How do we care justly, when selves suffer because of the identities that they inhabit? Pastoral theologian Katharine Lassiter approaches this interdisciplinary question from a feminist perspective in order to understand how suffering, subject formation, and social injustice are interconnected. Reflecting on tensions in her own experiences of caring for selves, Lassiter identifies the challenges of identity in developing a pastoral theological anthropology. Drawing from theories of recognition, she argues that doing just care requires recognizing the need for recognition as well as understanding the impediments to receiving interpersonal, social, and theological recognition. Bringing together resources from pastoral theology and social theory, she develops a feminist pastoral theology and praxis of encounter in order to advance a care that does justice. Scholars, social justice practitioners, and pastoral caregivers will be able to use this resource to understand not only how and why recognition affects human development but also how we might implement a liberative theological praxis attentive to the role of recognition in subject formation.
