花 水 木

最近不小心翻了一下Nancy Fraser 1989年的成名作，

發現這位不走後結構路數的左翼、女性主義大將

當年的寫作就可謂初生之犢不怕虎，措辭氣勢十足。

看完導論， 本書對於文學界德西達的徒子徒孫們，譬如Spivak等文學派的

解構主義者的批判，還有與

她同樣立場卻被她以女性主義姿態批判的Habermas（這篇好像是經典），

尤其她對自由主義哲學家Richard Rorty的批判幫我心中

對rorty的一些「不蘇湖」有了出口。

我的不蘇湖大抵是對Rorty以自由主義者自稱，對於左翼「文化/研究派」的批判

固然有理，但他心中的藍圖還是在美國如何成為一個令人

尊敬的國家以及十分自由主義式的對於馬克思主義及其傳統的

輕輕蔑蔑。其實Nancy Fraser早在1989年就已經寫了。而且

阿娘威，她的措辭優雅，我單字查了好多。才剛翻完她有著氣勢

十足的導論，系上就發信說五月她要來系上有一場

需要索票的seminar。

台灣的友人曾受教於她，說她可是女強人，看來不假。

Ps每天平均會收到系上大概十封信，英國人活動真多啊，哪裡的

學校的seminar，workshop或工作機會，每天就拼命轟炸，都快變成垃圾信了。

什麼博士生一年一度的春季全校seminar才最嚇人吧，聽說

就是被強迫要去報告自己的一篇文章，通常是一個時段幾個人，

然後開放全校旁聽，還會有老師在旁邊講評。

還好本人才剛到沒多久，還是追星的姿態，下週準備去聽butler在

另一個學院的天書級演講。

Nancy Frser女士的一小段文章如下：

As my essay makes clear, my response to Rorty's later work is deeply divided.

On the other hand, my own holism, and antiessentialism find a congenial echo in his

pragmatism. One could hardly ask for a more elegantly articulated distrust of the universalist

pretensions of traditional philosophy---nor for a more throughgoing

insistence on the priority of practice, on the contingent, historically conditioned character

of subjectivites and rationalities...

On the other hand, I am considerably less impressed by Rorty's political views:the knee-jerk anti-Marxist one liners, the smug celebratory references on the glories of "the rich North Atlantic bourgeois democracies," and the cozy assurances that radical metaphilosophical critique does not threaten politics as usual.

I am profoundly out of sympathy with the voice that profess loyalty to" postmodernist bourgeois liberalism and I am not won over when it repackages itself as "social democracy."

Entertaining such a divided reponse, I could not help but wonder: What is the relation between Rorty's philosophy and his politics? How can such critical metaphilosophical views sit so comfortably with such complacent political attitudes? Is some deep conncetion between pragmatism and "bourgeois liberalism"? Or is their conjunction in Rorty merely fortuitous? Can a democratic-socialist feminist accept Rorty's

metaphilosophy while rejecting his politics? Or, in embracing the one,

Will she be led ineluctably to the other?

Nancy Fraser "Apologia for Academic Radicals " In

"Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in contemporary social theory "  1989.