Theoria Seminar - Th 10 April 5pm SAST - Normative Ambivalence in the Politics of Recognition
Christopher Allsobrook
The editorial board of Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory (Berghahn Books) warmly invites you on Thursday 10 April 2025 from 17:00 to 18:30 SAST (15:00 to 16:30 GMT) to an online seminar on the politics of recognition with an eminent panel of speakers:
Abraham Olivier (Professor of Philosophy at the University of Fort Hare, South Africa and author of Being in Pain and editor of Phenomenology in an African Context (2023) and Social and Political Theories of Recognition (2024).
Olerato Mogomotsi (University of Cape Town, South Africa)
Jane Gordon (Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut)
Andrea Hurst (Professor of Philosophy at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa)
Dimpho Maponya (University of Johannesburg, South Africa)
Pedro Tabensky (Rhodes University, South Africa)
Please join us to listen to these authors of the December 2024 special issue of Theoria talk about their contributions to understanding aspects of recognition with a focus on the enduring trend toward normative ambivalence in critical theories of recognition.
With the collapse of international liberal consensus on the basic features of global justice, have critical theories of recognition run out of road?
If recognition is normatively ambivalent, then what critical traction may we gain from a theory of recognition?
The context of protracted postcolonial misrecognition and social injustice lays the basis for the special issue of Theoria, which was co-edited by Christopher Allsobrook and Abraham Olivier.
This raises acute awareness of the ideological limitations of the concept of recognition for Critical Theory and African Philosophy.
The authors acknowledge the entanglement of norms of recognition in contested relations of power that influence subject-formation.
They recognise the normative ambivalence of recognition, which enables and constrains subjective agency.
But ongoing inequality and social injustice make palpable the practical effects of norms of mis/recognition.
What, then, are we to make of such careful strategies of ideological sensitivity to normative ambivalence?
How to register?
Attendance is free, but please register here. You will then receive an email with a link to the Zoom seminar.
This event will also be streamed live on YOUTUBE. You can attend by clicking here
For queries please contact Chris Allsobrook at calls...@ufh.ac.za or calls...@gmail.com