Terrorism , the subaltern , and the politics of recognition : Rethinking Hegel and Honneth 1

This essay begins by analyzing how Hegel and Honneth’s theory of recognition would seem to lend support to insurgent terrorists’ struggle for the right to self-determination. Insurgent terrorism looks like a concretization of what Honneth calls the moral protest of the oppressed against the powerful. Insurgent terrorism also resembles the politics of recognition in that it challenges the legitimacy of the forces owned by the state, seeking public recognition instead for the legitimacy of their own cause. Precisely because what matters uppermost to terrorists is public recognition for their cause, terrorists are eager to seize the mass media to champion their ideas. This essay will end, however, by pointing out major differences between insurgent terrorism on the one hand, and Hegel and Honneth on the other.


INTRODUCTION
Before proceeding, it will be right to clarify that it is not the intention of this paper to argue for or against terrorism.Rather, this paper aim is to analyze what motivates insurgent terrorism from the viewpoint of the politics of recognition.The expression "politics of recognition" is adopted from Charles Taylor's essay of the same name and Axel Honneth's Struggle for Recognition.Both Taylor and Honneth believe that "our identity is partly shaped by recognition or its absence, often by the misrecognition of others, and so a person or group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people or society around them mirror back to them a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves" (Taylor, 1994, pp. 25).When talking about misrecognition, Taylor and Honneth have foremost in their minds the injustices faced by subaltern groups.For both of them, it is a moral necessity for subaltern groups to protest against misrecognition or humiliation.In the interest of space, this paper can only focus on one of these two thinkers, and have chosen to concentrate on Honneth's theory -especially as it is influenced by Hegel's master/slave dialectic.This paper will begin by analyzing how Hegel and Honneth's theory of recognition would seem to lend support to insurgent terrorists' struggle for the right to self-determination.However, it will conclude by pointing out major differences between insurgent terrorism on the one hand, and Hegel and Honneth on the other.Axel Honneth's most important contribution to social theory is perhaps his interpretation of the demands of new social movements in terms of a moral claim rather than as an interest claim for any particular group.Honneth shifts the basis for revolt and resistance from the material to the moral, hence the subtitle of his book: "The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts."In his "Reply to Andreas Kalyvas," Honneth further explains the significance of his transformation of Marxism in discussing social struggle: "it is in general more meaningful to assume the experience of disrespect or humiliation as motivational cause for protest and resistance instead of presupposing, as was common in Marxist theory for a long time, the (utilitarian) dynamic of injured interests" (1995, p. 250).Honneth argues that subaltern groups ought to protest against unfair treatment, not so much in response to their injured interests as in response to the violation of their moral expectationsexpectations which are based on a tacit understanding of the respect an individual or a group deserves as part of the human community.Honneth derives his idea from the young Hegel, for whom social conflicts are animated by moral impulses rather than mere instincts for selfpreservation, by intersubjective dynamics rather than individual subjects' raw biology.According to Honneth, such struggle for mutual recognition "generate[s] innersocietal pressure toward the practical, political establishment of institutions that would guarantee freedom" (1995, p. 5).

"STRUGGLE FOR RECOGNITION ACCORDING TO HONNETH"
For Honneth, human beings' self-worth and self-realization are dependent on recognition from others.He differentiates among three kinds of recognition: recognition through love, through rights or law, and through solidarity.Recognition from loved ones gives one self-confidence.Through rights, one is recognized as possessing equal dignity and worth as other human beings before the law.Last but not least, communities with shared values provide frameworks within which particular individuals can gain social esteem.Social conflicts arise when individuals are denied any one of these recognitions.As Joel Anderson (1995 pp 12) points out, "The 'grammar' of such struggles is 'moral' in the sense that the feelings of outrage and indignation driving them are generated by the rejection of claims to recognition and thus imply normative judgements about the legitimacy of social arrangements".

INSURGENT TERRORISTS' STRUGGLE FOR RECOGNITION
The two kinds of recognition most relevant for the study of insurgent terrorism are recognition through rights and solidarity-but particularly recognition through rights.Since legal recognition is a much more complicated issue, this paper will begin with the issue of solidarity and then work its argument back to the topic of legal recognition.

A. Solidarity
Terrorists usually belong to some kind of organization and derive their identity from being part of that group.
There exists among members of the same organization a fraternal spirit which binds together group members who are united in their commitment to the same ideal and their similar predicament of confronting life in its most extreme and intimate relations to death.It is thus not surprising that groups associated with terrorism either by choice or by unfortunate accident often call themselves "brotherhoods" or "solidarity movements."Typical examples are the Fenian Brotherhood, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the International Solidarity Movement.The sense of brotherhood and solidarity is even more intense among hard-core terrorists who tend to be absolutists and see the world in black and white, us versus them.
