Recognition, feelings of injustice and claim justification: a case study of deaf people's storytelling on the internet

Abstract

This paper argues that Honneth's theory of recognition opens promising venues for exploring the role of emotion in politics, particularly when issues of injustice are at stake. While endorsing Honneth's view that 'feelings of injustice' are an important source for intelligibility of injustice, and that disadvantaged individuals need to build a 'shared interpretative framework' in struggles for recognition, this article contends that a more nuanced account of discursive justification is required to deal with dissent and moral disagreement. As a response to this problem, we suggest that Honneth's approach of subjective reaction to injury as violation of conditions to practical identity can be brought together with notions of discursive justification in the Habermasian fashion. Through an empirically based analysis -using storytelling of deaf people gathered in two virtual environments: (a) the website of the main Brazilian organization for deaf persons (FENEIS), and (b) Orkut, an online social network -this paper evinces that subjects not only articulate feelings of injustice or claims for recognition in everyday experience, but also usually engage in interpretation, judgment and justification of such claims. Results show that Honneth's theory of recognition, when articulated with a notion of discursive justification, can better equip scholars concerned with practices that aim to overcome injustice.

How might the cultural significance of storytelling in Deaf communities influence the development of a life-story work intervention for Deaf people with dementia? A conceptual thematic review

“…Whilst Deaf scholars today may challenge that process as a reproduction of the dominant hegemony through the requirement for Deaf stories in signed languages to be seen in a written language (O'Brien and Emery, 2014), at the time their publication was an act of resistance, in challenging those other books ‘about’ Deaf people and creating rich counter-narratives. As Maia and Garcêz (2014: 366) note in their study of deaf storytelling on the internet: telling stories to a wider audience is a way to sensitize people who have different experiences, so that they may understand the harm and oppression that others have gone through … Narratives, thus, unfold specificities that need to be recognized.Such a specificity emerging over the past 20 years within Deaf communities and scholarship is an emphasis on Deaf diversity and a resistance to the common representation of Deaf sign language users as predominantly white, heterosexual, able-bodied people living in the developed nations of the world ( e.g. Fernandes and Myers, 2010).…”

Which types of reason-giving and storytelling are good for deliberation? Assessing the discussion dynamics in legislative and citizen forums

“…Underprivileged people frequently narrate personal experiences to politicize their situation, making different forms of domination visible (discrimination, exclusion, exploitation, etc.) as to facilitate consciousness-raising (Young, 2000;Maia, 2012Maia, , 2014Maia and Garcêz, 2014;Johnson et al, 2017). When searching for solutions, people can also vocalize stories as to identify otherwise obscure causal mechanisms or reveal the moral complexity of certain problems, particularly when rights are not assured or specific policies are unavailable (Steiner, 2012;Maia, 2014;Polletta and Gardner, 2018).…”

Quilombolas no WhatsApp: o papel do aprendizado coletivo nas lutas por reconhecimento

“…Além disso, o quadro de interpretação intersubjetivo (HONNETH, 2003;MAIA, 2014), como substrato das ações coletivas, depende desse ajustamento interno em que os sentimentos de injustiça e os sentidos de justiça são permanentemente constituídos e compartilhados. Dessa forma, os usos do grupo no WhatsApp e as interações que nele ocorrem certamente contribuem para esses ajustamentos, já que fazem parte da complexa teia de apropriações e práticas desses sujeitos em suas comunidades e no contexto social.…”