Navigating the ‘Ideology of Eros’ in the Politics of Recognition

Love and the Ethic of Non-Recognition

in Theoria
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Andrea Hurst Professor, Nelson Mandela University, South Africa andrea.hurst@mandela.ac.za

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Abstract

This article discusses Charles Taylor's analysis of the ‘politics of recognition’, which reveals that the major versions of the latter share an ideological conception of Eros as a binding, unifying force. Such striving for oneness is seen as key to forming harmonious, just communities and nations, and ultimately global cohesion. I refer to this as the ‘ideology of Eros’. However, Taylor highlights an ironically divisive opposition concerning how to realise such oneness, based on incompatible foundational principles: ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’. Instead of a choice, Taylor opts for the demanding political task of ongoing negotiation between them. I augment Taylor's analysis by re-evaluating the figure of ‘non-recognition’ arising from Lacan's critique of the ‘ideology of Eros’, which is centred on Socrates’ encounter with Alcibiades in Plato's Symposium and to which he adds his notion of genuine love, which affirms an ethic of healthy ‘non-recognition’. I argue that this ethic supports the difficult political task that Taylor rightly calls for.

Recognition is a fundamental human need. In Abraham Maslow's (1943: 381–382) well-known hierarchy of needs, the self-esteem needed for ‘independence and freedom’ is closely tied to recognition from others. It needs no argument that well-being, personal safety and even life itself – as highlighted by Achille Mbembe's (2019) concept of ‘necropolitics’ depend on being taken account of. Further, individual and collective identities are shaped or distorted by recognition and misrecognition, making a ‘politics of recognition’ central to the pursuit of social justice in multicultural societies (Taylor 1994: 25). The major versions of the politics of recognition are rooted in a conception of Eros as a binding, unifying force that strives for oneness (Freud 1955: 42–43, 50). I refer to this as ‘the ideology of Eros’. It manifests individually in expressions such as ‘my other half’ and collectively in the aspiration towards global social cohesion. It finds typical expression in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's (1977: 111–113) argument that the devolution of the desire for recognition into a power struggle to the death is an immature form of consciousness that humanity should surpass through Eros; that is, through dismantling power imbalances and forming a community of citizens bound together by the equal reciprocal recognition of all for all.

Hegel and the Desire for Recognition

The narrative of desire and recognition in the Phenomenology of Spirit (Hegel 1977: 111–119) offers a fitting ‘backstory’ to a discussion of Taylor's ‘politics of recognition’ because it shows how the transformative dynamic of the master–slave dialectic leads to the democratic notion of community as ‘a regime of reciprocal recognition among equals’ (1994: 50), and, in turn, how this notion, derived from ‘the ideology of Eros’, conflicts with the workings of love.

Hegel (1977: 111, 113) argued that simultaneous identification of the other at the emergence of self-consciousness generates both awe and fear, since this other has the power to command the new self's fledgeling will and thus threaten its very existence. This renders new selves insecure about their place in the world and dependent on the other's recognition as a source validation. Most individuals, believing that true self-security is attained only through dominating and controlling the other's will, endeavour to win unilateral recognition from the other without offering reciprocation. If the other refuses to be dominated, the relation devolves into a lethal power struggle (Hegel 1977: 113–114). However, as Hegel noted, usually individuals are unevenly matched (1977: 114–115). One would rather die than be subjected to another and will sacrifice biological being to a spiritual value (such as freedom of will) in a struggle ‘to the death’ to become ‘the recognised master’. The other tends to give way, preserving the body-self perhaps but accepting the death of the autonomous self as a consequence. This person becomes ‘the recognising slave’.

For Hegel (1977: 116–117), the realisation that a hierarchical master–slave relation is an untenable, immature form of consciousness that should be superseded is an outcome of further dialectical work done by self-consciousness. Marked by the emergence of reason, we advance in our development when we are able to apply abstract thinking and conceptual understanding, allowing us to see that recognition forced out of a submissive other will never be genuine, and any struggle to wrest recognition from another is flawed. ‘Those who fail to win out in the honor stakes remain unrecognised’, as Taylor (1994: 50) explains, but the winners lose out too. The recognition they win has already lost its value, as the losers ‘are no longer free, self-supporting subjects on the same level with the winners’. For Hegel, while masters and slaves must find different ways out of their opposing aporetic positions, the outcome is that they become one and the same in the notion of ‘the citizen’ (1977: 117–119, 267). Their developmental work is dialectical in the sense that each comes to recognise the other in the self. Masters come to see that they have already lost the war in winning the battle, since they have produced themselves as slaves to the recognition that supports their power. Slaves regain independence not through further power struggles but through indifference to power plays and engaging instead in the struggle to refashion themselves through creative work in the material world and mastery of the object (Hegel 1977: 118–119).

