Examination of practices of ignorance conducive to democracy based on Rancièrian thought and Rortian pragmatism

Introduction

Theorists including Gianni Vattimo, Etienne Balibar, Jacques Rancière, Richard Rorty, Slavoj Žižek, Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau among others very broadly subscribe to Claude Lefort’s association of democracy with the dissolution of the markers of certainty. The dissolution of markers of certainty appeals to these theorists because it signifies emancipation from structures of domination that take political as well as philosophical, psychological, gendered and other forms. Such a perspective on democracy also offers a viable alternative to the widely held identification of democracy with a particular institutional arrangement – an arrangement or regime that purports to empower those under the regime through such well-established mechanisms as elections. However, as recent studies have suggested, some institutional arrangements that go by the name of democracy, tend to reproduce domination in the name of democracy and consolidate or restrict the markers of certainty (Vatimmo and Zabala, 2011; Crouch, 2004; Chambers, 2012).

One central concern for theorists who lean towards Lefort’s conception of democracy revolves around the enactment and conditions of democracy. This issue has proven quite divisive, with some theorists preferring a reformist approach, while others favor a more disruptive, radical route. The gap between the two camps is quite wide as evidenced by the Critchley–Žižek debate and the persistent disagreements between agonistic democrats and radical democrats. ¹

I assume that the theorists very broadly agree that democracy involves the dissolution of the markers of certainty, enactment of equality, and emancipation from domination – which all bear the same meaning – but differ on how to enact this democracy. ² While reformists, including Rorty, Balibar and Žižek for that matter, insist that it is possible to work towards democracy and ameliorate the existing conditions of domination, for radical democrats, like Rancière and Critchley, such an option is foreclosed. Mark Wenman’s distinction between agonistic democrats and radical democrats is quite accurate in this respect – the former believe in innovation and the latter insist exclusively on absolute or genuine innovation (Wenman, 2013: 91–2). This means that radical democrats, unlike reformists, place ‘the exclusive emphasis on extra-ordinary moments of rupture, on the intrinsically binary nature of these events, and on the linking of the parts with the whole’ (ibid.: 92). At stake in this disagreement is the ‘proper’ enactment of democracy inseparable from questions concerning an individual’s or group’s agency in the enactment of democracy and how this agency becomes possible. Can democracy be worked towards or does it happen and interpolate the agent through the event?

The disagreement may not be as intractable as it appears if, as I suggest, greater attention is given to the ignorance each of the approaches advocates and affiliates with democracy. What should be ignored for the enactment of democracy? Ignorance often carries a pejorative meaning as a lack of knowledge or lack of understanding or cognitive incapacity rendering an individual incompetent in political decision-making. I here in large part rely on Rancière’s theorization of ignorance (cf. Rancière, 2006c, 2009a). ³ If knowledge is a practice that produces subjects and this practice facilitates domination or resistance to domination, so can ignorance. In asking how ignorance works and what it does, attention shifts away from narrow questions regarding what facts one knows or how one knows them, and towards questions regarding the sensibility one has, can have and should have. Should one ignore, for example, when one is told that one is not equipped to decide on a response to financial crises or security issues and these questions should be left up to the experts?

Several years ago, Rancière – who devotes much of his work to discussing the disruptive route – differentiated between the practices of ignorance he associates with democracy and others he associates with the police order (Rancière, 2006c). By picking up on his initial endeavor, I intend to highlight and complicate the distinction between practices of ignorance that facilitate or stymie democracy. I first draw attention to some of the shortcomings of his differentiation and use it as the starting point to describe the practice of ignorance I link with Rorty’s pragmatist approach to democracy – which is reformist. Then I suggest that supplementing Rancière’s initial differentiation with what I call pragmatist ignorance and formulating pragmatist ignorance with reference to Rancière’s account complements both approaches. The possibility that the two approaches complement each other should not come as a surprise.

