Abstract

This article is organized in two parts that deal with the issue of recognition and its relation to identity. The first part discusses a controversy between two models of recognition: Charles Taylor's classic identity model of recognition and Nancy Fraser's status model of recognition. In particular, it focuses on Fraser's arguments for the alleged superiority of her model over Taylor's model. The second part of the article challenges the adequacy of Fraser's model as a basis for a political theory of recognition and, after having briefly rehearsed the current arguments against the very idea of identity recognition, outlines an alternative based on a conflictual model of identity transformation.