Globalization, The Process of Identity and Social Hope

Richard Rorty calls for the return of philosophy to the cause of social change and support of a global utopia. He addresses his concern that current philosophy has lost sight of this aim which, until recently, has dominated the thought of past philosophers such as Marx, Dewey and Hobbes. These philosophers hinged their dialectics on historical narratives constructing "taxonomies of social phenomena" that dared to criticize current dominant social institutions. Today however, Rorty criticizes current philosophy as being submissive to the dominant social agenda, that it is now being used to create 'redescriptions of social phenomena' to reiterate and reinforce it, rather than to reveal its blind spots. This turn away from constructing narratives on social progress reveals a sense of despair to Rorty who believes that philosophy has become politically sterile.

However, Rorty highlights ways in which current philosphy can regain momentum on this subject, suggesting that the philosophies behind Derrida, Habermas and Lacan are supplementary to previous descriptions of Utopia such that they have revealed blindspots within the previous structures of thought and threfore have laid further tracks to the continuation of this aim.

What is intersting is that Rorty seems to negate the discourse surrounding the concepts of 'subject' and 'difference', common to current philosophy that is hinged upon the structure of language, saying that it holds no relevence to the aim of social change and political liberation. instead he maintains that a return to the old pragmatic notions of 'truth' and rationality will better serve political change in the long run; these notions that have been lost in the wave of postmodernism. So within this dialogue Rorty seems very apt to call for a paradigm shift out of the constructs of postmodernist thought into the return of a more universal ideal that trancends difference and pluralism, embraces the notion of the 'death of the subject' and that places identity of self back within the overriding construct of democracy. Within our dominant global construct that embraces difference and pluralism, Rorty calls for the ressurection of the United Nations, the democratic watchdog that has been all but abandonned as the unwavering stoic in the fight against the evils of a renegade society that no longer answers to the state.