After all, within their broad projects, Rancière and Rorty share in common more than first meets the eye and this warrants a more thorough comparison beyond the scope of this article. At least briefly though, I would like to point out the overlap in Rancièrian and Rortian thought that sets the stage for the more specific encounter I focus on. ⁴ Some of the common ground is marked by what both thinkers repeatedly refuse. They both refuse adherence to the historically dominant current in political philosophy that prioritizes philosophy over democracy. They expressly question Platonic metaphysics, which justifies domination by those who supposedly know the truth and the exclusion from ruling of those who lack a philosophical nature (Rancière, 2001, 2004b; Rorty, 1980, 1999). Just as they contest exclusion from ruling on the basis of Platonic metaphysics, they challenge more generally domination by the few, or oligarchy in Rancière’s terminology (Rancière, 2006b, 2001; Rorty, 1999, 1998b; cf. Chambers, 2014). ⁵ On the flipside, both Rorty and Rancière pay close attention to the role that the many in a particular political order play in the enactment of democracy. ⁶

In the specific encounter I examine, Rancière’s initial distinction between ignorance maintaining the rule of the few and ignorance conducive to democratic enactment supplies Rortian ignorance with a framework of reference to formulate more effectively the pragmatist democratic project. Rorty’s pragmatism in turn is far from a blueprint for enacting democracy – for interrupting the police order with the democratic moment in Rancière’s terminology. However, Rortian ignorance issues a historical, experimental invitation to the democratic moment Rancière has in mind.

Through examination of a specific case of the democratic interruption often cited by Rancière, the 1989 ‘We Are the People’ slogan, I explore how in the enactment of democracy, pragmatist ignorance may complement the operation of ignorance Rancière associates with democracy. Thus putting the two approaches in dialogue, I challenge claims that the disruptive route and the reformist route are incompatible – even if just within the limited scope of Rancièrian thought and Rortian pragmatism. ⁷ Towards the end of the article I draw attention to some of the problems that pragmatist ignorance encounters.

I Police, democracy and ignorance

The parameters are initially set by Rancière. He effectively juxtaposes police logic and democratic logic. While the former underlies the preservation of the police order, a hierarchical order presupposing inequality (Rancière, 2011b: 4; Chambers, 2012: 42), the latter is essential for the enactment of democracy, or the disturbance of the police order (Rancière, 2009a: 8; 2006c: 5). Neither logic precedes the other, nor is democracy prior to the police order or vice versa (Rancière, 2011b: 6). In operation, the police distribution comes into being through the democratic moment, and the democratic moment would be impossible without an existing distribution to disrupt. ⁸ Democracy is just that, a disturbance (ibid.: 4); a force of equality (cf. Rancière, 1992: 60–3); a moment of blurring between those qualified and unqualified for ruling (Rancière, 2001). Rancière is adamant that it is a disruption of the police order and not a regime that replaces the police (Rancière, 2004a: 101).

Rather than immediately jumping to anything even remotely resembling instructions for the enactment of democracy, I propose a brief investigation of the police order, the police logic it involves and the ignorance supporting it. The police order is an ethical order the ultimate expression of which Rancière locates in the ideal city in Plato’s Republic (Rancière, 2009c: 24). In this social order, artisans or others who are not in a position of ruling have a particular ethos and sensibility appropriate to that ethos (Rancière, 2006c: 3; Rancière, 2006a: 305). Given that a shoemaker has the sensibility necessary for making shoes, she must ignore other positions because she is not sensibility-equipped for other positions. More than that, her shoemaking is an occupation that leaves no time for involvement in other ways of doing, seeing and saying (cf. Rancière, 2012: 210). Those who rule have the sensibility and time for ruling, unlike the shoemaker. Each must ignore the other’s occupation and that a different distribution of positions is possible (cf. Rancière, interview with Liang, 2009b; Rancière, 2011b: 3). This practice of ignorance supporting the police order I refer to as the ethical ignorance. Even though it is a critical component of any form of domination, this does not mean that every form of domination deserves the name epistemocracy, which in Rancière’s terminology specifically refers to ruling on an epistemic basis (Rancière, 2010: 51). ⁹ Following Rancière’s lead, my discussion of practices of ignorance is not restricted to its operation in epistemocracy – in this one particular regime – considering that a police order signifying domination and democracy synonymous with emancipation involves ignorance.

For Rancière, no true knowledge can emancipate the people and open their eyes to the unnecessary and contingent inequalities of a police order. Only a better story could disturb the existing order and such disturbance for Rancière involves ignoring the ignorance, the ethical ignorance, which enjoys the status of an imperative in the police order (Dasgupta, 2008: 71; cf. Rancière, 2006c: 5). The tension between the stories operates in a myriad of settings from schools to theaters and workplaces. In his reflection on workers’ emancipation, for example, Rancière insists that only a better story can achieve the emancipation that neither true Marxist knowledge nor industrial change can. He explains that

