Abstract
In this paper, I discuss the idea of democratic love from the perspective of gender equality. More precisely, I argue that a particular form of gender inequality, namely a gender-specific division of care labour, jeopardizes democratic love. In the first two sections of the article, I introduce Anthony Giddens’ original idea of a ‘democratization of the personal’ and show how Axel Honneth has developed it by relying on the Hegelian notion of social freedom. In the third section, I discuss how the problem of care work affects democratic love relationships and depict the solution to this problem advocated by recognition theory, namely economic recognition. After having reconstructed some possible affinities between socialist-feminist arguments and Honneth’s suggestions, as well as criticisms against them, I outline another recognition-theoretic strategy for recognizing care work. I argue that the recognition paradigm conveys a view of the love relationship as inherently implying a caring recognition of human beings’ dependencies and vulnerabilities. I conclude by hinting at the idea that caring recognition may be extended beyond the social sphere of love, as constituent of social relations in general.
Introduction
The paper addresses the relation between democracy and recognition not from a political, public perspective, but rather from what we can call the politics of intimate, emotional life. The pivotal idea underlying the following considerations consists in employing the notion of democracy, which usually denotes a political form of living together and the ways in which people living together govern themselves, in order to critically investigate the social sphere of intimate relationships. I investigate, more precisely, a particular sense in which the ‘personal’, emotional life is said to undergo a process of democratization. I focus on relationships of (romantic, erotic) love between adults, leaving aside parenthood, friendship, or other kinds of intimacy. I conceive of love relationships as social relations, namely as constitutively embedded in a thick network of norms, laws, values, roles, systems of beliefs, in a bundle of cultural, juridical, economic institutions. As a result, lovers’ feelings, emotions and attitudes towards each other, their behaviours and thoughts concerning each other, the rituals and rules they follow in their relationship, the bodily and symbolic dimensions of their interactions, but also their bonds with other people (offspring, family members, friends, colleagues, etc.) are built up and shaped by such complex social webs.
The idea of thinking of love as a form of democracy can be traced back to Anthony Giddens (1992) and has been recently taken on by Axel Honneth (2014). Although characterized by a strong normative connotation, the concept of democratic love is also a descriptive one. According to Giddens’ and Honneth’s social diagnoses, love relations in the last decades have de facto undergone a process of democratization, which coincides with a factual, yet partial, social progress. Honneth in particular carefully cushions the positivity of such a diagnosis by pointing out those social dynamics that block and jeopardize the democratization of love relations.
Both authors pin down gender equality as one necessary condition of democratic love. This is a condition, however, that hardly finds empirical validation. One of the reasons explaining the failed achievement of gender equality is rooted, as Honneth among others notices, in the problem of care work. Care work, which has been referred to also as reproductive love, domestic or family work (or labour), indicates all those activities that are directly or indirectly aimed at acknowledging and fulfilling the vital, emotional and biological needs of dependent people (especially children, the sick, the elderly and the disabled). Care work, both paid and unpaid, does not enjoy widespread appreciation in capitalist societies, although it is fundamental for their reproduction. 1 From the perspective of gender equality, the problem of care work arises from the fact, empirically verifiable, that its burdens are still unequally distributed among men and women. As feminist theorists and activists persistently highlight, the reorganization of care work in the labour market and as value-producing service has neither eliminated home-based, unpaid care nor abolished the gender division of labour in which it is embedded (Federici, 2008: 100).
The fact that, in most cases, women are those who still do more care work represents a serious impediment to the process of democratization. 2 For this reason, recognition theorists like Honneth argue that the recognition of care work is an unavoidable step in achieving this goal. Recognition should concern here both the cultural and social acknowledgement of the fact that care work is fundamental for the reproduction of society, and its economic validation, namely retribution. This proposal raises many issues: What exactly is the object of this form of recognition? Is financial value the right medium through which this type of work can be appreciated and praised? Is the recognition-theoretical paradigm adequate to address gender inequality issues? Why should we assume that recognition of care work will foster democratization (of love)?
