Standing Problems 251their desires. These themes are developed in books such asIdentity/Difference(1991)
and theEthos of Pluralization(1995). Rorty’s contribution to postmodern thinking
has been controversial and he has been unhappy with the title ‘postmodern’. His own
contribution to postmodern thinking also owes a lot to his unique use of pragmat-
ism (and late Wittgensteinianism). However, it is still quite legitimate to consider
hisContingency Irony and Solidarity(1989) as making a significant neo-Nietzschean
contribution to political theory debate. The difference between Nietzsche and Rorty
is that the latter is altogether more optimistic. Rorty sees no need to agonize over
culture, decadence, and contemporary politics. In fact for both Connolly and Rorty,
Nietzschean aristocratic radicalism needs to be considerably softened if not bypassed;
postmodern radicalized liberal democracy is reconciled in itself to the private world
of self-creation as distinct from the public world.
In theIdentity/Differencebook, the main thesis is that all identity entails differ-
ence and exclusion—difference is built into all identity. Connolly predictably takes
the Enlightenment conceptions of reason as a vehicle of closure and fixed identity
excluding difference. Connolly suggests, for example, that the liberal individual-
ist, collectivist, and communitarian visions are all located in the same exclusionary
Enlightenment frame, that is, ‘a matrix, in which the categories across the horizontal
axis are mastery and attunement and on the vertical axis are the individual and the
collectivity’ (Connolly 1991: 29). For Connolly, a postmodern position embraces
difference and otherness and rejects closure.^19 Critics of postmodernism who accuse
it of making surreptitious truth claims are brushed aside by Connolly. He contends
that postmodernists are more interested in the way that accusation is framed. The
accusation in fact presupposes an ‘either/or’ mentality and therefore seeks closure and
exclusion of postmodernism as ‘other’. As Connolly observes, the postmodernist is
thus more interested in the ‘subterranean rhetorical configuration’ behind the accus-
ation (Connolly 1991: 59–61). Such critics are afraid of what Connolly calls, the
‘infinite openness’ of postmodernism. The critic is thus always trying to convert the
‘code of paradox’ back into the ‘code of coherence’. This is a clear use by Connolly of
both Nietzschean genealogy and perspectivism. Rorty’s answer to this ‘truth criticism’
is more subtle than Connolly’s, however the Nietzschean influence remains strong.
Rorty contends, ‘To say we should drop the idea of truth as out there waiting to be
discovered is not say that we discovered that, out there, there is no truth’ (Rorty 1989:
8). This would be claiming to know what has already been claimed cannot be known.
Language for Rorty is non-representational. There is nothing intrinsic about it. Thus,
the task of the theorists for both Connolly and Rorty is to counterpose genealogical
and perspectivist irony against all forms of transcendental piety (Connolly 1991: 61).
This leads to an acceptance of radical contingency.
Contingency forms Rorty’s main theme in his bookContingency Irony and Solid-
arity. The idea of contingency rests on the Nietzschean argument that truth ismade
and notdiscovered. This also echoes the themes of his earlier bookPhilosophy as
the Mirror of Nature.^20 Theory never represents or mirrors the real. There is only
the text and nothing outside it. Connolly, who also takes this position—employing
Heideggerian terminology—describes such attempts at mirroring, representation,