… the emancipation of workers is not a matter of making labour the founding principle of the new society, but rather of the workers emerging from their minority status and proving that they truly belong to the society, that they truly communicate with all in a common space; that they are not merely creatures of need, of complaint and protest, but creatures of discourse and reason, that they are capable of opposing reason with reason and giving their action a demonstrative form. (Rancière, 1995: 48)

In the archives, Rancière uncovers how the workers, for instance, slept less and devoted hours to artistic endeavors instead of resting for work (Rancière, 1975: 89–90; cf. Dasgupta, 2008). Such ignorance, and Rancière calls it aesthetic ignorance, confronts ethical ignorance (Rancière, 2009a: 8; 2006c: 5). Through the practice of aesthetic ignorance, this practice of ignorance associated with democracy, distinctions dissipate between those who can see, say and do and those who cannot. Those who presume and enact equality confirm it to themselves and thus enact emancipation.

In a setting conventionally seen as more political than others, some protests rely on the practice of aesthetic ignorance to refuse the existing distribution of positions and ethical ignorance. Picking one example, Rancière explains that

… when a small group of protesters takes to the streets under the banner We Are the People, as they did in Leipzig in 1989, they know that they are not the people. They create the open collective of those who are not the people that is incorporated in the state and located in its offices. They play the role of the uncountable collection of those who have no specific capacity to rule or to be ruled. (Rancière, 2009a: 11)

Notice that the confirmation of equality in this narrative does not involve an emancipator, a knowing outsider who intervenes in the unequal order on behalf of the dominated. To speak with the presupposition of equality, to enact equality in speaking, expresses the meaning of emancipation. In this respect, such a protest is little different from the 1833 tailors’ strike which for Rancière exemplifies ‘the definition of a struggle for equality which can never be merely a demand upon the other, nor a pressure put upon him, but always simultaneously a proof given to oneself. This is what “emancipation” means’ (Rancière, 1995: 48). Instead of obeying the logic that underlies self-exclusion from speaking and ruling on the grounds of supposed epistemic incapacity, the protesters demonstrate to themselves their ownership (mancipium) of their own words and confirm their equal capacity to speak in speaking.

II The incompleteness of Rancière’s story and diversional ignorance

Rancière’s description attributes redistributive force exclusively to the democratic moment, disruption, or interruption, which ‘happens very little or rarely’ (Rancière, 2004a: 17). From a Rortian perspective, Rancière’s way of untangling of democratic moments aligned with democratic logic from the police distribution and its logic comes at a high practical price. As good as Rancière’s description is, it assumes the successful application of the principle of inequality in practice, and the flawless operation of ethical ignorance. In the confrontation of ethical ignorance and aesthetic ignorance, there is no such thing as failure of ethical ignorance by itself without the success of aesthetic ignorance. An artisan either ignores political affairs, as ethics commands, or she ignores ethical ignorance (Rancière, 2006c). She either accepts her place in the hierarchy that keeps her epistemo-politically dominated, or she puts into effect the ‘collective understanding of emancipation’ which ‘is the collectivization of capacities invested in scenes of dissensus. It is the employment of the capacity of anyone whatsoever, of the quality of human beings without qualities’ (Rancière, 2014[2009]: 48–9). In other words, she emancipates herself by acting on the principle of equality and confirming it to herself in defiance of the ethical imperative of ethical ignorance. However, putting ahistorical principles to the side, and drawing on experience without eschewing fuzziness, ethical ignorance can fail on its own, on its own terms without necessarily enacting democracy. ¹⁰

It is not necessary to sacrifice the democratic regime – what Rancière prefers to call oligarchy for the sake of clarity, to distinguish it from the way he defines a democracy. Rorty’s pragmatic refusal to submit entanglements to hard distinctions between opposing qualities carries over to his approach to democracy and, as I hope to show, complicates the tensions between different practices of ignorance. Rorty is not ready to dismiss the confused way in which the police and democracy in Rancière’s terminology operate. Like Rancière, Rorty is dissatisfied with contemporary framing of philosophical moral imperatives and turns to praxis. Yet his approach does not presuppose the involvement of principles in praxis. Such conflation or the compulsion to marry experience with logic, and insist on qualitative differences between logics is a problem Rorty traces to the Enlightenment (Rorty, 1998a: 83; cf. Rorty, 1999a). In fact, it comes specifically with the philosophical Enlightenment project not to be confused with the political Enlightenment project (Rorty, 1997: 35). Rorty laments the mistaken conflation of the two, leading to the assumption that the failure of the philosophical project entails failure of the political project (ibid.: 35–40).