In what follow, I will address these questions. I begin by introducing Anthony Giddens’ seminal thoughts on democratic love. I will then show how Axel Honneth employs such an idea by interpreting love as social freedom. In the third part of the paper, I will articulate the problem of care work in four steps. First, I clarify the notion of care work and the problems it raises from the perspective of gender equality. In this section, I mention the way in which recognition theory usually suggests solving (some of) the aforementioned problems, namely by advocating monetary or financial recognition of care work, which should be deeply linked with social recognition. Second, I present some socialist-feminist arguments similar to Honneth’s considerations. Third, I sketch out some counter-arguments. Finally, I try a synthesis of the pro and contra with regard to democratic love. I propose, moreover, an alternative way to regard recognition of care work, which draws on the idea of caring recognition. As a conclusion, I outline caring recognition as an inherent dynamic of love relations and, presumptively, of social relations in general.
Democratic love
According to Giddens, and subsequently to Honneth, the democratization of personal life is primarily indebted with the idea of sexual liberation, or emancipation: ‘Sexual emancipation […] is more effectively understood in a procedural way, as the possibility of the radical democratization of the personal. Who says sexual emancipation, in my view, says sexual democracy’ (Giddens, 1992: 182). 3 Experiences related to intimacy have been democratized insofar as they have become ‘pure relationships’ which are characterized by ‘confluent love’ and ‘plastic sexuality’.
Pure relationship is defined as a social relation in which one enters ‘for its own sake, for what can be derived by each person from a sustained association with another; and which is continued only insofar as it is thought by both parties to deliver enough satisfaction for each individual to stay within it’ (Giddens, 1992: 58). Pure relationships take place between equal individuals who independently divide responsibilities between themselves and are free to end the relationship when they wish to. It thus constitutes an emancipation from the traditional, patriarchal idea of romantic relationship, which takes mainly the institutional form of marriage, entails strong gender hierarchy and division of tasks imposed by social and gender roles and is seen as an unbreakable contract. Pure relationships are, on the contrary, not regulated by external norms (traditional customs) but rather by internal ones, namely by norms, rules and habits established within the relationship itself. Pure relationships are the product, so to say, of partners only.
The notion of confluent love designates the attitude that lovers have towards each other in pure relationships. According to this notion, lovers try to come close to each other, to know each other’s wishes, desires, needs, feelings, aspirations, etc.; at the same time, they open themselves out to their partner in order to let the partner know them (Giddens, 1992: 61). While romantic love has always been skewed by power imbalances and asymmetries between the sexes, for women’s dreams of romantic love have often led to grim domestic subjection to their male partners, confluent love, on the contrary, ‘presumes equality in emotional give and take’ (Giddens, 1992: 62). From the outset, the idea of romantic love ‘has long had an egalitarian strain, intrinsic to the idea that a relationship can derive from the emotional involvement of two people, rather than from external social criteria’ (Giddens, 1992: 62). Such egalitarian potential can be realized, however, only by confluent love. In this kind of intimate relation, in fact, love develops to the degree to which each lover is willing and prepared to reveal their concerns, needs, desires and aspirations, namely their vulnerability to the other. Confluent love, moreover, makes the achievement of reciprocal sexual pleasure, which presupposes mutual bodily knowledge, a key element for the success of an intimate relationship.
In pure relationships, there are no strict rules or patterns of sexual relationships: This implies, among other things, that heterosexuality is no longer a standard by which every relationship is judged (Giddens, 1992: 34). The possibility to engage in pure relationship is not heterosexuals’ prerogative. Giddens addresses this point by introducing the notion of plastic sexuality, which means that individuals are free to autonomously shape their sexual lives: ‘sexuality becomes malleable, open to being shaped in diverse ways, and a potential “property” of the individual’ (Giddens, 1992: 27). It is a factor that ‘has to be negotiated’ within the relationship (Giddens, 1992: 63). Moreover, thanks to contraceptives, plastic sexuality has become disjointed from reproduction, thus making sex a source of pure enjoyment.
To recap the points listed so far: As pure relationships, democratic intimate relationships work according to rules that are determined by the individuals involved in the relationship itself and not by the social, communal order (Giddens, 1992: 190). These relationships can therefore take different shapes, according to the participants’ personalities, needs and wishes. As confluent love, a pure relationship puts the lovers in the condition of deeply knowing each other in such a way that the knowing of the partner contributes to self-knowledge. Self-identity, says Giddens, awaits its validation from the discovery of the other (Giddens, 1992: 45). This process of mutual acquaintance and development of self-identity coincides with the ‘creation of a mutual narrative biography’ (Giddens, 1992: 46) which is projected towards the future. According to the principle of plastic sexuality, moreover, sexuality is to be shaped according to the wishes and desires of individuals; in other words, it has been strongly ‘de-normalized’. For Giddens, both the equalization of gender roles and the overcoming of compulsory heterosexuality are intrinsic features of the democratization of love.