The transformative dynamic of the master–slave dialectic leads to the democratic notion of a community of citizens as ‘a regime of reciprocal recognition among equals’ (Taylor 1994: 50). However, this democratic notion immediately becomes problematic because Eros is divided between ‘the ideology of Eros’, which favours community, and Eros as parental, familial and romantic love, which implies the recognition of something captivating in selected individuals, binding lovers to beloveds in a special way that supersedes the claims of others. Singularising love, which is essentially unfair, pits individuals against the group. Citizens, Hegel argues, are torn between their political obligations to the state, where all must be recognised equally, and the family loyalties that demand preferential recognition for individuals (1977: 267).

Driven by the ideology of Eros, however, Hegel insisted that reason's task was to reconcile contradictions and integrate opposing viewpoints, and he saw resolving this conflict as a developmental stage involving the ethical, political and religious task of integrating individuality within the communal (1977: 268–270). A familiar hierarchy emerges, which follows what Socrates lays out in Plato's Symposium (1989: 56–60). Parental, family and romantic love (as bodily, emotional and attached) is deemed initially necessary but should evolve into the more advanced form of social love, extended to all people in the form of ethics and politics, and finally leave the material and social world altogether in the highest, abstract form of divine love. Echoing this dynamic, Maslow proposed that so-called ‘transcenders’ surpassed the social competitiveness of ‘self-actualisers’, embracing social inclusiveness and synergy to the point of ‘identification with all human beings’ (1971: 272–279). In a similar vein, Freud argued that we ideally overcome primal sexual and aggressive passions through ‘socialisation’, developing a uniquely human ethical sense by the sublimation of sexual love into social justice (1961: 27). This is rewarded by social and political recognition (acceptance, value and a place within a group). Seeing it as reasonable to think that socialisation driven by the ideology of Eros promises a better kind of happiness than love's selfish libidinal happiness, Freud argued (1961: 27; 42), we expect maximal happiness to stem from ‘becoming a member of the human community’ and ‘working with all for the good of all’ (1961: 27). Although, as noted below, Freud believed we were misguided in this expectation, he conceded that it remains hard to see why such egalitarian communitarianism would not result in optimal human well-being. This sentiment, which underlies an enduring commitment to the democratic notion of community as ‘a regime of reciprocal recognition among equals’ (Freud 1961: 56;) persists, as Taylor shows, in our contemporary politics of recognition (1994: 50).

Charles Taylor and the Contemporary Politics of Recognition

The very notion of a politics of recognition, Taylor argues, stems from a pivotal ideological shift entailing the dissolution of social hierarchies, anchored in notions of ‘honour’, in favour of ‘human dignity’ (Taylor 1994: 26–37). Previously, property was literally a person's ‘honour’ and people were honoured (given value, dignity and status) because of the property they held. As Taylor notes: ‘For some to have honor in this sense, it is essential that not everyone have it’ (1994: 27). Honour was also contingent upon fulfilling inherited social roles, with deviations often resulting in ostracism. Further, recognition was not reciprocal. Honouring those in a higher station was obligatory, and denigration of those in a lower station was allowed and even expected.

The hierarchical honour system has been superseded (at least formally) by a modern ethos of universal human dignity, which seeks to dismantle power hierarchies and establish the equal reciprocal recognition of all for all (Taylor 1994: 27). Recognition in contemporary terms is a complex concept, integrating three different aspects when applied to humans. First, the sense of identification that resonates in ‘recognition’ is deeper than identifying someone as being the same person as encountered previously. It also implies identification with other people – recognition of myself in you, or our sameness as humans. This recognition that you are human like me should, second, entail recognition in the sense of ‘acknowledgement’ of your equal human value (however this is articulated), which goes hand in hand with the responsibility to respect this value. Third, recognition in the sense of ‘honour’ may be given to people, indicating admiration or esteem for achievements. Unlike the first two senses, honouring entails exclusivity; it is valueless as recognition if it is given indiscriminately to everyone.

Rousseau, Kant and Respect for Human Dignity as the Recognition of Sameness

Two early versions of the politics of recognition, based on respect for human dignity as the recognition of sameness, stem from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant (Taylor 1994: 44). Taylor's discussion of Rousseau's vision may be outlined very briefly as follows: individuals voluntarily enter into a social contract, agreeing upon a common good that reflects the true interests and collective aspirations of the entire community. Rousseau advocated for a society, shaped by ‘the general will’, where all individuals enjoy equal rights and status without undue privilege or extreme deprivation. All community members would enjoy recognition just by virtue of their voluntary association with one another. Rousseau envisioned a decentralised governance structure without class distinctions, and direct democracy where all citizens participated in decision-making. He dreamed of a society where citizens valued social solidarity, compassion and cooperation in pursuit of the collective good (1994: 44–51, 58–59). However, dissatisfaction with Rousseau's vision, Taylor notes, arises because those advocating for collective goals believe that society can be organised around a shared definition of the good life (1994: 58–59). Consensus regarding what constitutes the good life has proved impossible to achieve in large social groupings. Thus, Rousseau's insistence that people would need to be educated and shaped into citizens for whom ‘each sees and loves himself in the others’ (Rousseau, cited in Taylor 1994: 48) reveals troubling undertones of indoctrination. Such education and shaping tends to suppress individual differences for the sake of the common project, violating autonomy, marginalising dissenting internal voices and excluding outsiders.