Of particular interest in understanding recognition through solidarity among terrorists is that they are driven by a sense of solidarity not only with their own immediate group but also with an imagined community.Benedict Anderson's theory can well be used to theorize the following characterization of terrorists by Albert Bandura (1990) "Some terrorist violence is carried out by selfappointed crusaders who act on behalf of (an imagined) oppressed people with whom they identify.They are motivated . . .by ideological imperatives and mutual reward of their efforts by fellow members" (178) as well as by recognition from an imagined community of brothers whom they do not know in person.The Symbionese Liberation Army, for example, defined its identity in the following terms: "The name 'symbionese' is taken from the word 'symbiosis' and we define its meaning as a body of dissimilar bodies and organisms living in deep and loving harmony and partnership in the best interest of all within the body."Its leaders declared their group to be "a united and federated grouping of members of different races and people and socialistic political parties of the oppressed people of The Fascist United States of America, who have under black and minority leadership formed and joined The Symbionese Federated Republic and have agreed to struggle together on behalf of all their people and races and political parties' interest in the gaining of Freedom and Self Determination and Independence for all their people and races": The Symbionese Federation is not a government, but rather it is a united and federated formation of members of different races and people and political parties who have agreed to struggle in a united front for the independence and self determination of each of their races and people and The Liquidation of the Common Enemy [ . . . ] The Symbionese Federation is not a party, but rather it is a Federation, for its members are made up of members of all political parties and organizations and races of all the most oppressed people of this fascist nation, thereby forming unity and the full representation of the interests of all the people (DeFreeze 1973).
Terrorists typically mobilize the media and launch propagandistic wars to explain to the public their activities and their cause.Such practice is based on the assumption and imagination of the existence of a community of fellow sympathizers--a community which they also seek to expand through their propaganda and acts of terrorism.Patty Hearst, for example, told her lawyer to publicize the following message when she was being processed for prison: "Tell everybody that I'm smiling, that I feel free and strong and I send my greetings and love to all the sisters and brothers out there" ("Radicals 1975").

B. Terrorists' struggle for recognition of their rights
Being accorded rights is crucial to self-respect.Honneth highlights this point by making use of Joel Feinberg's (1980) argument that "what is called `human dignity' may simply be the recognizable capacity to assert claims" (1995, p. 151).Terrorist groups often perceive themselves as the "oppressed group" -that is, a group deprived of their rights and human dignity.Being deprived of legal recognition, they attack the state and sabotage institutions associated with the legal establishment -thereby making a symbolic declaration of the invalidity and illegitimacy of existing laws.

The struggle for rights according to insurgent terrorists and Axel Honneth: Some continuity
At first sight, it seems as if terrorist activities concretized Honneth's theory about the struggle for recognition.Honneth focuses on the moral dimension in social conflict.Joel Anderson (1995, pp 19).highlights that for Honneth, "`moral' motives for revolt and resistance . . .do not emerge only in the defences of traditional ways of life . . .but also in situations where those ways of life have become intolerable": Because key forms of exclusion, insult, and degradation can be seen as violating self-confidence, self-respect, or self-esteem, the negative emotional reactions generated by these experiences of disrespect provide a pretheoretical basis for social critique. . . the potential emerges for collective action aimed at actually expanding social patterns of recognition Terrorists can be interpreted as Honneth's "victims of disrespect," who, by engaging in political action, tear themselves "out of the crippling situation of passively endured humiliation and [help] them, in turn, on their way to a new, positive relation-to-self" (1995, p. 164).Terrorist activities, in other words, can be understood as an attempt to overcome "the diminished self-respect typically accompanying the passive endurance of humiliation and degradation."Through their act of "collective resistance, individuals uncover a form of expression with which they can indirectly convince themselves of their moral or social worth" (1995, p. 164).Insurgent groups resorting to terrorism in their struggle for decolonization or for liberation from oppression have justified their actions in these terms.Appeals of this sort have been made by the FLN during the Algerian Revolution, and have also been used to justify acts of terror carried out by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Lehi, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Above all, it is Honneth's debt to Hegel's Master/Slave dialectic in formulating his struggle for recognition that brings him close to the terrorists' position.Honneth is inspired by Hegel who locates the hallmark of humanity in human beings' willingness to sacrifice their lives and to give up on self-preservation for the sake of recognition.The struggle for recognition is for Honneth a moral struggle, because it raises a human being above his/her instinct for self-preservation -and only with such areadiness to give up life for dignity do human beings differentiate themselves from other animals.What is at issue in the struggle for recognition is one's honor and humanity rather than "mere life."Self-realization through mutual recognition, rather than self-preservation, is what is at issue for Honneth in theorizing subaltern struggles.Despite Honneth's attempt to read Hegel's life-and-death struggle "in a metaphorical sense" -in that "a subject is forced to realize that a meaningful life is only possible in the context of the recognition of rights and duties" (1995, p. 45) -his prioritization of dignity above mere self-interest (which necessarily includes the interest of self-preservation) makes it tempting to imagine Honneth as at least theoretically endorsing suicidal bombers who place their honor and the honor of their people above mere life. 2 Interestingly enough, death is a means for terrorists to assert their rights and their equal dignity with their enemies.Death wipes out the humiliating inequality that exists between the dominating and the dominated.While alive, the powerful and the powerless are unequal.But in death, this humiliating structure of misrecognition is eliminated.