They express different historical movements with different starting points, and historically, the political project is not the by-product of philosophical Enlightenment. The philosophical projects set a trajectory to study philosophy and ideas to arrive at the ultimate right one, on which to base social relations. Philosophical enlightenment is a story about progress towards a world-view with rationalism or reason at its core (Rorty, 1997: 39). This story does not sustain the political project of the Enlightenment that Rorty readily associates with what Avishai Margalit calls ‘decent society’ (ibid.: 38).

The political project evolves through a series of events that do not translate reason from philosophy into lived experience. The series of events does appear to work towards the reduction of social, political, economic and other inequalities (Rorty, 1997: 39). Rather than study philosophical texts, this strand of Enlightenment political emancipation directs attention to a history of experiments, ones that worked and ones that did not. Rortian conception of emancipation attends to these experiments without being grounded in principles, because even the principle of equality would fasten the political project to a philosophical foundation instead of lived experience.

Rorty begins with the assumption that the American version of a liberal democratic regime is democracy, which means that it involves the dissolution of markers of certainty, the dissolution of social, political, epistemic and other hierarchies. He often praises the United States as a democracy, but he is not blindly devoted to it, and he readily admits this much when he addresses a non-American audience. In a 2004 ‘Democracy and Philosophy’ lecture Rorty delivered in Iran he distinguishes between two conceptions of democracy. According to the minimalist conception he calls constitutionalism, the United States is nothing but a democracy (Rorty, 2007). It has regular elections in which citizens vote to choose a government, and a constitution that protects the freedom of speech among other rights and freedoms. The second conception of democracy he associates with egalitarianism (ibid.). To qualify as a democracy in this second sense, a society should ensure that all those born into it have equal opportunities as anyone else born into it, regardless of economic status, gender, sexual orientation, race and other like characteristics. The United States is not a full-fledged democracy in this sense of the term.

In the 2004 lecture, Rorty asks his audience to suspend judgement of various political regimes on philosophical basis – on the basis of one form approaching some ultimate truth more than the others. Instead, he proposes to pay attention to what democracy, and the second sense of democracy in particular at certain historical junctures, facilitates compared with other types of political regimes. As an experiment, democracy allows for a wider range of experimentation that could prove effective for communal living (Rorty, 2007). This does not make it any truer than feudalism or totalitarianism, but if one appreciates some of the consequences of democracy, it might be worth a try. To reinforce the thesis he points to Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement and the feminist movement as historical examples of what democracy facilitates compared with the other regimes (ibid.). Since my primary focus is on the pragmatist approach to democracy, I refrain from indulging in the conception’s elaborate defense.

I am merely intent on pointing to how Rorty’s pragmatism involves the operation of ignorance that does not eschew experiential confusion. I contend that this pragmatist ignorance involves ethical ignorance as well as what I refer to as diversional ignorance. This latter ignorance that accompanies the pragmatist route presumes inequalities instead of starting from a presupposition of equality. In this respect, it operates like ethical ignorance, but in its failure expands the space for Rancière’s democratic moment to take place. More than Rancière, Rorty is prepared to take what is given for granted and push the boundaries of the distribution of spaces and positions from the inside. Pragmatist ignorance works from inside the police order, but maintains the democratic conditions for democracy within this order. This approach does not require ignorance of the existing distribution of roles and places, and in fact, it plays by the rules of the police distribution. Pragmatist ignorance operates in three interconnected ways towards maintaining and supporting democratic conditions: (1) by way of ignoring metaphysics, actively accepting liberal democracy without foundations; (2) ignoring those who are not ‘we’; and (3) in conversations, maximally ignoring the topic of metaphysics in its various forms from truth to religion.

The first operation of this ignorance excludes the metaphysical grounding of democracy. Disputes over the right elements of democracy, and whether it truly exists, are philosophical concerns that pin democracy to philosophy. Pragmatist acceptance of democratic institutions and democracy as a political regime does not need to involve itself in metaphysical claims beyond ignoring them. The pragmatists accept ethical ignorance more readily than those who practise ethical ignorance because they presume or believe that they actually lack time for anything but their work and lack competence for anything but their occupation. Pragmatists say, ‘We agree about the working of democracy’ – which should be sufficient in a liberal democracy – without the ‘because the truth is that’ clause that makes a metaphysical claim. They accept, for example, that democracy allows for protests, constitutionally protected freedom of speech, and elections for governmental offices without questioning these parameters or demanding objectively verified, philosophically sound reasons for them. For pragmatists, ‘our agreement’ needs no further justification.

