al -

i share a recording of a couple of lectures from him on slsk. and you can find a lot more if you search there. interesting stuff.

I think he's frequently right, but I also think he's boring. This is probably my problem though.

He mainly made his name as the "father of modern linguistics," but many of his basic theories have been debunked (Nim Chimpsky anyone?). He teaches at M.I.T.

Cool thing about Chomsky is that the gutterpunks and anarchists read him. His position as a vocal critic is a good entry into big issues for disaffected kids who know more than their parents about what's going on, and his books and tapes are widely sold at underground book and 'zine shops. An unusual development.

Jesse

jeff -

wasn't that theory about some logical structure that apparently is behind all languages from him? i vaguely remember something like that...

Don't know all the details, tomas, but one of his theories was that language was uniquely the domain of humans, which was disproved by the sign-language-speaking apes, one of which was jokingly named "Nim Chimpsky" in his honor.

His more important theory, though, was something like that think you mentioned. I've read some criticism of it, but I'm not very interested in linguistics so I didn't "take notes." You could probably find out pretty quickly with some googling.

best,
jenna

Here's the classic chomsky/foucault debate transcript, by the way:

http://criminyjicket.tripod.com/chomfouc2.html

The Nim Chimpsky line had to do with Chomsky's debunking of behaviorism, for which we should all be highly grateful. I wouldn't say Chomsky has been debunked at all. His notion of transformational grammar is still very important, even he abandoned it favor of government and binding theory. he's still the major figurehead in the field of linguistics, especially syntax, even if a greater focus on corpus linguistics has recently emerged due to computer assisted research.

Chomsky's politics are for me basically truisms. He is given to polemic, which is understandable, but the bulk of what he's written recently is basically repetitive for me. Al's chosen book is a good one, but I'd also recommend World Orders Old and New and Manufacturing Consent, a book that I think got the American media completely right. I think there are more interesting thinkers writing about politics these days than Noam, including Arundhati Roy. But they all owe him a debt of gratitude, and few have been the tireless researchers that he has been. Compared to the people the networks put on TV, the fact that Chomsky so rarely appears is indeed a travesty.

You should see the film version of Manufacturing Consent, where he debates John Silber and Michel Foucault.

"Don't know all the details, tomas, but one of his theories was that language was uniquely the domain of humans, which was disproved by the sign-language-speaking apes, one of which was jokingly named "Nim Chimpsky" in his honor."

The argument was that language was "innate" to humans, not unique. Whorf had already demonstrated that bees used a kind of language to communicate. The innateness argument was pretty well dismissed. Transformational grammar, however, was not.

good evening

the french psychoanalyst Lacan was saying, or wrote (i hope i am not making such a statement, a wrong one i mean) "le language structure la pensée", in english "the language structures the thought"

good night

I tend to echo Bill's thoughts re. Chomsky's politics (I'm far less versed on his linguistic theories), though I'd add that his political writings in recent years are not only repetitive but bordering on simplistic.

Bill, when did that debate occur? I've got a transcribed debate (from somewhere in the Netherlands, I think) between MF and Chomsky, though I can't recall the date. If memory serves, Chomsky did quite well though Foucault won on style points (surprise surprise).

Foster, I see his stuff all over the place in indie bookstores. He seems to be a hero in small press publishing. Normally I'm really wary of writers with such a seemingly enormous liberal follwing. I have to admit that I'm intrigued by some of his observations and have yet to come across any passages that stink of pot-stirring for the sake of the spoon. Who are his detractors?

I don't know much about Chomsky's work on language aquisition and such (and less on his political views), but he ostensibly invented modern syntactic theory. In a semantics class I took, we had a lecture on about his theory of logical form vs. grammatical form in cases of ambiguous scope readings. It's a pretty fascinating, but I don't think anyone here would care.

Bill wrote:
Compared to the people the networks put on TV, the fact that Chomsky so rarely appears is indeed a travesty.
_________

I think this is dead true. While I agree with the take that he's somewhat ponderous and repetetive (from the little I've read), he's such a major researcher and he's been involved for so long that it's shameful that the press ignores him (in the U$ at least - elsewhere he's regularly cited and interviewed).

"I'd add that his political writings in recent years are not only repetitive but bordering on simplistic. Bill, when did that debate occur? I've got a transcribed debate (from somewhere in the Netherlands, I think) between MF and Chomsky, though I can't recall the date. If memory serves, Chomsky did quite well though Foucault won on style points (surprise surprise)."