Alternative Kantian-inspired models of equal recognition strive to reconcile ‘sameness’ (equal respect for human dignity) with individual differences (Taylor 1994: 57). These models acknowledge wide-ranging disparities in our beliefs about what constitutes the good life and tie the recognition of human dignity to respect for people's autonomy in determining their own conception of the good life. Politics is said to remain neutral regarding different views of the good life and prioritises only ‘a strong procedural commitment’ to treat one another fairly, ensuring that the state deals equally with all by developing an identical set of rights and protections for all (Taylor 1994: 56–57). The equal recognition of all for all is understood as a neutral ‘blindness’ as to how people differ (Taylor 1994: 40).

Prior honour-based systems left stubborn legacies of discrimination and entrenched narratives of demeaning inferiority in the previously subjugated (Taylor 1994: 65–66). Particularly women, minorities and the impoverished remain vulnerable to continued structural disadvantages, ongoing discrimination and internalised self-devaluation (Taylor 1994: 63). To ensure that everyone ultimately enjoys the same set of universal rights, it becomes imperative to implement anti-discrimination and redistributive measures that contravene the principle of equal recognition as ‘difference blindness’ (Taylor 1994: 40). These are conceived of as temporary measures to uplift previously disadvantaged groups to a point where difference blindness may come back into force. However, life's accidents (of geographical location, environment and so on) ensure that this ideal remains elusive, and in the name of non-discrimination, differential treatment must become an integral component of a politics striving for equal treatment for all.

There are further complications. Kantian-inspired models claim to provide a neutral platform where people of all cultures can coexist. This requires an ethos of difference blind human rights, and public–private distinctions (e.g. between politics and religion). Yet the private–public distinction itself is just a particular cultural norm. In mainstream Islam, for example, politics and religion cannot be separated (Taylor 1994: 62). Moreover, difference-blindness itself reflects a particular cultural bias that favours rule-based, rather than care-based moral reasoning (Taylor 1994: 38n15). Both examples contravene the very essence of difference-blind recognition, which would require equal recognition of different forms of political and moral reasoning. In short, these models are not universally inclusive but are rather tailored to specific cultural perspectives that are incompatible with others (Taylor 1994: 62).

An Articulation of Dignity in Terms of Difference

Dissatisfaction with political models prioritising sameness largely stems from their failure to accomplish genuine recognition of cultural differences. While legal mandates may compel recognition of fundamental rights, it is argued, genuine recognition involves giving ‘due recognition to the hitherto excluded’ (Taylor 1994: 28) by challenging and revising unfavourable narratives, images and self-conceptions of both oppressed and dominated groups. As Taylor notes, an alternative articulation of human dignity emerges from a second major ideological shift, towards individualised identities, as espoused by late eighteenth-century thinkers like Johann Gottlob Herder (1994: 31). This notion entails the idea that each person or group has a unique way of being human and is obligated by the ‘ideal of authenticity’: ‘being true to myself and my own particular way of being’ (1994: 28). Authentic individualism imposes the task of critically navigating formative influences and cultivating a distinct voice or path (1994: 32). Importantly, the ideology of Eros no longer drives a vision of the kind of social unity in which the distance between ‘I’ and ‘we’ dissolve. Instead, as Taylor continues, identities become problematic rather than fixed and automatic, recognition must be won, and this can fail (1994: 34–35).

The shift from social to individualised identities engenders an alternative politics of recognition, still rooted in the universal principle of equal recognition but differing fundamentally from the politics of sameness (Taylor 1994: 37–39). Concerning the recognition of human identity, the politics of sameness emphasises identical fundamental qualities, while a politics of difference highlights the unique identity possessed by individuals or particular groups (Taylor 1994: 38). Both approaches advocate equal respect for all people based on their ‘universal human potential’, but they differ regarding what should be acknowledged (Taylor 1994: 41). The politics of sameness emphasises the potential for rational agency irrespective of what we ultimately make of that potential and extends even to those unable to realise their potential. For a politics of difference, what commands respect is the potential for individual and cultural identity formation – that is, the capacity to produce the traits, behaviours, creations and so on that constitute unique ways of being that are not universally shared (Taylor 1994: 42–43). With respect to recognition as honouring, the politics of sameness insists on equal rewards for equal achievements. Giving recognition to some people for outstanding achievements does not compromise any other person's dignity. By contrast, a difference politics proposes to honour all people equally for their different ways of being. Since there is no clear measure for the current or future impact of ways of being, making it impossible to adjudicate fairly between them, such recognition need not be won through achievements but is granted automatically. As Taylor notes: suggesting that any culture is less valuable than others ‘is ruled out from the start’ (1994: 42).

