Misrecognition and cross-cultural understanding: Shaping the space for a ‘fusion of horizons’

Abstract

This article explores how difference and identities – and consequently the space for dialogue between persons – are shaped by patterns of recognition and misrecognition. Against a context in which many have discerned a retreat from multiculturalism in many liberal democracies at both public and policy levels, the argument is that a multicultural response of some sort is crucial to fostering conditions for integration in society. However the article highlights the need for this to take a contextual and complex form, one aspect of which may be acknowledging that multiculturalism as the recognition of identities can itself be part of the problem and can reinforce the very power dynamics that generate misrecognition, and hence claims for recognition, in the first place. The article thus attempts to shift attention from the recognition of people’s identities, and instead to questions surrounding what might be involved in transforming the conditions in which misrecognition is produced. Using the insights found in Hans Georg Gadamer’s (1989) account of understanding as a ‘fusion of horizons’, it is argued that an important part of this must be addressing misrecognition as it occurs as a failure in the ‘communication of meanings’ on the part of ‘ordinary agents’. Refocusing the debate in this way offers the hopeful possibility that difference can be reclaimed from its common portrayal as the source of conflict and can instead be a source of reflection through which more inclusive social realities can be realized.