On the politics of recognition in critical urban scholarship

ABSTRACT

In this response to Ananya Roy’s plenary talk at the Association of American Geographers annual meeting in 2015, “What’s urban about critical urban theory,” I engage the work of Nancy Fraser and feminist epistemologists to argue for the necessity of a robust critical politics of recognition in knowledge projects with emancipatory aims. I question the political utility and empirical accuracy of the increasingly popular assertion that there is no analytical outside to the category “urban,” and argue, like many feminist, post-colonial, and anti-racist scholars before me, that attempts to construct a totalizing political subject have the effect of reproducing cultural misrecognition and are thus incompatible with emancipatory politics.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban theory
• feminism
• recognition

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Ananya for a rich paper, to Bob Lake and Deb Martin for the invitation, to Linda Peake for excellent commentary, and to Josh Barkan, Kendra Strauss, and Lorena Munoz for critical engagement with the argument in previous drafts. Thanks also to Aaron Mallory for bringing the Clyde Woods piece to my attention.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.