A MULTIDIMENSIONAL VIEW OF MISRECOGNITION

Following Axel Honneth, I accept that recognition is integral to individuals’ self-realization and to social justice and that instances of misrecognition are injustices that cause moral injuries. The change in approach to misrecognition that I advocate is to replace a macrosocial top-down picture of misrecognition, such as Honneth’s typology, with a fine-grained phenomenological picture of multiple dimensions in misrecognition behaviors that offers greater explanatory power. This paper explains why a multidimensional view of misrecognition is needed and explores the various ways that engagement with pathological norms or disengagement from individuals lead to injustices of misrecognition and how understanding behaviors in terms of these two dimensions—norms and individuals—illuminates causes of injustice. The multidimensional view of misrecognition replaces Honneth’s binary view of misrecognition as the contrary to recognition without replacing Honneth’s conceptions of the value of recognition.


Introduction
Following Axel Honneth and others, I accept that recognition is integral to individuals' self-realization and to social justice and that instances of misrecognition are injustices that cause moral injuries.The change in approach to misrecognition that I advocate is to replace a macrosocial top-down picture of misrecognition, such as Honneth's (2003;2007a;2008)

Why a Multidimensional View?
Honneth provides us with the valuable insight that justice requires mutual recognition.Recognition is not sufficient for justice, but it is necessary for it.I cannot receive legal rights unless I am first recognized as a person.If I am not recognized as a member of the ethical community, I will not receive the respect that persons deserve.Recognition norms inform us what conduct is proper when we encounter certain types of people in certain types of situations.Engaging with recognition norms is part of our acceptance of our moral responsibility, and lack of a sense of moral responsibility for another is a significant factor in injustice.By Honneth's definition, recognition behavior is a tracking of specific positive properties in others as measured by means of social recognition norms (Honneth, 2008, 153).For example, society's recognition norms teach me that I should respect honesty and that when I know someone who is honest in his dealings, I recognize that individual as honest and treat him accordingly.Given Honneth's picture of misrecognition as the contrary of recognition (Honneth, 2003;Honneth 2007a), it would seem that misrecognition behavior can be defined as occurrences in which recognition norms are not engaged and applied.If I meet someone who is honest, but I either do not care about honesty or do not recognize the other's honesty, I am not valuing the other appropriately.If I do not consider a right to be important or do not acknowledge an individual's entitlement to that right, I will not behave as required by that right toward the individual, and that is misrecognition.
Honneth's account gives the impression, intended or not, that if recognition norms are in place and engaged with, then there is justice in recognition relations.
For two reasons, I think the connection between recognition norms and misrecognition is not a binary one.First is that the norms themselves may be unjust, so following them would lead to injustice.Second is that engaging with the norms themselves is not always sufficient to achieve justice.We need to take these two aspects of recognition into account and extend Honneth's insights into the importance of recognition in justice by clearly indicating all that is required in recognition relations to achieve justice.A closer analysis of recognition norms and misrecognition behavior reveals their complex interrelationship.First, I will look at the ways that individuals do not engage with norms (a lack of vertical recognition), and then I will explore ways in which individuals can engage with norms that, in practice, perpetrate misrecognition on others.It is counterintuitive to think that misrecognition behavior could maintain engagement with recognition norms, but it is the case in some misrecognition behaviors.
Honneth does not develop this idea adequately, but he said that embedded within a discussion of individuals' socialization into their society's recognition order, "subjects acquire the capacity to move about within the normative structures of their social network by treating each other in accordance with the specific kind of recognitional relationship they maintain with each other (Honneth, 2011, p. 396).I think this points to a core aspect of recognition-that it is behaviors within the constellation of relationships between individuals that must be constantly maintained by the individuals involved.I think that this thought opens up a new emphasis on recognition relations that I wish to expand.
Unlike Honneth, I do not think that "a just society requires no more than that subjects learn the various patterns of mutual recognition 'well enough'" (Honneth, 2011, p. 395).I understand his point-that we need not place a moral burden on individuals to excel at the "art" of recognition.However, injustice occurs when recognition relations are dysfunctional, and recognition relations can be dysfunctional in ways beyond individuals not learning the patterns of mutual recognition-in other words, misrecognition is more than recognition norms not being applied.
To recognize another is to see him or her as a member of the ethical community and to acknowledge his or her experiences as real and worthy of consideration.Stephen Darwall (2010) has argued that the authority to demand respect from others and hold them answerable if they do not provide it are second-personal reasons that operate within a circle of mutually involving concepts of authority and accountability.Similarly, Christopher Zurn (2015) observes that only other recognizing agents can engage in the mutual interactions of recognition and participate in our claims of normative behavior expectations.which concern for the other individual is not conditioned by prudential considerations.Ikäheimo's reason for making these distinctions is to argue that only unconditional purely intersubjective horizontal recognition-recognition that is not of another individual as a bearer of a normative status but as an individual irreducible to functional significance-can be called "love" and "respect."When we are moved unconditionally by others, that is a genuine respect not mediated by a sense of obligation.
Ikäheimo's discussion makes clear the real-world benefits of mutual recognition and the harm that comes from misrecognition.Humans are autonomous beings, but one of the essential features of the human life-form distinguishing it from animal life-forms is that humans are governed by social norms authorized by humans themselves.This means, Ikäheimo says, that to live a human life, human individuals must recognize "vertically upwards" some norms as governing their lives, and it also means that they must recognize some others horizontally both in the normatively mediated sense as bearers of the rights, duties, entitlements, and responsibilities prescribed by the norms, and in the purely intersubjective sense as having or sharing authority on those norms (Ikäheimo, 2015, pp. 32-33).Human freedom, then, is not a general independence from others (which is impossible) or freedom from being determined by anything other than oneself.Concrete freedom is finding oneself affirmed as having authority by other individuals who we affirm as having authority in the unconditional mode of respect and this is the goodness of mutual recognition.Genuine freedom is therefore a practical question of the real-life capacity and propensity for individuals to have genuine respect recognition for each other (Ikäheimo, 2015, pp. 35-36).