Honneth's theory seems to make intelligible not just the terrorists' suicidal behavior but also their killing of others.On this latter subject, Honneth's source of inspiration is again Hegel -this time Hegel's theorization of crime.Honneth explains how, for Hegel, crime differs from exigency (1995, p. 53) in that it is motivated by the desire for recognition: Built into the structure of human interaction there is a normative expectation that one will meet with the recognition of others, or at least an implicit assumption that one will be given positive consideration in the plans of others. . . .The reason why the socially ignored individuals attempt, in response, to damage the others' possessions is not because they want to satisfy their passions, but rather in order to make the others take notice of them.Hegel interprets the destructive reaction of the excluded party as an act whose real aim is to win back the attention of the other (Honneth 44; my italics) Honneth's "compatibility" with the terrorists' position seems to be more solidly confirmed by his reference to Sartre (1963) as one of his theoretical predecessors.Honneth even cites Sartre's championing of decolonization as an explication of what he means by the struggle for recognition.And, when one thinks of Sartre as a spokesman for decolonization, one cannot possibly overlook his endorsement of violence as a means for liberating the colonized, especially in the context of Algeria.
Honneth speaks approvingly of Sartre's later work where "the struggle for recognition . . .came to be intepreted as a phenomenon that is caused by an asymmetrical relationship between social groups . . .and is, in principle, open to being overcome": This historically relativized model of conflict came to dominate the essays Sartre (1964) composed on the anti-colonialist movement of négritude in particular (Situations V).There, colonialism is understood as a social site that distorts intersubjective relationships of reciprocal recognition in such a way that the participant groups are pressed into a quasi-neurotic scheme of behaviour.The only way that the colonizers can work through the selfcontempt that they feel for themselves as a result of sysmtematically denigrating the native people is through cynicism or heightened aggression, and the only way the colonized are able to endure the "common degradation" is by splitting their conduct into the two parts of ritual transgression and habitual over-accomodation ("Introduction to Fanon," 16 f.)(1995, p. 157).
Honneth further follows Sartre's argument about how the asymmetrical relationship between the colonizer and the colonized makes necessary a simultaneous denial and maintenance of relationships of mutual recognition, the result of which is a psychopathology called "neurosis": [F]or Sartre, the asymmetrical patterns of communication between the settler and the native that are found in the colonial system represent interactive relations that demand from both sides the simultaneous denial and maintenance of relationships of mutual recognition.In order for interaction to be possible at all, the colonial master has to both recognize and disrespect the native as a human person in just the way that the latter is forced into "laying claims to and denying the human condition at the same time" ("Introduction" to Fanon, 17).As a label for the type of social relationship that must result from this reciprocal denial of claims to recognition . . ., Sartre introduced the concept of "neurosis" at this point. . . ."neurotic" is meant to designate not an individual behavioural disorder with a psychological aetiology but rather a pathological distortion of relations of interaction stemming from the reciprocal denial of relationships of recognition that are still effective below the surface ("Introduction to Fanon," 18, 19) (1995, p. 157).
The asymmetrical relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, in other words, prevents a healthy kind of intersubjective mutual recognition from coming into being.It would seem natural, in other words, for the politics of recognition to endorse the project of decolonizationincluding the violent kind Sartre sometimes approves of.And if the logic of Honneth obliges him to fully approve of Sartre's position on decolonization, he would have to endorse terrorism in the late twentieth-and early twenty-first-centuries also.
The logic of Honneth's argument, in other words, seems to oblige him to endorse terrorism, if terrorism is to be seen as a legitimate means for bringing about decolonization.Terrorism seems all the more continuous with the project of decolonization, when we keep in mind Kofi Annan's description of one of the major faultlines in today's world being the division between the "privileged and humiliated" -those who have all the glorious recognition, and those on whom is imposed the most degrading forms of misrecognition.The following is the Nobel Prize speech Kofi Annan gave in Oslo on December 10, 2001: Today's real borders are not between nations, but between powerful and powerless, free and fettered, privileged and humiliated.Today, no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the world from national security crises in another.Indeed, 20th-century and especially 21st-century terrorism seem to be triggered by the great asymmetry among different social and political entities and the great imbalance of power which makes impossible a healthy intersubjective mutual recognition between different nations, different races, or different social classes.The discrepancy becomes so intense that terrorist outbreaks seem to be a concretization of what Honneth calls the moral protest of the oppressed launched against the dominating powers.
