Richard Rorty, from MAPPING IDEOLOGY

Rather than reading this version which is a draft, you can download the corrected and cleaned up text of all the annotations and my introduction to them here now called, "One Possible Narrative of the Concept of Ideology since Marx". 

“Feminism, Ideology, and Deconstruction: A Pragmatist View” -  Richard Rorty

Think of me as an establishment philosopher.

This text by Rorty is relatively brief though it makes a fair number of points. Rorty argues that philosophy - specifically deconstruction and pragmatism - are not tools of social change and never will be. He discusses intellectuals and how they wish to make a difference and contribute to positive social changes and that how they have done this is to engage in ideology critique. But he thinks that demystifying critiques of ideology do no good, and are “at best, a mopping-up, rather than path-breaking” (232). He claims that pragmatism, like deconstruction, maintains that “everything is a social construct, and that there is no point in trying to distinguish between the ‘natural’ and the ‘merely cultural’” (229). [Here I have to wonder what has happened to “pragmatism” as I do not see C.S. Peirce as in any way on board with a totally social constructivist viewpoint and in any reasonable account of pragmatism, he remains crucial.] As such, if anyone wishes to help to change the social realm that they ought to forward “an alternate practice, rather than criticizing the current one” (227). He talks about why it was, in his view, easier for Marx and Engels to maintain an immanent critique - the answer being that they had a revolutionary program with which to back it up (228). But those times are gone, he thinks, and write that the “difference between their situation and ours is principally that no one now wants the revolution they had in mind; no longer does anyone want to nationalize the means of production or to abolish private property” (228) [Here we might pause for a moment to ask, is this true?  It seems to me that many have serious problems with intellectual property and the way in which corporations can act as legal “persons” and own virtually anything. Many still offer criticism as of inheritance. Private property may not need to be abolished in all forms, but a significant shift in how it is understood seems to be quite urgently needed and desired by many. As to nationalizing the means of production, again, while few probably want all industry nationalized, there is a significant number of people who would favor nationalized health care and well as many other basic social services - I know as I am one of them and have met others. These claims strike me as too monovalent (bordering on smug), even if he is right that very few (if not, “no one”) want a revolution along the lines of the October revolution, but that is not the whole story.] Rorty sees contemporary intellectuals, having lost a desire for revolution and any connection to a revolutionary movement or party platform as casting about for a cause and finding feminism as the best option. And yet, in his view, feminism is not a good stand in for communism and is essentially reformist and not revolutionary (228). Reformist, even if many feminists suspect that reform will never actually fully achieve its aims. But because of the move toward feminism in the mode of ideology critique, intellectuals focus on “revolutions in consciousness” but these revolutions are simply not enough for Rorty and he thinks that Marx and Engels would have laughed at them as well for they bring about no change in “the material level” of society (229). Returning to the impotence of philosophy as regards politics he claims that even if society and culture should adopt an anti-logocentric view of things that masculinism would survive (232). [This text strikes me as fundamentally conservative - Rorty clearly has embraced capitalism as the horizon under which all must be lived. Additionally, while effecting change is surely more effective effecting change than critique of that which one wishes to change, do not the very terms of the statement require that answer? As such, might there not be other benefits of critique? When do the new ideas come from is not from a dissatisfaction with the current state of things, a dissatisfaction that critique does have an effect upon? It is also notable that, though he cites Eagleton, he seems to have only read the first chapter of his book and thus his thought of what ideology is, goes no further than the Marx of The German Ideology, a position that most of the thinkers collected in this volume have all found insufficient.]