Taylor points out that in a contemporary multicultural nation, because of the legacies of early honour-based political systems, there will always be some less-valued cultural groups that, in the name of a politics of difference, desire recognition of their uniqueness and require special rights, immunities and powers so that their culture or way of life can survive (1994: 58–59). Yet, as he goes on to demonstrate, this radically left-wing stance in contemporary politics, which insists on the recognition of individual differences for the sake of promoting disadvantaged individuals and communities, readily tips towards a right-wing orientation that accepts authoritarian or even fascist impositions. Ensuring the survival of a culture, he argues, means actively trying to create members of the community by making sure that future generations continue to identify with it. Cultures seeking to safeguard their distinctiveness often compel their members to conform to specific identifiers, such as dress, language or customs (Taylor 1994: 60). It might be necessary to pass special laws to ensure a culture's survival – like regulating who must and who cannot send their children to mother tongue schools, specifying what must appear in university curricula, or dictating what language businesses must be operated in (Taylor 1994: 52–53, 60). Orania, in South Africa, provides an example of a cultural community being granted such tacit immunities and powers of regulation through being ignored by the South African government. This is not just a contravention of the notion of equal rights for all, but, ironically, also a contravention of the basic principle guiding a politics of difference. The preservation of a cultural group in which there is unity of purpose, a common project and collective goals looks strikingly like Rousseau's version of the politics of sameness, with all of the attendant problematics of authoritarian or fascist internal suppression and exclusion of dissenters and outsiders, which leaves little room for the equal recognition of differences (Taylor 1994: 58).

The Aporia

To sum up so far, Taylor details two major versions of the politics of recognition (1994: 60). These share the ambition to dismantle power imbalances, address the structural disadvantages, ongoing discrimination and internalised self-devaluation that are legacies of early honour-based political systems, and bind us into an integrated community through respect for human dignity as the equal reciprocal recognition of all for all. Conflict occurs, however, over whether this entails the reciprocal recognition of the universal in us (our sameness as a group) or the particular in us (our uniqueness and individuality, including that of particular groups). As Taylor writes: ‘One of the great sources of our present disharmony is that the two views have squared off against each other’ (1994: 60). This echoes Freud's explanation of our persistent failure to achieve a unified community where all work for the good of all (1961: 37). His account draws from ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ (1955: 50–54), where he argued that understanding human passion in terms of the unifying and binding forces of Eros is one-sided. We are equally subject to the disconnecting forces of death instincts (Thanatos), manifest in aggression, a narcissistic impulse aimed at self-preservation. Freud, however, questions any sharp dichotomy between Eros and Thanatos, seeing that intrinsic to Eros is love as the aggressive exclusion of those outside its singularising bond (1955: 53). In Freud's words: ‘My love is valued by all my own people as a sign of my preferring them, and it is an injustice to them if I put a stranger on a par with them’ (1961: 56–57). In the proposed telos of Eros as a force, the grand unity of all humankind, there would simply be no space for singularising love, and this is something we find unbearable. For Freud, the creation of a unified community is an elusive abstraction that cannot be realised because the dichotomy in Eros noted by Hegel between ‘the ideology of Eros’ and singularising love defies resolution (1961: 49–50).

Accepting this complexity and tacitly adopting the ‘plural logic of the aporia’ proposed by Jacques Derrida (1993: 20), Taylor (1994) shows that both versions of ‘the politics of recognition’ are aporetic. They not only oppose one another, but each is internally inconsistent, since putting each into practice contravenes its own core principle. Kantian-inspired models of equal recognition, based on ‘sameness’, face a fundamental challenge when they insist on the uniform application of universal rights for all. In practice, incorrigible power imbalances ensure that differential treatment for some becomes an integral component of a politics striving for equal treatment for all. On the other hand, the politics of difference faces the paradox that to preserve the uniqueness of a particular culture, sameness is enforced, which contravenes the fundamental principle of respect for individual uniqueness. While these opposing approaches to the politics of recognition both have legitimacy, proponents of one approach, rightly assured of its legitimacy, assume that this automatically delegitimises the other. But both are also equally flawed.