So far, the logic of Honneth's argument seems to bind him to endorse terrorism.However, this would be the case only if it could fulfill Honneth's requirement of legitimacy for any struggle for recognition.However, precisely in terrorists' disregard for legitimacy and normativity, terrorism turns out to be a perversion rather than an exemplification of Honneth's theory concerning the struggle for recognition.Mainly, Honneth insists on the respect for the criterion of legitimacy as the absolute foundation on which any struggle for recognition is to be carried out.As he puts it, [R]ights and social esteem... represent a moral context for societal conflict, if only because they rely on socially generalized criteria in order to function.In light of norms of the sort constituted by the principle of moral responsibility or the values of society, personal experience of disrespect can be interpreted and represented as something that can potentially affect other subjects.(1995, p. 162; my italics) Expressions such as "rights" and "socially generalized criteria" highlight Honneth's concern for legitimacy and normativity.It is not surprising that in his explication of Honneth's theory, Joel Anderson also foregrounds the sense of indignation provoked by social injustice as made possible by some kind of "normative judgements about the legitimacy of social arrangements": the grammar of [the subalterns'] struggles is `moral' in the sense that the feelings of outrage and indignation driving them are generated by the rejection of claims to recognition and thus imply normative judgements about the legitimacy of social arrangements (1995).
Given that for Honneth, legitimacy and normativity are the framework for allowing the moral grammar of social struggles to unfold, terrorism cannot possibly qualify as a struggle for recognition in Honneth's sense.Terrorists do not recognize state law or international law, nor do they respect the conventions of war which require discrimination between combatants and civilians.If the state is understood in Max Weber's sense as the entity that has "a monopoly on the legitimate use of force," this legitimacy is precisely what terrorism tries to undermine rather than to uphold. 3In fact, the real target of terrorist attack against the state seems to be precisely this idea that the state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.Since terrorism is usually employed by a weak party against a strong one, what terrorists seek to undermine in their attack is not so much the might, but the right of a state. 4 Terrorists deliberately violate the principle that "the state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence" because, in their eyes, the state itself is not a legitimate body in the first place.And it is their outrage at the state's various "illegitimate" and "unjust" practices that the terrorists seek to shock the public into listening.The terrorism [singular] launched by the anarchists in the late nineteenth-century, early twentieth-century Russia and subsequently in the 1920s America provide good examples.The terrorisms rampant in the West in the 1960s-70s were by and large motivated by similiar spirit.
While terrorists are by and large regarded by outsiders as an illegitimate group, 5 terrorists themselves often see their acts as perfectly legitimate, as the protector of Justice Terrorists openly challenge the legitimacy and authority of the forces owned by the state, seeking to gain public recognition instead for the legitimacy of their own cause and their own use of violence to topple what they perceive to be a corrupt regime.However, their notion of legitimacy is messianic, in contrast to Honneth's idea of legitimacy which is grounded in normativity.Terrorists often sacrifice themselves in the name of a grand Cause, and it is in that name that they seek to be recognized.
In Lacanian language, insurgent terrorists typically dedicate themselves to a big Other which is an emblem of political virtues (for example, Justice and Equality).Oftentimes, terrorist violence is carried out by self-appointed champions of justice who act on behalf of oppressed people with whom they identify.They are motivated, in large part, by ideological imperatives and the reward and approval of their efforts by fellow members.For this reason, terrorists believe that legitimacy is on their side.Terrorists appoint themselves to be the rightful guardians of Justice, in contrast to the state which the terrorists perceive to be a mere corrupt enterprise.In attacking the existing legal and political structure, the terrorists see themselves as serving a higher law and a big Other that has real legitimacy.Leila Khaled, for example, claimed that their terrorist movements were "fighting for humanity-all those who are oppressed and tortured." 6 In other words, insurgent terrorists' struggle is for recognition, rather than for immediate military success.Their immediate goal is public support.They think that if they can undermine the state on the issue of "right," the destruction of its might will follow by the time they have the public on their side.Since the terrorists' immediate goal is to win over public opinion, the "wars" they carry out are generally symbolic wars.In other words, it is the messages being conveyed by the attack rather than their practical destructiveness that is uppermost in the terrorists' minds.Terrorists typically destroy symbolic targets to demonstrate their stand against what those targets represent.Their targets are often highly symbolic of the established authority, or of organizations associated with various normative structures, such as government offices, national airlines, banks, and multinational corporations deemed by the terrorists to be complicitous with the established order.Well-known examples include the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, the London Underground, and the explosion at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport.The 9/11 terrorists struck at the most eye-catching symbols of American financial and military power.As D. Steven Nouriani (2011) points out, the Twin Towers "dominated the New York City skyline, making their loss, and the symbolic destruction of American commerce and power, all the more visible."Martin Gus, on the other hand, observes that "The Pentagon was a strategic