ThoughtGallery.org > Richard M. Rorty and the Trump Years: On the 20th Anniversary of “Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America”

Richard M. Rorty and the Trump Years: On the 20th Anniversary of “Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America”

Just days after the 2016 presidential election a good deal of attention was given to passages from Richard M. Rorty’s book, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America, published in 1998, for those passages seemed to predict the rise of Donald J. Trump and his stunning election to the presidency. Those passages, though sketchy, seem to provide a tenable explanation for such an unlikely series of events in American politics. While some have criticized this “Rorty, American Prophet” conclusion, the insights and worries that Rorty articulated in Achieving Our Country (and elsewhere) should not be brushed aside. Rorty wrote, “Nobody is setting up a program in unemployed studies, homeless studies, or trailer-park studies because the unemployed, the homeless, and the residents of trailer parks are not ‘other’ in the relevant sense.” What was Rorty trying to get us to see? Had we seen it, could the 2016 election, as well as the Republican primaries preceding it, have turned out differently? Is the current political tribalism rooted in dualisms and binaries with which we must come to terms and dissolve if we are to prevent a continued descent into balkanization and incommunicability?











When: Wed., Oct. 24, 2018 at 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Where: The New School
66 W. 12th St.
212-229-5108
Price: Free
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Just days after the 2016 presidential election a good deal of attention was given to passages from Richard M. Rorty’s book, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America, published in 1998, for those passages seemed to predict the rise of Donald J. Trump and his stunning election to the presidency. Those passages, though sketchy, seem to provide a tenable explanation for such an unlikely series of events in American politics. While some have criticized this “Rorty, American Prophet” conclusion, the insights and worries that Rorty articulated in Achieving Our Country (and elsewhere) should not be brushed aside. Rorty wrote, “Nobody is setting up a program in unemployed studies, homeless studies, or trailer-park studies because the unemployed, the homeless, and the residents of trailer parks are not ‘other’ in the relevant sense.” What was Rorty trying to get us to see? Had we seen it, could the 2016 election, as well as the Republican primaries preceding it, have turned out differently? Is the current political tribalism rooted in dualisms and binaries with which we must come to terms and dissolve if we are to prevent a continued descent into balkanization and incommunicability?

Buy tickets/get more info now