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List of contents
Foreword by John Holloway
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1: Hegel’s Dangerous Idea
2: Marx as Thinker of Recognition
3: Revolutionary or Less-Than-Revolutionary Recognition?
4: Mutual Recognition in Practice
5: Recognition’s Environment
Conclusion
References
Index
About the author
Richard Gunn lectured in Political Theory at Edinburgh University, UK, until his retirement in 2011.
Adrian Wilding is a Fellow of the Centre for British Studies at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany.
Summary
Revolutionary Recognition represents a major contribution to contemporary political theory. It argues that human emancipation is only possible in a society characterised by 'mutual recognition'. In present-day political theory, the term 'recognition' has become popular and widely discussed, but has become synonymous with reformist scenarios, such as social democratic politics and the politics of identity.
Richard Gunn and Adrian Wilding undertake a comprehensive critique of existing understandings of recognition, particularly those of Axel Honneth and Charles Taylor, returning ‘recognition’ to its original meaning in the work of Hegel and Marx, and showing how mutual recognition has revolutionary rather than merely reformist implications. Gunn’s and Wilding’s work is unapologetically political and introduces a new principle – 'mutual recognition' – around which radical politics can organise. This book is a ground-breaking contribution to left wing theory and is relevant as both a scholarly text and a rallying cry to the Left.
Foreword
In a major contribution to political theory, Gunn and Wilding argue that the guiding principle of emancipatory politics must be the notion of ‘mutual recognition’.
Additional text
Gunn and Wilding’s book conveys the revolutionary power of dangerous ideas; specifically, Hegel’s concept of ‘mutual recognition’ and how it was used by Marx to underpin his theory of property, class and communism. Gunn and Wilding show how Hegel and Marx’s dangerous ideas are actualised in more recent events, like Occupy, the Arab Spring, the movement for climate justice and other forms of participatory democracy. Gunn and Wilding favour the ‘commons’ and ‘commoning’ as direct types of revolutionary recognition now and in the future. Study this book and be enlivened by the spirit of freedom which freedom through others brings.