Love as social freedom
The notion of modern intimate relationship that Honneth (2014) has recently introduced appears to be impressively similar to Giddens’: ‘Not only should the individual be freer than ever to enter into life-long relationships free from parental commands and based solely on personal sentiments, but freely chosen relationships between men and women were now regarded as a social arrangement that embodied a special form of freedom’ (Honneth, 2014: 143). Drawing on Hegel’s famous notion of ‘being oneself in being in another’, Honneth conceives of this ‘special form of freedom’ as social freedom: lovers are free in this sense because they can discover, express and realize themselves within their romantic, intimate relationships in virtue of and thanks to their relationship with the other. The self-realization of one lover depends on and at the same time contributes to the partner’s self-realization (see also Giddens, 1992: 40). Democratic love as social freedom is thus based on reciprocity and mutuality.
Honneth employs the term ‘democratization’ of love, which he takes from Luhmann (1986) 4 rather than from Giddens, for designating those transformations of intimacy, culminating in the 1960s, that have actualized and are still in the process of actualizing the idea of love as social freedom. In Honneth’s terms, democratic love relations have to be said to be autonomous insofar as the choice of the romantic partner would depend only on feelings of affection and attraction and not on the commands of the lovers’ family, class or community (Honneth, 2014: 145, 152). This idea of democratization as functional differentiation and autonomization of the social sphere of love recalls Giddens’ central notion of pure relationship. Honneth (2014: 153) even speaks of the institution of ‘pure’ intimacy.
The condition of mutuality and reciprocity, which Giddens attributes to the form of confluent love, is conveyed by Honneth in normative recognitive-theoretical terms: ‘[E]ntering into such relationships requires that we recognize our obligations to observe normative rules that guarantee the identity of these relationships beyond the immediate moment.’ Such rules determine complementary role obligations, whose fulfilment enables, in turn, a special form of social freedom. ‘Whoever enters into a relationship of love […] expects to be loved for the qualities that he or she regards as central to his or her identity.’ Reciprocal love is thus based ‘on the very desires or interests that a person sees as crucial elements of his or her own self-understanding’ (Honneth, 2014: 145–6). As I will emphasize in the last section, such desires, interests, qualities, etc., are the object of a particularly bodily, affective form of recognition, namely caring recognition.
Due especially to the oppression of women and subordination and to the misrecognition of non-heterosexual couples, this idea of intimate love, introduced in the 19th century, remained a merely normative ideal until the ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1960s (Honneth, 2014: 143 ff.). ‘Sexual revolution’ refers to a complex bundle of phenomena, such as the legalization of birth control, acceptance of same-sex couples, integration of women into the ‘social labour process’, more flexible divorce laws, and greater sexual experimentalism (Honneth, 2014: 145). Both Honneth and Giddens optimistically see the democratization process as the concrete equalization of gender roles, effective overcoming of the traditional division of labour between men and women and ‘denaturalization’ of the heteronormative model of love. It is particularly Honneth, however, who points out that, from the perspective of gender equality, democratization still constitutes an ideal norm. Most of the time, the idea(l) of democratic love does not find complete fulfilment in reality. Giddens recognizes the ‘imbalance in economic resources available to men and women and in responsibilities for children care and domestic work’. The aim of his democratic model of intimacy, however, does not lie in ‘complete parity’ but rather in an ‘equitable arrangement negotiated according to the principle of autonomy’ (Giddens, 1992: 195). 5 Giddens seems to overlook how ‘external’ norms, such as those of gender or economics, still shape and intervene into lovers’ decisions, behaviours and even emotions. 6 Lovers’ autonomy has to be regarded, in other words, as (still) strongly interwoven with social (economic, cultural, etc.) heteronomy. The establishment of the ‘principle of autonomy’ as a backbone of contemporary, namely democratic, love does not mean that lovers are completely detached from broader social dynamics, institutions, structures and identities.
