Una materialità rimossa: recuperare il materialismo nella teoria del riconoscimento di Axel Honneth

This paper attempts to accomplish two related tasks: a genealogical, exegetical one and a programmatic one. The genealogical reconstruction of Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition serves the aim of making a few propositions for the continuation of the project of a critical theory of society. The first task is guided by the purpose of highlighting the materialist background against which Axel Honneth’s ethics of recognition grew. The beginnings of the theory of recognition lie in the assumption that historical materialism could be salvaged if it was re-grounded in anthropological materialism. In the course of its development, however, the ethics of recognition has tended to focus more and more on intersubjective interactions understood narrowly, and to repress the material mediations with which these interactions are implicated. My argument in conclusion will be that this was a misguided development and that retrieving these material mediations might allow a more substantive model of critical theory. I attempt to give an example of what such theory could look like with the paradigmatic case of work.