Taylor demonstrates, contra Hegel and others, that the tension between individual and group, ‘difference’ and ‘sameness’, is irreducible and that there is no way out of its aporias through the unifying force of Eros. Instead, facing an increasing condition of multiculturalism, where societies include multiple cultures that want to survive, Taylor takes a Derridean approach, calling for hybrid models of liberal society that negotiate between ‘the invariant defence of certain rights’ and immunities and liberties accorded to cultures for the sake of their survival (1994: 61). In short, Taylor's analysis of the politics of recognition suggests that, rather than engaging in power struggles, we are obliged to take on the demanding political and ethical task of an ongoing, judicious and inherently imperfect negotiation between conflicting imperatives (Derrida 1993: 19). Aligned with this approach, I believe Taylor's analysis may be augmented by taking account of Lacan's critique of our understanding of Eros as ‘a tension toward the One’, which he calls the ‘earliest of confusions’ (1998: 5), and which gives rise to an interesting affirmation of healthy ‘non-recognition’ in ethics and politics.

A Lacanian Account of Love

The following construction of a Lacanian account of love may not reflect precisely what Lacan intended; this is always hard to know for sure. Rather, it is constructed primarily from ‘The Mirror Stage’ (Lacan 2006a), ‘Aggressivity’ (Lacan 2006b), Seminar XII (Lacan 1964–1965), Seminar XX (Lacan 1998), and work by Lacanian psychoanalytic theorists such as Joan Copjec (2002), Dylan Evans (1996), Bruce Fink (1995, 1997), Todd McGowan (2016) and Slavoj Žižek (2006).

Translating Hegel's dialectic of recognition into psychoanalytic discourse, Lacan's (2006a) ‘mirror stage’ places the moment of self–other recognition, which inaugurates desire, in early ego-development. Lacan views desire as more primarily a narcissistic ‘wanting to be’ than a possessive ‘wanting to have’ (2006a: 79). In the mirror stage, Lacan explains, self-recognition emerges as captivation by an ideal of ego-wholeness in response to our reflected self (understood literally or metaphorically), whose seductive completeness contrasts strikingly with the fragmentation and lack of co-ordination that characterises our experienced being (2006a: 76–78; 2006b: 91–92). This ambivalence about the nature of our own being creates a sense of ‘lack’, a profound anxiety about going missing or being invisible, dispensable or misunderstood, and the desire to become whole (Lacan 2006a: 76–77; cf. Evans 1996: 119–120).

Lacan (2006a: 80; 2006b: 98) agrees with Hegel regarding the emergence of self-recognition, positing it as a self–other relation where we endow our most significant others with immense power to verify or threaten our inherently uncertain egos. We initially believe that their recognition of our worth and significance, as measured by the intensity of their desire for us and our power of control over them, validates and completes us. Yet this other remains essentially enigmatic, forcing us to develop strategies to master and control the other's desire. These become habitual, forming underlying relational ‘blueprints’ that we depend on to negotiate our interactions with other significant others (Fink 1995: 95; 1997: 56–57; Lacan 2006a: 78; Žižek 2006: 43–50). Most of us stall at this developmental stage, remaining entangled in power struggles aimed at securing the validation from others that promises a sense of wholeness. Some might argue that Eros, as illustrated in Aristophanes’ myth of the four-legged beings (Plato 1989: 25–29), enables us to transcend such power struggles by finding Oneness and ultimate satisfaction (i.e. relief from lack and desire) with our true ‘other halves’ or ‘soulmates’. As mentioned above, Lacan challenges the underlying understanding of Eros as a longing for unity, arguing that the anticipated absence of lack and desire (‘lack of lack’) would be unbearable (1998: 5). To explain this, drawing from Todd McGowan (2016: 142), we should consider Freud's perplexity concerning what truly constitutes satisfaction. Freudian psychoanalysis was based on the assumption that patients sought help because some restriction/repression had created a situation of lack and, therefore, dissatisfaction. It seemed reasonable that this dissatisfaction had triggered desire for a resolution, the fulfilment of which would bring about satisfaction. Freud found it anomalous, therefore, that some of his patients resisted their own therapeutic improvement by repeatedly engaging in self-sabotaging behaviours (1955: 21; see McGowan 2016: 15–16). This, and other observations, forced him to acknowledge that people derive satisfaction from repeating negative experiences of loss.

Taking this up, Lacanians pose a challenge to conventional wisdom about the close association between life satisfaction and fulfilment, suggesting instead that we remain intrinsically satisfied with life in the face of a lack of fulfilment that keeps desire alive. Having all our desires met becomes claustrophobic and suffocating. Satisfaction stems from the invigorating disruption of our psychic equilibrium created by the absence of what we desire. Paradoxically, we actively manufacture dissatisfaction to preserve our satisfaction with life. While overtly susceptible to the allure of romantic ideologies promising pathways to Oneness and jouissance, we surreptitiously perpetuate disruptions in love to avoid the suffocating effect of jouissance and keep desire alive. A state of desire, as McGowan puts it, ‘leaves the loving subject in a permanent condition of disruption, and yet this disruption is the source of the satisfaction that love provides’ (2016: 183).