How I interpret and apply Ikäheimo's conceptions is to understand that though we must vertically recognize that norms govern our social lives, there is more to applying a recognition norm than an awareness that applying it in one's interaction with another individual is the right thing to do.Recognition requires a set of norms and social institutions to guide it, but recognition also requires that we engage actively in intersubjective recognition relations.In many circumstances, only a particular way of engagement with the individual in his or her distinct circumstances is proper recognition of that individual.I need to tailor my response to the individual in front of me; my recognizing a particular individual is conditioned by his or her individuality.Justice demands that we consider what norms apply to the current situation, plus it demands that the application of those norms be tailored to suit the individuals involved.
Justice requires engagements with recognition in two dimensions, one vertical with recognition norms and one horizontal with individuals, meaning that nonengagement with either norms or individuals could lead to injustice.The demands of recognition, aside from a narrow set of legal relations, go beyond the conventionality of applying norms to groups of people.Justice requires that some forms of legal recognition apply equally to all individuals and, therefore, requires nonengagement with other individuals in their particularities.Basic human rights are invariant, but nearly everything else in social interactions is variant.
Even a legal judge needs to apply the norms according to the individual circumstances.We need to modulate norms according to individual circumstances and a range of interpretations dependent on the individual.Within the need for engagement with other individuals, there are public interactions in which engaging with the individual is necessary but in which we do not need to engage the person as an individual.For example, in commercial transactions, we are polite to those who serve us or to the individuals we serve, but we do not always need to know them personally-what Ikäheimo calls normatively mediated horizontal recognition.We can engage with individuals in ways that do not take into account their individuality, though we are still recognizing them as human beings.There are other interactions in which recognition requires engaging with another individual in a way that recognizes the individual as an individual.In personal relations such as between family and friends, and in mentoring or other care relationships, only unconditional personal engagement meets the needs of recognition and justice.Unconditional purely intersubjective horizontal recognition should not appear only in the most intimate relationships, however, because intersubjective recognition relations that are based on sincere care for others are sincere expressions of our humanity and are what, more than any other social activity, cultivates self-realization and autonomy, and, thus, justice.
Engagement is at the core of recognition because recognition always takes an individual as an object.Norms exert a constant influence on individuals, and the following of norms can be a nonreflective action.Recognition is different because it requires an intention-an unreflective following of the norms is not a recognition of another.Recognition norms are universal within a culture, but to be operative, the norms must be applied to an individual.Recognition norms are nonspecific and need to be made specific through an expression of intention.General recognition norms point to possible recognition behaviors, but this potential behavior must be made manifest through an individual expression directed at another individual.Because recognition is related to certain aspects of another individual, it is a specific response to the way a specific individual is.
Recognition is recognition only if it is the expression of a purposeful intention, not incidental or accidental, but directed and specific.
Recognition is a matter of caring about others in terms of significance, if not fondness.Human interaction that is without care for another's needs and wellbeing is itself a kind of misrecognition.The mutual nature of recognition calls for an intersubjective engagement between individuals of mutual valuing if not mutual affection.Because recognition is a relation of care, recognition comes more easily within personal relationships.According to Stanley Cavell (1976, pp. 238-266), maintaining social relations requires engaging with another individual such that one is existentially involved in the emotional world of the other individual.The involvement Cavell describes need not be intimate but does need to be what he calls a "stance of acknowledgement" of the other individual that is emotional rather than cognitive.This involvement is a recognitional stance of mutual sympathy through which we come to understand that we have a moral responsibility to react to the other individual in specific ways.I will explore ways in which recognition relations have gone wrong and lead to misrecognition.First I will discuss misrecognitions in which the problem is in vertical recognition, either disengagement from norms or engagement with problematic norms, and then I will discuss misrecognitions in which the problem is in horizontal recognition in which there is insufficient or improper engagement with other individuals.

Dimension of disengagement from norms
If an individual or social institution is not engaging with norms, then misrecognition is a likely consequence.If, for example, we ignore the recognition norm that says that productive labor should be rewarded, then we will not respect those who provide productive labor, which is a misrecognition.Individuals are socialized into social norms and learn their value, so broad general disregard for recognition norms would be rare.It is possible that someone can consciously and willfully disregard all norms, taking herself out of mutual recognition relations despite the cost of becoming a pariah in her community.However, given the essentialness of recognition for social functioning, it is far more likely that nonengagement with norms is a specific disregard within a specific situation.At times, we become oblivious to others in our everyday tasks and morally injure others in our inattention, but we can be prodded into awareness at any moment by seeing how we are not treating another appropriately.An example would be being so focused on one's current activity, such as driving or walking in a crowded area, that one forgets the rules regarding behavior, being either rude or otherwise negligent in our moral obligations to others.This type of misrecognition is prereflective and is often resolvable by reflecting on the effects of our obliviousness.
There can also be a more deliberate nonengagement with norms when individuals believe that certain norms are not appealing or convenient within a specific social environment.Disengagement from norms is compartmentalized to suit one's own interests without a rejection of moral responsibility in general.
Individuals can rationalize away their responsibility to follow specific norms in specific situations, such as in their workplace.Business owners, for example, can neglect the health and safety of their employees to preserve profits while at the same time being honest in their accounting practices.A supervisor could think that recognizing his employees' needs is unimportant because they are his subordinates but still treat friends and family justly.Workers, perhaps in response to their employers' actions, could believe that norms do not apply, or apply differently, in specific situations on the job.A worker could see dishonesty on the job as acceptable if it increases her productivity.Another could rationalize that his theft of company property is acceptable.Another could feel that she does not owe politeness or camaraderie to fellow workers because it is "just a job."By suspending the application of recognition norms in particular aspects of one's life, one is perpetrating misrecognition.
