Abstract
This chapter discusses the relationship between recognition and vulnerability. I explore how recognition requires vulnerability, for the latter enables—rather than limits—recognition. Recognition theory entails certain cultural norms, such as interdependency, which emerge from vulnerability. Moreover, I examine the possibility of mutual recognition through vulnerability. Surrendering to the other is a necessary and transformative step towards mutual recognition. Yet, recognition remains an urgent and critical aspect of personal and communal development, and the mutuality of vulnerable recognition is necessary for reconciling histories and persons. Such vulnerable selves support an ecclesial and eschatological self whose vocation is lived out within a community of mutual recognizers in a spirit of mutual accompaniment.
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Notes
- 1.
Cf. Sturla J. Stålsett, ‘Toward a Political Theology of Vulnerability: Anthropological and Theological Propositions’, Political Theology 15, no. 5 (2015): 464-78. Stålsett argues for a positive and creative understanding of power that emerges from the experience of human and divine vulnerability.
- 2.
Jean Vanier, Becoming Human (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1999), 9.
- 3.
Judith Butler, ‘Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance’, in Vulnerability in Resistance, ed. Judith Butler, Zeynep Gambetti, and Leticia Sabsay (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), 25. Kindle edition.
- 4.
Judith Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 145.
- 5.
Cf. Metz, ‘Facing the World’.
- 6.
Cf. Taylor, Language Animal.
For Taylor, storytelling is a constitutive feature of language and meaning. He suggests that storytelling is more than the communication of facts. Rather, it is an account of insights received and locating these insights within a wider background.
- 7.
Judith Butler, Senses of the Subject (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), 4.
- 8.
Cf. Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 28–29. Rahner contends that the lack of knowledge available to the self calls for self-interpretation.
- 9.
McNay, Against Recognition, 124. McNay argues against what she refers to as an ‘over-generalized idea of narrative identity’ (ibid., 97). Both Butler and McNay are cautious of normative theories of narrative and recognition. For them, normative theories of narrative reduce the other to a form of domination.
- 10.
Butler, Senses of the Subject, 4.
- 11.
Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York: Routledge, 1997), 23.
- 12.
Ibid., 25.
- 13.
Ibid.
- 14.
Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself, 78.
- 15.
Cf. Kurt Borg, ‘Narrating Trauma: Judith Butler on Narrative Coherence and the Politics of Self-Narration’, Life Writing 15, no. 2 (2018): 447–65.
- 16.
Rowan Williams, Lost Icons: Reflections on Cultural Bereavement (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 144.
- 17.
Cf. Jan-Olav Henriksen, Desire, Gift, and Recognition: Christology and Postmodern Philosophy (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 216–20.
- 18.
Patchen Markell, Bound by Recognition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 35.
- 19.
Saarinen, Religion and Recognition, 243.
- 20.
For an explanation of recognition as a project or praxis, see Stefan Bird-Pollan, Hegel, Freud and Fanon: The Dialectic of Emancipation (London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2015), 87–93.
- 21.
Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, ‘Systematic Theology: Task and Methods’, in Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives, ed. Francis Schüssler Fiorenza and John P. Gavin (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2011), 49.
- 22.
Justo L. González, Essential Theological Terms (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 137. He contends that not all action is liberating, and he identifies resistance as a type of praxis. Of course, Butler identifies vulnerability with the praxis of resistance.
- 23.
Johann Baptist Metz, Theology of the Word, trans. William Glen-Doepel (New York: The Seabury Press, 1969), 112.
- 24.
Metz, Faith in History and Society, 68.
- 25.
Jeanrond, A Theology of Love, 44.
- 26.
Ibid.
- 27.
Bird-Pollan, Hegel, Freud and Fanon, 89.
- 28.
Kelly Oliver, Witnessing: Beyond Recognition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001).
- 29.
Judith Butler, ‘Taking Another’s View’, in Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea, ed. Martin Jay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 116.
- 30.
Judith Butler, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (London: Verso, 2009), 36.
- 31.
Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, 37.
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
Mari Mikkola, ‘Dehumanization’, in The Wrong of Injustice: Dehumanization and its Role of Feminist Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 145. She argues that ‘an act or a treatment is dehumanizing if and only if it is an indefensible setback to some of our legitimate human interests, where this setback constitutes and moral injury’ (ibid.).
- 34.
Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004), 2.
- 35.
Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself, 36.
- 36.
