued. Far from supplanting or demoting self-realization, then, the status model of recognition aims to establish the terrain on which it can be fairly pursued. These considerations dovetail, I think, with the spirit of one of Kompridiss criticisms of Axel Honneth. Claiming that Honneth reduces self-realization to recognition, Kompridis contends that he overburdens the latter concept and impoverishes the former. The better course, I agree with Kompridis, is to disentangle self-realization from recognition so as to make room for a broader spectrum of perfectionist concerns. What Kompridis misses, however, is that the status model does just that. By prioritizing the critique of institutionalized injustice, which can be overcome by institutional change, this approach limits itself to a political conception of recognition. Effectively downsizing recognition, as Kompridis himself recommends, the status model clears a space in which social agents can legitimately pursue diverse perfectionist aims, freed from the straitjacket of identitarian recognition. What I have said so far suffices, I trust, to defend my general conceptions of recognition and of critical theory. But by establishing the priority of the critique of institutionalized injustice, I hope also to have provided the basis for dispelling Kompridiss more specific objections. Let me conclude by responding to one such objection here, while leaving it to readers to work out the implications for the others. Kompridis claims that I neglect the importance of linguistic innovation aimed at giving expression to heretofore unnamed injustices. Yet nothing in my approach entails that existing vocabularies of justification are adequate for disclosing harms that have not yet been publicly articulated. On the contrary, the justice-theoretic view is fully compatible with the claim, which I advanced more than 20 years ago, that a societys authorized means of interpretation and communication (MIC) are often better suited to expressing the perspectives of its advantaged strata than those of the oppressed and subordinated.22 As a result of this typical bias in signifying systems, the dominated shoulder an extra, asym-
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Fraser: Identity, Exclusion, and Critique metrical burden in political argument. Impeding their ability to participate as peers, the bias built into the MIC is itself an institutionalized injustice. To unmask it requires the sort of justice-theoretic critique I have elaborated here. For this reason, virtually every epochal struggle against injustice has involved the creation of new vocabularies for articulating injustices that previously lacked names. Second-wave feminism, which invented such expressions as date rape, sexual harassment, and the double shift, as well as the language game of consciousness-raising, is exemplary but by no means unique. What Kompridis calls the struggle for voice is intimately linked to such linguistic innovation, as new political subjects literally talk themselves into existence, often creating their own subaltern counterpublics to amplify new need interpretations and situation definitions that cannot at first gain a hearing in mainstream public spheres.23 Moreover, when social movements succeed in expanding the range of publicly nameable injustices, the protocols of public reason change too. In broadening the spectrum of intelligible claims, these movements also enrich the pool of potentially persuasive justifications and change the understanding of impartiality. Contra Kompridis, no paradigm better comprehends the historicity of public reason than the version of discourse ethics that informs my approach. Far from relying on rigid, predefined notions as to what counts as an impartial reason, that version invites the reflexive critique of all institutionalized rationality regimes, whose injustice it already suspects. And far from neglecting the disclosive dimension of signification, it valorizes the efforts of emancipatory social movements to invent novel significations that expand the meaning of justice. In general, then, the view of critique I have been advocating here is informed by a version of discourse ethics. Although Habermass version is sometimes thought to privilege justification at the expense of disclosure, mine accords due importance to both those linguistic practices, while clarifying the relation between them. What distinguishes this approach from all four alternatives intimated by Kompridis is its ability to link the disclosive use of language directly to the project of unmasking domination. On this point, too, it better expresses the practical, emancipatory intent of critical theory. In replying to Kompridis I have pursued a quasi-Hegelian strategy. Examining a staged sequence of views about recognition rejectionist, anti-monistic, freedom-theoretic, and synthesizing I have shown that each leads to an aporia whose sublation requires a shift to a justice-theoretic conception. The end result is to validate a specific answer to the extra-paradigmatic question about the social ontology of critical theory: such a theory best promotes its emancipatory aims when, construing misrecognition as status subordination, it prioritizes the critique of institutionalized injustice.