In the above examples of nonengagement, the norms themselves are not causing misrecognition and injustice.It is also possible that engagement with norms leads to misrecognition if the norms themselves are misrecognitions.In the next section, I identify two types of recognition norms that result in misrecognitions, differentiated by whether the norms are tracking putative negatives, which I call "normative discrimination," or putative positives, which I call "pathological recognition."I will discuss each in turn.

Normative discrimination
What I call "normative discrimination" is the use of recognition-like norms that designate particular social groups as having negative traits that characterize those groups as deficient and inferior, justifying negative consideration and treatment of those people.These norms are a form of negative recognition that mediates our interactions with certain groups, dictating that the appropriate response is to deny these groups positive recognition and moral consideration.
Because the discrimination is guided by recognition-like norms, individuals who perpetrate such discrimination believe they are behaving properly.The normative character of normative discrimination discourages questioning whether the traits it attributes to targeted groups are actually present in individual members of that group.The negative recognition of normative discrimination differs from a negative response to violations of norms such as disapproving of dishonesty or theft.There, the negative response recognizes the rights of those who have been wronged, and a negative response to wrongdoers is an appropriate upholding of norms.When we punish someone who has been convicted of a crime with imprisonment or fines, we are upholding general norms that recognize the rights of victims of the crime, even if we are denying recognition to the convicted individual's freedom and desire to not be punished.
In contrast, a normative discrimination is when a trait that should be neutral to moral norms (skin color, ethnicity, or religion) is taken as a negative and all who hold that trait are regarded as less worthy.Normative discrimination is directed predominantly at social groups separated by race, gender, class, and so on.
Additional illusionary negatives are often attributed to a social group, such as labeling all Muslims as violent, all Jews as dishonest, all gays as promiscuous, all who live in poverty as deserving their poverty because they are lazy, and so on.
How the targets of normative discrimination actually are is irrelevant to the negative stereotypes because the perpetrators follow the norms that dictate behavior toward the targeted groups.Veit Bader's (2007) "criteria of ascription," by which he categorizes structural asymmetries of power and practices of discrimination, oppression, and exclusion as being socially defined and ascribed characteristics of targeted groups, are examples of normative discrimination.
Normative discrimination can be taken to the extreme of a group being considered not deserving of any moral consideration.This misrecognition is beyond a lack of awareness of the moral standing of others and is a conscious antagonism toward others.An individual engaged in this comportment considers the appropriate response to other groups of human beings is to deprive the other actively of recognition as a human being.The extreme hostility toward a number of historically marginalized groups such as Gypsies and Jews in Europe, Dalits in India, and Burakumin in Japan are examples of this extreme normative discrimination.Someone born into one of these groups is condemned for life to misrecognition.The stigma attached to certain diseases or conditions also fits into normative discrimination.Those afflicted with leprosy were cast out from society as unclean.More recently, those afflicted with AIDS have suffered similar pariah status.In both cases, the ostracizing was accompanied by moral rebuke, the victims condemned as immoral simply for having a disease.One could say these people are rendered invisible, but it is more accurate to say they are condemned as unfit to be included and are dispossessed of rights and status.
The institution of slavery in the Americas is a historical example of how the recognition norms of normative discrimination structure human interactions.
Slavery is a relationship defined by a malicious use of power, but slavery in the Americas did not result from taking away an existing recognition relation from Because slaves were natally alienated by normative discrimination, questions about slaves' integrity, honor, autonomy, or self-respect were nonsensical to anyone who engaged with the norms that specified what the slaves were-property.Slaves were, as Patterson (1982, p. 263) observes, annulled of rights and identity, without ties to past or future, unrecognizable as human beings, at best shadow members of society.The attitude of impossibility of the slaves' social inclusion preceded the enslavement because the normative discrimination framed the recognition relations with the slave whether the slave was captured or born into slavery.Before the violent act of enslavement occurred, the target, reduced to skin as Fanon said, had been deemed to be compatible with enslavement.Whether the assessment was that the slaves were undeserving of freedom or deserving of enslavement, the misrecognition was a normative discrimination against those who possessed the trait of dark skin and, therefore, lacked humanity, dignity, and rationality.It is not so much that the slave was objectified as a tool as much as it was that the slave was tracked as being of no value beyond menial labor.
Our contemporary society does not have slavery per se, though a Marxist theorist could point to low wages as a form of slavery.Our society retains the normative discrimination of what Andrew Sayer (2009) calls "contributive injustice"-the social misrecognition that restricts what members of social classes are allowed to contribute, particularly in terms of occupations.The lottery of birth restricts most individuals to an inheritance of class distinction that limits their economic opportunities, whereas the fortunate inherit wealth either directly or through privileged opportunities for education, jobs, and careers.As Sayer (2011) observes, public attitudes support the idea that greater contributions to society deserve greater compensation, but the public measures the value of contributions on the basis of class and an unequal distribution of labor.The social structure produces unequal opportunities, with jobs with higher social status and compensation going to a privileged class.Most of the problems of distributive injustice stem from this contributive injustice because low-value jobs are given low-value compensation.Sayer (2009, p. 92) correctly observes that what individuals are allowed to contribute is at least as important as what they receive in terms of resources.This misrecognition is centered on jobs and occupations, but it extends to educational and cultural opportunities, the health hazards and health care one encounters, where one can afford to live, and all of the lifestyle opportunities that go with these.Contributive injustice is a normative discrimination against others who are not allowed to contribute and not allowed to use their talents and explore their possibilities.A wide range of social groups are negatively tracked and restricted as to the occupations they can enter.The normative discrimination against women as weaker and less rational restricts their occupational opportunities and leads to glass ceilings within occupations.
Minorities of race, ethnicity, and religion are also negatively discriminated against and restricted to low-value occupations.Mostly, contributive injustice is tied to class, with labor divided between blue-collar and white-collar, and individual workers are subsumed under the norms that designate their social contributions and status.
