The struggle for recognition, Axel Honneth and Charles Taylor observe, can fragment social structures and undermine common culture or can promote solidarity and consensus. Nowhere is the integrative function of recognition more evident than in the Korean War Veterans Memorial. This inclusive monument to the Korean War's veterans and fallen soliders symbolizes the erosion of social boundaries that had previously deprived ethnic, racial, gender, and service groupings of official regard. As it reflects the determination of military boards to acknowledge all wartime sacrifice, the Korean War Veterans Memorial articulates solidarity, but it is not solidarity based on mutual appreciation, as formulated in the recent philosophies of recognition and multiculturalism; the object of struggle is official recognition of all sacrifices, however mundane, made on behalf of a transcendent state. The dignity of the veteran is affirmed by representing his identification with this state, not the separate communities composing it.
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