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European Journal of Political Theory 6(3)
4. Justification or Participation? A Rejoinder to Forst

Rainer Forst and I agree on the basic objectives of critical theory. For him, too, such a theory best fulfills its practical, emancipatory aims when it makes the critique of institutionalized injustice its priority. Unlike my dispute with Kompridis, then, my disagreements with Forst are intra-paradigmatic. Premised on a shared commitment to justice-theoretic critique, they concern the best way to realize that project. The core issue is categorial: with what categories should one formulate a critical theory of (in)justice? In order to specify that core disagreement, I must first note the points of agreement, of which there are many. In fact, notwithstanding his carefully cultivated posture of evenhandedness, I read Forst as siding with me, and against Axel Honneth, on nearly all of the fundamental issues debated in Redistribution or Recognition? Aligning my position with the tradition of exploitation critique and Honneths with that of alienation critique, Forst himself comes down in favor of the former. Thus, he agrees with me that Honneths theory fails in two major ways to provide an adequate conceptual basis for critical theory. First, recognition monism is deficient as social theory, as it cannot identify the major genres of structural injustice in contemporary society. Because distributive injustices are not always forms or effects of misrecognition, a critical theory needs a multidimensional explanatory framework. Second, recognition monism fails to supply an adequate normative basis for critique. Because a teleological notion of recognition cannot justify binding obligations of justice in modern contexts of ethical pluralism, a critical theory needs a deontological moral philosophy, which should, moreover, be normatively monist. Thus, instead of distinguishing three spheres of recognition, each governed by a different norm, critical theorists should espouse a single overarching principle of justice, which all injustices can be shown to violate. In general, then, Forst and I agree that a critical theory of contemporary society should be social-theoretically multidimensional and normatively monist.24 Nevertheless, Forst does not endorse the theory I have proposed. On the plane of social theory, he appears to reject my account of three intertwined orders of subordination in favor of a pluralism of evaluative notions. On the plane of moral philosophy, he proposes to replace my principle of parity of participation with a norm of justificatory fairness. The apparent result is to substitute a justificationtheoretic conception of justice for my participation-theoretic conception. Consequently, Forsts article invites us to consider the question, which of these two approaches should one prefer? Given the priority of (in)justice, should critical theorists conceive that notion in terms of justification or participation? But that is not the only possible interpretation of our exchange. Instead of reading Forsts and my views as rivals, one can read his norm of justificatory fairness as a special case of my principle of participatory parity, applied to one specific arena of social practice, namely, the practice of political argument. In what follows, I shall
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Fraser: Identity, Exclusion, and Critique consider each of these interpretations. While devoting the bulk of my discussion to the relative merits of our respective views when construed as alternatives, I shall end by sketching a reading that incorporates elements of Forsts approach into mine. Let me begin, then, by assuming that we are confronted with a choice between two competing conceptions of (in)justice, one justification-theoretic, the other participation-theoretic. How should one weigh their relative merits? Forst himself suggests an evaluative standard: does a given critical-theoretical framework succeed in putting first things first? Does it clarify the power asymmetries that simultaneously entrench injustices and hamper efforts to challenge them? I wholeheartedly endorse this evaluative standard. Construing Forsts theory and mine as rivals, I shall employ his standard to assess their respective strengths and weaknesses, asking: which does a better job of putting first things first in social theory and moral philosophy? I can deal briefly with the social theory side of the question, as Forst himself says little about that. In fact, I am not even sure whether his references to evaluative pluralism are really meant to refer to social theory at all, i.e. to a multidimensional explanatory account of the genres, mechanisms, orders, and sources of injustice. Because he offers no account of his own of these matters, nor any substantive arguments against mine, it is not entirely clear whether he really does mean to reject my account of three intertwined orders of subordination (economic, cultural, political), corresponding to three intertwined genres of injustice (maldistribution, misrecognition, misrepresentation). In any case, this account satisfies Forsts evaluative standard. Each of the three orders of subordination/genres of injustice names a type of institutionalized power differential