Cf. Jeremy Waldron, ‘Lecture 1: Dignity and Rank’, in Dignity, Rank, and Rights, ed. Meir Dan-Cohen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 28. Waldron offers an interesting critique of Catholic social teaching, suggesting that the Catholic Church has politicized the term dignity. While I do not share his opinion, his treatment of rights presents a current and novel interpretation of the discourse.
- 37.
Jeremy Waldron, One Another’s Equals: The Basis of Human Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 43.
- 38.
Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, 132.
- 39.
Butler, Senses of the Subject, 8. In suggesting that the body is dependent, Butler is writing within a philosophical tradition that asserts that the turn to the subject is not the identification of an autonomous subject, but dependent. Here she draws upon the insights of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Nicolas Malebranche.
- 40.
Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, 43.
- 41.
Ibid., 65.
- 42.
Ibid.
- 43.
Ibid.
- 44.
Butler, Senses of the Subject, 8.
- 45.
Butler, Frames of War, 19.
- 46.
Ibid.
- 47.
Ibid.
- 48.
Ibid., 61.
- 49.
Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, 128.
- 50.
Ibid., 145.
- 51.
Butler, Frames of War, 61.
- 52.
Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, 149.
- 53.
Ibid., 153.
- 54.
Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself, 38.
- 55.
Butler, Senses of the Subject, 110.
- 56.
Ibid.
- 57.
Karl Rahner, ‘On the Question of a Formal Existential Ethics’, in Theological Investigations, vol. II: Man in the Church, trans. Karl-H. Kruger (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1963), 225.
- 58.
Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, 104.
- 59.
Jean Vanier, Community and Growth (London: Darton, Longman and Todd), 62.
- 60.
Oliver, Witnessing, 222.
- 61.
Jessica Benjamin, Beyond Doer and Done to: Recognition Theory, Intersubjectivity and the Third (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), 69.
- 62.
Jessica Benjamin, ‘Beyond Doer and Done To: An Intersubjective View of Thirdness’, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 73, no. 1 (2006). In this essay, Benjamin offers a concise genealogy of the third. She notes that it became operative in psychoanalysis through Jacques Lacan. He drew upon Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s development of intersubjectivity. Lacan located thirdness in the movement of the child’s dependency from the mother to the father. He presented a movement from the dialectic between mother and son as that from paternalism to maternalism.
- 63.
Benjamin, ‘Beyond Doer and Done To’, 6.
- 64.
Taylor, Language Animal, 65.
- 65.
Benjamin, ‘Beyond Doer and Done To’, 6.
- 66.
Ibid.
- 67.
Ibid., 7.
- 68.
Hannah Arendt, Human Action, 2nd edn. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 199. See also Seyla Benhabib, ‘Feminist Theory and Hannah Arendt’s Concept of Public Space’, History of the Human Sciences 6, no. 2 (1993): 97–114.
- 69.
Ian Buchanan, Michael de Certeau: Cultural Theorist (London: Sage, 2000), 112. See also Ward, How the Light Gets In, 274–78. Ward suggests that de Certeau’s development and expansion of narratives is an exercise in recognizing others.
- 70.
Ibid.
- 71.
Butler, Frames of War, 14.
- 72.
Benjamin, ‘Beyond Doer and Done To’, 7.
- 73.
Butler, Frames of War, 14.
- 74.
Ibid.
- 75.
Benjamin, Beyond Doer and Done to, 102.
- 76.
Ibid., 139.
- 77.
Taylor, ‘The Politics of Recognition’, 70.
- 78.
Benjamin, Beyond Doer and Done to, 140.
- 79.
Ibid.
- 80.
Ibid., 8.
- 81.
Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 39.
- 82.
Ibid., 24.
- 83.
Ibid., 51.
- 84.
Benjamin, ‘Beyond Doer and Done To’, 12.
- 85.
Honneth develops his first sphere of recognition through a similar exploration of the relationship between a child and its mother.
- 86.
Benjamin, Beyond Doer and Done to, 26.
- 87.
Ibid.
- 88.
Ibid., 30.
- 89.
Ibid.
- 90.
Ibid., 47.
- 91.
Ibid.
- 92.
The forgiveness or reconciliation stressed is the forgiveness given to the perpetrator, where their humanity is restored (Benjamin, Beyond Doer and Done to, 241–42).
- 93.
Ibid., 51.
- 94.
Ibid.
- 95.
Butler, Undoing Gender, 132.
- 96.
Ibid.
- 97.
Ibid.
- 98.
Benjamin, Beyond Doer and Done to, 155.
