I get that the original article was a joke - a sort of academic discipline ad hominem. But in case anyone actually wants to understand why literary criticism is seen as valid, they should read Rorty as you mentioned. Here is an paper that is worth the time:
I've read Rorty on this subject before, and the paper you linked to gives a good illustration of why, although I understand where he's coming from, I don't agree with him. He says:
"Redemptive truth would not consist in theories about how things interact causally, but instead would fulfill the need that religion and philosophy have attempted to satisfy. This is the need to fit everything--every thing, person, event, idea and poem--into a single context, a context which will somehow reveal itself as natural, destined, and unique. It would be the only context that would matter for purposes of shaping our lives, because it would be the only one in which those lives appear as they truly are."
He appears to think this is possible; I think it's a dangerous illusion. I don't think there is any one, single context in which our lives "appear as they truly are". Our lives are too complex for that.
In fact, physics is too, although Rorty doesn't seem to realize that. He says that scientific inquiry could conceivably terminate; apparently he thinks that physicists who talk about a "theory of everything" mean that once we've found it, we won't need to do science any more. That's a dangerous illusion too. No matter how much we discover about the universe, there will always be more to discover, and that's what scientific inquiry is.
Furthermore, even with the stuff we do know in science, there is always the possibility of finding new ways to look at it. Feynman once said that every theoretical physicist who is any good knows multiple theoretical representations for exactly the same physics. Each representation is useful in its own way, and no one of them reflects "the way things really are". Even putting them all together doesn't necessarily reflect "the way things really are". All of our knowledge is incomplete, even in physics.
And if that's the case for physics, it's the case even more so for ourselves and our societies. We should not expect to ever be able to understand ourselves using one single context, any more than we can understand physics using one single context. And as Rorty describes it, the search for this one single context by intellectuals (which he defines, reading between the lines, as people who can afford to waste time in such pursuits because they don't have to do any productive work to make a living) is, in my opinion, a sad waste of human talents that could be put to better uses.
I think you have completely misunderstood him. He is arguing against the fact this is possible. The whole point of the article is that there is no redemptive truth at all. The whole point of promoting the literary over the philosophic is to remove our need for redemptive truth. He argues that philosophy (and science) suffer the same mistake as religion in that they believe they are searching for Truth. Literature doesn't suffer from that mistake.
No, I've read the whole paper. I agree that he does describe a key difference between the search for redemption through literature and the search for redemption through philosophy or religion; he says:
"[A] culture which has substituted literature for both religion and philosophy finds redemption neither in a non-cognitive relation to a non-human person nor in a cognitive relation to propositions, but in non-cognitive relations to other human beings... This sort of culture drops a presupposition common to religion and philosophy—that redemption must come from one’s relation to something that is not just one more human creation."
But if the point of this is to remove the need for redemptive truth, it doesn't work; the search for redemption through literature still tries to fulfill "the need that religion and philosophy have attempted to satisfy", it just tries to fulfill it without appealing to non-human entities:
"For the Socratic idea of self-examination and self-knowledge, the literary intellectual substitutes the idea of enlarging the self by becoming acquainted with still more ways of being human. For the religious idea that a certain book or tradition might connect you up with a supremely powerful or supremely lovable non-human person, the literary intellectual substitutes the Bloomian thought that the more books you read, the more ways of being human you have considered, the more human you become..."
Even at the one point where he does explicitly seem to say there is no redemptive truth...
"To give up the idea that there is an intrinsic nature of reality to be discovered either by the priests, or the philosophers, or the scientists, is to disjoin the need for redemption from the search for universal agreement. It is to give up the search for an accurate account of human nature, and thus for a recipe for leading The Good Life for Man. Once these searches are given up, expanding the limits of the human imagination steps forward to assume the role that obedience to the divine will played in a religious culture, and the role that discovery of what is really real played in a philosophical culture."
...he follows up immediately with something that contradicts what he just said:
"But this substitution is no reason to give up the search for a single utopian form of political life--the Good Global Society."
