Reference to human rights, not as abstract consensus but as shared object, issue for action and principle of innovation, is ignored in Huntington’s theory of the clash of civilizations. The psychosocial processes of relegation to alterity are a form of exclusion which, beyond discrimination and contempt, deny the possibility of a common world. They prevent actors from experiencing their diversity of positioning as a rational diversity and prevent societies from democratically inhabiting the divisions that run through them. The author argues, (...) relying on authors like Etzioni, Moscovici and Crespi, that recognition of minorities’ influence will be the best bulwark against the divisions that undermine contemporary societies’ democratic purpose when they are eliminated or radicalized. She analyses the relations between connected phenomena such as persuasion and the common world, the struggle for recognition in the legal sphere, and the denial of esteem. (shrink)