Despite the fact that contributive injustice damages society, causing it to miss out on the potential contributions of so many, its injustice persists because the normative discrimination is seen as a proper response to how things are.Sayer (2009, p. 87) observes that one of the most common contemporary misrecognitions is underestimating the extent to which structural inequalities give only some individuals preferential access to practices that are socially recognized.Sayer argues that the cause of this unequal distribution of occupations-society's structural inequalities-is likely to be misrecognized as being the deserved product of effort and intelligence.Furthermore, specific individuals' contributions are evaluated according to the unequal distribution of labor, misrecognizing their contributions and qualities.The combination of these two misrecognitions means that regardless of individual traits and efforts, the economically privileged are seen as having earned their wealth through hard work and superior ability, and the economically disadvantaged are seen as deserving of their lack of wealth because they are lazy and incompetent.These misrecognitions hide and reinforce contemporary society's structures that created class inequality, contributive and distributional injustices, and their accompanying normative discrimination norms.
In normative discrimination, a negative preconception, not the other individual, is being seen.The other is being viewed through the negative preconception and treated with hostility on the basis of it.The mistake in normative discrimination is that the perpetrator is guided by his or her own preconceptions (though these preconceptions are usually learned from the culture's recognition norms) rather than the attributes actually possessed by the other individual.The perpetrator assumes, if not insists, that the oppressed others conform to those preconceptions, and the perpetrator is resistant to contrary information.Negative recognition norms are a denial, often with malice, of the positive values and contributions of others who hold particular traits and, thus, are misrecognition.Oppressed individuals are rendered without voice or will, and their experiences, words, and actions are suspected and delegitimized.
Today, for example, Muslims are tracked (literally and figuratively) as terrorists; their every word and action is treated as suspect, and their claims for recognition as human beings are delegitimized.
In today's pluralistic society, malice in normative discrimination often reflects social insecurity by dominant groups against minority groups.Racists, sexists, homophobes, jingoists, and antireligious bigots of all stripes imagine themselves harmed by the social inclusion of hated and feared groups.To see those one thinks inferior being treated equally by society is perceived as a moral insult.Normative discrimination also arises in the midst of ethnic and sectarian conflicts.When tensions exist between social groups, all sides can become paranoid and overly sensitive to what the other groups are doing.Actions by the other groups are negatively tracked and perceived as threatening, and the success and well-being of other groups may be perceived as a matter of the others receiving greater and unfair advantages, thus diminishing one's own perceived social position (For example: Cohen, 1972;Vertovec, 2010;Azmanova, 2011;Göle, 2011).
Common targets of negative stereotyping are subcultures and countercultural movements, such as religious sects and youth movements.
Stanley Cohen (1972) observed that the behavior of subcultures, such as the violence between mods and rockers in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, is exaggerated by the mainstream culture to hysterical proportions, generating unwarranted hostility against those subcultures.Members of the subculture are stigmatized as moral outsiders or, as Cohen calls them, "folk devils," who are defined as a threat to the mainstream social order, values, and interests.The perceived threat becomes a moral panic, rousing normative discrimination against the members of the subculture.Members of a subculture are labeled as deviants, and "once a person is thus type cast, his acts are interpreted in terms of the status to which he has been assigned" (Cohen, 1972, p. 12).
The morality of normative discrimination is easily compartmentalized by perpetrators.Those who deny equal rights to women, minorities, immigrants, or other groups often do not see themselves as being against rights and equality.
They would see their exclusion of particular groups not as a double standard but as consistent with and upholding of moral norms.They would justify their disparate treatment with an interpretive narrative of why targeted groups are deserving of exclusion.Superficially rational arguments are used to justify the misrecognition as a case of the victims deserving it and even that there is an ethical demand to misrecognize these individuals because of their traits.The

Pathological recognition
Recognition norms that purport to recognize groups of individuals positively but in practice misrecognize them I label "pathological recognition"recognition norms that cause injustice.In pathological recognition, social relations are structured by a recognition order that designates social groups, such as women, as having particular traits that should be positively recognized.Within this recognition order, individuals recognize others by engaging with and applying their culture's seemingly positive recognition norms.This type of misrecognition behavior conforms to a recognition-like structure that socializes individuals into behaviors that emulate recognition, but the norms are pathological in that the cultural recognition norms are concealed misrecognitions, the application of which does not support others' self-realization and autonomy.Pathological recognition norms erode others' autonomy by subsuming them under recognition norms that define them and limit their possibility for recognition-for example, the traditional characterization of the traits and contributions of women.Unlike normative discrimination, the recognition norms of pathological recognition provide an affirmation of the value of targeted individuals.Both forms normatively restrict individuals and their possibilities, but pathological recognition deals with norms that focus on alleged positives that exclude other positives, whereas normative discrimination focuses on alleged negatives.
Pathological recognition encompasses portrayals of negative recognition as domination, as advanced by, for example, Althusser (1971), Markell (2003), andMcNay (2008).These theorists address how recognition is used to maintain social domination by motivating subjects to serve the interests of power.
Individuals are recognized for adhering to their responsibilities and duties to society, and their recognized compliance gives them a social identity.These theorists tend to reject recognition as irredeemable.Althusser rejects recognition as the central mechanism of ideology, and McNay rejects recognition as a model for emancipatory critique.Markell sees the pursuit of recognition of our identity from social institutions as unobtainable, contributing to injustice rather than emancipating us from it.What these negative conceptions of recognition tend to overlook is that the forces of domination succeed because they are exploiting a positive social mechanism.Recognition can be distorted and used to dominate people because recognition can have a positive influence on individuals but can be difficult for individuals to discern.As Honneth (2007b) says, we need to distinguish the false forms of recognition from its correct morally positive forms, even though identifying "correct and morally required" recognition is even more difficult than Honneth assumes.
