Rorty and Pynchon

[Thomas Eckhardt]

A few weeks ago in the German newspaper taz an interview with Richard Rorty
was published. His argument was in favor of a "more practical, more
economically based left-wing approach to politics". He said that the
contemporary left-wing movement in the USA would focus too much on
ethnic-minority- and gender-issues, affirmative action etc., which made it
easy for people like Buchanan to dismiss them as crazy extremists, confused
postmodernists, homosexuals and atheists. (A very strange argument, I think,
because what is Rorty's agenda? To become friends with Buchanan?) 

Apart from that, he argued that US-leftists preferred to talk about "the
system" on a fundamental level, inspired by, for example, Foucault or
Baudrillard, instead of discussing worker's wages and health security. He
called Foucault's theory of power a kind of philosophical or academic
"gothicism" (because it is based upon an abstract notion of power that is
always out to get you, I guess, just like Pynchons "THEY"). The interviewer
then asked him whether he was referring to a "Thomas-Pynchon-like
view-of-the-world", and Rorty answered: "Exactly. Pynchon is absolutely
typical for the concept of an America where nothing really is important
because everything is artificial anyway. What he describes is not a real
country, but a facade built by the ones in power." I do send this mainly as
a bit of information. But as I do know next to nothing about Rorty, his
philosophy and his reputation among Pynchon-readers, I would of course be
curious as to what you think.
Thomas Eckhardt


                             The clouds didn't look like cotton,
                             they didn't even look like clouds.

                             Townes Van Zandt