Copyright
Heidi SalaverriaPublished On
2025-12-02Page Range
pp. 123–146Language
- English
Print Length
24 pages
6. Creative Doubts against Authoritarian Certainty
Rorty through Reparative Critique
Chapter of: Solidarity in Contingency: Rorty’s Constructive Project(pp. 123–146)
The text examines Richard Rorty’s concept of self-creation through the lens of reparative critique, proposing that creative forms of doubting—rather than irony—offer a stronger response to authoritarian certainty. Drawing on Melanie Klein, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Judith Butler, it argues that reparative doubt integrates dependency, empathy, and ambivalence into a non-humiliating model of autonomy. By contrasting paranoid and reparative
positions, the paper suggests that solidarity arises not from shared power but from acknowledging vulnerability, relational dependence, and the transformative potential of doubt in overcoming cruelty and humiliation.
Contributors
Heidi Salaverría
(author)Philosopher and Chair Professor for Art Theory and Artistic Practice at Medical School Hamburg
Heidi Salaverria is a philosopher and Chair Professor for Art Theory and Artistic Practice at the Medical School, Hamburg. She is a philosopher, art theorist, and cultural worker, living in Hamburg, Germany. She is working on an Aesthetics of Doubt. She has published widely on ideas of non-identitarian subjectivity and critical common sense, the problems of recognition, the intersection of aesthetics and politics, and the question of agency.