Recognition Discourse and Systemic Gender Injustice: An Essay in Honour of Mary-Anne Plaatjies-Van Huffel

Against the backdrop of the South African Reformed ecclesiologist Mary-Anne Plaatjies-Van Huffel’s reflections on gender insensitivity in church and society, this article engages with the notion of recognition, a concept that has found strong currency in many contemporary discourses. The first part of the article mentions the promise of recognition as a moral, political, and also theological category. In addition, it also interrogates the term in conversation with theorists who raise some critical concerns regarding accounts of recognition that are not adequately justice-sensitive. The second part of the article enters more directly into conversation with some of the writings of Plaatjies-Van Huffel, highlighting in the process her emphasis that the recognition of women should not be dislocated from a plea for a change in the dynamics of patriarchal power and structural gender injustice. The article concludes with a call to move beyond what is termed “cheap recognition.”