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Making Noises: Contextualising the Politics of Rorty’S Neopragmatism to Assess Its Sustainability

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Making Noises: Contextualising the Politics of Rorty’S Neopragmatism to Assess Its Sustainability Making Noises: Contextualising the Politics of Rorty’s Neopragmatism to Assess its Sustainability by Euan Mitchell VOLUME 1 The Novel ² A Creative Thesis in Two Volumes Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Communication, Culture and Languages Faculty of Arts Victoria University Melbourne, Australia March 2005 Making Noises ii Dedication To a young prisoner whose talent soared over the walls iii Due to copyright arrangements with the publisher of Making Noises, the text of the novel (Volume 1) is not available as part of the digital version of this thesis. The novel was published in November 2006 by OverDog Press (Melbourne, Australia). The ISBN is: 9780975797921. In place of the novel, an introduction to the storyline is provided here. Making Noises is a fictionalised account of federal and state government involvement with the popular music industry in Australia during the 1990s. The story is told from the point of view of a newcomer, Marty, to a music industry organisation funded by the federal government called the ‘Oz Rock Foundation’. This organisation is run by a former federal politician, Perce ‘Perk’ Harrigan, who maintains close links with his political colleagues still in government. When Marty discovers a young Aboriginal prisoner, Billy, with exceptional musical talents, Perce Harrigan seizes this opportunity to help launch the Oz Rock Foundation in the ‘Year of the Indigenous Person’. This venture, however, has unexpected consequences for all concerned. iv Making Noises: Contextualising the Politics of Rorty’s Neopragmatism to Assess its Sustainability by Euan Mitchell VOLUME 2 The Exegesis ² A Creative Thesis in Two Volumes Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Communication, Culture and Languages Faculty of Arts Victoria University Melbourne, Australia March 2005 Table of Contents VOLUME 2: The Exegesis 1. INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................1 2. METHODOLOGY...........................................................................................................7 2.1 Research Models Employed.......................................................................................7 2.2 First Stage Methodology.............................................................................................8 2.3 Second Stage Methodology ........................................................................................9 2.4 Third Stage Methodology ...........................................................................................9 2.5 Fourth Stage Methodology...................................................................................... 10 3. OUTLINE OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS .......................................................... 11 3.1 Origins of the Concept ............................................................................................ 11 3.2 Drafting the Proposal............................................................................................... 15 3.3 The Formal Literature Review................................................................................ 16 3.4 Main Research ........................................................................................................... 18 3.5 Writing the Novel ..................................................................................................... 20 3.6 Further Research....................................................................................................... 21 3.7 Writing the Exegesis................................................................................................. 22 4. PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH................................................................................ 23 4.1 Origins of Neopragmatism...................................................................................... 23 4.2 Rorty’s Early Philosophy ......................................................................................... 28 4.3 Overview of Rorty’s Neopragmatism.................................................................... 30 4.4 Rorty’s Specific Theses ............................................................................................ 37 ii 4.5 Major Criticisms of Rorty........................................................................................ 40 4.6 The Novel’s Critical Themes................................................................................... 49 4.7 The Characters and their Contrasting Philosophies ............................................ 50 5. HISTORICAL RESEARCH......................................................................................... 54 5.1 Redescribing History through Fiction ................................................................... 54 5.2 Historical Overview of Music Industry Associations.......................................... 58 5.3 Was it an Experiment in Neopragmatic Democracy? ......................................... 65 5.4 History and Indigenous Issues................................................................................ 68 6. GENRE RESEARCH.................................................................................................... 74 6.1 Defining the ‘Political’ Novel.................................................................................. 74 6.2 The Political Novel and the Historical Imagination............................................ 79 6.3 The Sub-genre of ‘American Democracy’ Novels............................................... 81 6.4 Making the Link into the Sub-genre ...................................................................... 85 6.5 Finding the Novel’s Voice....................................................................................... 91 7. FURTHER DISCUSSION............................................................................................ 94 7.1 Dramatising the Themes of the Novel.................................................................. 94 7.2 Sustaining Liberal Democracy .............................................................................. 111 7.3 Sustaining Neopragmatic Liberal Democracy .................................................... 115 7.4 The Merits of the Political Experiment............................................................... 118 8. OVERALL PERSPECTIVE....................................................................................... 120 WORKS CONSULTED.................................................................................................. 123 iii 1. INTRODUCTION The overall aim of this creative thesis is to contribute an original perspective on theoretical debate likely to influence reforms to so-called liberal democracy during the 21st century. Volume 2, the exegesis, employs a narrative framework to explain: how my engagement with bodies of theory fed into the creation of the novel “Making Noises”; and how a perspective emerged from this process to offer a new window onto contemporary theoretical debate concerning democracy. Although the context of the novel is Australian, the theoretical approach central to its creation is a postmodern1 philosophy, debated on a global scale, known as neopragmatism.2 The principal proponent of neopragmatism3 is Richard Rorty4, 1 The Macquarie Dictionary’s first spelling preference is ‘postmodern’ although Rorty’s is ‘post-modern’. 2 Neopragmatism’s origins and its specific theses are detailed in Chapter 4 of this exegesis. 3 Other notable philosophers associated with the re-emergence of pragmatism include Willard v. O. Quine and Hilary Putnam. 4 Richard McKay Rorty, born 1931, educated at the University of Chicago and Yale, formerly Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University, Emeritus Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia and currently Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. US critic and author Harold Bloom describes Rorty as “the most interesting philosopher in the world today” (Brandom 91). 1 whose views are variously regarded as anti-essentialist, anti-realist, anti-metaphysical, anti-dualist and anti-foundational, because he argues against the Platonic5 philosophical tradition of “truth as the accurate representation of a natural order” (Truth, Politics and ‘Post-modernism’ 13). My preference, however, is to refer to Rorty’s work as ‘post-essentialist’. I do so in order to suggest a positive rather than a negative emphasis in his work. In the latter part of the 20th century, essentialist conceptions of the nature of truth, objectivity, knowledge, ethics, social organisation, history and identity have been challenged by both postmodern and post-structuralist approaches to theoretical analysis.6 As a consequence, a number of the epistemological assumptions underpinning and shaping the development of Western civilisation and its institutions have been challenged. For instance, the predominant system of government in the West is democracy7 and its origins can be seen to reside in the essentialist traditions of ancient Greece. Rorty contends that these traditions, based on ‘Reason’, provided useful ladders for the development of democratic discourse, however, they should now be discarded in favour of a post-essentialist approach: …although the idea of a central and universal human component called “reason,” a faculty which is the source of our moral obligations, was very useful in creating
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