Insisting that genuine love embraces the paradox that we derive fulfilment from lack, Lacanians argue that we do not move beyond the Hegelian power struggle via the ideology of Eros (and by supposedly achieving a higher form of love in reciprocal recognition) but by acknowledging the crucial work of the negative (lack) in love. Lacan's negative formulation of love – ‘love is to give what one does not have to someone who does not want it’ (1964–1965: 191) – seems counterintuitive, but Lacan finds it well exemplified in the encounter at the end of Plato's Symposium where Alcibiades disrupts the party and raucously declares his love for Socrates (1964–1965: 189–191). ‘The real people’, as Lacan puts it, ‘upset here all the rules of this extraordinarily civilised celebration’ (1964–1965: 189). Interestingly, in both Plato's Symposium and his Phaedrus an orderly understanding of love is interrupted by something unruly, disruptive and unbalancing. This suggests that Eros as the drive to Oneness is an ideology rather than a phenomenological observation of what love actually does. Behind this ideology is the conventional belief that human well-being increases to the extent that one erases all negatives to reach the all-positive; but the more phenomenological sketch of the encounter between Socrates and Alcibiades suggests otherwise. In Lacan's unconventional reading, the encounter is interestingly at odds with the argument in Socrates’ speech that true love is the epitome of a hierarchical development beyond the worldly, in a tension towards the One. The accuracy of Lacan's reading is not at issue here; its value lies in the vivid descriptions of false and genuine love that can be drawn from it.

It is easy to think that a person declares love as a gift to the beloved. But, a love declaration, which really announces the lover's desire to be loved by the beloved, is essentially narcissistic according to Lacan (1964–1965: 44; 1998: 6). Thus, in his love declaration Alcibiades gives Socrates, as his beloved, not something he possesses but rather what he does not have, a lack in the form of his own desire. In his recognition of Socrates as significant to him, Alcibiades finds something exhilarating and attractive in Socrates that generates a sense of his own lack and the tandem belief that reciprocal recognition and validation, marked by Socrates’ desire for him, is the key to complete fulfilment, or jouissance. This conventional understanding of love as the encounter with the other half is captured in a straightforward interpretation of Lacan's multivalent statement, ‘Man's desire is the Other's desire’ (1998: 4n14) – namely, individuals want the Other to desire them (see also Evans 1996: 117; Fink 1995: 53–55; Žižek 2006: 42–50). Alcibiades’ declaration of love inscribes a wish to capture Socrates’ desire, to have exclusive rights over it, marked by Socrates’ reciprocal investment in him as his ‘one and only’. But this makes Alcibiades’ love declaration ambivalent. It overtly elevates Socrates to a position of power over him, since it is solely Socrates’ recognition that can validate and complete his being. However, it also represents an intention to captivate Socrates and burden him exclusively with the responsibility to supply jouissance. Covertly, Alcibiades desires Socrates to be the recognising other without the power, will or desire to act independently of him (Kojeve 1980: 10–11).

Paradoxically, however, Alcibiades can only risk declaring his love for Socrates if he knows that Socrates does not want it. The historical Alcibiades was wildly attractive, and he was avidly desired even by those he treated abominably. It is only because Socrates is uniquely and inexplicably beyond his potent charms that his love can thrive. If Alcibiades could capture Socrates’ desire and use it for narcissistic validation, it would be self-defeating and his love for Socrates would evaporate. He would lose the validation he craved by destroying precisely what he really wants: the desire of an unmasterable other whom he respects as worthy of recognising him and whom he cannot treat abominably.

