> Rorty has done a good job of domesticating continental strains of
> anti-humanism and mixing a resulting weak relativism with American
> pragmatism (philosophically) and liberal pluralism (politically), which
> nicely complements his nationalist-social democratic political agenda. A
> boring philosophy to go with a fucked-up politics--nationalism in America
> cannot but be reactionary.
I'm afraid I have to agree with this. Rorty means well (don't they all?), but his stuff is just so paleocon. It's like he's talking to what he thinks are still Kennedy liberals and Nixon conservatives, i.e. people who believe in the efficacy of state-monopoly capitalism. But the world has changed and he hasn't. Rorty gave this talk at the U of O last fall, and after hearing ten minutes of him ramble on about how Leninism was the malignant cancer which destroyed the heart and soul of the US trade union movement, I walked out. OK, maybe the Left is hardly immune to the temptations of paleo-think, but compare this to a David Harvey, who keeps developing and enriching his practical and philosophical positions, and engages with real Left struggles, instead of sermonizing about the nonexistent ones dancing in the heads of tenured whitemalesuited (somehow, they all look and sound alike to me, like Yuppie Borg) professionals.
-- Dennis