that deprives some social actors of the chance to participate on a par with others in social life. Given Forsts failure to provide a comparable account of power asymmetries, one might conclude that my approach is better equipped to put first things first in social theory. I turn now to the moral-philosophical aspect of our exchange, which requires more extended discussion. Beginning with the points of agreement, I note that both of our views belong to the family of discourse-theoretic approaches. Each of us holds that justice claims must be warranted discursively, via a deliberative process in which all potentially affected can participate on fair terms in the exchange of arguments and counterarguments. For both of us, moreover, that process is not conceived monologically, as an interior thought process, but rather dialogically, as a real democratic political process, which must be socially institutionalized. For both of us, finally, the process will be fair, and the outcome legitimate only if all who are potentially affected are able to participate fully, as peers which is to say, only in the absence of entrenched power asymmetries. Nevertheless, our moral-philosophical views differ in four respects, which concern the object, modality, scope, and social ontology of normative critique. Let me consider each of these issues in turn, beginning with the problem of object. Here the question is: what does each theory take to be the principal focus of critical
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European Journal of Political Theory 6(3) scrutiny? How does each construe the object to which its normative principle applies? As I understand it, Forsts justification-theoretic approach takes as its privileged object the formal syntax of the reasons the participants exchange. This, I take it, is what he means to assess when he invokes the criteria of generality and reciprocity. Those criteria are treated by him as attributes of reasons, as opposed to social relations. For Forst, accordingly, justifications cannot be cogent unless their syntax manifests formal properties of generality and reciprocity. The reasons offered must eschew special pleading and restricted, non-reciprocal codes and idioms. In contrast, my participation-theoretic approach takes as its primary object the social relations among the interlocutors. The parity standard applies, not to the syntax of the propositions they utter, but to the social terms on which they converse. Are these terms such as to permit all to participate fully, as peers, in political argument? Or do institutionalized power asymmetries deprive some potential interlocutors of the resources, standing, and voice that are needed for full participation? Thus, my approach applies its normative standard to the power relations in force, which can institutionalize obstacles to participatory parity in deliberation. This difference in object bears importantly on Forsts suggestion that critical theorists put first things first. Unlike his, my approach provides a non-circuitous route to the question of power. Whereas he broaches power indirectly, through the proxy of syntax, my approach confronts power directly, tackling head-on the structural asymmetries that taint social practices of justification in unjust societies. As a result, it is better able to see through the ways in which dominant strata manipulate arguments for example, by using reasons whose formal syntax is facially general and reciprocal to defend arrangements that injure the dominated, on the one hand, and by disqualifying the latters protests as particularistic and non-reciprocal, on the other. By training scrutiny not on syntax but on social relations, my approach unmasks such strategies. Interrogating the social-structural context disregarded by Forst, it captures power asymmetries that are not reflected in justificatory syntax and that elude an approach that takes the latter as a proxy for the former. If the two theories are construed as rivals, then, mine has advantages over Forsts on the issue of object. Directly targeting differentials in power, it is better able to put first things first. My second moral-philosophical difference with Forst concerns the modality of normative critique. What is at issue here is the mode in which our respective principles of justice operate. For each of us, does the principle function procedurally or substantively? Does it evaluate the process of deliberation, or does it serve rather to assess the outcome? As I understand it, Forsts principle of justificatory fairness is purely procedural. Applying exclusively to the input side of the dialogical exchange, it serves to evaluate the latters procedural fairness by scrutinizing the syntax of the reasons exchanged within it. For me, in contrast, the principle of participatory parity is at once procedural
