An ethics of recognition

1), Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smith have argued that life narratives of human rights abuses have played a crucial role in struggles for a more just world, demanding what the authors call an "ethics of recognition."Stories that bear witness "issue an ethical call to listeners... to recognize the disjunction between the values espoused by the community and the actual practices that occur.They issue a call... to respond to the story; to recognize the humanity of the teller and the justice of the claim; to take responsibility for that recognition; and to find means of redress" (p.3).While scholarship most certainly plays a different role in social justice struggles than life narratives of collective forms of trauma, it, too, at its best, demands an ethics of recognition.The articles included in this issue call attention to identities, struggles, and violences that are often occluded in public discourse and that demand recognition, responsibility, and-in some cases-the pursuit of redress."Practicing Latinx: Queer Theory and the Deradicalization of Latinx" by Frank García presents a challenge to scholars of Latino studies in the current practice of adopting "Latinx" as the general term referring to all those of Latin American origin in the United States.Over the past decade, scholars have embraced "Latinx" because it signals radical inclusivity-by moving beyond a gender binary, by suggesting openness and indeterminacy, and even, according to some scholars, by privileging Indigenous identities and roots.Provocatively, however, García notes that, in practice, the term "Latinx" has become simply the new "umbrella" label, used in exactly the same ways that Latino and then Latina/o and Latin@ have been used, even when the term is not actively doing the work of investigating and dismantling systems of cisgender-and hetero-normativity.That is, García says, "Latinx" has been co-opted and deradicalized, and we would do well to actively recall its original and oppositional use as a term signaling alterity rather than a generic and all-inclusive "whole."The essay is a call to remember, recognize, and attend to the queerness of Latinx.