target because of its symbolism as the branch of the American government which protects the country."Terrorist attacks can also be carried out against representative individuals whom the terrorists associate with political repression, economic exploitation, or social injustice ("Terrorism Research 2012").The Symbionese Liberation Army's kidnapping of Patricia Campbell Hearst, the granddaughter of the publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst and great-granddaughter of the millionaire George Hearst, was an act of this kind.Another favorite tactic of terrorists is to time their attacks to coincide with significant dates or anniversaries, thereby exploiting their symbolism.In the early months of 2011, for example, the U.S. intelligence received warnings that a major terrorist strike would be made on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Not unlike Lacan's notion of demand, terrorist activities carry with them a demand for recognition -a demand to have their agent's voice heard or read -and this demand certainly exceeds the need for inflicting significant physical damages on the enemy.To further drive home how terrorist war is at its core a war for recognition, let me draw attention to how terrorists often begin their careers by making speeches and distributing pamphlets.Failing to catch public attention, they then try to bomb the public into listening (Rubenstein1987). 7As much as the terrorists are driven by idea(l)s, it is ultimately the attempt to gain public recognition for their political idea or message, rather than the material consequences of killing, that they are concerned in their activities. 8This is why violence committed by insurgent terrorists is usually "signed" (Pasquino, 1996, p. 872).After the 1993 bombing of the WTC, for instance, a letter was sent by the terrorists to the New York Times: "We declare our responsibility for the explosion on the mentioned building.This action was done in response for the American political, economical, and military support to Israel the state of terrorism and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region." Politically motivated terrorism carried out against a state in the name of liberation movements is designed to awaken the broader population to an injustice that the terrorists feel only they are sufficiently aware of.Terrorists therefore actively seek publicity for their cause in the effort to enlist popular support for the social or political changes they desire.Terrorists often "perform" for the television to gain sympathy and support for their plight.This generally takes the form of a narrative that presents the terrorists as risking their lives for the well-being of a victimized constituency whose legitimate grievances have been ignored.They often attempt to minimize, or deflect attention from, the harm inflicted through their terrorist acts by centering attention on the injustices perpetrated by the state or the states they are combating.Since the terrorists' challenge to the state is on the level of ideas and recognition rather than a serious exercise of military force, it is not surprising that terrorism and counter-terrorism always go hand-in-hand with propaganda wars -most notably in the form of media wars. 9In the aftermath of 9/11, for instance, various news media reported the "propaganda battle" on both sides, sometimes using that very term.Anup Shah (2002)  If inciting people to do that is terrorism, and if killing those who kill our sons is terrorism, then let history be witness that we are terrorists [. ..]We will work to continue this battle, God permitting, until victory or until we meet God before that occurs.
On the American side, the Bush administration hurried to revitalize its propaganda activities in the Middle East (see Battle).According to the New York Times on February 19, 2002, the Pentagon proposed the establishment of an Office of Strategic Influence to "[develop] plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations as part of a new effort to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries" (Dao and Schmitt 2012).Despite the fact that the office was declared closed by the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld soon after its existence became publicly known, the actual operations of the OSI seem to have continued unabated.On December 14, 2005, USA Today quoted an unnamed military official remarking on "a $300 million Pentagon psychological warfare operation" which included "plans for placing pro-American messages in foreign media outlets without disclosing the U.S. government as the source" (Kelley 2005).The Canadian economist Michel Chossudovsky (2009) points out further that "The US intelligence apparatus has created its own terrorist organizations.And at the same time, it creates its own terrorist warnings concerning the terrorist organizations which it has itself created.In turn, it has developed a cohesive multibillion dollar counterterrorism program `to go after' these terrorist organizations." Precisely because what matters uppermost to terrorists is the gaining of recognition for their cause as just, terrorists are eager to seize the mass media as a means of spreading their ideas.Media publicity is "the oxygen of terrorism," as Margaret Thatcher is frequently quoted for her observation during her term as British Prime Minister (Muller et al., 2003, 65;Vieira, 1991, 73-85).Acts of terrorism become almost pointless unless they are reported by the media.Brigitte Nacos observes: "Without massive news coverage the terrorist act would resemble the proverbial tree falling in the forest: if no one learned of an incident, it would be as if it had not occurred" (Nacos, 2000, 175).In the same vein, Bruce Hoffman writes: "without the media's coverage the act's impact is arguably wasted, remaining narrowly confined to the immediate victim(s) of the attack, rather than reaching the wider 'target audience' at whom the terrorists' violence is actually aimed" (Hoffman 2006, 174).The terrorist attack in Munich in 1972, for instance, achieved its global impact because large numbers of newspaper and broadcast journalists had gathered in Munich for the Olympic Games, and the terrorists were able to "monopolize the attention of a global television audience who had tuned in expecting to watch the Games" (Nacos, 2007,179).
