Alterman and Rorty (was "Re: Some of what Alterman said)

Jim heartfield Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Sun May 24 14:53:06 PDT 1998


In message <l03130311b18e235920b1@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>Isn't this just one more attempt (by Rorty on the high end and Alterman on
>the low) to assert some pragmatic, pure native strain Americanism, against
>all that decadent and foreign stuff going on in the humanities departments?
>In the 50s it was Marxists; in the 90s it's Derrideans and queers.

The way I see it what Richard Rorty and other 'post-analytic' philosophers (like Cornel West, say) are trying to do is neither to repel post-structuralist philosophy, nor adopt it wholesale. Rather they are trying to draw on indigenous intellectual traditions, but to develop them in the same general direction. Rorty draws on Dewey and Wittgenstein, but as John St Clair intimated, he does so along lines suggested by developments in continental philosophy, drawing out the similarities that underlie the superficial opposition of European and Anglo-American philosophy.

Where, as Frances points out, Rorty differs from Derrida


> Once again,
>this is from _Achieving Our Country_:
> But I have argued that insofar as these antimetaphysical,
>anti-Cartesian philosophers (such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and
>Derrida) offer a quasi-religious form of spiritual pathos, they should be
>relegated to private life and not taken as guides to political
>deliberation. The notion of infinite responsiblity, formulated by Levinas
>and sometimes deployed by Derrida--may be useful to some of us in our
>individual quests for private perfection. When we take up our public
>responsibilities, however, the infinite and the unrepresentable are merely
>nuisances.(p. 96)

Then it seem pretty clear to me anyway that Rorty is wholly in the right, and it is here that Derrida is muddying the waters. Political action is about decision, action and common goals - differance, as Derrida has often said is about a deferral of decision, and about rejecting common goals.

Incidentally, you should know that Derrida, Baudrillard and (the late) JF Lyotard are much better known in America than they are in France. As Derrida once said 'America is deconstruction'. -- Jim heartfield



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