ABSTRACT Gerald Early's remark that black people are seminally important to the modern world because they created the blues is examined as a contribution to the politics of recognition that deviates from the liberal model that dominates in political theory. Central to this deviation is the politics of honor and Paul Corcoran's distinction between formal and aesthetic recognition. The politics of aesthetic recognition is examined here through Hans-Georg Gadamer's discussion of hermeneutics in Truth and Method as well as through Martin (...) Heidegger's phenomenology and philosophy of Dasein, inspired by Aristotle's Rhetoric, and his writings on art. The significance of art and specifically of the blues to the politics of recognition goes beyond the representation or the relaying of others' voices, in that it calls forth modes of being-there over against difference. (shrink)