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Fraser: Identity, Exclusion, and Critique and substantive. Applied to both the input and the output of deliberation, that principle serves to evaluate each of two major variables in the equation. First, it assesses the procedural fairness of dialogical processes by interrogating the relations of social power that underlie them. Second, it also serves to assess the substantive justice of deliberative outcomes by examining their consequences for future social interaction. In the first case, the principle directs us to ask whether the interlocutors are really able to participate as peers in exchanging arguments about justice and injustice. In the second case, it directs us to ask whether the political decisions that ensue from their discussions will really enhance the fairness of future encounters by reducing disparities in participation. Once again, faced with two alternatives that appear to be rivals, we should ask: which approach is better positioned to put first things first in the sense of exposing unjust asymmetries of power? To be genuinely critical, in my view, a theory of power must keep open the possibility of a gap between procedural fairness and substantive justice. Allowing for the possibility that a procedurally fair process can generate a substantively unjust outcome, such a theory should be able to criticize substantive injustice as well as procedural unfairness. Granted, any specific account of substantive injustice must be dialogically warranted. But the discussion, like the theory itself, should be informed by empirical research, which can reveal the likely impact of a contemplated policy decision on extant power relations in a given context. Thus, a critique of institutionalized injustice should encompass both consequentialist and procedural considerations. Sensitive to output as well as to input, such a theory best grasps the workings of power when it incorporates a normative principle that operates in both modalities, i.e. both procedurally and substantively while taking care neither to confuse them with one another nor to blur the distinction between them. Forst correctly notes, however, that my double use of participatory parity to evaluate both the input and the output of political argument raises the question of circularity. On the one hand, what exactly is needed to achieve parity of participation in a given case can only be determined dialogically, through fair democratic deliberation. On the other hand, fair democratic deliberation presupposes that participatory parity already exists. There is indeed a circularity here, but Forsts own view is circular in just the same way: one needs a fair structure of justification in order to determine the requirements of justice; but one needs just distribution and recognition in order to have a fair structure of justification. In no way specific to me, then, the circularity problem arises for any approach that envisions a transition to more just social arrangements via political processes that occur by definition in unjust circumstances. All such approaches must take steps to prevent the circle from becoming vicious. Forst proposes an ingenious solution to this problem. Echoing Bohmans idea of the democratic minimum, he distinguishes minimal from maximal justice. Whereas the first refers to the existence of an institutionalized structure of justification, where participants can demand and receive justifications, the second
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European Journal of Political Theory 6(3) denotes a fully justified basic structure of society. Although Forst suggests that this distinction redounds to the exclusive credit of his approach, I maintain that it sits equally well with mine. Elsewhere, in fact, I have proposed the analogous idea of good enough deliberation. A paraphrase of D.W. Winnicotts notion of good enough mothering, this expression refers to deliberation that, while tainted by power asymmetries and thus falling short of participatory parity, is good enough to generate outcomes that reduce disparities, so that the next round of political argument proceeds on terms that are somewhat more fair and can be expected to lead to still better outcomes, and so on.25 This idea, like those of Forst and Bohman, aims to turn a vicious circle into a virtuous spiral. The difference between it and Forsts minimal justice is not a difference that makes a difference. As I see it, therefore, when our two approaches are construed as rivals, mine comes out better than Forsts with respect to the issue of modality. No more liable than his to the charge of circularity, the participation-theoretic model is more critical of power asymmetries insofar as it interrogates both the input and output of deliberation. Operating substantively as well as procedurally, it is better able to put first things first. Let me turn, then, to my third moral-philosophical difference with Forst, which concerns the scope of normative critique. The issue here is the range of social practices that each theory subjects to critical scrutiny. As I read him, Forst limits his core principles scope of application to a single class of social practices namely, practices of justification. It is to them alone (or to the reasons exchanged within them) that his criteria of generality and reciprocity apply. In contrast, my principle of participatory parity applies more broadly, to all major social practices and arenas of social interaction. Included here are practices of justification, to be sure, but also other major social arenas, such as employment and markets; family and personal life; formal and informal politics; public goods and services; and associations in civil society. It is