What I argue separates false forms of recognition from positive ones is that the former attribute to individuals stereotypical traits and value judgments that subsume individuals under a group definition.These attributed recognition norms hinder those individuals' possibilities for self-realization and receiving recognition for their actual qualities and contributions.Because pathological recognition norms appear to be positive recognition but in practice perpetrate misrecognition, they are false dis-ease-causing forms of recognition.Pathological recognition's positive affirmations are deceptions that mislead individuals into accepting affirmations that limit them.Honneth gives the example of the idea of the heroic soldier, which grants to men who suffer social insignificance and a lack of prospects a type of recognition by becoming part of the military subculture (Honneth, 2007b).This example illustrates how pathological recognition works.
In the military subculture, individuals gain a measure of prestige and honor while at the same time being treated as nonautonomous servants of the state, if not used as canon fodder to achieve aims in which they have little or no involvement or from which they do not benefit.It is, at its core, a pathological recognition that lionizes war and honors "Our Glorious Dead" while downplaying the reality that they are, indeed, now dead.We should not doubt that many served honorably, and whether they acted for their country, families, or comrades in arms, they did their jobs properly and are worthy of our esteem.We also should not doubt that the esteem many individuals give to military veterans is sincere and with cause.
Many of those who adopt the pathological recognition norms are not deliberately misrecognizing others but are following social norms, so they believe they are behaving properly.Individual soldiers accepted the pathological recognition that glorifies war because it offers them with a place to belong and a sense of purpose, even if it denied them other options for self-relation and social affirmation.
Maybe they had no better options, because of their social position and society's contributive injustice, to achieve social status.This is why pathological recognition cannot be reduced to ideological machinations of the power structure.We need to discern how pathological recognition relations become part of the social fabric of normative expectations.
Pathological recognition works because there is reason for individuals to accept the narrative that distorts individuals and their possibilities, and with time these distortions become cultural traditions, largely unthought and unseen.The theoretical approach to pathological recognition is best served by understanding it as a largely prereflective form of recognition whose normative conceptions of individuals appears to value their traits and status positively but has lost touch with its tangible effects on individuals.That the putative identities of pathological recognition give individuals a sense of meaning and value is why it is appealing to those being limited by it, despite its imposed limitations.Pathological recognition can exploit two positive aspects of recognition: its importance for individual development and relations-to-self and its normative role as a guide for proper conduct.Pathological recognition can convince people that they are affirming themselves by applying the pathological recognition norms, and in doing so they are affirmed by others as behaving properly.
Pathological recognition remains influential as long as the targeted recipients do not come to realize fully that they are not receiving fair and equal recognition.This is why pathological recognition is accompanied by narratives that justify and maintain its pathological norms.Social norms provide criteria for knowing what is expected of us and for assessing our own actions.We are socialized into the habit of relying on norms to guide our behavior.By distorting recognition norms to give the appearance that following the norms either affirms individuals and/or exemplifies proper conduct, the recognition order can influence people into misrecognition behavior that could advance a conformist ideological agenda.Critique of this ideological structure is necessary to reveal its assumptions and influences in order to open the possibility of individuals' awareness of the structure and motivate them to oppose misrecognition.
A prime example of pathological recognition is the traditional classification of women as caregivers-the normative evaluation of a "good" woman as wife and mother.The traditional social definition of womanhood tracks positive qualities, such as being caring and nurturing.Such a classification of women recognizes women, but in a limiting way.The norms assigning women caregiver roles can place women into restrictive gender roles that, among other effects, define women's care work as part of a woman's natural disposition and thus not real labor warranting compensation.The pathological recognition norms defining women's nature as being caring and nurturing beings assumes that women should pursue caregiving as their life's work-either as a wife and mother or in caregiving professions such as nursing or teaching.The pathological norms defining women in this way preclude other possibilities for recognition-if one is recognized as being a caregiver, then one cannot easily also be recognized as powerful, creative, or intellectually gifted.Also, women's caregiver role is recognized as a less valuable contribution compared with the contributions made by men.No matter how good a wife and mother a woman is, she still would not be esteemed highly compared with men.This pathological recognition does not empower women or engender their self-realization.In practice, it limits women's autonomy and self-image by socializing them into accepting a seemingly positive self-image as a caregiver.What is recognized and honored excludes women as individuals with particular traits or behaviors and is instead an impersonal, stereotypical perception of women, attributed to women as a group.The side effect of this pathological recognition is that other possible roles for women that do not include the recognized traits are discouraged if not outright denied to women, and when women do enter male-dominated occupations, women are paid less.
That gender roles are propagated in terms of recognition helps explain their persistence.By objective criteria, women are being subordinated and harmed by this "recognition," yet women and men find it difficult to overcome gender roles because those roles' pathological recognition norms are embedded within society's other, healthy recognition norms as part of the fabric of cultural attitudes.Men and women are socialized into a society's set of recognition norms, and the pervasiveness of a culture's pathological recognition norms gives individuals reason to believe that the norms are true and proper.Because men and women need mutual recognition and social acceptance, it is in their selfinterest to adopt recognition norms concerning women in their behaviors.Thus, through recognition, women have a stake in their subordination.What is more, the normative content of recognition normalizes the expectation of the subordination of women.For men, their place as superior to women is affirmed.
For women, their subordination feels natural in that it is familiar even when it feels wrong somehow.Pathological recognition norms affirm gender roles while at the same time hiding the damage they inflict.
Pathological recognition is the link between ideological structures and practices of subordination.Ideological forms of subordination cannot prevail without an adequate level of participation from all concerned.Amy Allen (2008, p. 77) says that "regulatory regimes cannot maintain and reproduce themselves; instead, they must be maintained and upheld by the individuals whom they regulate."Power structures can achieve acceptance and attachment from individuals through recognition norms.Recognition norms provide a moral grammar that individuals can use to gauge their own and others' behavior.
