Ironia, tragedia, wspólnota: Richard Rorty W oczach barbarzyńcy
Irony, Tragedy, Community: Richard Rorty in the Eyes of a Barbarian

Summary/Abstract: The essay is a perverse attempt at interpreting Richard Rorty from the perspective of a barbarian, that is, a person whom the author of "Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity" excludes from the conversation of civilised people. For Rorty, the basic criterion of barbarity is adherence to a culture which has retained distinctly pre-modern characteristics, i.e., those which predate 'the process of civilisation'. The author, by identifying herself with the excluded "barbarian", seeks to indicate the merits of the pre-modern paradigm which has been unjustly disparaged by the leading philosopher of American postmodernism. Thus the author wants to redress the postmodernist turn from a pre-modern position; by evoking those categories that modernity has made to sink into oblivion - e.g. ritual un-differentiation and the catharsis experience - she argues that they are a natural supplement to Rorty's 'call for universal solidarity'. Without this supplement, Rorty's call is just a vacuous declaration.

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