Neoliberalism in Rorty and Forster - Richard Rorty and E.M. Forster

Twentieth Century Literature, Summer, 1993 by Brian May

Clearly the acceptance of contingency can both edify and stymie. In ironist hands the liberal project of self-invention suddenly turns sober: the liberal ironist aims, not to remake self and world politically, but simply "to get out from under inherited contingencies and make his own contingencies, get out from under an old final vocabulary and fashion one which will be all his own" (CIS 97). The liberal ironist seeks nothing larger than the discursive elbow room one needs to write or speak an autonomous self As small as the quest is, underlying it is a possible negation, since the acceptance of contingency betokens an acceptance of groundlessness, the groundlessness of the liberal's own vocabulary and self as well as other vocabularies and selves. About all final vocabularies, about the very possibility of a final vocabulary, then, the liberal ironist must be absolutely skeptical. Inevitably, then, any liberal hoping to be an ironist sort of liberal must adopt a skeptical attitude toward her own vocabulary, as well. Ironism originates in a skepticism which borders on the radical and which attaches to the liberal ironist's own project as readily as any other. Still, the ironism in the liberal ironist enables as surely as it disables; if it disables the traditional liberal philosopher, it enables the tentative liberal scriptor. According to Rorty the liberal ironist, like the pragmatist, insists that "redescribability and irreducibility are cheap. It is never very hard to redescribe anything one likes in terms which are irreducible to, indefinable in the terms of, a previous description of that thing" (EHO 4). Rorty here suggests, somewhat negatively, the promiscuity of things; they invite many independent or "irreducible" descriptions, none of which possesses any transcendental value. But he also suggests the ironist's consequent freedom, even facility. In inviting multiple descriptions things incite autonomy, not just a freedom from other descriptions but also a freedom to describe as the ironist sees fit.

In exploring Forster's liberalism Rorty's description of the liberal ironist will prove useful: it will illuminate Forster's most characteristic representation of liberal behavior. For at the climax of Howards End Forster's most characteristic liberal, Margaret Schlegel, emerges as Rorty's chief early modernist exemplar. In an act of meditation and mediation very near the end of the novel, Margaret demonstrates that she is capable of Rortian ironism and Rortian liberalism alike. On the one hand, in the face of the powerful previous description she here faces she demonstrates the liberal ambition--and enabling skepticism--that liberal ironists always demonstrate. Proposing an alternative, and very humanistic, description, redescribing as "all her own" a specific set of "inherited contingencies," she "gets out from under" them. Thus Forster, too, explores a more or less standard (if more sober) liberalism. Like Rorty's liberal, Forster's is no complete ironist; he seeks a stay against confusion. But, on the other hand, Forster also represents the estranging skepticism about redescriptions that liberal ironists also need to practice. As we will see, and at some length, Margaret proposes her liberal recovery from disabling contingencies only in full and humble awareness that her liberalism is itself equally contingent. Like Rorty's ironist, Margaret does not simply accept the liberalism handed down to her. Sensing that straight, uninflected liberalism will not serve in a world of postliberal, anarchic ironies, being too rigid, too easily refuted, Margaret knows that she must practice it ironically--not faithfully but tentatively. As she knows, it will stay flexible enough to last only if she regards it as just one among several equally truthful ways of constructing experience, one which the liberal can continue to practice warily as long as no more useful way presents itself, even if the liberal way no longer seems the one true way.