Recognition norms of all types are authoritative and normalizing-those following them see them as the basis for judging themselves and others.The classification of women as caregivers recognizes women who are quiet, nurturing, and long-suffering, but it does not honor, perhaps does not even see, women who are bold, intelligent, and creative.Pathological recognition and normative discrimination limit individuals' expression of talents and ideas and often actively silences targeted groups.If, for example, one has a limited view of East Asians as excelling in math and science, one can easily fail to recognize that they have talents and interests in the arts and humanities.If one has a limited view of African-Americans as physically talented in entertainment and athletics, one can easily not recognize their cognitive talents in academia or leadership roles.These stereotypes limit possibilities for recognition relations and opportunities for the individuals being stereotyped, failing to recognize them as human individuals who possess unique talents and personalities.Such stereotyping is common in human societies across race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and other group traits.

Dimension of Horizontal Engagement with Individuals
So far, we have discussed vertical misrecognition behaviors that are shaped by engagements with problematic norms and seen briefly how they discourage engagements with individuals.Now, we move to horizontal misrecognition behaviors that more directly stem from a disengagement from other individuals.
The moral aspect of human interaction is that recognition is possible only at a level of engagement in which other individuals are seen as having a moral value.
Intersubjective engagement means interaction with and awareness of other individuals as individual human beings with thoughts and desires who deserve moral consideration.Recognition relations need both engagement with norms and engagement with individuals to affirm individual self-realization and freedom.
Depending on how powerful the processes are that diminish a sense of moral responsibility, horizontal misrecognition could be structurally entrenched in interpersonal interactions or could be a by-product of a temporal forgetfulness from which an individual can recover.If it is the former, misrecognition behavior is entrenched and difficult for an individual to perceive, much less overcome.If it is the latter, then perhaps moral responsibility to others is only forgotten or obscured but not entirely abandoned.Not engaging with others intersubjectively precludes the possibility of adequately recognizing others, resulting in misrecognition such that we are oblivious and inconsiderate.These are behaviors in which we are no longer responsive to the other and we no longer recognize the other for who he or she is and how he or she is behaving.Within this type of misrecognition, the perpetrator would not see the other individual, resulting in blindness to the positive contributions and capacities of others, forestalling recognition.However, this is not to say that the individual who is not engaging intersubjectively is deliberately engaging in misrecognition behavior or is even aware of misrecognizing others.A perpetrator could be so engrossed in his or her activities, even while conducting them in a moral way, that he or she loses awareness of dealing with another human being.We go about our activities aware that others are present but not recognizing them as individuals, and this misrecognition is part of the self-absorption of everyday life.Honneth gives the example of a tennis player who is so focused on winning that she forgets her opponent is her best friend.Her goal has become independent of the context in which it originated, and "any attentiveness for the cooperating partner vanishes completely" (Honneth, 2008, p. 155).The tennis player has not forgotten the rules of the game but has forgotten her opponent's humanness and is no longer engaging intersubjectively with her friend.Winning the match has become a single purpose independent of her other relations to the world.Such a forgetfulness of others is commonplace in everyday life when we are caught up in everyday tasks and fail to notice and appreciate others as individuals like ourselves.In such forgetful behavior, we do not see other individuals as agents whose contributions and personal well-being should be taken into account.We perhaps remain polite, giving the appropriate gestures of civil behavior, but because we are forgetting the other, our courtesy is cursory and cold.This unintentional disengagement from others is temporary and does not necessarily lead to the elimination of all intersubjective engagements.This dimension of misrecognition could be a deliberate withdrawal from intersubjective engagements or an involuntary loss of the capacity for intersubjective engagements.Deliberate withdrawal from intersubjective relations is not a forgetting but a denial or defensiveness resulting in not considering the possibility of others' contributions and personal well-being.A deliberate withdrawal is most likely isolated within certain social interactions rather than across an individual's entire life-for example, an individual being inconsiderate of others while posting comments online-engaging in thoughtless or aggressive behaviors he or she would not engage in within other interpersonal interactions.Disengagement may also result from general insecurity and anxiety.
We are, as Cillian McBride (2013, pp. 136-137) says, recognition-sensitive beings because our well-being depends on receiving recognition, as Honneth says.We need recognition from others, and the potential lack of it is a threat.It is no surprise that social life comes with anxiety about how others will judge us and our actions.Such anxiety limits how much we are willing to risk exposure to negative judgments from others, and we deliberately hold back from engaging with others.
Tension in recognition relations explains a great deal of the social anxiety we all have, and it explains why some individuals protect a positive self-image by telling themselves they do not need others' approval, which is another way intersubjective engagement can be cut off.Within our relationships, changes in circumstances or in other individuals change our recognition relations with them.
We are creatures of habit, and we tend to resist change.The threat of changes in relations leads to the temptation to withdraw from intersubjective engagement.
In objectification, one engages with specific other individuals but nonetheless takes them to be the same as others who seem to possess similar traits and capacities.This generalization neglects the distinct traits and needs of the individual, objectifying or commoditizing him or her.In more benign forms, objectification is a general depersonalization, akin to the temporary lack of intersubjective engagement, in which only a general recognition of that individual is possible.Because we are not engaging with that person as a specific individual, we are less open to recognition relations beyond acknowledging him or her as a human being.The other individual is perceived as only a member of a type and is objectified or commoditized.Objectification is often malevolent.Normative discrimination against groups leads to objectification of individuals whose particular traits and capacities are erased by an identity attributed to them that opens up the objectified to abuse.Within patriarchy, women are objectified as beings in service of male desires.Sexual objectification of women has multiple forms and degrees, but the common denominator is that women are the proper objects of male sexual desire, the proper purpose of women being that they are used in order to satisfy that desire.As Timo Jütten (2016) has argued, sexual objectification of women is more than instrumentalisation of them; it is a social meaning imposed on them that undermines their autonomy and equal social standing even at times when they are not being used as an instrument to gratify male desire.