thanks to this wide scope of application that the parity principle can serve as a substantive norm for evaluating the outcomes of deliberation as well as a procedural principle for evaluating deliberative processes. Assuming here, too, that we are dealing with competing views, we should ask: which approach more thoroughly exposes the unjust asymmetries of power that pervade contemporary societies? On its face, my approach is more critical, because it targets more types of power asymmetries in more arenas of social life. Yet Forst maintains that he is justified in limiting the scope of his principle to justificatory arenas for two reasons: first, because the political is the master dimension of social (in)justice; and, second, because power is the hyper-good whose distribution determines that of all other goods. What should we make of these claims? In my view, Forst mixes genuine insights with dubious conclusions. I agree that the political is a fundamental dimension of justice, as my revised threedimensional framework makes clear. I also agree that power has a special status, that it is a hyper-good. But it is a mistake, in my view, to identify power exclusively
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Fraser: Identity, Exclusion, and Critique with the political dimension of justice. Rather, each of the three dimensions (economic, cultural, and political) identifies a fundamental, irreducible dimension of social power. Corresponding to a distinctive mode of subordination and genre of injustice, each picks out an order of power asymmetry that poses a distinctive type of obstacle to parity of participation. So what is so special about the political? Forst is right, I think, to insist that the political is always necessarily in play, even when it is not the explicit focus of dispute. But this does not entail that it is the master dimension. For the same is true of the other two dimensions of justice. In fact, the three dimensions stand in relations of mutual entwinement and reciprocal influence. Just as the ability to make claims for distribution and recognition depends on relations of representation, so the ability to exercise political voice depends on the relations of class and status. Thus, maldistribution and misrecognition conspire to subvert the principle of equal political voice for every citizen, even in polities that are formally democratic. It follows that efforts to overcome injustice cannot, except in rare cases, address the relations of representation alone. On the contrary, struggles against misrepresentation cannot succeed unless they are joined with struggles against maldistribution and misrecognition and vice versa. Where one puts the emphasis, of course, is both a tactical and strategic decision. Given the current salience of injustices of misframing, my own preference is for the slogan, No redistribution or recognition without representation. But that priority is conjunctural, not conceptual. And even today the politics of representation appears as one among three interconnected fronts in the struggle for social justice in a globalizing world. The upshot is that the political cannot be designated the master dimension of (in)justice. I say this even while endorsing Forsts view of power as a hyper-good and stipulating that the political enjoys a special salience today for conjunctural, not conceptual, reasons. This is a difference that makes a difference. By refusing to treat the political as the master dimension of justice, my approach avoids the pitfalls of what I shall call reductive politicism. Analogous to economism, on the one hand, and to culturalism, on the other, politicism is the view that the social relations of representation determine those of distribution and recognition. Ascribing a basesuperstructure configuration to contemporary society, while installing the political as the base, this view is no more adequate than vulgar economism or reductive culturalism. Like those discredited approaches, whose architectonic it faithfully mimics, politicism fails to do justice to the complexity of structural causation in capitalist society. Consequently, its practical implication, that one can overcome all maldistribution and misrecognition simply by overcoming misrepresentation, is deeply misguided. Politicism appears to follow from Forsts insistence that the political is the master dimension of justice. If so, it disables his approach from grappling successfully with the three dialectically entwined sources of power asymmetry in contemporary society. What follows for the issue of scope? If the political cannot be deemed the master dimension, there is no justification for limiting normative critique to
