1 This paper is a precis of the line of argument set out in my Ideals and Illusions (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1991).

2 Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1979), 390

3 Ibid., 174; 367

4 See Hilary Putnam, ‘Why Reason Can't be Naturalized,’ inK. Baynes,J. Bohman, T. McCarthy, eds., After Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1987) 222-44.

5 Richard Rorty, ‘Solidarity or Objectivity,’ in J. Rajchman and C. West, eds., Post-Analytic Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press 1985) 3-19, at 13 6 In what follows I am referring to Foucault's work from the 1970s, until now the most influential in the English-speaking world, and not to the earlier or later phases of his thought.

7 Michel Foucault, ‘Truth and Power,’ in Foucault, Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon 1980) 109-33, at 131

8 See Nancy Fraser, ‘Foucault on Modem Power: Empirical Insights and Normative Confusions,’ in Fraser, Unruly Practices (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1989), 17-34.

9 See especially Michel Foucault, ‘What is Enlightenment?’ in P. Rabinow ,ed., The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon 1984) 32-50, and my analysis in Ideals and Illusions, 60-75.

10 See, for example, the interview with Julia Kristeva in Positions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1981) 115-36. 11 Positions, 32

12 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1976), 10 13 Jacques Derrida, ‘The Ends of Man,’ in Derrida, Margins of Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1982) 109-36, at 135

14 Jacques Derrida, ‘Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,’ in Derrida, Writing and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1978) 278-93, at 280-1

15 Positions, 19

16 Positions, 33 17 See, for instance, his response to critics in ‘But beyond … ,’ Critical Inquiry 13 (1986) 155-70.

18 ‘Afterword: Toward an Ethic of Discussion,’ an interview with Gerald Graff, in Derrida, Limited, Inc. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press 1988) 111-60, at 150

19 Ibid., 147

20 Ibid., 136 21 For this analogy see especially his Postmetaphysical Thinking (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1992), 125-7.

22 In what follows I depart somewhat from Habermas’ terminology in order to convey a few of his basic ideas in what are, I hope, more familiar terms.

23 See Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice- Hall1967) and Habermas's discussion of different models of social action in his Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. I (Boston: Beacon Press 1984﹜, 75-101. 24 See Melvin Pollner, ‘Mundane Reasoning,’ Philosophy of the Social Sciences 4 (1975) 35-54, and Habennas's discussion of this point in Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. I, 12-15.

25 Thus not all of my arguments will apply equally to all of the authors mentioned above.

26 Postmetaphysical Thinking, 47

27 Interview with Paul Rabinow, in The Foucault Reader 239-56, at 249

28 ‘What is Enlightenment?’ 45-6

29 This point has been developed by Stephen K. White in Political Theory and Postmodernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991).

30 See William Connolly, Politics and Ambiguity (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press 1987), and my discussion of it in Ideals and Illusions, 76-82.