On Recognition and Interpellation in Althusser and Lacan

In the 1950s and 1960s violence in westerns would often begin with a cowboy asserting that he didn't like the way a stranger looked at him. At Columbine High School, Klebold and Harris were violent, we are told, because they were treated as outcasts and “looked upon” with veiled or outright contempt. In Washington, D.C. last year more than 15 African American teenagers were shot because their shooters felt they were not being treated with respect by a person outside their gang. In all these acts of violence, the attacker and the victim belong to different membership groups, and the very act of a recognition of outsider status seems sufficient to generate feelings of discomfort and violent aggression.

If lack of recognition can fuel violence among gang members, the reverse is also true. The sheer need for group recognition can also motivate violence. In the “great” epics of Western culture Greek, Roman, and Anglo-Saxon heroes talk about war as a way of winning recognition. War is justified, in the rhetoric of the sagas anyway, not on the basis of some real material reward gained, but on the basis of the honor, admiration, or recognition it brings. Achilles, for example, speaks to Agamemnon: “I for my part did not come here for the sake of Trojan spearmen, to fight against them, since they are nothing to me; but for your sake … we followed you, to do your favour …, to win your honor and Menelaos'.” The great slaughter outside the gates of Troy, Achilles reveals, is not done for the trophies of war, women, and armor, but for honor. And the trophies of war, so carefully described by Homer, are valuable not as material objects, but as reminders of the admiration and recognition given the heroes. In the Anglo-Saxon world, when Beowulf comes to the great hall of Heorot, he tells the king that he seeks to win honor by taking on a difficult task. He risks his life because he craves the recognition and memory of a tribal group. It is as if “life” itself were not primarily biol