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European Journal of Political Theory 6(3) justificatory practices. Rather, critical theory should track the effects of power asymmetries across the entire range of social practices in contemporary society. On this count, too, then, the participation-theoretic approach puts first things first. This brings me to my fourth moral-philosophical difference with Forst, which concerns the social ontology of normative critique. Here, too, it is necessary to separate out the points on which we differ from the views we share. Both of us eschew as sectarian the strategy espoused by Honneth, which purports to ground critical theory on a comprehensive (albeit formal) account of human being. Rather, each of us follows John Rawls in correlating her or his theory with a more limited, political conception of the person, which picks out only those features of personhood that a nonsectarian theory of justice must presuppose.26 On this general theoretical strategy we agree. Nevertheless, Forst and I hold different political conceptions of the person. His approach portrays persons as givers and receivers of justifications, who participate with one another in the social practice of exchanging public reasons. Mine, in contrast, depicts persons as co-participants in an indeterminate multiplicity of social practices, which emerge and disappear in a historically open-ended process and, so, cannot be specified once and for all. In my approach, persons are socially situated but potentially autonomous fellow actors, whose (equal) autonomy depends on their ability to interact with one another as peers not only in political reasoning, but in all the major arenas and practices that comprise their form of life. For me, accordingly, the practices of justification that Forst makes central are but one of the many social practices in which individuals ought to be able to exercise their free and equal personhood by participating with one another as peers. Assuming they constitute rival social ontologies, which of these conceptions is better situated to put first things first? As I see it, my approach has at least two advantages over Forsts. First, by refusing to single out justification practices for special notice, it offers a more capacious, variegated, and historically open-ended view of social personhood. As a result, it is less vulnerable to the charge of excessive rationalism. Second, by affirming the ideal of participatory parity, my approach posits a close relation between the liberal value of individual autonomy and social belonging. According the latter a non-communitarian interpretation, it construes institutionalized obstacles to participatory parity as impediments not only to equal autonomy but also to full membership in society. As a result, this social ontology permits critical theory to address a major form of alienation, namely, alienation from ones society and fellow actors, even while prioritizing justice. Thus, the participation-theoretic view manages to recoup within a deontological theory of justice at least one important ethical concern that is usually deemed the exclusive province of teleological theories of self-realization.27 In this way, it satisfies Forsts desideratum that a critical theory avoid as far as possible sacrificing other ethical concerns, even as it rightly prioritizes the critique of institutionalized injustice.
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Fraser: Identity, Exclusion, and Critique In general, then, there are good reasons for preferring my approach to Forsts with respect to all four issues considered here: the object, modality, scope, and social ontology of normative critique. Thus, in moral philosophy, as in social theory, the participation-theoretic conception of justice appears to do a better job of putting first things first, assuming the two views are construed as rivals. Suppose, however, we reject that interpretation in favor of one that regards Forsts view as a special case of mine. Read this way, his norm of justificatory fairness appears as an application of the principle of participatory parity within one important but restricted type of social practice namely, the practice of demanding and receiving political justifications. No longer the fundamental principle of justice, Forsts norm now presents itself as one of several such applications, each of which specifies the meaning of parity in relation to a given type of social practice. Certainly, this interpretation assumes the validity of my approach, but perhaps it captures the spirit, if not the letter, of Forsts as well. As I read him, he too envisions a maximally just society as one in which no one is disrespected as a result of institutionalized power asymmetries in any social practice that is essential to full membership. It follows, I think he would agree, that in such a society no one would be structurally excluded from or marginalized in any social arena of real significance. And Forst would agree too, if I understand him, that a just society requires that no one be deprived of the resources, standing, and voice needed to avoid exclusion or marginalization in any major arena of social interaction. If that is right, then the equal right to justification serves in effect for him as a kind of synecdoche for society-at-large; it not only promotes but also models the sort of egalitarian social relations that justice requires more broadly, throughout the whole of social life. Perhaps I read too much of myself into Forst. But the mere fact that I can imagine interpreting him in this way shows how close in spirit our views really are. Our disagreements, as I said at the outset, are intra-paradigmatic, premised on a shared understanding of the basic shape and point of critical theory. In defending my participation-theoretic view here, then, I have sought to forward objectives we hold in common.
