Recognition without authority: Cormac McCarthy's Stella Maris and the gender visibility debate

Gender visibility days aim to mark and correct the underrepresentation of women in specific institutions and fields. This article argues that the empowerment-versus-ritual debate in gender visibility scholarship is missing a conceptual distinction already present in the sociology of tokenism and institutional diversity work: the difference between being recognized and being granted authority. Drawing on sociological theories of tokenism, institutional non-performativity, and intersectionality, this article proposes "recognition without authority" as an analytic category for evaluating gender-focused observances. It illustrates the category through a single case: Cormac McCarthy's novel Stella Maris (2022), whose protagonist is watched, examined, and discussed at length within institutions dominated by men, yet whose testimony is never treated as credible on its own terms. The case serves as a practical example of a dynamic that future sociological research on visibility days can test more systematically across different institutional settings.