Rorty’s refusal to substantiate acceptance of the liberal democratic regime beyond the ‘we agree’ statement did not sit well with critics who accused him of ethnocentrism (Geertz, 1986) and essentialism (Bernstein, 1987), and called the ‘we’ restrictive and elitist (Comay, 1986). At first, Rorty’s retort blatantly reaffirmed the intent to practise ignorance of democracy’s foundation beyond the ‘we’. Mocking his critics he writes: ‘“[U]nforced agreement among whom? Us? The Nazis? Any arbitrary culture or group?” The answer, of course, is “us”’ (Rorty, 1991a: 38). In reply to Richard Bernstein’s criticism in 1987 in the pages of Political Theory, he offers an elaboration on this answer that maintains his practice of ignorance and reveals little more about ‘us’ than ‘our’ historical contingency. Within the ‘we’ he makes room for those whose set of views overlaps with his own including the now-outdated concern over Soviet imperialism, and the perception that ‘time seems to be on the Soviet side’ (Rorty, 1987: 566). On the one hand, some of these historically very specific beliefs give the impression that the ‘we’ sharing these beliefs must be a very narrow category that disappears quickly. On the other hand, reference to such views patently highlights the historically contingent overlap of beliefs that constitute ‘us’ and within Rorty’s larger project entices the audience to ‘drop the appeal to neutral criteria’ (Rorty, 1998c: 217).

The second operation of pragmatist ignorance excludes those who starkly clash with ‘us’ – those whom liberal democrats cannot accommodate and could not possibly agree with. For Rorty, they are madmen. We could talk to them, he suggests, but such talk would be futile. Ignorance thus works to exclude, for example, Ignatius of Loyola whom Rorty singles out for such treatment (Rorty, 1991a: 190–1). Loyola’s cruelty towards heretics would be intolerable in a liberal democratic regime and in this case liberal democrats should ‘show a contempt for the spirit of accommodation and tolerance, which is essential to democracy’ (ibid.: 190). Accommodation of Loyola’s vocabulary would require profound redistribution of the police order. The paradox of tolerance, namely that tolerance does not allow for intolerance, perplexes the best political minds. Rorty’s pragmatist approach to democracy with its associated form of ignorance overcomes the issue by affirming, as Eric Gander puts it, ‘that, for practical political purposes, we liberals should simply ignore the self-referential nature of the aforementioned objection’ (1999: 73). Without such ignorance, pragmatists would most likely be forced to fall back on metaphysical theories of human nature and truth. Pragmatist ignorance enables one both to exclude Loyola and to fend off objections to such exclusion.

For pragmatists like Rorty, democracy has priority to philosophy. E. D. Hirsch, Jr, Rorty’s distinguished University of Virginia colleague, suggests that the word ‘priority’, in ‘The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy” paper in which Rorty articulates his position on Loyola, is too weak. Democracy is coercive and shall have dominance over philosophy and religion is what Rorty wants to say (Hirsch, 2008: 44). Democracy involves ignorance of intolerable non-liberals as well as their philosophical or religious ideas, because these topics are conversation-stoppers. The third operation of pragmatist ignorance removes these roadblocks to conversation. Rather than battle over the right view of the self, human nature and the meaning of life, the pragmatist approach encourages ‘benign neglect of certain topics – and in particular of both religious and philosophical topics’ (Rorty, 1997: 30). Ignore philosophy and the conversation shall go on. Do not ignore philosophy and, as the historical record shows, deep social divisions form over religion or some other truth (Rorty, 1999: 86). The former approach has the practical advantage – which does not make it truer in any metaphysical sense – that it facilitates experimentation, and remains historical and open to the future to a greater degree than the latter.

In the last couple of decades, some scholars who defend democracy from various pragmatist perspectives commend democracy for the above reasons. To bolster democracy they propose, for example, removing obstacles to participation (Knight and Johnson, 2011); forming the public into scientific communities for democratic participation (Dryzek, 2004); argue the adjudication process in democracy should be embedded in pragmatism (Posner, 2009); and argue that dissent during and after decision-making within the existing political system should be defended (Anderson, 2006). Pragmatism serves as the basis for these normative arguments, just as another philosophy or sense-forming perspective would. However, complementing the pragmatist-based prescriptions, pragmatism is also a concrete approach, deployable within and towards the democratic project. My focus is on this latter sense of pragmatism as a concrete approach, a strategy, for the cultivation of democratic conditions.

