{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.019230769230769232, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.317919075144508, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
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.”