Time Will Tell, But Epistemology Won’t: In Memory of Richard Rorty

A Celebration of Richard Rorty’s Archive

Confirmed speakers include Michael Bérubé, Steven Mailloux, and Mary Rorty.

In March 2010, the UCI Library’s Special Collection launched the archive of Richard Rorty, the pragmatist philosopher, critical theorist, and public intellectual who is commonly described as one of the most important thinkers of his era. The Richard Rorty papers are part of UC Irvine’s Critical Theory Archive, which includes significant works of Jacques Derrida, Paul De Man, Hillis Miller, Wolfgang Iser, and Murray Krieger. Included in the UC Irvine collection are electronic word-processing files, created between 1988 and 2003, which were retrieved from Rorty’s 3.5″ floppy disks during processing of his personal papers.

Participants will address a number of key questions for criticism in the era of computational media. What is an archive if it includes “born digital” materials? How do new forms of digital production and reception change the character of scholarly discourse? What is the relationship between public memory and computer memory? How should teaching materials be handled in the age of open courseware? How can Rorty’s ideas about philosophy as cultural politics be read in both the liberal and academic blogospheres? How can more dialogue between critical theory and the digital humanities be fostered?

This celebratory event is sponsored by the UC Irvine Libraries, the UC Irvine Humanities Center, and the systemwide University of California Humanities Research Institute.