La posta in gioco del riconoscimento: genealogie femministe

This article explores the concept of recognition through a feminist genealogical lens, positioning Mary Wollstonecraft as a foundational figure in rethinking subjectivity, autonomy, and justice. While philosophical debates on recognition often begin with Hegel’s dialectic of the master and the slave, Wollstonecraft’s thought anticipates a relational and moral framework that challenges both individualist and hierarchical models. Her conception of virtue as modesty, her critique of dependence, and her insistence on educational and civic freedom for women frame recognition not as approval from above, but as mutual formation through ethical relations. The essay follows this trajectory through Simone de Beauvoir’s analysis of woman as the ‘Other’, Carla Lonzi’s radical refusal of recognition as a patriarchal device, and Judith Butler’s deconstruction of recognition as a normative and exclusionary act. In this itinerary, Wollstonecraft emerges not merely as a precursor but as a theorist of relational autonomy, whose insights destabilize the logic of domination embedded in traditional recognition. Rather than tracing a linear history, the article maps a series of ruptures and tensions that reposition recognition as a site of political contestation, ethical transformation, and feminist critique.