The pragmatist ignorance I describe supports the existing police order and particularly the fuzziness – however it is distributed – in the police order. To the extent that it does so, it is difficult to distinguish it from ethical ignorance. Yet when it happens to expand the space for experimentation and change sanctioned by liberal democracy, it constitutes the failure of ethical ignorance on its own terms – the failure to maintain the status quo of the police order. In practical terms, the pragmatist route is a refusal to wait for the democratic moment Rancière points to. Their practice of ignorance frees pragmatists to hopefully be more efficient citizens than either Protestants or Maoist revolutionaries. Efficiency at relieving suffering and cruelty is the vague measure that Rorty suggests (Rorty, 1997: 40).

More specifically, the ignorance – of non-liberals on one side, of metaphysical foundations of democracy on the other, and of topics that stop conversations in their tracks – empowers pragmatists to ignite or join protests more often than other approaches do. Protests themselves do not relieve suffering, but they maintain or push the boundaries of the police from the inside to provoke alleviation of suffering.

Perhaps there is no better example of what the pragmatist approach can facilitate than the Monday 2 October 1989 We Are the People protest invoked by Rancière. Rancière’s historical account overemphasizes the democratic moment at the expense of the conditions that provoked or invited the moment. He makes a point of focusing on the enactment of democracy, the moment when the protesters aesthetically ignored that they are not the people and walked under the We Are the People banner. In his words, they ‘disrupted the [enunciation’s] static embodiment’ and enacted democracy (Rancière, 2010: 85).

What he omits from his account are the protests that had taken place on Mondays since 4 September 1989 – for this reason they became known as the ‘Monday Protests’. They were held on Mondays and specifically around five o’clock in the afternoon because during this time, the Communist Party members usually attended their party meetings. ‘We want out’ is the banner they walked under on 4 September and then again on 11 September when 89 protesters were arrested (Chronik Der Mauer). By 18 September the protesters were chanting, ‘We’re staying here!’ instead of the ‘We want out!’ slogan used in previous weeks (ibid.). On 25 September the protesters called for democratic reforms as the numbers of those among them who wanted to leave East Germany waned (ibid.). During the 2 October protest Rancière singles out the ‘We Are The People’ slogan when it was part of a combination of slogans that also included ‘Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood’, ‘We’re staying here’, ‘Gorbi, Gorbi’, ‘Allow The New Forum’ and ‘Freedom for the prisoners’ (ibid.). The protests that did not disturb the existing social order, nonetheless maintained the space for the enactment of democracy thus provoking and inviting the democratic moment. I am not claiming that the protesters were pragmatists, but I see the protests as an excellent example of what the pragmatist approach and experimentation with ethical ignorance can achieve.

The failed practice of ethical ignorance constitutes diversional ignorance that only in practice distinguishes itself as such. Small experiments within the scope of ethical ignorance in the police order rarely yield any noteworthy results in terms of expanding the space for democracy or provoking the democratic moment. Most of the time, such experiments will disappoint in one way or another. Rorty admits this much himself: ‘there are nine chances out of ten that things will go to hell. However, what is important is the hope that they might not end badly, because they are not fated to go one way or the other’ (Rorty, 2006: 41). It is more than likely that ethical ignorance will just confirm the presupposition of inequality even though this is not guaranteed.

III Diversional ignorance and the problematic commitment to hope

The pragmatist’s practice of ignorance hinges on the hope that one of the experiments will bring closer a better future. Rorty’s hopefulness strengthens his affiliation with earlier pragmatists and when pushed to define a vision, he is happy to ‘only say, with Whitman, “variety and freedom”, or, with Dewey, “growth”’ (Rorty, 1999: 28). In fact, Rorty refuses to accord hope a concrete content, instead allowing experience and experimentation to show whether the vision will lean, for example, more in Whitman’s or Dewey’s direction (cf. Rorty, 1998c; cf. Green, 2013). The success of each vision presumably does not depend on which one is the true or untrue vision. These are terms Rorty encourages his readers to abandon because they entrap adherents in metaphysical confinements.

