Disability and the Pitfalls of Recognition

Abstract

Within the last 20 years, recognition has emerged as a central theme within social and political theory. Recognition can be understood in this context as the processes by which a person’s or group’s claims to and about their identity are acknowledged. As novel identity groups organise around the belief that they have been subjected to injustice because of features that have historically marked them out, two distinct questions are involved: (i) the status of the claim to have experienced injustice, and (ii) the legitimacy of the group identity itself (Young 1990). It seems only logical that the basic prerequisite for recognising a collective identity is that the group should exist in the first place, and the most controversy (and therefore some of the most interesting thinking) has centred on questions raised about claims to identity by groups that are unfamiliar and potentially more contested. So it is no coincidence that the rise of recognition as such a significant social and political concept has coincided with the emergence of emancipatory movements based on gender, sexual orientation and most recently disability, as these political movements have called into question many taken for granted assumptions about ‘real’ social identities.¹