Equality, Interpellation, Liberation: Three Vectors of Recognition

The fundamental achievement of the concept of recognition is to conceptualize social relations as relations of equality. Recognition is the social relation of ontologically equals. This is how Axel Honneth, following Hegel, defines the concept. The article shows that such recognition as equality necessarily presupposes relations of recognition as inequality (or alterity): recognition by an other (or the Other) that is ontologically unequal. The article further argues that the recognition of inequality has a double, internally divided, even opposed meaning: it is at the same time the “interpellation” of subjection (Althusser) and of liberation (Santner).