Relativism: So What? (Part Seven): Beats me; I wrote an article about it but that's as far as I got

[koganbot]

Int: In Philosophy And The Mirror of Nature, you attacked Putnam's early philosophy. What do you think of his more recent work?

Rorty: I think our views are practically indistinguishable, but he doesn't. He thinks I'm a relativist and he isn't. And I think: if I'm a relativist, then he's one too.

Int: Why do you think Putnam sees you as a relativist?

Rorty: Beats me. I wrote an article about it, but that was as far as I got.

. . .

Int: Do you disagree with any of Davidson's views?

Rorty: I can't think of anything we really disagree about that doesn't seem to me a verbal issue, but Davidson may have a different view of the matter. Well, one thing is that he keeps saying truth is an absolutely central concept, and I can't see what makes it central or basic. I take Davidson to be saying that truth, belief, meaning, intention, rationality, cognitivity - all these notions are parts of a seamless web, and that seems to me a useful point to make, that you can't have any of these notions without all the others. It's just that he then wants to say, "And truth is in the middle." I can't see why you have to have a middle.

Int: Putnam has also criticized you for deemphasizing truth.

Rorty: Putnam keeps saying that you have to have what he calls "substantive truth." I take Davidson to be saying: there's not much pointing in saying truth is substantive. I don't think Davidson has any better idea than I do what Putnam means by that. Nonetheless, he somehow attaches a weight to the notion that I can't seem to attach to it.
--Interview with Richard Rorty in January 1995 by Joshua Knobe

I'm intending to resume my "Relativism: So what?" series but want to relate it to some other bubbling thoughts, e.g., (1) Given that alienation is my addiction, my default mode, my heroin, am I capitulating to my addiction by avoiding the current rockwrite/musicwrite convo about (e.g.) Vampire Weekend and social class? Or would I be capitulating to that addiction way more if I dove into that conversation? I mean, I've only been thinking about the class thing and the no-success-like-failure thing for forty-two years, but my experience tells me that the convo will be nothing more than pretend, that other than Dave and Tom no one involved in it even wants to start thinking about social class, or knows how, even if class is what they think they're thinking about (and I can talk to Dave or Tom any old time). But since I haven't explored the convo, or Vampire Weekend, I don't know this. I really have little hope. It's like (metaphor I heard the other day) going to starving Ethiopians and asking for food. (2) This generalizes to the two Deaths I was talking about at the end of Microwaving A Tragedy: you're dead if it's all about the other dude, about her/his response, what s/he's gonna do next; but you're just as dead if you don't make the effort to understand the other dude. It rains when you're here and it rains when you're gone, but maybe I just need different dudes. (3) For my own sake I'd like to be less harsh, without being less smart; this involves finding my way to go "Hmmm, what can I learn here? Can I open myself up to its surprise?" without overlooking the basic dysfunction of the conversation. Or do we need to rip up the conversation, forget the dead we've left, find a new world not to be so harsh in, so that I'm no longer the guy who wrote points 1 and 2? (4) I've been calling "relativism" a stand-in issue, a substitute for facing the interpersonal, cross-cultural, intergalactic whatever. So these bubbles will be the deep background of that "relativism."

Comments

[mcatzilut.livejournal.com]

So there's two things. There's the thing the conversation is about -- ie: What it is we agree we're talking about, and here that might be social class. That's what is supposedly linking Hopper with Abebe, social class and also kinda this multicultural discourse. So Hopper is arguing that Vampire Weekend are participating in this class; they're colonizing African music, they're using WASP'y signifiers, etc. And then Abebe comes back and says, no, they have legitimate identity claims you're ignoring, they aren't simply participating, they're critiquing, etc.

But then there's the second thing, which is kinda what the conversation could be about, or what it's about for the individual participants. For me, it's about my Jewish identity - and the claims I have to being Jewish as opposed to being simply White. And that's what's REALLY going on in the conversation, even if Hopper + Abebe might not see that themselves. It's not totally unlike your comment about knowing what Dylan meant even better (or differently) than what Dylan meant. So when I say that Vampire Weekend is partially about a history of Jewish relationships to old WASP wealth, I know that's really what it's about. So there's a certain relativism there, you could say.

In the end tho, I think Abebe is really arguing not necessarily for the specifics, but arguing that you should be willing and able to make the second kind of argument. You shouldn't come in deciding that the band is really about being bourgeois or whatever. You should come in and as the evidence moves you, maybe the kind of argument you're making changes too.

[mcatzilut.livejournal.com]

Do you not want to be drawn in? I guess I felt you did and wanted a segue in -- and I'm offering one from my own personal experience. My mother told me a story about when she used to work as a waitress at a restricted country club. One of the people she was waiting on made an anti-Semitic comment and so she dumped his soup on him and made some retort and quit. I can probably join any country club I want now -- the Mainline in Philadelphia used to be exclusive and now is full of Jews, religious and otherwise including my parents. So clearly I'm hearing something specific in Vampire Weekend, something that speaks to that experience, and I think that's a doorway into talking about this band, but talking about music in general.

Anyway, off-topic question: Have you ever revisited your thoughts on the relationship between Academia and music criticism? I brought up your classroom/hallway discussion in an academia class last week and pointed people towards your book.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

It's kind of funny because for the past year or two there's been a massive ongoing furore in media fandom (the global community of ppl who write fanfiction online), bouncing back and forth between it and SF/F fandom (writers, readers, editors...), circling around manifestations of race/gender/class privilege in genre narratives and the community experiences centred around these genre narratives - sometimes it's a conversation, sometimes it's a witchhunt. In the parlance of this shakedown, the effect agrammar describes - the way ppl look at Ezra Koenig or the Chinese-American college girl** in his audience and describes them as white - is "erasure", and considered the most sinful manifestation of privilege, because the most unthinking and the most difficult to counter. (If saying "look I'm right here and not who you think I am!" doesn't do it, what possibly will?)

EDIT -- I've taken out that last bit because disingenuous: I'm not boggled that Nitsuh is (what looks like to me) reinventing the wheel. Media/SFF's way of INTERROGATING THE TEXT I tend to think is quite awful, getting your blame game in my soup etc. but music writers sometimes insist on having this conversation even when they haven't interrogated the text because there is NO TEXT TO INTERROGATE (not in the same way, at least. And you'd disagree with that, no?).


** This is who I think of as the typical Vampire Weekend fan, not "white" at all.

[ludickid.livejournal.com]

That's my favorite interview ever with Rorty.