Contemporary Pragmatism Editions Rodopi Vol. 2, No. 2 (December 2005), 127–144 © 2005

From Folk Psychology to Deontology: Nancy Fraser on Redistribution and Recognition

Mitchell Aboulafia

Nancy Fraser has challenged the view that issues of identity are more central to political and social reform than attention to economic disparities. Fraser proposes a status model of recognition that treats recognition as a question of justice, rather than as a question of self- realization. In addition to appealing to the deontological, she also draws on folk paradigms and addresses them in a manner that reflects a sympathy with pragmatism. This article highlights difficulties that Fraser faces by incorporating the deontological in a model that has affinities to pragmatism.

According to Nancy Fraser, identity theorists have expanded our idea of what justice entails, but they have done so at a price. Commitments to economic justice, which have traditionally informed critical theory and leftist politics, have been replaced by concerns about recognition and difference. To the delight of neo-liberals and neo-conservatives, this has led to questions of redistribution being left by the wayside. In her article, “Rethinking Recognition,” Fraser frames the problem this way.

Claims for the recognition of difference now drive many of the world’s social conflicts.... Why today, after the demise of Soviet-style communism and the acceleration of globalization, do so many conflicts take this form? Why do so many movements couch their claims in the idiom of recognition? To pose this question is also to note the relative decline in claims for egalitarian redistribution. Once the hegemonic grammar of political contestation, the language of distribution is less salient today.... We are facing, then, a new constellation in the grammar of political claims-making – and one that is disturbing on two counts. First, this move from redistribution to recognition is occurring despite – or because of – an acceleration of economic globalization, at a time when an aggressively expanding capitalism is radically exacerbating 128 MITCHELL ABOULAFIA

economic inequality. In this context, questions of recognition are serving less to supplement, complicate and enrich redistributive struggles than to marginalize, eclipse and displace them. I shall call this the problem of displacement. Second, today’s recognition struggles are occurring at a moment of hugely increasing transcultural interaction and communication, when accelerated migration and global media flows are hybridizing and pluralizing cultural forms. Yet the routes such struggles take often serve not to promote respectful interaction within increasing- ly multicultural contexts, but to drastically simplify and reify group identities. They tend, rather, to encourage separatism, intolerance and chauvinism, patriarchalism and authoritarianism. I shall call this the problem of reification.1

The most developed statement of Fraser’s position to date is in Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange, a work that takes the form of a debate with Axel Honneth.2 Here, as well as in earlier articles, especially “Rethinking Recognition,” Fraser develops a wide-ranging and insightful theory that highlights the pitfalls that a fixation on identity politics poses, both in terms of economic justice and parochialism.3 Needless to say, as with virtually any thinker covering as much territory as Fraser attempts, tensions and ambiguities may arise. I am interested in focusing on her dual commitment to folk paradigms and the deontological, which reveals a tension in her thought between Fraser the pragmatist and Fraser the defender of a certain notion of progress.4 I should note that by making this claim, I am not intending to suggest that pragmatism is a monolithic tradition or that there aren’t pragmatists who would find her approach relatively congenial. Certainly there are pragmatists who are not averse to speaking about the importance of right and obligation. When I refer to pragmatism in this article, I appeal to a family of philosophies that emphasize pluralism, novelty, habit, the importance of problem-solving behavior, non-transcendental approaches to morality, and the importance of community in the development of the self and science. If asked to name the figure in the pragmatic tradition most relevant in the present context, I would say John Dewey, who will serve as foil for Fraser. I begin with a summary of the central claims of Fraser’s position, and then address the above mentioned tension, as well as difficulties that ensue from her lack of attention to the expressivist dimension of recognition. Fraser seeks to address moral philosophy, social theory, and political theory in her work and in her contribution to Redistribution or Recognition? My focus will be primarily on moral philosophy. I will consider Fraser’s views on critical theory, recognition and redistribution, the principle of participatory parity, ethical life, and the notion of self-realization. My goal is to outline the