I.

The thesis is that our identity is partly shaped by recognition or its absence, often by
the misrecognition of others. - Charles Taylor
The passage in found in Charles Taylors essay The Politics of Recognition. In terms of traditional
political philosophy, Taylors thesis steers a middle way between the politics of dierence or
individual identity and the politics of universalism or equal dignity. The former, in emphasizing
singularity, makes a coherent framework for general recognition impossible in its ethnocentric
focus. The latter, in emphasizing universality, neglects the concrete sense of recognition of
singularity, and thus becomes homogenizing and inauthentic. Taylor arms that an adequate
politics of recognition can only proceed through a synthesis of both positions, and thus
espouses an initial assumption of the equal worth of all cultures (thus recognizing concrete
singularity), with a general framework being constructed after extensive study and comparison
(thus establishing a measure of universality).
II. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble
Butlers account of the constitution of identity through iteration, and the subsequent illusion
of mistaking what is only a performative gesture for an essence directly undermines the notion
of national identity.
The supposed familial relation emphasized by the discourse of nationalism posits an internal
genetic relation between the citizen and the nation. The citizen is a child to the mother/
fatherland, and therefore led to consider herself as bound in a quasi-organic manner to the
nation. This is precisely an illusion of essence. Butlers account of iterative constitution
undermines this illusion by directly attacking the substance ontology implicit in the discourse of
nationalism. The repetition of ritualistic gestures of allegiance (i.e. the singing of the national
anthem, oaths, salutes, etc) is the gradual imposition of a constructed identity, and is no way
the expression of a prior essence.
The gendered language used by the discourse of nationalism (i.e. fatherland) is disturbed
when one is led to ask just how a nation can be gendered. What is eective about the process of
enquiry Butler conducts is that, through asking questions of a genealogical type, what is
previously taken as natural and self-evident is demonstrated to be artificial and constructed.
As both gender and nationalism contains a substance ontology, and as discourses of
nationalism are gendered, so, in questioning nationalism, we inevitably come to question
gender.
III. Hegel on Kafkas Before the Law
Kafkas Before the Law can be interpreted in light of Hegels Master/Slave dialectic. My
interpretation, however, will not be situated at the beginning of the dialectic where the slave
and the master attempts a struggle onto death, but will be situated at the end, where mutual
recognition has been achieved. Using the dialectic, I will specify the point in the story at which
this achievement has failed, and will give the reason why.

In essence, the law is accessible to everyone. Everyone is recognized as equal under the law.
Entry into the law thus raises the man from the country (M) to a status of equality. Should the
man enter, the unwilling gatekeeper (G) is bound by law to recognize him as equal. The point
of failure occurs when M accepts that he is bound by the obedience required within the law when he
is still outside. For recognition under the law and the structure of obedience it demands only
extends those to whom it has granted admittance. The one on the outside is the Stranger, the
man in the state of nature who is bound only by his potential animality. Since he is outside, he
is not compelled to obey. Thus, M mistakenly acts as if he is already within the law, unaware of
his freedom. It is only by this act of self-misrecognition that M is overdetermined by Gs refusal.
Ms self-misrecognition consists in seeing himself in G, as bound by the same law as G.
Therefore, as G is already within the law, M only recognizes G as free and independent, and
does not recognize himself as free. Conversely, G mis-recognizes M, as M is not seen as other
but only as defined by the law. M is only seen as his entrance, which, no matter how particular,
is still defined by the laws homogenizing abstraction. Thus, in terms of the Master/Slave
dialectic, the relation between M and G is not a true dialectic. M eventually dies in front of the
entrance without recognizing his freedom. Until his death M remains the Slave enthralled by
the Master. In turn, G never recognizes M as other. There is no sublation. The negation is not
negated. There is no mutual recognition.