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 the academic blogospheres? How can more dialogue between critical theory and the digital humanities be fostered?
I don’t dispute Rorty’s prominence among Twentieth Century philosophers or philosphers in general. I don’t doubt Rortian pragmatism will be referenced by scholars and statespersons in the years to come. I don’t contest the influence Rorty has had on clarity and understandability in philosophical writing. His long friendship with and understanding of Derrida places him in the company of a small few.
The real significance, though, of this announcement is in the modesty of the archive: 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.»