Critical Environments: Postmodern Theory and the Pragmatics of the Outside

Contents......Page 8
Acknowledgments......Page 10
Introduction. Nothing Fails like Success: The Postmodern Moment and the Problem of the “Outside”......Page 12
1 Pragmatism: Rorty, Cavell, and Others......Page 28
The Island of Belief: Walter Benn Michaels and the Uses of William James......Page 29
Making Contingency Safe for Liberalism: Richard Rorty’s Evasion of Philosophy......Page 39
Coming to Terms: Stanley Cavell and the Ethics of Skepticism......Page 49
2 Systems Theory: Maturana and Varela with Luhmann......Page 68
Feminist Philosophy of Science and the Detour of “Objectivity”......Page 72
When Loops Turn Strange: From First- to Second-Order Cybernetics......Page 79
Between the Scylla of Realism and the Charybdis of Idealism: Autopoiesis and Beyond......Page 86
Necessary Blind Spots: Niklas Luhmann and the Observation of Observation......Page 92
Politics, Ethics, and Systems Theory......Page 98
3 Poststructuralism: Foucault with Deleuze......Page 114
Rorty and Foucault......Page 115
A Pragmatics of the Multiple: Foucault with Deleuze......Page 128
Folded but Not Twisted: Deleuze and Systems Theory......Page 144
Conclusion: Post-Marxism, Critical Politics, and the Environment of Theory......Page 156
Notes......Page 182
D......Page 200
L......Page 201
S......Page 202
Z......Page 203