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This essay investigates the concept, experience, and autobiographical rendering of recognition. The first two sections consider and elaborate upon two philosophical accounts of recognition: those by Ludwig Wittgenstein and Charles Taylor. The essay then reads a contemporary work of Australian life-writing, Peter Rose’s award winning Rose Boys, as an autobiographical exploration of recognition. The essay argues that recognition is a many-faceted concept and phenomenon with a range of important moral, political, logical and perceptual implications, and that it is central to the genre of autobiography.
Professor of English and Director of the Unit for Studies in Biography and Autobiography at La Trobe University, Melbourne, and is currently Tong Tin Sun Chair Professor and Head, Department of English, at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He has published books on the English and American novel, relations between literary theory and philosophy, ethics and life-writing. His books include Threads of Life: Autobiography and the Will (Chicago, 2001); a memoir, Shadow of Doubt: My Father and Myself (Bystander, 2003), and This Crazy Thing a Life: Australian Jewish Autobiography (University of Western Australia Press, 2007).