To objectify another individual is to see that person as not worth engaging with intersubjectively.We know that we have more latitude in how we treat objects than in how we treat other human beings, and we can use objects as we see fit.When individuals are objectified, they are objects for our use.In sexual objectification, the woman is excluded from intersubjective engagement because her normative status is as a sexual object, and not even a particular sexual object, but a fungible one.She is a commodity to be bought, sold, and used.This, I argue, is because objectification, unlike normative discrimination, sees the victim as having use value but not as an individual.The companion to pathological recognition's putative positives of women's gender roles is that women are portrayed as subordinate objects whose value is lessened by intersubjective engagement, plus, intersubjective engagement reveals the woman is not an object.This normative status of women as sexual objects not to be engaged with as individuals enables human trafficking and sexual slavery.Attempts by women to exercise their autonomy in opposition to their imposed social meaning are met with stern and perhaps violent attempts to reassert their objectification.
Self-absorbed disengagement involves behaviors in which the disengagement is driven not by norms but either by a refusal to acknowledge or deal with another or by a moral judgment that the other individual is not worth engaging with as an equal.Perhaps the other is considered to have no qualities of value to the community or not having wants or needs worth considering.What interaction there is with others assumes how other individuals are, and one is resistant to contrary information.Self-absorbed disengagement is misrecognition in its denial of the other individual's value.Various kinds of social ostracizing, shunning, and disregard are examples of self-absorbed disengagement.
Instances of this misrecognition behavior involve restricting the granting of recognition to a select few, while disregarding or denying recognition to others.A line is drawn between those who are "us" and those who are "them," and we engage with "us" but not with "them."Honneth (2007a, p. 227) gives the example of a robber recognizing his companions while misrecognizing his victim.Similar divisions are drawn by almost all individuals who, wittingly or not, engage more with individuals within their group but less with those outside their group.This explains the tendency that all individuals have of according more recognition to those within their social circle than to those outside it.We each have our own lives and our own involvements and relationships, and it is no surprise that we tend to place more importance on individuals and relationships close to us.The human tendency to view those outside our own group through a lens of our own preconceptions is a common form of misrecognition.This disengagement happens at all levels of society, from ignoring other individuals who are not our friends or family, to governments not seeing members of groups for who they are."The Indian delegates had been organized into religious groups by the colonial power.Gandhi objected vehemently but colonial officials were immovable in their determination to view Indians primarily through the lens of sectarian division" (McBride, 2013, p. 37).The British self-absorbed disengagement that saw Indians only in terms of British categorization had its most disastrous consequences in the shortsighted partition of the land into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan.
McBride quotes Patricia Williams on the attitudes of white tourists to local African-American churches, saying that for the whites, "no one existed for them who could not be governed by their intensions" (as cited in McBride, 2013, p. 37).
In other words, for the white tourists, African-Americans did not exist as individuals, only as objects to be used for their pleasure.These condescending and patronizing attitudes are not seen by perpetrators as disrespectful, and it might not even occur to them that they are misrecognitions.We could count some of this as the manifestation of privilege, but in a broader sense it reveals a common human laziness to engage with others and be open to perceiving them as they are.
So far, I have discussed the dimension of personal engagement only in its positive aspect-that because acknowledging another individual's positive traits is recognition, the absence of this acknowledgment is misrecognition.There is also personal engagement that is perverse.Intersubjective engagement is perverse when it is perpetrated with intentions contrary to affirming the other positively.In perverse engagement, in regard to the individual engaged with, recognition norms are willfully neglected because the needs and desires of the other are subsumed under the perpetrator's desires.Unlike normative discrimination that targets a social group, in perverse engagement the perpetrator targets a specific individual, believing either that this specific individual does not deserve to be treated well or that this individual's deservedness is unimportant in the context of the perpetrator's larger concerns.
Perverse engagement ranges from selfishness to active manipulation of another to sadistic behavior.Examples of perverse engagement would be a bully who targets a specific individual to abuse or a boss who harasses a particular employee.Most bullying and harassment are targeted antagonism that can be understood as perverse engagement.Another example is a con artist engaging with an individual to swindle him or her.The con artist may have selected a target on the basis of the target's perceived vulnerability or gullibility, and the con artist ignores the norms against theft and dishonesty, specifically in terms of that individual, even if the con artist is honest with others.The con artist is engaging with the other, recognizing and acting in response to the individual's qualities, only in the service of his or her involvement in the successful swindle, but there is not necessarily a specific antagonism toward the target.
The complexity of the negative aspect of personal engagement can be unpacked further.The misrecognition behavior of perverse individual engagement is characterized by the self-absorbed perpetrator focusing on a personal relation but not on recognition or moral norms.In other words, the character of perverse individual engagement is not "these norms are irrelevant" but "for this specific individual these norms are irrelevant."A stalker is obsessed with a specific individual to the extent that norms of appropriate conduct are subsumed under the stalker's desires, which disregards how the other individual actually is.Stalkers often falsely believe the objects of their obsession return their interest and do not take in information to the contrary.If the stalker was engaging intersubjectively with the other individual, he or she would take into account the expressions of noninterest from the other person.But because the stalker is engaging not with the other but with his or her own attributed identity of the other, there is no intersubjective engagement.An individual seeking revenge on another is engaged with that individual but seeks to harm him or her, so the engagement is not an intersubjective genuine respect.The perpetrator considers that the other deserves to be harmed, not affirmed.

Conclusion
The multidimensional view of misrecognition expands the tools available to us to investigate and understand injustice.The misrecognitions perpetrated by and experienced by individuals do not map onto Honneth's typology of misrecognition as being the contrary of recognition-a typology that is too narrowly construed to encompass the diversity of misrecognition behaviors.
