In her now famous response to Jurgen Habermas, Nancy Fraser (Citation1990) argues that the lack of recognition of marginalized social groups excludes them from any possibility of belonging to a universal public sphere. Fraser contests the suggestion that such a public space, to the extent that we can say it currently exists, is actually able to be inclusive. For Fraser, the very notion of independent “citizens” is masculinist, because to function in the public sphere, one must rely on a certain level of domestic (private, usually female) unrecognized labor, stolen or repossessed land, and ignored identity politics. Especially since the 1990s, the question—in theory and in politics—of how subjects might participate in the social has nourished renewed critical engagements with the politics of distributive justice, the recognition of difference and the relationships between these things. Historically, these particular engagements have brought into relief broader theoretical and political tensions. Exchanges between Judith Butler and Nancy Fraser in the late 1990s offer one example of this work.