Page 202 - Cultural Studies Dictionary
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RORTY, RICHARD (1931– )
In the context of cultural studies the idea of the rhizome is particularly associated
with the work of Deleuze and Guattari, whose 1988 book A Thousand Plateaus works
across a range of perspectives or plateaus including psychoanalysis, subjectivity, the
state, maps, language, forms of writing and so forth in a non-linear multi- 179
perspectival way. However, the idea of the rhizome has wider application than the
work of Deleuze and Guattari in so far as it stresses multiplicity, complexity, multi-
dimensionality and chaos in contemporary cultural arrangements. The logic of the
rhizome resists reductionism and embraces holism and as such shares something
with the idea of différance in the work of Derrida and the capillary character of
power as articulated by Foucault.
Links Deconstruction, determinism, différance, power, reductionism
Rorty,Richard (1931– ) A Professor at Stanford University (USA), Rorty is the leading
contemporary writer in the tradition of pragmatism. Rorty advocates anti-
representationalism by which language is unable to represent the world in ways that
more or less correspond to an independent object world. This leads him to adopt
an anti-foundationalism that suggests that we are unable to ground our actions or
beliefs in any form of universal truth. For Rorty, language is best understood
through the metaphor of the tool rather than that of a mirror, and politics justified
from within the values of specific traditions rather than seeking universal
foundations. Knowledge is not a matter of getting a true or objective picture of
reality but of learning how best to cope with the world. For Rorty the contingency
of language underpins irony, that is, holding to beliefs and attitudes which one
knows are contingent and could be otherwise. Rorty advocates both a politics of
‘new languages’ or ‘re-description’ and a reforming Left Liberalism based on hope
in the struggle for social justice.
• Associated concepts Epistemology, ethnocentrism, foundationalism (anti-),
holism, irony, language-game, Liberalism, truth.
• Tradition(s) Postmodernism, pragmatism.
• Reading Rorty, R. (1989) Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.