In what follows, I will address only one specific hurdle facing the idea(l) of democratic love, namely the problem of the gender-specific 7 unequal division of (care) work, which is related to a ‘misrecognition’ of this kind of work.
The problem of care
What is care?
Care work or care labour can be generally defined as a bundle of activities aimed at recognizing, meeting, and fulfilling the particular needs of other individuals, especially children, elderly, sick, and disabled individuals. In a certain respect, however, every human being is in need of care. Care can be seen as a free gift, springing as an act of love, or as a commodity. As a result, care work can be unpaid or paid. In the latter case, care labour presupposes a close, intimate relation between caregiver and care-taker, which implies touching, dealing with organic functions, paying attention to the dependent’s particular, individual wishes, requests, desires, frustrations, etc. Dependence on the caregiver can be both the motivation and the result of care activities. The former case occurs whenever care is provided because of a given dependence relation. Consider, for instance, parents’ care for their children, which is motivated by the toddlers’ dependence on them. In this case, care work is usually unpaid. A relation of dependence can also be established as a consequence of care activities. This is usually the case of paid care work. Consider, for example, a child who becomes dependent on the baby-sitter who has been employed in order to take care of her.
The relationship between caregiver and caretaker is usually regarded as an asymmetrical one. Dependence is not mutual. The caretaker does usually depend on the caregiver more than the other way around. The degree of dependence that marks the asymmetry is related to the kind of needs that have to be taken care of and to the possibilities one has of independently taking care of them. For example, infants, elderly or sick people cannot get themselves the nourishment they need, and in various degrees physically rely on others for being fed. To be sure, in contemporary industrialized societies, adult healthy individuals also heavily depend on others for their nourishment: We all depend on, for instance, farmers, truck drivers, sellers, but also, in some cases, on cooks, domestic workers, partners, etc. However, this kind of dependence is less compelling because adult healthy individuals enjoy a broader range of choices among which they can freely (although not fully so) choose. Individuals’ independence is related to their economic, social, symbolic power.
Care work does certainly represent a service necessary for the biological and symbolic reproduction of society, but it is also motivated by affection, feelings of attachment, commitment and, in some cases, pleasure. Caregivers are usually not exchangeable. As Jenny Nedelsky explains, (family) bonds call for care; at the same time, ‘care builds bonds’ (Nedelsky, 2015). People engage in care activities for reasons other than just money, even though there is money involved. Care work can be organized within the market economy (both privately and publicly) or in the household. In both spheres, women have done historically a very large proportion of care work, and this is still true today. Sexual division of labour constitutes a reason that explains gender economic inequality and inequalities of opportunities. Nancy Folbre (2002) famously speaks of a ‘penalty’ that is imposed on women for taking on care responsibilities at home. If you take time out of paid employment to take care of a child or an elderly person, that often not only reduces your wages in the present moment but over your entire lifetime. Furthermore, care work in the market is undervalued and poorly paid. Society tends to take it for granted because it was traditionally provided by women at a very low cost, essentially outside of the market economy.
In this paper, I do not tackle the highly complicated question of the recognition of care work in globalized neoliberal markets. Rather, I concentrate on the recognition of care within the household, and more precisely, within (democratic) love relationships. In this context, care work does entail at least one of the following activities:
family work: upbringing of children and adolescents; housework: housekeeping, providing and preparing of food, running errands; general dependence-work: care of needy (elderly or sick) persons living in the household or related to the partners; reciprocal care: activities that partners carry out in relation to each other, e.g. emotional support, concrete help in different activities, availability and willingness to organize and share leisure time with each other.
As Honneth states in the context of his debate with Nancy Fraser, care work is not fully recognized, either monetarily or in terms of social esteem, as it is not considered a meaningful social ‘achievement’ (Leistung). 8 None of the aforementioned forms of labour is in fact seen as resulting from the employment of one’s skills and capacities, but rather as an expression of women’s nature. Care work is, in other words, not regarded as articulation, manipulation and transformation of nature by exercise of one’s own forces, but rather as a natural force itself. As ‘naturalistically grounded’, the misrecognition of care work makes the inclination to take care of vulnerable, dependent, weak people’s needs a gender-based characteristic. In Honneth’s view, this explains, moreover, why ‘every professionalized activity automatically falls in the social status hierarchy as soon as it is primarily practiced by women’ (Fraser and Honneth, 2007: 153). In order to overcome such inequality, Honneth argues, care work in the household should be understood as socially relevant and of equal value to gainful employment outside the household. Furthermore, in order to be regarded as an important activity and thus deserving of social recognition, care work must be remunerated.