5. Conclusion
Let me conclude on a note of gratitude. It is a rare privilege to have the opportunity to respond to four such interesting and intelligent articles. Different as they are, each symposiasts article inspired me to think more deeply than I had before about key aspects of the view I elaborated in Redistribution or Recognition? Whether the primary focus of a critics article was political or philosophical, the result was the same: each contributor pushed me to devise new formulations of my position that go beyond, and (I hope) improve upon, those that appear in that volume. No author could ask for anything more.28 335
European Journal of Political Theory 6(3) Notes

1. On this point, Alcoff misunderstands my view. She claims that I distinguish one type of recognition claim, aimed at parity, from another, aimed at identity. In fact, however, I hold that all recognition claims should be judged by the single standard of parity of participation, which applies also to claims for redistribution. Thus, the parity standard applies equally to claims for universalist, affirmative, and deconstructive recognition. What distinguishes these types from one another is neither the standard by which they are judged nor the goal at which they aim. The difference lies, rather, as I noted above, in the type of obstacle to participatory parity that each confronts hence in the type of remedy each projects as the means to parity. 2. Manuel Castells (1997) The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, vol. 2, The Power of Identity, pp. 811, 3568. London: Blackwell. 3. Nancy Fraser (1995) From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a Postsocialist Age, New Left Review 212 (July/Aug.): 6893. Repr. in Nancy Fraser (1997) Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the Postsocialist Condition. London: Routledge. 4. Andr Gorz (1967) Strategy for Labor: A Radical Proposal, tr. Martin A. Nicolaus and Victoria Ortiz. Boston: Beacon Press. For my use of Gorz and my later account, see Nancy Fraser (2003) Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics ch. 1 of Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, at pp. 7982. London and New York: Routledge. 5. Fraser (n. 4), pp. 8182. 6. Here, too, Alcoff misunderstands my position. Noting my worry that recognition is displacing redistribution, she observes that I fail to express any parallel concern that redistribution could displace recognition. Seeking to explain the asymmetry, she concludes that I must value redistribution over recognition. But here she decontextualizes my argument, neglecting to see it as an intervention in a specific historical conjuncture: the rise of neoliberalism, the weakening of social egalitarian ideals, and the surge of identity politics. This is the context in which I have commended the slogan, No recognition without redistribution, while noting that in an earlier era of reductiveeconomistic social democracy, one might well have preferred the converse slogan, No redistribution without recognition. 7. Karl Marx (1975) Letter to A. Ruge, September 1843, in Karl Marx: Early Writings, ed. L. Coletti, tr. Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton, p. 209. New York: Vintage Books. 8. I first elaborated this revised, three-dimensional framework in Fraser (2005) Reframing Justice: The 2004 Spinoza Lectures. Amsterdam: Van Gorcum. See also Fraser (2005) Reframing Justice in a Globalizing World, New Left Review 36 (Nov.Dec.): 6988. Fraser (2006) Democratic Justice in a Globalizing Age: Thematizing the Problem of the Frame, in Nathalie Karagiannis and Peter Wagner (eds) Varieties of World-Making: Beyond Globalization, pp. 193215. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Kate Nash and Vikki Bell (forthcoming) The Politics of Framing: An Interview with Nancy Fraser, Theory, Culture and Society. 9. Fraser (2005, in n. 8). 10. Because access to these arenas is so fundamental for peoples well-being, I construe all of them as spheres of justice in which the requirement of participatory parity applies. Here I break with the common view that focuses exclusively on political participation, often understood very narrowly in terms of voting. For me, in contrast, the requirement of participatory parity applies broadly, in all the major arenas of social life. 11. Whether exclusion from one sphere converts into exclusion from others is in the end an empirical question, which depends on the character of the society in question.