The reliance of terrorism on mass media is one reason why terrorist acts usually target icons that would generate maximum media attention.Terrorist acts are designed to teach and "educate" the populace through a form of real-life political theatre.The key point here is that terrorists generally do not maintain a distinction between ideas and actions.Their teachings are not articulated in abstract expressions, but are dramatized vividly for their students through concrete examples of terrorist activities in real life.Terrorism itself is theatre (Jenkins 1986, Combs, 1997, Tugwell, 1987).As the nineteenth-century anarchists claimed, terrorism is "demonstration by example" and "propaganda by deed."One can even say that, for the terrorists, it is more important to win the media war than the military campaign.The reason is, so long as the terrorists succeed in hijacking the legitimacy of the state, even if the immediate terrorists get eliminated, other people dissatisfied with the state will look upon them as martyrs and perhaps even turn terrorists themselves.By contrast, if the terrorists lose their moral authority and popular support, they will easily disintegrate.

A. Why Terrorism is Not a Viable Means for the Struggle for Recognition
As often as terrorists like to insist on the legitimacy of their own operations as sanctioned by a "higher law," their self-bestowed legitimacy does not really hold, in that law is both based on, and enforces, mutual recognition between equal parties.As Hegel points out, Law . . . is the relation of persons, in their conduct, to others, the universal element of their free being or the determination, the limitation of their empty freedom.It is not up to me to think up or bring about this relation or limitation for myself; rather, the subject-matter [Gegenstand] is itself this creation of law in general, that is, the recognizing relation.(1983, p. 111; trans.modified by J. Anderson, 1995, p. 42) Terrorism is based on anything but mutual recognition and respect.It is an absolutely unilateral violent imposition of one side's will on the other.This is precisely why terrorists can never gain the recognition of legitimacy in Honneth's sense.Not unlike its counterpart state terror, insurgent terrorism is also based on unilateral decisions.Neither insurgent terrorism nor state terror is conducive to peace precisely because both are devoid of legitimacy, and they both lack legitimacy because unilateral decision shortcircuits the necessity to respect and recognize the other party's position.It is possible for terrorists to cower their opponent into submission, but such victory by force does not mean that the terrorists can gain the recognition of legitimacy in the world's eyes, less to mention in the eyes of their opponents.It is important to defer conflicts to the law because law is , in Lacanian terms, the third party or the Big Other which breaks up the aggressivity characterizing the two-party imaginary register, and it does so by giving parties of conflicts equal recognition through granting them equal rights.That way, the "losing" side will not feel that it loses because it is being "taken for granted" or casually bullied by its opponent.By contrast, short-circuiting the law reduces the injured to mere victims who feel that their autonomous will has not been consulted: whoever is attacked feels themselves objectified and their dignity compromised.
By privatizing violence, by making unilateral claims about one's own legitimacy, terrorists proceed not on the basis of mutual recognition.Where there is no mutual recognition, one's own claim about one's legitimacy remains an empty claim, since there is no legitimacy unless if it is intersubjectively recognized.If terrorists' goal is to win on the level of "right" rather than "might," if they want to win public support for their position as the injured party making rightful demands, then terrorists' struggle for recognition of its legitimate grievances through violent acts is self-defeating: the means of terrorism compromises its end.
In short, there is no real legitimacy without a party and its practice first being recognized by what Lacan calls the big Other.This is why in the end, insurgent terrorism is incompatible with the philosophy of recognition because law is the foundation for the struggle for recognition.As Honneth points out, [A]ll human coexistence presupposes a kind of basic mutual affirmation between subjects, since otherwise no form of being-together whatsoever could ever come into existence.Insofar as this mutual affirmation always already entails a certain degree of individual self-restraint, there is here a preliminary, still implicit form of legal consciousness.But then the transition to the social contract is to be understood as something that subjects accomplish in practice, at the moment in which they become conscious of their prior relationship of recognition and elevate it to an intersubjectively shared legal relation (1995, p. 43).
"Intersubjectivity" is a key word Honneth emphasizes in his discussion of the philosophy of recognition.And intersubjectivity is precisely what terrorism brackets in its unilateral action against its opponent.Honneth's emphasis on law and legitimacy resonates with Hegel's own position.Hegel thinks that "international law should preserve the possibility of peace -for example, ambassadors should be respected and "war be not waged against domestic institutions, against the peace of family and private life, or against persons in their private capacity" (1958, §338 and 339).Although Hegel in this context is condemning war of aggressions, his disapproval of attacking private citizens would entail that terrorism cannot be legitimized as well.From Hegel's viewpoint, states are represented by armies, which are the proper entities to conduct war.Moreover, war is to be guided by principles derived from the modern idea of right including respect for the property and life of non-combatants.Terrorists violate these ideas of right and are not representatives of legitimate institutional bodies.
