The demand for recognition in these latter cases is given
urgency by the supposed links between recognition and
identity, where this latter term designates something like a
person’s understanding of who they are, of their fundamental
defining characteristics as a human being. The thesis is
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.
Nonrecognition or misrecognition can inflict harm, can be a
form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted,
and reduced mode of being.