ABSTRACT
The following article aims to mobilize the Honnethian idea of recognition in order to reflect on the issue of race in Brazil. It is particularly focused on how the notion of ideological (or distorted) recognition helps inform an understanding of the ambivalent legacy of Gilberto Freyre, which re-signifies the place for black populations in society without however revealing to them effective and systematic opportunities for self-realization. This then leads to a questioning of whether Axel Honneth’s approach would be limited to proposing a symbolic appreciation of collectives that would not alter institutionalized patterns of social subordination. In actual fact, Honneth aims to renovate the very foundations of critical theory, providing both a means of diagnosing historical oppressions and pathways for conceiving of effective emancipation in the framework of existing society. His perspective does not reduce the processes of formation of the self to a private and pre-political endeavor, but instead highlights their centrality in order to understand the conflicts informing the moral grammars at the foundations of social interactions.
ideological recognition; Gilberto Freyre; Axel Honneth; issue of race; black