What does recognition require? A discursive approach

Debates about cultural recognition have been divided into two main views: on the difference-sensitive liberal view, recognition of individuals’ collective identities requires group-specific minority rights, whereas on the difference-blind liberal view, recognition requires nothing beyond the basic rights guaranteed by liberal procedural justice. This article seeks to show that, in fact, both camps are wrong about what recognition requires. Instead, I argue that what recognition requires must be decided through a democratic discursive procedure, which allows members of minority groups to freely articulate their claims to recognition, and have those claims in turn, reviewed by the public through an impartial process of mutual argumentation. In fact, I show that even if independent principles of fairness might seem to require extending group-specific minority rights, as Alan Patten argues, the content of those rights must be determined by the affected agents themselves through a democratic discursive procedure. On the basis of this argument, I defend an alternative discursive approach to the problem of recognition.