We are currently approaching a political stalemate between two discursive idioms of community and difference. A third way has been introduced through the politics of identity recognition (race, sexuality, multiculturalism). Yet the latter tends to overwhelm the politics of community on the grounds of its outmoded universalism and sacrifice of singularity. More with the interests of a welfare society in mind than the stakes in cultural politics, the article restates the Hegelian dialectic of recognition as a critique of both absolute subject-position and absolute other-position. Hegel regards this polarization as the non-starter in state of nature politics. Because global capitalism threatens a regression to a similar zero-point, Hegel’s dialectic of recognition is restated as the proper ground for a politics of civic recognition.
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