Bridging the gap between critical theory and critique of power? Honneth’s approach to ‘social negativity’

Abstract

In this paper, I will analyze Axel Honneth’s theory against the background of some of the criticisms that Amy Allen levelled against it. His endeavor seems to partially compromise his ability to identify the domineering forms of power that the subject does not acknowledge consciously and affectively. I will argue that, despite some significant limitations, Honneth’s theory has become increasingly able to analyze social negativity since The struggle for recognition. Also, in both defending Honneth’s methodology and delimiting its scope, I aim to contribute to the debate between two understandings of power: power as ‘domination’ and power as ‘constitution’.

Keywords:

• Axel Honneth
• Amy Allen
• Martin Saar
• Frankfurt school
• recognition

Notes

1. For a more detailed comparison, see the article of Saar (2010).

2. For a comprehensive critique of Honneth’s concept of power from a Foucauldian perspective, in which power is not considered as domination but as constitution, see Petherbridge (2013)

3. See for instance Mead (1925). Identity is shaped through a form of social control, from which only the idiosyncratic spontaneity of the individual (what Mead named the ‘I’) fosters a differentiation (Mead 1934).

4. Underestimation of social irrationality was also the critique that Whitebook (2001) leveled at both Habermas and Honneth. However, as I will argue below, this applies mainly to The struggle for recognition, and not to the further elaboration of his theory. Although I think that we could – and should – make irrationality even more central to the analysis of social negativity then Honneth does, after The struggle for recognition, he does not neglect this aspect.

5. For criticisms, see Young (2007, pp. 206–212) and Allen (2010, pp. 23–25). As I see it, however, the problem is not the claim that the baby-caregiver relationship also entails moments of symbiosis implying a certain kind of symmetry, but rather the preponderant and exclusive weight that this ‘social’ element takes on at the expense of the isolatedness of the self (omnipotence) and its consequences: controlling the other, reducing his or her otherness to one’s sameness. What is problematic is not the symmetry per se, but its hypostatization.

6. Allen (2016) endeavors to address this quandary by proposing a modest and humble notion of progress based on a ‘metanormative’ contextualism which, she claims, can avoid relativism.

7. By highlighting and acknowledging some of its limitations, in this paper I endeavor to defend Honneth’s methodology against criticisms that sometimes do not seem to recognize the positive achievements of his theory. This does not mean that we should not give due consideration to those limitations in order to strengthen critique where necessary. I made some steps in this direction in Angella (2016).

8. Even in classical psychoanalysis these two dimensions coexist without contradiction. If The ego and the Id (Freud 1990a) show the weaknesses of an ego which is subjected to the id (drives, superego), Inhibition, Symptoms and anguish, (Freud 1990b) stresses its ability to coordinate and mediate between the different psychic forces and the external reality.

9. See Honneth (1995, 131–139). From a different perspective, see Whitebook (1995, pp. 217–263).

10. According to Allen (2010, pp. 25, 30–31), Whitebook’s critique of Honneth does not hit the point: the problem of Honneth’s recognition was not that it is not conflictual enough, but that it cannot identify power if power does not give rise to conflict. Nonetheless, I believe that Whitebook’s point, i.e. increasing the conflict-oriented dimension of critical theory by avoiding hypostatization of intersubjectivist thought, is of great importance for critical theory.

11. For a recent update of the Honneth-Whitebook dialogue see Honneth and Whitebook 2016(). Allen (2015b) endeavors to integrate psychoanalysis by referring to Melanie Klein.

12. For criticisms, see Freyenhagen (2015) and Schaub (2015). See Honneth (2015) for a reply.

13. For a critique, see Allen (2016, pp. 106–107).

14. For a critique of this aspect from a Foucauldian viewpoint (in which recognition is ideological from the outset), see Allen (2010, pp. 28–31) and Owen (2010, pp. 103–106).