Rather than seeing misrecognition as simply a violation of recognition norms, the multidimensional view separates positive and negative recognitions.The multidimensional view of misrecognition understands recognition and misrecognition as complex responses by individuals to everyday circumstances that involve varying vertical engagements with norms and horizontal engagements with other individuals.This more complex view of misrecognition reflects the complexity and diversity of human behaviors and helps us to better understand the distinct harms of injustice.The multidimensional view illuminates that, though social institutions set the stage, misrecognition behaviors occur at the microsocial level of individual and small group interactions.The insight that recognition and misrecognition are best viewed in terms of a web of interpersonal relations opens up a microsocial analysis of recognition relations and provides us with the tools to begin to tackle those injustices caused by individuals not being treated as individuals.This microsocial analysis adds complexity to our task of understanding misrecognition, because it calls for a deeper analysis of individual relations, attitudes, and actions, but such an analysis will give our social theory greater explanatory power.
typology or Emmanuel Renault's (2011) institutional approach, with a fine-grained phenomenological picture of multiple dimensions in misrecognition behaviors.A multidimensional view of misrecognition is needed because recognition requires both engagement with positive recognition norms and engagement with other individuals.The multidimensional view of misrecognition in terms of the dimensions of engagement with norms and with individuals replaces Honneth's binary view of misrecognition as the contrary to recognition without replacing Honneth's conceptions of the value of recognition.In this paper, I explore how engagement with pathological norms and disengagement from individuals are forms of injustice.I offer a multidimensional view of misrecognition that illuminates misrecognition behaviors and provides greater explanatory power of both recognition and misrecognition by addressing the importance of individuals recognizing each other as individuals.
Mutual recognition and normative behavior require intersubjective involvement with other human beings as human beings.Because recognition is related to certain aspects of another individual, it is a specific response to a specific individual.Because recognition is by someone of someone, recognition is a relation between individuals.It is reasonable then to consider misrecognition as a dimension of social interaction in which recognition relations between individuals lack reciprocity.Recognition relations are complex, and we need to delve into what is involved in occurrences of misrecognition to craft a more expanded and finer-grained account than Honneth's account of misrecognition as the contrary of recognition.We need to clarify the relations of recognition norms to injustice and identify which norms contribute to injustice, and we also need to clarify the nature of our relations with individuals who are the recipients of our recognition.Heikki Ikäheimo (2015) provides a helpful way of conceiving of differences in recognition relations.He first distinguishes between vertical and horizontal recognition.Vertical recognition occurs between persons and norms and institutions.Social norms and institutions exist if and only if individuals recognize them as authoritative (upwards vertical recognition), and social institutions such as governmental bodies recognize persons as possessing rights (downwards vertical recognition).Horizontal recognition occurs between individuals with Ikäheimo distinguishing between two forms: normatively mediated and purely intersubjective.The normatively mediated form of horizontal recognition is one individual recognizing another individual as a bearer of rights or entitlements stipulated by norms for which the recognition is obligatory.The second-purely intersubjective-is a recognitional response to another as an individual person independently of his or her rights and entitlements.Ikäheimo further identifies two modes of purely intersubjective horizontal recognition: conditional, in which concern for the other individual is instrumentally calculated in terms of one's own interests, and unconditional, in members of a community and enslaving them.Indentured servitude and debtors' prisons could be construed as a destruction of an existing recognition relation.An impoverished European (already suffering from normative discrimination because of his or her class) was condemned to a debtors' prison because he or she allegedly violated his or her responsibilities as a member of society.The social institution of debtors' prisons operated as a social relation that was used properly or improperly.An individual wrongly accused or condemned to debtors' prison would be suffering an injustice according to society's norms.Slavery operates under a very different set of assumptions because the normative discrimination based on race denied the possibility of recognition relations.Rather than a rupture of a recognition relation of social inclusion, the slave is, as Orlando Patterson (1982) observes, natally alienated.As Frantz Fanon (1967) observed, racism reduces others to a skin to which they are chained and determined.The recognition norms of the dominant culture are imposed onto the oppressed who are represented through normative discrimination as mere animal bodies unable to think, reason, or speak properly.The Native Americans and Africans enslaved by Europeans were always outsiders to the European slavers and had never been afforded recognition other than normative discrimination.The recognition order of European culture negatively recognized non-Europeans as inferior and uncivilized, and this normative assumption framed European encounters with indigenous people throughout the world.Africans and Native Americans had never been included, so enslaving them was ethically possible in a way that enslaving Europeans was not.
presence of normative discrimination reinforces an environment in which mistreatment of others is defensible.Instances of normative discrimination will be witnessed by other individuals who will become disinclined to offer recognition to socially ostracized individuals, even encouraged actively to misrecognize those individuals.Powerful individuals and institutions can use arguments and persuasion to convince others to engage in normative discrimination against targeted groups or individuals.Similarly, individuals can appeal to interpretive narratives to provide post hoc validity for misrecognition motivated by personal reasons.Often, rational arguments are not needed to tap into fear and hatred of others who are different.
Generally, individuals want to do what is considered proper and help maintain social order, and they are given reason to believe that by complying with traditional gender attitudes they are doing good for themselves and others.When socialized individuals adopt pathological recognition norms within their lives, those subordinating recognition norms persist and propagate through the generations.The basic structures of normative discrimination and pathological recognition can be applied to any group.Both pathological recognition and normative discrimination encourage a lack of engagement with other individuals because those individuals are subsumed under group identities and general norms, which limits recognition relations and the possibilities for individuals.
Unlike normative discrimination and pathological recognition, this type of misrecognition is not driven by social norms as much as by individuals' decisions of inclusion and exclusion.It does not have the entrenched hostility and dehumanization of normative discrimination, but there is a lack of genuine respect and consideration of those outside one's social circle.Within self-absorbed disengagement, the engagement is with the preconceived notions of the situation and others and not how the situation and other individuals actually are.This self-absorbed behavior hinders communication and intersubjective recognition.McBride describes an occurrence of self-absorbed disengagement by the British government in 1931: