To understand the politics of recognition, one must conceive of it as a politics of representation. Like representation, recognition proceeds at once in a constative and a performative mode, whereby they bring into being what is simultaneously represented or recognized. This structure has paradoxical implications. The politics of recognition is also a politics of representation in the sense that it always involves questions such as, Which representations are recognized? Whose representations are they? The reverse is also true: the politics of (...) representation involves recognition because representatives and representations must be recognized in order to gain authority. In short, we can examine recognition as representation, and there is no recognition without representation, and vice versa. This is demonstrated through a reading of a recent British legal case, Begum, where the issue at stake concerned which representation of Islam should form the basis for the recognition of Islam in the school uniform policy. (shrink)

This essay examines Elizabeth Grosz's provocative claim that feminist and anti-racist theorists should reject a politics of recognition in favor of "a politics of imperceptibility." She criticizes any humanist politics centered upon a dialectic between self and other. I turn to Spinoza to develop and explore her alternative proposal. I claim that Spinoza offers resources for her promising politics of corporeality, proximity, power, and connection that includes all of nature, which feminists should explore.