Honneth (2014) has recently further acknowledged that in present-day relationships there are different aspects of care work, especially traditional ones (housekeeping, raising of children), that are still carried out mostly by women. This creates economic disparities. As result of their taking care of other’s dependencies, women become economically dependent on their male partner. It is also important to remark – although Honneth does not make this argument explicit – that even for employed women, the excessive burdens of care work cannot but slow down or damage their careers and their self-realization. In order to overcome this asymmetry, that constitutes a serious impediment for democratic love, Honneth advocates economic recognition of care work as a way of protecting the economically dependent person, usually the woman, within the relationship; he sees this recognition as a right/obligation implied in the legal institution of marriage (Honneth, 2014: 149).
I do not intend to discuss the different concrete strategies and policies in which this form of recognition can be implemented. Rather, in the following I am going to ponder over the relevant philosophical arguments in favour or against economic recognition of care work.
Monetary recognition as anti-capitalist strategy
In two seminal texts, socialist feminist Silvia Federici (1975a, 1975b) introduced some arguments that will later appear – albeit deprived of their revolutionary inspiration – in Honneth’s reflections on the topic. Honneth’s critique of the naturalized gender-specific division of labour and his plea for an economic recognition of care work present in fact similarities with the socialist feminists’ argument I am going to present in this paragraph.
In the aforementioned articles, Federici exposes the key arguments underlying the anti-capitalistic and feminist movement ‘Wages for Housework’, which she was co-founder of.
9
The movement was aimed at exposing and overcoming those forms of violence, exploitation and manipulative ideologies that constituted a particular type of non-waged labour, namely what Federici and others called ‘housework’. Housework is defined as production of ‘the most precious product to appear on the capitalist market: labour power’. It is much more than housecleaning: It is servicing the wage earners physically, emotionally, sexually, getting them ready for work day after day. It is taking care of our children – the future workers – assisting them from birth through their school years, ensuring that they too perform in the ways expected of them under capitalism. (Federici, 1975b: 31)
10
natural attribute of our female physique and personality, an internal need, an aspiration, supposedly coming from the depth of the female character. […] Capital had to convince us that it is natural, unavoidable, and even fulfilling activity to make us accept working without a wage. In turn, the unwaged condition of housework has been the most powerful weapon in reinforcing the common assumption that housework is not work, thus preventing women from struggling against it. (Federici, 1975a: 16) once housework is totally naturalized and sexualized, once it becomes a feminine attribute, all of us as women are characterized by it. If it is natural to do certain things, then all women are expected to do them and even like doing them. (Federici, 1975a: 18)
The economic exclusion of housework and its naturalization/romanticization are two mutually reinforcing capitalist strategies. The ideology according to which care work is the expression of female feelings and natural attitudes justifies the fact that it is not paid; on the other hand, the non-waged character of care work and its external position to capitalistic relations of production are factors reinforcing and reproducing the naturalistic/romantic ideology. As I have already mentioned, Honneth’s argument in favour of monetary recognition of care work relies substantially on this argument.
The International Wages for Housework Campaign aimed at liberating women by making them refuse to work; more precisely, the work that had to be refrained from was a work conceived of as a pure expression of female ‘nature’. The demand for housework to be paid (by the state) is envisioned by Federici as the first stage of a wider struggle against capitalism and women’s subordination. It is a stage within the anti-capitalist struggle since, although it cannot per se destroy capital, it forces it to reorganize social relations in terms more favourable to women and consequently more favourable for the whole class struggle. The demand for wages for housework is, moreover, an anti-patriarchal struggle because it is the first step towards refusing to do housework (in the kitchen, in the bedroom, in the household), namely refusing to be the only ones doing it: ‘the demand for a wage makes our work visible, which is the most indispensable condition to begin to struggle against it’ (Federici, 1975a: 19). The battle to gain wages for housework is a revolutionary strategy. It undermines the role women are ‘assigned in the capitalist division of labour and consequently it changes the power relations within the working class’ (Federici, 1975b: 39).