Socrates, as the beloved, admonishes Alcibiades for this declaration of love, calling it a selfish ploy to turn him away from his own pursuits and use him for narcissistic validation. By contrast, an abusive beloved might desire and actively seek the power to validate a lover's being and the responsibility it implies. Abuse is fed by a toxic mix of insecurity about the position of mastery over the lover, contempt for the lover for needing validation, and resentment over the feeling of entrapment that responsibility brings. Socrates refuses the power of recognition that Alcibiades offers him along with its unbearable responsibility to secure Alcibiades’ being, not because he is indifferent to Alcibiades. Instead, as Lacan notes, everyone knows that Socrates loved Alcibiades genuinely (1964–1965: 191). His love is characterised through reinterpreting ‘Man's desire is for the Other's desire’ (Lacan 1998: 4n14) as talking about the desire for the Other to have desire; that is, to embody and experience the lack that keeps love alive. Socrates recognised something ineffable in Alcibiades, a potential greatness that surpassed the being that Alcibiades wished to validate through recognition. Socrates desires Alcibiades to experience ‘the love which would send him back to his own mystery’ (Lacan 1964–1965: 191). To capture this ‘recognition of the unrecognisable’, Lacan (2006a) introduces the concept of méconnaissance. Against a common view of misrecognition as a false assumption of knowledge, and as entirely harmful – in Taylor's words: ‘Mainly due to the spread of the idea that we are formed by recognition, misrecognition has now graduated to the rank of a harm’ (1994: 64) – méconnaissance encompasses the negative aspect of misrecognition in a manner that may be constructive rather than harmful. It involves a form of knowing that must miss the mark because it does not constitute pure recognition but is also not exactly misrecognition. I experience méconnaissance when I perceive something beyond mere recognition that transcends complete comprehension. Relatedly, Copjec explains: ‘When one loves something, one loves something in it that is more than itself, its nonidentity to itself’ (2002: 79). Lacan names this ‘something’ ‘object a’ (1998: 6). He describes it as the cause of desire and that which ‘sustains desire through its lack of satisfaction (insatisfaction), and even its impossibility’ (Copjec 2002: 79). It is profoundly satisfying to remain on the chase for the impossible ‘object a’, for what remains impossible to master in a person, even if this is experienced as painful – because that is where love happens.

Socrates’ méconnaissance in relation to Alcibiades certainly excited his desire to attract him to a philosophical way of life. But this had nothing to do with demanding Alcibiades’ recognition of him for the sake of his own self-validation. He insists that Alcibiades has experienced his own méconnaissance, and has seen the truth that Socrates, the person, is ‘nothing inside’. The godliness that Alcibiades sees in him is not Socrates but Socrates’ lack, his love, his desire for godliness. He enjoins Alcibiades to turn his gaze away from Socrates the person towards the ‘nothing’ in him, the ineffable godliness; this is what attracts genuine love. Instead of desiring Alcibiades’ desire in self-validation, Socrates wants to inspire Alcibiades to embrace the lack in being that will help him transcend a narcissistic power play, and gaze not at Socrates the person but in the same direction as Socrates. His desire is for Alcibiades to become his student, to be inspired by him as a teacher, allowing him not to secure his being but to draw out the unrecognisable greatness he mis/recognises.

The sketch suggests that love is misunderstood if it is tied one-dimensionally to mutual recognition between two halves. Instead, for Lacan, the negative figures of non-recognition and misrecognition are the basic forms behind Lacan's concept of genuine love. In opposition to the ideology of Eros, love accepts asymmetrical power differentials as inevitable, with distinct roles for lover and beloved. Such power differentials need not deteriorate into power struggles. These are transcended in a relation of genuine love, where, like Alcibiades, lovers carefully select beloveds who refuse to submit to their love in the narcissistic form it is offered and have the courage to call them out on it. Conversely, beloveds truly love when they are vigilant about the lover's desires and judiciously reject the burden of responsibility for narcissistic validation in a liberating and elevating way that celebrates the unrecognisable aspects of the lover. In turn, this requires from lovers the flexibility and readiness to be stretched beyond their own self-recognition.

Conclusion: Integrating the Figure of ‘Non-Recognition’

An examination of love through a Lacanian lens shifts our focus beyond identity and recognition to what has been missing from the discourse so far, namely the work of the negative done by something other than both: méconnaissance. To establish a basis for future explorations of this topic, it is worth considering what the figure of non-recognition intrinsic to genuine love might look like in the three-part definition of recognition.

A Lacanian perspective makes it clear that recognition as identification is always already misidentification. The very act of trying to see people precisely as they are is already an act of misrecognition because it cannot but fail to grasp their ineffable complexity. This holds true even when an individual is merely identified as human, as this still hinges on certain assumptions about human nature, be it sameness or uniqueness, which are used to ground a politics. Identification remains the starting point of any political model, and simultaneously there is no getting around the misidentification in every act of identification. However, a person's attitude is changed by the knowledge that any identification has legitimacy but can never be all-embracing, making it impossible not to do an injustice in the very act of identification. One cannot become the arrogant proponent of a politics based on a particular way of identifying humans, who, rightly assured of its legitimacy, assumes that this automatically delegitimises any other.

The human dignity that commands recognition as respect or acknowledgement lies in our intrinsic unrecognisability, which places us beyond full comprehension, mastery and control. We can neither fully recognise others nor fully recognise ourselves in others. This means that nobody has to be fully recognisable to, or fully recognised by, another to command respect for their being. This intrinsic unrecognisability, which unsettles and unseats us, liberates us from the narcissistic power struggle. It allows us to embrace our own humility by realising that we can never accumulate the full recognition that would secure our place in the world.