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12. Max Weber (1958) Class, Status, Party, in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, pp. 188190, 399. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 13. Katherine C. Bond, David D. Celentano, Sukanya Phonsophakul, and Chayan Vaddhanaphuti (1997) Mobility and Migration: Female Commercial Sex Work and the HIV Epidemic in Northern Thailand, in Gilbert Herdt (ed.), Sexual Cultures and Migration in the Era of AIDS: Anthropological and Demographic Perspectives, pp. 185215. New York: Oxford University Press. 14. (2004) Darwins Nightmare, film dir. Hubert Sauper. Celluloid Dreams/International Film Circuit. 15. James Ferguson (1999) Global Disconnect: Abjection and the Aftermath of Modernism, in Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt, pp. 23454. Berkeley: University of California Press. 16. Dan La Botz (1995) Democracy in Mexico: Peasant Rebellion and Political Reform. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. June Nash (2001) Mayan Visions: The Quest for Autonomy in an Age of Globalization. London: Routledge. 17. In fact, as I shall explain shortly, in my reply to Forst, I have my own analogue of the democratic minimum in the notion of good enough deliberation. 18. Kevin Olson (forthcoming) Participatory Parity and Democratic Justice, in Nancy Fraser, Adding Insult to Injury: Social Justice and the Politics of Recognition, ed. Kevin Olson. London: Verso. Ingrid Robeyns (2003) Is Nancy Frasers Critique of Theories of Distributive Justice Justified?, Constellations 10(3): 538, repr. ibid. 19. I will return to this point in replying to Forst. 20. I made a similar argument several years ago in response to Iris Marion Young, whom I also regard as a proponent and practitioner of gratuitous pluralism. See her (1997) Unruly Categories: A Critique of Nancy Frasers Dual Systems Theory, New Left Review 222(March/April): 14760. Nancy Fraser (1997) A Rejoinder to Iris Young, New Left Review 223(May/June): 1269. 21. John Rawls (1999) A Theory of Justice, rev. edn, pp. 34, 2634, 2667. Cambridge: Belknap Press. 22. Nancy Fraser (1986) Toward a Discourse Ethic of Solidarity, Praxis International 5(4): 4259. (1989a) Talking about Needs: Interpretive Contests as Political Conflicts in Welfare-State Societies, Ethics 99(2): 291313. (1989b) Struggle over Needs: Outline of a Socialist-Feminist Critical Theory of Late-Capitalist Political Culture, in Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press and Polity Press. 23. Nancy Fraser (1991) Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy, in Craig Calhoun (ed.) Habermas and the Public Sphere, pp. 10942. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; reprinted in Fraser (1997, in n. 3). 24. Forst suggests that my theory can be interpreted in two ways: as normatively monist or as normatively dualist. The first interpretation is correct. Although I conceive distribution and recognition (and now representation) as two (now three) conceptually irreducible dimensions of justice, I subsume both (all) of them under the single overarching norm of participatory parity. For me, accordingly, all injustices violate a single normative principle. Thus, my view is social-ontologically two- (now three-)dimensional, but normatively monist. 25. The phrase good enough deliberation was suggested to me by Bert van den Brink (personal communication). I develop the idea in Who Counts? Thematizing the Question of the Frame, in Fraser (2005, in n. 8). Fraser (2006, in n. 8). 26. John Rawls (1996) Political Liberalism, pp. 2935. New York: Columbia University Press. 27. I owe this point to Cristina Lafont (oral intervention in discussion of this exchange at
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session on Redistribution or Recognition?, Central Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association, Chicago, April 2006). 28. Special thanks to Nikolas Kompridis. Not only did he organize and guest-edit this symposium, but he also remained patient and gracious despite my slowness in preparing this response. I am grateful, too, to Amy Allen, Maria Pia Lara, and Eli Zaretsky for helpful comments on the present text.
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Identity, Exclusion, and Critique : A Response to Four Critics

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Identity, Exclusion, and Critique

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2. Identity or Status? A Rejoinder to Alcoff

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2. On Political Exclusion: A Rejoinder to Bohman

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3. The Priority of Justice: A Rejoinder to Kompridis

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European Journal of Political Theory 6(3)

4. Justification or Participation? A Rejoinder to Forst

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European Journal of Political Theory 6(3) Notes

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Fraser: Identity, Exclusion, and Critique

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European Journal of Political Theory 6(3)

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