Anti-Climacus

ON RORTY AND STALIN: I have been toying with the idea, developing ever-so-slowly, of suggesting Stalin as the perfect instantiation of Rorty's belief in redescription: a man so capable of changing the language and environment people function in that to even bring up the possibility of previous or future redescriptions is its own crime. Reading Trotsky's oppositional writings, one is struck by the constant return to the language of modern epistemology: one speaks of facts, looks to documents and the historical record to support one's assertions, etc. He is emphatic that was Stalin does is best described as lying--hence The Stalin School of Falsification.

I wonder if postmodernism isn't a kind of luxury, available to those for whom the basic terms of politics have already been settled (or appear settled). Perhaps it's the case that I reject it as a viable political move because I look to politics in places where irony is not an option, where to employ it would lead to disastrous consequences.* (And, of course, there's always the thought that ironic politics is not unlike pacifism: it gains some of the traction it has precisely because there are always enough people who aren't willing to see things that way--it is parasitic on those who reject it).

Also, a general question about the postmodern approach, which it seems to me has some plausibility (at least) in the realm of political discourse: how ought one handle legislative, bureaucratic decision-making, etc? Can one be ironic in the face of that?


*Rorty can make this move because he believes in some progress throughout history: I'd think conservatives would be wary of this position.