More than that, hope itself should not be grounded or made dependent on pragmatist ignorance that it supports. Rorty’s insistence on unbuttressed or ‘unjustifiable hope’ (Rorty, 1982: 208) is uncomfortable and has garnered substantial opposition (Bernstein, 1987; Deneen, 1999; Talisse, 2001; Westbrook, 2005). It is much easier to reverse the order and posit hope’s dependence on pragmatist ignorance than allow for pragmatist ignorance to hinge on ungrounded hope. Judith Green, for one, reproaches Rorty for misreading Dewey’s hope and overemphasizing hope’s reliance on ‘world-narrowing blinders’ as she calls them, or what I refer to as pragmatist ignorance. I am tempted to agree with Green that hope ‘depends upon courage to reach out in a pragmatist “faith” without intellectual certainty towards what Delbanco calls “a spirit”’. (Green, 2013: 148; emphasis added). Yet setting Rorty’s misreading of Dewey aside, Rortian hope depends on neither pragmatist ignorance nor imagination. In writing that ‘nothing is on the side of this hope except the energies and intelligence that those who share it devote to it’ (Rorty, 1995: 91), Rorty is careful to put them on the same side with hope without giving the energies, intelligence, or devotion priority over hope. At the same time, he refuses to designate what particular vision this constellation is bound to achieve.

The success of a vision, Rorty suggests in pragmatist fashion, depends on whether or not the vision forges a wider ‘we’ than the one that exists and this result is far from certain (Rorty, 1989: 195). Hope lends itself to the unpredictability of experimentation with ethical ignorance not knowing if it will result in a better future or end badly. The neutrality and unpredictability of such pragmatist experimentation are dangerous considering that it is equally useful for supporting Mussolini as well as Woodrow Wilson and the two Roosevelts (Rorty, 1991b: 75). This danger is the price pragmatists are willing to pay for abandoning certainty as a moral commitment for a future-oriented and relational moral commitment.

Hope, or ungrounded social hope as Rorty at times refers to it, replaces truth (Rorty, 1999: 24). Colin Koopman correctly observes that for Rorty, ‘it is an old faith that the truth emancipates us – it is the new pragmatist hope that we emancipate ourselves’ (Koopman, 2013: 26). While truth demands obedience to what supposedly was and is always here, to the past, hope – unanchored and aligned with social forces – opens from the future and orients towards a collectively forged vision. The way this should be understood is not that the replacement of truth with hope undermines the democracy that exists, and Rorty expresses a radical, utopian philosophy. Rather, Rorty’s move to hope as the last resort allows him and Rortian pragmatists to accept the rules of the game that exist. They play by the existing rules in the hope that the use of those rules can ameliorate the deficiencies of the ethical order, or maintain aspects of the ethical order that are conducive to democracy. Hence the resort to hope is neither radically progressive, nor necessarily conservative.

Despite repudiation of radicalism, Rorty’s insistence on replacing truth with social hope in the last decade of his life nonetheless did little to mend divisions among pragmatists (Misak, 2006; Talisse, 2001). Robert Talisse, a prominent pragmatist and author of A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy, went as far as to call hopeless Rorty’s preference for hope. Unlike Green’s above-discussed objection to the ungroundedness of Rorty’s hope, Talisse broadly contests the commitment to hope instead of truth (ibid.). Given the serious danger of extremism and stakes that are too high, Talisse encourages holding onto objective distinctions that render democracy superior to any alternative (ibid.: 621). More specifically, the alternatives are epistemologically different and inferior because they do not involve legitimation of decisions through public justification of beliefs that Talisse attributes to democracy. ¹¹ Talisse’s preference for positively linking epistemology, and knowledge in particular, with democracy posits ‘agent ignorance’, or the condition of both holding onto unjustified beliefs and being incapable of evaluating these beliefs in his words, as the problem democracy contends with (Talisse, 2004: 458). As I have argued, ignorance is neither a problem, a crippling condition that has to be remedied, nor is there a good reason to reject a positive link between ignorance and democracy in favor of, or at least on par with, the knowledge–democracy link.

The philosophical position that Talisse espouses is precisely of the kind that both Rancière and Rorty argue should be ignored. On this, their perspectives would concur. From the Rancièrian point of view, Talisse’s rejection of unjustified beliefs imputes silence onto those excluded from speech. The assumption of the people’s ignorance historically reinforces existing structures of domination. A slave, a woman, a member of a particular racial group, or anyone who has been historically excluded from ruling at the time of their exclusion could not have held a belief in their equal capacity to rule because that simply was not supported or justified by their experiences.