- 99.
Ibid., 6.
- 100.
Ibid., 3.
- 101.
Ibid.
- 102.
Ibid., 4.
- 103.
Ibid.
- 104.
Ibid.
- 105.
Ibid.
- 106.
Benjamin, Beyond Doer and Done to, 75. Ricoeur’s understanding of mutual recognition stresses not so much the obligation of the person to respond generously to the recognition received, but rather ‘to speak of a response to a call coming from the generosity of the first gift’ (Ricoeur, The Course of Recognition, 243). In so doing, he moves mutual recognition as a giving that is understood phenomenologically to a giving born out of agape, whereby receiving the gift of recognition in a spirit of gratitude will determine how I respond to the giver of that recognition.
- 107.
Benjamin, Beyond Doer and Done to, 5.
- 108.
Ibid.
- 109.
Ibid.
- 110.
Ibid. In the ‘theorizing of recognition we must conceptualize not a static condition but a continual oscillation between relating to the outside and the inner object’ (ibid.). Benjamin draws upon the contributions of D.W. Winnicott in how one relates to an object, specifically ‘The Use of an Object and Relating Through Identifications’, in Playing and Reality (New York: Penguin, 1971). For a summary and assessment of this chapter, please see Jan Abraham’s ‘Further Reflections on Winnicott’s Last Major Theoretical Achievement: From “Relating through Identifications” to “The Use of an Object”’, in Playing and Reality Revisited: A New Look at Winnicott’s Classical Work, ed. Gennaro Saragnano and Christian Seulin (London: Karnac Books, 2015), 11–125.
- 111.
Benjamin, Beyond Doer and Done to, 6.
- 112.
Ibid.
- 113.
Ibid., 18.
- 114.
Ibid.
- 115.
Ibid.
- 116.
Ibid.
- 117.
Ibid., 18–19.
- 118.
Ibid., 19.
- 119.
Ibid.
- 120.
Ibid.
- 121.
Ibid.
- 122.
Ibid.
- 123.
Ibid.
- 124.
Wirén, Hope and Otherness. Wirén draws upon Ola Sigurdson’s suggestion that recognition is a theological category when it is understood in light of imago Dei.
- 125.
Thomas E. Reynolds, Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of Disability and Hospitality (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2008), 123.
- 126.
Metz, Theology of the World, 27.
- 127.
Vanier, Community and Growth, 78.
- 128.
Reynolds, Vulnerable Communion, 123.
- 129.
Wolfhart Pannenberg argues for a ‘mutuality of human destiny’. While the recognizer’s understanding of this is always evolving, it is also the context in which one encounters the other. This relational exposure is transformed through love into ‘human associations’. Of significance for such associations are communities, where ‘interconnections’ with other groups can be facilitated and nurtured. See Wolfhart Pannenberg, What Is Man? Contemporary Anthropology in Theological Perspective, trans. Duane A. Priebe (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970), 83.
- 130.
The term ‘able-bodied’ suggests strength and the ability to perform a minimum level of psychical and cognitive abilities. In L’Arche, everybody is able-bodied, in that every person is a unique gift. The value or ability of a person is not based on their abilities, but rather on the recognition that they are a person who participates in a covenantal relationship within the community.
- 131.
Vanier, Becoming Human, 46.
- 132.
Reynolds, Vulnerable Communion, 69.
- 133.
Jeanrond, A Theology of Love, 229.
- 134.
Graham Ward, The Politics of Discipleship: Becoming Postmaterial Citizens (London: SCM Press, 2009), 185.
- 135.
Ward, How the Light Gets In, 218.
- 136.
Ibid., 189. Ward favours ‘interrelationality’ over ‘intersubjectivity’ as the former underscores ‘relations [that] are far larger than the subjects engaged in evaluating them can measure; relations by nature exceed subjects’.
- 137.
Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 184.
- 138.
Vanier, Community and Growth, 61.
- 139.
Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 153.
- 140.
Ibid., 154.
- 141.
Ibid.
- 142.
Ibid.
- 143.
Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 431.
- 144.
Jeanrond, ‘Love and Eschatology’, Dialog: A Journal of Theology 50, no. 1 (2011): 56.
- 145.
Ibid., 61.
- 146.
Ibid.
- 147.
Vanier, Becoming Human, 161.
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Ryan, G.J. (2022). Vulnerability as a Context for Theological Reflection on Recognition. In: Mutual Accompaniment as Faith-Filled Living. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06007-6_4
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