This is why I said that, although I understand where he's coming from, I don't agree with him. He claims to have "deconstructed" redemptive truth and put something better in its place; but all he's really done is fasten on to his own particular brand of redemptive truth. His belief in the Good Global Society meets the definition of redemptive truth that I quoted, and he appears to think that is possible; so whether he realizes it or not, he does think a form of redemptive truth, as he defines it, is possible. And he's wrong for the reason I gave: our lives are too complex for a "single utopian form of political life" to work.
I suppose you might not find it funny or clever that after 20+ pages of arguing there is no redemptive truth that he would share his opinions on a good life but don't think for a second he didn't realize it himself. It was the subtle wink at Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zarathustra". Why doesn't Rorty get to share his own literary opinion?
However, as to the "utopia" that he describes in that article - I very much share your doubts and I feel he is unduly optimistic. However, the general idea of having a multiplicity of options and the liberty to pursue them is something I can agree with.
don't think for a second he didn't realize it himself
Realize what? That he was being funny or clever? Certainly, he can be both. That doesn't change the fact that he made a serious claim, and one which, whether or not he was being funny or clever, I believe he meant to be taken seriously (and you appear to believe that too--but see below).
Or are you saying that he realized that he was, in fact, advocating a new kind of redemptive truth, after he'd just said there was no such thing? In that case, I disagree: I don't think he realized that, because if he had, that part of the article would have been different; at least, it would have been if he is intellectually honest (and I have no reason to believe he isn't--but see below). Either he would have taken out the claim that there's no such thing as redemptive truth, or he would have taken out the claim about utopia, or he would have made some argument attempting to reconcile the apparent contradiction between the two.
You could, I suppose, be saying that he did realize the apparent contradiction, but it was OK because he didn't mean the claim about utopia to be taken seriously. If that's what he meant, then he would not, IMO, be intellectually honest, because he clearly believes that "having a multiplicity of options and the liberty to pursue them" is a desirable state for society.
Yes. That is the irony of ironism. The final point of Ironism is the self-awareness of authors to their own final vocabularies.
I think it is more than fair for Rorty to state his preference for social orders and explain his rationale for his beliefs. And he has as much right as anyone to expect his ideas to be taken seriously. But to suggest that the man believed he was relaying the Truth is to miss literally everything he stood for.
That is, I can say that man having liberty to pursue diverse lifestyles is a good state of social affairs without having to believe I am stating a redemptive truth.
to suggest that the man believed he was relaying the Truth is to miss literally everything he stood for.
I don't think he believed that; I think he genuinely thought he was "deconstructing" the idea of Truth and putting forward a way of dealing with the world without needing such a notion. I just think he was in error in believing that. See below.
I can say that man having liberty to pursue diverse lifestyles is a good state of social affairs without having to believe I am stating a redemptive truth.
Either you mean your statement to be taken seriously or not. If you don't, then yes, you're not stating a redemptive truth, because you're not stating anything. So I can just ignore what you say. (I assume that wasn't your intention, but of course I may be wrong, just as I may be wrong in thinking that Rorty meant his utopia claim to be taken seriously.)
If you do mean your statement to be taken seriously, then, whether you realize it or not, you are committing yourself to truth claims. Perhaps you would not describe them as "redemptive" truth claims, but that's quibbling over words. If you're committing yourself to truth claims, then you haven't deconstructed the idea of Truth, because we all live in the same world, so all of our truth claims about it have to be consistent.
Similarly, if Rorty means his claims about utopia to be taken seriously, then he's committing himself to truth claims (not least about the possibilities allowed by human nature). To say that, well, it isn't "redemptive" truth because he's allowing different people to have different worldviews, is, once again, quibbling over words. Everybody has to coexist in the same world, and his claim about utopia amounts to claiming that there is a One True Way to organize society that will somehow magically let everyone coexist without conflict. I think, as I said, that that's a dangerous illusion, but whether it is or not, it isn't something one can believe without having a notion of Truth.
http://olincenter.uchicago.edu/pdf/rorty.pdf
It isn't on deconstruction specifically but on why literary criticism has become so important in general.