The revolutionary anti-capitalist dimension of Federici’s work marks an important difference with Honneth’s recognition-theoretical approach. The demand for wages for housework does not aim at a social recognition of housework’s contribution to the well-being of a society; the campaign represents, on the contrary, a stage in a revolutionary battle for radically changing social-economic conditions (Federici, 1975b: 32). 11 Two common traits between socialist feminism and recognition theory are, however, worthy to be stuck to: first, the idea that some kind of monetary reward of care work or housework would crumble its naturalized and romanticized status; and second, the belief that denaturalization and deromanticization would amount not only to women’s liberation and equalization of gender roles, but also to the overcoming of a certain ideology of bourgeois love. In Honneth’s terms, such overcoming would correspond to (a step in) the actualization of democratic love, namely of love as social freedom.
Is economic recognition an adequate solution?
In this paragraph, I introduce critical arguments against the monetary recognition of care work. According to Rössler (2007), who has exhaustively summed up many of these arguments, the social-financial recognition of family or domestic work 12 fails, both on normative and on empirical grounds. Family work, Rössler argues (2007: 136), demands a different form of social recognition than paid work. Care work cannot be interpreted and regarded, like wage labour (which Rössler calls gainful employment), as a social achievement. Rössler singles out three main reasons, explaining the difference between family work and gainful employment.
First, care work follows a ‘different logic’ than paid work. Care work’s logic does not allow us to determine a number of working hours and days (e.g. an eight-hour day, five-day week), it offers no free weekends or fixed holidays a year, and no paid sick leave. Care work in the household cannot be ‘operationalized’ or stipulated in a contract: ‘Living with one’s own child can at times be extremely anarchic and can easily take up twenty-four hours in a day. In other words, no beginning or end can be structured into the working day’ (Rössler, 2007: 141). 13
Second, the position of monetary recognition ignores the fact that children constitute an infinite source of pleasure and personal satisfaction. This aspect ‘involves a very specific mixture of love and difficult times – labour and personal interaction that characterizes family work’ (Rössler, 2007: 142). The labour component and the pleasure component of (at least) family work cannot be easily distinguished. If we take into account these first two reasons, then it becomes rather difficult, perhaps even impossible, to accurately and adequately calculate the time and the exact activities that have to be financially rewarded. To put it in a nutshell, care work is not a commodity: it cannot be subdivided in time-units; its human, intimate aspects, especially those related to parent-child relations, resist quantification and depersonalization (see also Young, 2007: 209).
Third, according to many women’s biographical accounts, care work in general appears as meaningless, a repetitive torture, often carried out in complete isolation from broader social contexts. These accounts suggest that what ‘housewives’ really want is not financial recognition of their work, but rather to be engaged in different, more rewarding and self-realizing activities (Rössler, 2007: 144). 14
An additional problem in the recognition theory of care work tackles Honneth’s and Federici’s idea that the monetary recognition alone would succeed in overcoming the naturalized sexual division of labour and the power relations it entails. According to Rössler, care work is not misrecognized because it is not paid, but simply because it is performed by women (Rössler, 2007: 146). The devaluation and misrecognition of what is regarded as ‘woman work’ cannot be overcome by simply appraising it as a crucial service to society, namely as a social achievement. This kind of recognition would simply perpetuate the identity of woman as primary caregiver, thus underestimating and discriminating against those women who do not want to engage in care work. Furthermore, by pointing out that non-paid female caregivers are misrecognized, ‘women’s experiences can only be reconstructed as the experiences of victims. The cultural interpretation drawn on here is the traditional image of the suffering, exploited woman’ (Rössler, 2007: 148).
As results of these criticisms, Rössler, in the wake of Nancy Fraser and others, calls for a just distribution of paid as well as of care work. Thanks to such a distribution of the two different types of ‘work’ the gender-specific division of labour can be overcome. This model ‘envisages a radical reduction of time spent in gainful employment, along with sufficient provision of good social, state-financed child care for the period of parental employment and the equal distribution of family work among both sexes’ (Rössler, 2007: 157). According to this solution to the problem of care work, the equalization of roles and tasks in ‘private’ family and care work should foster the conditions for equal participation in ‘public’ (which means non-domestic) gainful employment.
