“Redemption from Egotism”: Richard Rorty, the Private-Public Distinction, and the Novel

Abstract

Whereas Richard Rorty restricts the power of creative self-invention to the private sphere, Michel Foucault, in L’Usage des plaisirs, Le Souci de soi, and other later texts, shows that self-creation (or the care of the self) on the contrary might have strong effects in the public sphere and that the idea of a radical private-public split is therefore untenable. How does the idea of self-creation present itself in this Franco-American conversation or theoretical dialogue? Both Rorty and Foucault were provocative self-fashioners in the field of theory. Moreover, both often felt closer to the poets than to the philosophers. As a young analytic philosopher, Rorty experienced a profound melancholy because Platonism had not kept its tempting promise. In the late 1950s and 1960s, Foucault’s writings on literature and art made it obvious how much he had been influenced by writers such as Nietzsche, Raymond Roussel, Maurice Blanchot, Georges Bataille, Pierre Klossowski, Philippe Sollers (and the Tel Quel group), and de Sade. One should also think of his baroque writing style, for instance in Les Mots et les choses. Nonetheless, the idea of self-creation plays a different role in Rorty’s and Foucault’s theoretical frameworks.