Concerning recognition as honouring, Lacan's perspective shows that giving recognition for achievements is irrelevant to love. Here, it is important to bring to a more conscious level the surreptitious truth that conventional wisdom ignores – namely, that we derive covert satisfaction from lack. Perfection, while often pursued, becomes insufferable, and we are instinctively drawn to disrupt it because love is ignited not by visible achievements or attributes themselves, but by an intangible quality within them that sparks the yearning for the ineffable, the excess. This longing can just as easily be stirred by quirks or idiosyncrasies that some might consider flaws or failures (like Socrates’ legendary physical ugliness). This encourages us to turn away from the competitive pursuit of narcissistic validation through recognition as honouring. It encourages a focus on the intangible qualities that spark genuine connection and frees us to concentrate on self-fashioning through creative and meaningful work.

To conclude, embracing the figure of non-recognition intrinsic to genuine love is not conducive to formal politics. I agree with Taylor that the tension between individual and group is irreducible, and accept that love, contrary to the ideology of Eros, remains essentially singularising and for this reason unavoidably antagonistic to our political obligations (Hegel 1977: 267). Lacan's critique of our understanding of Eros as ‘a tension toward the One’ (1998: 5), therefore, does not offer any radical politics of méconnaissance that would suggest a way out of the political aporias that Taylor describes. Instead, to embrace the figure of non-recognition modelled by the Lacanian account of genuine love would be to catalyse a profoundly transformative ethical change in human relationships from competitive power struggles to mutual empowerment and creative activity. Such an ethical transformation towards humility, generosity and creativity, I believe, creates an attitude towards others that augments the difficult political task that Taylor rightly calls for in his analysis of the politics of recognition (1964: 61). This political task remains that of supplanting competitive power struggles with ongoing, judicious and inherently imperfect negotiation between two conflicting, but irreducible, imperatives: recognition of sameness and recognition of difference.

Acknowledgements

This article is based on the research supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa (Grant No. 99188). Opinions, findings, conclusions and recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author alone, and the NRF accepts no liability whatsoever in this regard.

References

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Contributor Notes

Andrea Hurst is a Professor of Philosophy at Nelson Mandela University, Gqeberha, South Africa. After obtaining a PhD in philosophy at Villanova University, Philadelphia, her research connecting complexity thinking, psychoanalytic theory, and philosophy as an ethical practice led to a book entitled Derrida vis-á-vis Lacan: Interweaving Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), as well as numerous articles and book chapters on related subjects. She currently holds an NRF South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) Research Chair in Identities and Social Cohesion in Africa, enabling her to develop a research programme that fuses philosophical enquiry with practice-based knowing in the arts. E-mail: andrea.hurst@mandela.ac.za; ORCID: 0000-0001-5707-2636

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Theoria

A Journal of Social and Political Theory

  • Copjec, J. 2002. Imagine There's No Woman: Ethics and Sublimation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

  • Derrida, J. 1993. Aporias. Trans. T. Dutoit. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

  • Evans, D. 1996. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge.

  • Fink, B. 1995. The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  • Fink, B. 1997. A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

  • Freud, S. 1955. ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’. In J. Strachey (ed.), The Standard Edition: Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 18. Trans. J. Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 764.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Freud, S. 1961. Civilization and Its Discontents. The Standard Edition. P. Gay (ed.), Trans. J. Strachey. New York: W.W. Norton.

  • Hegel, G. W. F. 1977. Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Kojeve, Alexandre. 1980. Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of the Spirit. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Lacan, J. 1964–1965. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XII: Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis, 1964–1965. Trans. C. Gallagher from unedited French manuscripts. https://esource.dbs.ie/server/api/core/bitstreams/2bd46730-2b17-4235-b2c6-6c5201baf6dd/content (accessed 08 November, 2024).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Lacan, J. 1998. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: Encore: On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge, 1972–1973.J. A. Miller (ed.),. Trans. B. Fink. New York: W.W. Norton.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Lacan, J. 2006a. ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience’. In Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English. Trans. B. Fink. New York: W.W. Norton, 7581.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Lacan, J. 2006b. ‘Aggressiveness in Psychoanalysis’. In Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English. Trans. B. Fink. New York: W.W. Norton, 82101.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Maslow, A. H. 1943. ‘A Theory of Human Motivation’, Psychological Review 50 (4): 370396. doi:.

  • Maslow A. H. 1971. The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. New York: Viking.

  • Mbembe, A. 2019. Necropolitics. Trans. S. Corcoran. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

  • McGowan, T. 2016. Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets. New York: Columbia University Press.

  • Plato. 1989. Symposium. Trans. A. Nehamas and P. Woodruff. Indianapolis: Hackett.

  • Taylor, C. 1994. ‘The Politics of Recognition’. In A. Gutmann (ed.), Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2573.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Žižek, S. 2006. How to Read Lacan. London: Granta.

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