Rössler’s proposal does not aim at completely dismissing the recognition-theoretical view, but calls for its revision. Recognition of care work would then be provided in various forms: availability of good day nurseries, pre-school arrangements, good after-school facilities for older children, high salary of caretakers (of different sorts – in nurseries, schools, but also hospitals, in-home nurses, etc.), equal distribution of care and family work between men and women (Rössler, 2007: 157). 15
Conclusion: From recognizing care to caring recognition
In the introduction, some questions were raised concerning the solution of the care work problem advocated by recognition theory. Those questions may be now reformulated as follows: How should we think of and organize care work so that love relationships can flourish as democratic and free ones? How can we recognize care work in order to equalize gender roles and tasks and to overcome the gender-specific division of labour within a traditional family or couple? In my concluding remarks, I try to combine Federici’s and Rössler’s arguments and sketch out some guidelines for addressing these questions:
I first suggest that the idea of monetary recognition as denaturalization and deromantization strategy has to be maintained and further elaborated under present-day norms of gender and love. Which kinds of naturalistic discourses tend today to justify gender disparities in care work responsibilities as an expression of certain feelings, emotions, natural dispositions, bodily functions, needs, etc.? What forms of subordination, oppression and domination are now characteristic of gender relations, so that women’s ‘preference’ for care work would be explained precisely as result of these forms? Rössler but also Young’s arguments do not seem to offer useful instruments for tackling this question. Young (2007: 201) thinks of the ‘naturalistic’ explanation of gender inequality as ‘shallow’; Rössler, on the other hand, does not seem to critically investigate the idea that the pleasure attached to family work would be, at least partially, socially constructed. Secondly, as Rössler, Young and Fraser rightly point out, the overcoming of traditional gender roles and tasks, crucial for the democratization of love relations, means among other things that individuals involved in a relationship ought to reciprocate the partner’s care, and to equally share with the other the time and the tasks of care work carried out for other persons (children, elderly, sick). This goal is not necessarily at odds, however, with monetary retribution of care work: as Federici clearly states, wages for housework do not constitute a goal in itself, or the definitive solution, but rather only one step in ongoing feminist struggles. Federici’s insight that feminist struggles have to be linked to anti-capitalist struggles has to be further investigated under present-day neoliberal and globalized conditions (see e.g. Baumann et. al., 2013; Aulenbacher et al., 2015; Arruzza, 2016; Dowling, 2016). Federici herself (2009: 117) shows the importance of investigating how globalized neoliberal capitalism forces millions of women from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean Islands and the former socialist countries to migrate to the more affluent regions of Europe, the Middle East and the United States and serve as nannies, domestics, and caregivers for the elderly (see also e.g. Federici, 2008; Glenn, 2010; Lutz, 2011; Anthias et al., 2013).
Moreover, beyond the arguments in favour of or against economic recognition of care work, the meaning and role of care within intimate love relationships have to be conceptually reconsidered. For this purpose, the recognition-theoretical approach proves to be insightful in a more encompassing sense than the idea of mere financial rewarding of certain activities. Recognition of care work might be understood, namely, as recognition of the needy, vulnerable nature of every human being. This thesis reaches beyond the social sphere of love. As needy and vulnerable, human beings constitutively depend on others. Judith Butler (2015: 21) has recently emphasized that ‘there is no getting rid’ of the dependence on others, on social relations and on those economic, political, juridical infrastructures that organize social relations: Taking care of others’ particular needs, desires and wishes, and thus of the particular ways in which these needs, desires and wishes create vulnerabilities and dependencies, is a necessary condition not only for a good life but, more fundamentally, for a liveable one. ‘The life of the other, the life that is not our own, is also our life,’ says Butler ‘since whatever sense “our” life has is derived precisely from this sociality, this being already, and from the start, dependent on a world of others, constituted in and by a social world’ (Butler, 2015: 108).
