Recognition as an Ongoing Struggle: Conflicts Involving Racism and Homophobia in the Networked Media Environment

Abstract

In his The Struggle for Recognition, Axel Honneth traces the dynamics of conflicts that regularly arise in different spheres during the course of individual socialization. The previous chapter examined the construction of “shared semantics” among members of a group. We focused on social movement organizers’ attempts at advancing collective causes and speaking for others to define origins of injustice and their remedies. Chapter 6 also evinced the ongoing conflict among members of the group to interpret their needs, rights, and achievements, along with how they build different demands for recognition to attain autonomy, better inclusion in society, and self-realization. In this chapter, my collaborator and I examine conflicts for recognition in everyday interactions, while also establishing how these encounters play out freely with multiple others in a pluralist society.