Honneth asserts that there is a moral grammar to social struggle.Likewise, we can also say that there is a moral grammar to political struggle, insurgent terrorism being a good case in point.However, it is important to note that for Honneth, law provides the deep structure for that moral grammar.As such, in the end, insurgent terrorism turns out to be a perversion of Hegel and Honneth's philosophy of recognition, and it is a perversion in the Kantian sense of the perversion of the will discussed in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone.

B. The root-cause of insurgent terrorism and the importance of recognizing the grievances of the other
While insurgent terrorists fall short of gaining legitimacy through recognizing the law, the law also risks losing its own legitimacy if it fails to recognize solidarity as one important basis for self-esteem and self-realization.An abstract system of legal codes by itself cannot guarantee equity and as such does not carry enough authority to enjoin a non-violent struggle for recognition.This is why Honneth (1995, p. 57) insists on "context-sensitive forms of the application of law".As he puts it, "the concretization of legal relations . . .[need to] take the particular situation of individuals better into account".In this regard, Honneth is again indebted to Hegel who, along with Guizot, were aware of the need to create institutions that reflected people's passions, interests, and values.Without this sensitivity to will, law could become unjust and even tyrannical.
Careless induction of all people into the same set of legal relations with no sensitivity to particular cultural contexts can be experienced by subaltern groups as a form of imposition and disrespect.Transgression of this legal relation and a deliberate strike at the legal system (such as those launched by the terrorists) maybe motivated by particular groups' will to assert their identity and to force the legal establishment to recognize their particularities.Punishment of such transgressions would only intensify the transgressor's feeling of being disrespected and imposed upon.Hegel develops a theory to this effect.His analysis of the desire for recognition as the driving force behind crimes committed by individuals can be adapted to understand the factor motivating terrorist groups and their activities: The inner source of crime is the coercive source of the law; exigency and so forth are external causes, belonging to animal need, but crime is directed against the person as such and his knowledge of it, for the criminal is intelligent.His inner justification is coercion, the opposition to his individual will to power, to counting as something, to be recognized.Like Herostratus, he wants to be something, not exactly famous, but that he exercises his will in defiance of the universal will (Hegel, 1983, p. 130 ff.;1969, p. 224;trans. corrected by Anderson, 1995, p. 53).
Honneth's explication of this paragraph is most relevant for understanding insurgent terrorists' readiness to stake out their lives for recognition -that is, for the dignity of their community.Drawing attention to Hegel's saying "Crime represents the deliberate injury of "universal recognition [Anerkanntsein]"[ "Jena Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit 131, 224], Honneth explains that "The motivational cause of such an act lies in the feeling of not having the particularity of one's `own will' recognized in the application of legal coercion."Honneth goes on to compare this defiance of the legal establishment to the human willingness to give up one's life for honor in the Master/Slave dialectic: "In this sense, what occurs ...in the case of crime is the same as what occurred (as part of the conditions for the individual formative process) in the case of the struggle for life and death" (Honneth, 1995, p. 53).
Sensitivity to cultural contexts when deciding legitimacy issues is of paramount importance to make possible a non-violent form of struggle for recognition.It is precisely this need to give due recognition to subaltern groups that animates the ending of Seyla Benhabib's essay "Unholy War." "Unholy War" is primarily a critique of terrorism.Nonetheless, toward the end of the essay, Benhabib indirectly faults the West for being partly responsible for radicalizing the Muslims by denying them proper recognition and treating them with contempt: given the global entertainment industry's profound assault on their [the Muslims'] identity as Muslims, and given the profound discrimination and contempt which they experience in their host societies as new immigrants who are perceived to have "backward" morals and ways of life, many young Muslims today turn to Islamism and fundamentalism.Commenting on l'affair folard (the headscarf affair) in France, in which some female students took to wearing traditional headscarfs less as a sign of submission to religious patriarchy than as an emblem of difference and defiance against homogenizing French republican traditions (Benhabib, 2002, p. 44).
The true answer to insurgent terrorism, in other words, is not by force, but to try to understand the terrorists' grievances and their particular contexts, and to, as Honneth (1995, p. 58) suggests, "conceptualize the ethical sphere of the State as an intersubjective relationship in which members of society could know themselves to be reconciled with each other precisely to the degree to which their uniqueness would be reciprocally recognized".

NOTES
1 An early draft of this paper was first given as an invited presentation on September 28, 2002 at "The Internationalization of Critical Theory" Conference, co-sponsored by the DAAD and the Institute of German Cultural Studies, Cornell University.

2.