In Honneth’s theory, such sociality is conceived of as intertwined relations of recognition. Predominantly in his early work, it is precisely his conception of love as a (social) relation of recognition that focuses on the bodily, material interdependence underlying relations of recognition. Love is defined as an interaction in which lovers are aware of their partners’ emotional and physical needs and wishes and try to do their best in order to meet, fulfil or help to fulfil them. In love, contends Honneth, individuals mutually confirm each other with regard to the concrete nature of their needs and thereby recognize each other as needy creatures. In the reciprocal experience of loving care, both subjects know themselves to be united in their neediness, in their dependence on each other. Since, moreover, needs and emotions can, to a certain extent, only gain ‘confirmation’ by being directly satisfied or reciprocated, recognition itself must possess the character of affective approval or encouragement. (Honneth, 1995: 95)
The relation of care can be more or less symmetrical. In democratic, free love relationships between adults, care is supposed to be symmetrical and reciprocal. This does not only mean that lovers have to equally take care of each other (reciprocal care), but also that they have to more or less equally divide up the tasks and activities associated with family work, housework and general dependence-work. Why? As explained before, Honneth thinks of the social relation of love as a social sphere of freedom. Democratic love is free not only because it is released from traditional customs and (to a certain extent) from social expectations and norms and from economic imperatives. There is a further and, in this context, more relevant sense that conveys the particular freedom made available by love: ‘in the social form of love as we know it today, each person is a condition for the freedom of the other by becoming a source of physical self-experience for the other’ (Honneth, 2014: 151). By recognizing each other, Honneth argues, lovers put their partner in the condition of becoming free, namely of realizing themselves by fulfilling their needs and desires, by pursuing their goals and projects, by shaping and developing their identities and values through the activities and encounters in which they are involved. Becoming (and being) free in this context does not imply or require cutting or rejecting dependence: the condition of this kind of freedom resides, on the contrary, in the recovery of the ‘natural neediness of our own self in physical interaction, without fear of being humiliated or hurt’ (Honneth, 2014: 151). This is, in short, the meaning of the notion of social freedom in the dimension of interpersonal relationships. Taking care of others implies, therefore, putting the others, at least partially, in the condition of experiencing such freedom. Given the characterization of care work provided in previous sections, it seems highly improbable that a sexual division of labour might open up for all partners possibilities of self-experience, self-fulfilment and self-realization. 16 If, on the contrary, lovers care for each other, and divide between them their care responsibilities and tasks, caring recognition may become a liberating force and a condition of freedom. As caring recognition, care is not to be seen as a burden or penalty; furthermore, it does not objectify the recipients of care and cast them as only ‘dependent’, as if dependence would not intrinsically denote human nature. Everyone is in need of care and everyone can provide it. As such, caring recognition gives rise to intense, rich relationships in which individuals can flourish, discover and develop their capacities and capabilities, figure out and realize their needs, wishes and desires, be empowered.
In this article, I have drawn on Giddens’ and Honneth’s insights in order to outline an idea of love organized on the basis of democratic principles. Unequal recognition of care work and gender-based division of (care) labour jeopardize this mode of love. The obstacle to democratic love rooted in this particular form of gender inequality is twofold. First, an unequal distribution of care work activities, tasks and responsibilities does not put each partner in the condition of equally contributing to the formation (and transformation) of a love relationship. Second, asymmetrical care fails to enable each person’s flourishing, self-realization, empowerment, and freedom. After having addressed the solution of monetary recognition and highlighted its pro and contra, I want to suggest that the contribution of recognition theory to this topic may go beyond that. If we consider love relations as social relations of recognition, we discover that care is constitutively inherent in them. Honneth thinks of caring recognition as an emotional, intimate way of dealing with human beings’ neediness, vulnerabilities and dependencies and sees it as characterizing the sphere of interpersonal relationships. Such inquiry into the social sphere of love, however, could perhaps open up further perspectives for grasping the interdependent structure of sociality in general and understanding the constitutive role of care, and caring recognition, also for economic and political relations.
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The thoughts formulated in this paper have been inspired by the participants in the workshop ‘Love and Care in the Time of Capitalism’ (Frankfurt am Main, June 2015) that I have co-organized with Mara Marin. For those illuminating discussions I am thankful especially to Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Lisa Yashodhara Haller, Jenny Nedelsky, Beate Rössler and, of course, Mara. Also, I warmly thank the participants in the panel ‘Recognition and Democracy’ (held at the ASPP-Conference, Amsterdam, June 2015) for helpful comments and criticisms on an early draft of this paper. I am furthermore indebted to Paddy McQueen for having improved my English.