recognized, but is deliberately shaped and depicted in a way which leads to misrecognition. Taylor (1994: 25) maintains that misrecognition can inflict harm and imprison the other in a distorted and reduced mode of being.


BENEATH THE IMAGES


Apartheid in South Africa was implemented on the basis that while Blacks, on the basis of their race, should be recognized and treated as less than Whites. Within this construction it is not so much the absence of recognition as it is the deliberate recognition of the more in one group and the less in the other, which has ultimately led to a distorted mode of being among certain Whites, believing themselves to better than, and a reduced mode of being among Blacks, believing that they are less than. And because our identities are shaped by our moral spaces, even when that moral space is harmful and oppressive, we buy into whatever informs and shapes that space, and we start believing it – often leading to what Taylor (1994: 26) describes as a potent instrument of oppression, imposed by our own self-depreciation.


If all we had, as was the case in apartheid South Africa, were distorted modes of being, then what was actually brought to the fore in our interactions when we did manage to interact? When we misrecognize each other in the way that apartheid intentionally set out to do – by replacing the individual's humanity with a (un)social construct of race - then all that we are left with are the images of what we believe others to be. So we believe that Blacks are inferior and we treat them with disregard and inhumanity, and we believe that Whites are deserving of our reverence, and are treated accordingly. Cooke (2001: 130) describes the images as part of the baggage that we bring to who we are and how we engage with others, and until those images are eradicated, our interactions and conversations will always be mediated by the myth of distorted modes of being. Cooke explains that it is the extent to which the image is present in dialogue that impacts on the way in which the identity is articulated. The less apparent and present the image, the more individuated the self, and the more the image interposes between two people, however, the more the distorted the recognition.


Post-apartheid, democratic South Africa brought ideals of equality – equality of race, language, culture, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation - ultimately, calling for an abandonment of distorted recognition, and a more complex and enshrouded calling for an abandonment of distorted modes of being. I say more complex and enshrouded, because while the political end of apartheid could halt the unequal and oppressive treatment of individuals, it could not halt the damaged and distorted modes of being. The deeply entrenched conception of self-depreciation amongst previously marginalized individuals and communities is not one than can be easily discarded. And while Taylor (1994: 26) insists that unless oppressed groups purge themselves of the destructive identity of self-depreciation, they will, in fact, continue oppressing themselves, it


I am, Therefore I Belong: Fulfilling a Conception of Citizenship from within the Self 40


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