A Taliban spokesman, for example, openly declared that his people love death as much as the Americans love life.See Benhabib 2002, 38.  3 This is why terrorism often pays no regard to any norms or rules associated with "legitimacy."As Robert A. Friedlander observes, "terrorism involves the deliberate disruption of norms" (1981, p. 286).Interestingly enough, while terrorism is being faulted by ruling parties for not recognizing the legitimacy of the state, the same criticism is much less often launched by them against global capital, which in many ways also demonstrate a lack of respect for the state.In fact, both terrorism and global capital seek to establish themselves over and above the state.More interestingly still, despite first-world governments' tendency to criminalize terrorism while fawning on global capital, supranational terrorism and global capital are often implicated in each other. 4Terrorists have to focus on legitimacy issues both for moral and for strategic reasons.As Wilkins explains, "only by appealing to the court of public opinion can terrorists hope to achieve their goals" (1992, p. 4). 5 The dilemma of the terrorists is that their legitimacy is in many cases being refused recognition not just by the government but also by society at large.This is especially the case when their claim of fighting for human justice is seen by the general populace as being contradicted by their killing of the innocent.
6 Interview, BBC "Man Alive" programme on terrorism 12 June 1975.Leila Khaled is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.She became known to the world public when she involved herself in the hijacking of an Israeli airliner over Britain on 6 September, 1970.She was overpowered.According to Khaled, although she was carrying two hand grenades at the time, she had received very strict instructions not to threaten passengers on the civilian flight.She was held for twenty-three days at Ealing police station, and was released afterwards as part of a prisoners' exchange (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leila_Khaled). 7 The Symbionese Liberation Army, for example, sent its manifesto to the Press in August of 1973, a couple of months before the organization carried out its first murder.The manifesto, entitled "The Symbionese Federation and the Symbionese Liberation Army Declaration of Revolutionary War and the Symbionese Program," was widely believed to have been written by Donald DeFreeze (aka Cinque). 8The struggle for recognition is so crucial to terrorist activities that one thinker even defines terrorism as "a strategy, a method by which an organized group or party tries to get attention for its aims, or force concessions toward its goals, through the systematic use of deliberated violence" (my italics): Typical terrorists are individuals trained and disciplined to carry out the violence decided upon by their organizations.And, if caught, true terrorists can be expected to speak and act during their trials not primarily to win personal freedom, but to try to spread their organization's political ideas.(1976, p. 1) [definition based on Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 1934.] 9 The fact that it is the "right" (legitimacy)--and not the "might" (power)--of the terrorists and their opponent that is at issue for the success or failure of a terrorist act explains the two sides' scramble to be the "authoritative interpreter" of the symbolic meaning of the terrorist acts.For example, in the 9/11 attack, the terrorists intended an iconic assault on the United States' military and financial power--and the overbearing, domineering manner in which it was wielded.The Bush administration, however, insisted on reading the act as a declaration of war on civilians and the innocent.Insurgent terrorists challenge the governing power symbolically by seeking to undermine the public's recognition for the state.Terrorists emerge victorious, not when they succeed in destroying certain targets, but when their intended message-that is, their interpretation of their acts and their idea/ideology--win public recognition.In other words, the propagandistic wars between the terrorists and their opponents over the correct interpretation of the symbolic significance of particular terrorist acts amount to no less than their relentless struggle against each other for legitimacy. 4Terrorists have to focus on legitimacy issues both for moral and for strategic reasons.As Wilkins explains, "only by appealing to the court of public opinion can terrorists hope to achieve their goals" (1992, p. 4). 5 The dilemma of the terrorists is that their legitimacy is in many cases being refused recognition not just by the government but also by society at large.This is especially the case when their claim of fighting for human justice is seen by the general populace as being contradicted by their killing of the innocent.
6 Interview, BBC "Man Alive" programme on terrorism 12 June 1975.Leila Khaled is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.She became known to the world public when she involved herself in the hijacking of an Israeli airliner over Britain on 6 September, 1970.She was overpowered.According to Khaled, although she was carrying two hand grenades at the time, she had received very strict instructions not to threaten passengers on the civilian flight.She was held for twenty-three days at Ealing police station, and was released afterwards as part of a prisoners' exchange (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leila_Khaled). 7 The Symbionese Liberation Army, for example, sent its manifesto to the Press in August of 1973, a couple of months before the organization carried out its first murder.The manifesto, entitled "The Symbionese Federation and the Symbionese Liberation Army Declaration of Revolutionary War and the Symbionese Program," was widely believed to have been written by Donald DeFreeze (aka Cinque). 8The struggle for recognition is so crucial to terrorist activities that one thinker even defines terrorism as "a strategy, a method by which an organized group or party tries to get attention for its aims, or force concessions toward its goals, through the systematic use of deliberated violence" (my italics): Typical terrorists are individuals trained and disciplined to carry out the violence decided upon by their organizations.And, if caught, true terrorists can be expected to speak and act during their trials not primarily to win personal freedom, but to try to spread their notes that in the UK,