Based on the diagnosis of a political conjuncture of de-democratization of democracy and a theoretical conjuncture in which we can find two fields that either separate recognition from violence or consider it as saturated by it, the thesis explores the role of the concept of recognition in the analysis of contemporary processes of democratization and de-democratization. The general hypothesis, supported by an investigation of authors belonging to Western Marxism and post-structuralism, more specifically the thoughts of Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Judith Butler and Theodor Adorno, claims that recognition can be read as a dialectical phenomenon, which is traversed by a minimal degree of violence, in spite of which and because of which democratization is enabled as an internally tensioned process. This implies arguing that the value of the concept of recognition is given on the condition of adopting a dialectical reading of recognition, in which its internal contradictions are unfolded and a certain internal limit that might be inherent to it is examined. The exposition of the link between the dialectic of recognition and democratization constitutes the general object of the three chapters that integrate the thesis. The thesis is located in the spectrum of critical theory in general and in the model of dialectical critique in particular. Through an approach to the concept of recognition by means of the methodological precautions of dialectical negation, mediation and the historicity of the object, the thesis offers a Hegelian reconceptualization that aims to keep up with the complexity of the phenomenon, especially in its attention to contemporary processes of democratization and de-democratization. Furthermore, the analysis of each author’s thought illuminates different particular levels of recognition as a general object: with Lacan, the unconscious, and, with Althusser, ideology; with Butler, embodiment; with Adorno, singularity.