Clayton Chin - The Practice of Political Theory: Rorty and Continental Thought

THE PRACTICE OF POLITICAL THEORY

NEW DIRECTIONS IN CRITICAL THEORY

Amy Allen, General Editor

New Directions in Critical Theory presents outstanding classic and contemporary texts in the tradition of critical social theory, broadly construed. The series aims to renew and advance the program of critical social theory, with a particular focus on theorizing contemporary struggles around gender, race, sexuality, class, and globalization and their complex interconnections.

Narrating Evil: A Postmetaphysical Theory of Reflective Judgment , Mara Pa Lara

The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory , Amy Allen

Democracy and the Political Unconscious , Nolle McAfee

The Force of the Example: Explorations in the Paradigm of Judgment , Alessandro Ferrara

Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence , Adriana Cavarero

Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World , Nancy Fraser

Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory , Axel Honneth

States Without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals , Jacqueline Stevens

The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy: Ngritude, Vitalism, and Modernity , Donna V. Jones

Democracy in What State? , Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Daniel Bensad, Wendy Brown, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancire, Kristin Ross, Slavoj iek

Politics of Culture and the Spirit of Critique: Dialogues , edited by Gabriel Rockhill and Alfredo Gomez-Muller

Mute Speech: Literature, Critical Theory, and Politics , Jacques Rancire

The Right to Justification: Elements of Constructivist Theory of Justice , Rainer Forst

The Scandal of Reason: A Critical Theory of Political Judgment , Albena Azmanova

The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics , Adrian Parr

Media of Reason: A Theory of Rationality , Matthias Vogel

Social Acceleration: The Transformation of Time in Modernity , Hartmut Rosa

The Disclosure of Politics: Struggles Over the Semantics of Secularization, Mara Pa Lara

Radical Cosmopolitics: The Ethics and Politics of Democratic Universalism, James Ingram

Freedoms Right: The Social Foundations of Democratic Life , Axel Honneth

Imaginal Politics: Images Beyond Imagination and the Imaginary, Chiara Bottici

Alienation, Rahel Jaeggi

The Power of Tolerance: A Debate , Wendy Brown and Rainer Forst, edited by Luca Di Blasi and Christoph F. E. Holzhey

Radical History and the Politics of Art , Gabriel Rockhill

The Highway of Despair: Critical Theory After Hegel , Robyn Marasco

A Political Economy of the Senses: Neoliberalism, Reification, Critique, Anita Chari

The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory , Amy Allen

Recognition or Disagreement: A Critical Encounter on the Politics of Freedom, Equality, and Identity , Axel Honneth and Jacques Rancire, edited by Katia Genel and Jean-Philippe Deranty

What Is a People? , Alain Badiou, Pierre Bourdieu, Judith Butler, Georges Didi-Huberman, Sadri Khiari, and Jacques Rancire

Death and Mastery: Psychoanalytic Drive Theory and the Subject of Late Capitalism , Benjamin Y. Fong

Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History, and Memory , Enzo Traverso

Foucault/Derrida Fifty Years Later: The Futures of Genealogy, Deconstruction, and Politics , edited by Olivia Custer, Penelope Deutscher, and Samir Haddad

The Habermas Handbook , edited by Hauke Brunkhorst, Regina Kreide, and Cristina Lafont

Birth of a New Earth: The Radical Politics of Environmentalism , Adrian Parr

THE PRACTICE OF POLITICAL THEORY

RORTY AND CONTINENTAL THOUGHT

CLAYTON CHIN

Columbia University Press

New York

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New YorkChichester, West Sussex

cup.columbia.edu

Copyright 2018 Columbia University Press

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E-ISBN 978-0-231-54799-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from the Library of Congress

ISBN 978-0-231-17398-8 (cloth)

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Cover design: Lisa Hamm

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TO ANA, FOR ALL THE STRENGTH AND SUPPORT THAT MADE THIS POSSIBLE.

CONTENTS

T here are many people I am indebted to for aiding me in the completion of this book. I would like to thank the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Melbourne for graciously allowing me a semester free from teaching in 2016 during which time I completed the bulk of the book. This much-needed space can claim much of the credit for whatever is of value here. Similarly, I would like to thank the good people at RIPPLE, KU Leuven. The short time I spent there in 2015 as a visiting postdoctoral fellow was a rich and challenging time during which many of the broad ideas of this project were set down. More personally, I would like to thank Caroline Williams, Matteo Mandarini, Nathan Widder, Michael Bacon, Stephen White, Annabelle Lever, and Lasse Thomassen all of whom provided deeply valuable and insightful advice about both the intellectual content here and the always-fraught publishing process. Michael, in particular, deserves my thanks not only for the continual insights into pragmatism and Rorty but for suggesting Columbia University Press as an ideal destination. I must also thank Wendy Lochner at Columbia, whose patience and support has often surprised me, and the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript, whose generous comments have seen this project through. It is also very important to acknowledge the contemplative labor expended in the development of this work. Daniel McCarthy, Tara Mulqueen, Simon Kaye, and Ana Estefana Carballo all willingly sacrificed hours of their lives to read chapter drafts. They have thereby incurred responsibility for any errors here. Finally, and most significantly, I want to thank my partner, Ana Estefana Carballo, who, quite literally, is responsible for the completion of this book. Her help, support, encouragement, and affection have been the motivation to always keep poking that bubble.

Works by Richard Rorty

The value of Rortys contribution resides in his attentiveness to the potential for philosophy in its role of gathering up the threads of new knowledge and perspectives into a central tendency to exclude, overlook, and distort the range of meaning inherent in the diverse social experiences of different individuals and groups.

Christopher Voparil, Pragmatist Philosophy and Enlarging Human Freedom