Consider Talisse’s example of Barbara whose ignorance presents a serious obstacle to democracy according to him: ‘Barbara believes that not-p … Barbara believes this despite the fact that she had regular exposure, from sources that are justifiably thought to be reliable, to the true premises that warrant belief that p’ (Talisse, 2004: 458). Barbara is ‘agent ignorant’ as Talisse refers to the condition or she is not ethically ignorant in Rancière’s terminology, because she does not exclusively rely on the historical experiences, the ethos or place she finds herself within – this place that is the source of all she knows. While Talisse maintains that someone like Barbara, or anyone, should confine themselves to their ethos and ignore what is not within their experience, Rancière associates democracy precisely with ignorance of ethos (Dasgupta, 2008: 71). Aesthetic ignorance, or this ignorance of the ethical ignorance imperative, both disturbs the prevailing unequal social order with the presupposition and confirmation of equality, and confirms that the supposed truth is nothing but one possible relatable story or just one of many ‘ways of world-making’ (Rancière, 2011a: 244).

A Rortian perspective concurs with the Rancièrian view that Talisse’s philosophical position should be ignored, but it does so without delving into qualitative differences between the principles of equality and inequality. Pragmatists should ignore Talisse’s position because of its philosophical nature in terms of its reliance on truth. The philosophical position is a non-starter for conversations and this is sufficient for a Rortian not even to address and refute its assumptions regarding mutual interests and norms. Talisse does not take seriously enough Rorty’s extensive work pointing to the impediment that philosophical truth poses to democracy and especially Rorty’s pragmatist position that ‘philosophy is a good servant of political hope, but a bad master’ (Rorty, 1997: 50). Making hope subservient to philosophy stifles hope and stringently restricts future possibilities.

Rorty readily admits that a commitment to hope is problematic, but a commitment to truth, and Talisse’s commitment in this particular instance, is no less problematic (Rorty, 1999). Talisse’s criticism to my knowledge did not so much as elicit a brief reply from Rorty. ¹² I am not suggesting that Rorty purposefully refused to confront the criticism, but that a comprehensive response has been given in his earlier work on the priority of democracy to philosophy, on abandoning truth grounded moral commitments, and his stated position on the discourse of justifications. Retreading on the same path would be just another philosophical exercise for Rorty. If Talisse’s refutation of Rorty’s hope does not succeed, at least his reservations about Rorty’s hope forcefully express the discomfort that is inseparable from this commitment that could be conducive to a variety of visions, compared with a commitment to truth.

Conclusion: Hopefully opening the door

Engagement of pragmatist ignorance hopefully produces at least one effect: the maintenance of space for, and provocation of, what Rancière calls democracy or emancipation. Harvey Cormier suggests that Rorty underestimates the role of pragmatists in asserting that, as Cormier puts it, ‘the only useful role for a pragmatist like him [Rorty] now is the micro-role of holding the intellectual door for the visionary feminist thinkers, politicians, and the artists who hope to spread their visions’ (Cormier, 2007: 67). Cormier argues that pragmatists themselves want to walk through the door. Despite any grandiose aspirations, as far as democracy is concerned, Rorty’s approach presents an obstacle for pragmatists to enact democracy themselves – in Rancière’s sense of enactment. Rorty’s pragmatist ignorance both prevents commitment to any single vision of democracy and works through experimentation towards incremental adjustments. The best his approach can do, is hope to maintain the space for emancipation – the enactment of democracy, without giving it any specific meaning. This involves experimentation with provocations, without being certain of results. Not even the logic or principle of equality Rancière discusses is central to this approach because principles must be secondary to ethics.

As I have argued in this article, Rorty’s diversional ignorance properly fits neither under ethical nor under aesthetic ignorance. The differentiation between those practices of ignorance aligned with democracy and those maintaining the existing police order is incomplete without at least accounting for the operation of diversional, pragmatist ignorance. Moreover, I proposed that instead of invalidating Rancière’s project, Rorty’s pragmatism and the associated practice of ignorance offer another path – one merely steeped in hope, that could facilitate what Rancière calls democracy. It renders this possible because unlike other reformist paths that focus on specific changes that should be enacted for the realization of a particular vision, it does not support one vision against another. Thus Rorty’s pragmatism, through pragmatist ignorance, could, without intending to do so, provoke what Rancière calls aesthetic ignorance or reinforce ethical ignorance. The possible convergence of the pragmatist and aesthetic practices of ignorance forges commonality between the reformist and radical approaches to the enactment of democracy within the limited scope of Rancièrian project and Rortian pragmatism. The transition from one to the other nonetheless is far from guaranteed. What we are left with at the end is a predicament in which principled enactment cannot avoid malfunctioning and malfunction in no way guarantees a desirable outcome.