Chomsky has always been interested in simplicity. that's the crux of his whole emphasis on Cartesian linguistics. It's all about the individual reflecting on what he (in this case, Chomsky) does with language. I think that form of simplicity also informs his political analysis. What people like Robert de Beaugrande have pointed out, though, is that the Chomskyian approach, rooted as it is in Descartes, fails to take into account our empirical knowledge about language emerging from corpus linguistics. For Chomsky, the learning of syntactic rules intuitively allows a speaker to form an infinite variety of sentences, but this "infinity" is only theoretical for Beaugrande. In fact, humans produce a very finite variety of sentences in actual practice, and these can be traced with actual corpus work now. (I believe the British corpus plugs data from every English language newspaper, magazine, journal, currently published book in the world). from that corpus data, clear patterns emerge, but when Chomsky was inventing modern syntax, computers had not yet developed to a point where corpus work was feasible, so he rejected it at the time.

The debate with Foucault took place in 1971. Chomsky's basic argument emerged from his basic premises of humans as rational actors making choices and capable of changing current political arrangements. Foucault, of course, would have no truck with any specious notion of human nature or any concept of rational actors acting outside deterministic social and political constraints. He also had problems with Chomsky's status as a public intellectual speaking for others, and here, one sees Foucault's suspicion developing out of his reservations with French public intellectuals, namely Sartre. Overall, though, despite Chomsky's belief in a form of autonomous rational agency, his analysis of mediated power is fairly Foucaultian, or at least early Foucault.

For me, Chomsky isn't so much simple as repetitive. I've heard the argument about US intervention in Nicaragua with the condemnation of the World Court a million times now from him. I understand the point, but he endlessly repeats it in his various books and articles. I get a bit more out of Robert Fisk these days, or at times John Pilger for that brand of news punditry, and I generally find Slavoj Zizek more interesting, Edward Said, more compelling etc. But Noam Chomsky was the one who really made public the slaughter in East Timor from 1975 and on and who pointed out the way in which that atrocity was elided in the American mass media by the focus on Pol Pot. Chomsky deserves a lot of praise for alerting the public to what was happening in East Timor. Outside of a small group of people, no one was talking about it, but Chomsky worked tirelessly on it. No matter where one sees his thought these days, that particular case puts Noam Chomsky on the pinnacle of admired intellectuals for me and pretty sacrosanct by now.

Aspects of a Theory of Syntax was a formative book for me in my undergrad years, as well. That one had a huge impact.

"the french psychoanalyst Lacan was saying, or wrote (i hope i am not making such a statement, a wrong one i mean) "le language structure la pensée", in english "the language structures the thought"

Lacan is really more renowned for saying that the unconscious is structured like a language not for saying language structures thought.

thanks for correcting me Bill
i kinda had the feeling i wasnt so precise
so i know well
i'll think about it

>I think there are more interesting thinkers writing about politics these days than Noam, including Arundhati Roy.

I find Chomsky simplistic, repetitive, and almost GWBush-ian in his total unwillingness to change his mind once it's been made up, realities of the situation under discussion be damned...but Arundhati Roy actually manages to be more irritating, more bound up in empty-headed campus-lefty clichés, and more annoying than Noam at his most tendentious. I watched her give a speech on CNN, accompanied by Howard Zinn, who I actually respect, and nearly put a brick through my TV. It's rare that one gets to watch a political "thinker" who actually inspires the reaction "Wow, he/she really could use a smack."

But I suspect I may be more conservative than the other folks round these parts. (No, that doesn't mean I'm a Bush defender - I find the man loathsome as a person, and criminal as a leader. And most of his defenders, including folks I once thought were pretty smart, like Christopher Hitchens, now piss me off to the point of literally spitting. But most of the left is just as infuriating, blinkered, and useless.)

i just read a very short bio of Chomsky's on the net and also an article from french paper about the fact that somehow Chomsky's got bad reputation here in France

to be honest I didnt know about him before this discussion started on the bag.

this article i just read about him was very interresting. somehow it crosses some stuff i am strongly wondering about the moment which could be resumed to " a global constestation of the capitalist system is on its way again". seems according to this article that in this sense, the works of Chomsky's can be a great help.

so many things to read and learn about

m'on Suzanne Arundhati Roy now on the net. reading about her book "god of small things'

have you read this?

as someone said she seems to pass message in a very poetic, beautiful way!

thanks for the bag to make people discover new things

Not being much of an admirer of his political philosophy, I still find Richard Rorty's "placing" of Chomsky in his "Philosophy and Social Hope" from '99 to be not too far off the mark. Writing about "the second cultural war ... between those who see modern liberal society as fatally flawed (the people handily lumped together as 'postmodernists') and typical left-wing Democrat professors like myself", he states the following:
"People on the postmodernist side of this dispute tend to share Noam Chomsky's view of the United States as run by a corrupt elite which aims at enriching itself by immiserating the Third World. From that perspective, our country is not so much in danger of slipping into fascim as it is a country which has always been quasi-fascist. These people typically think that nothing will change unless we get rid of 'humanism', 'liberal individualism', and 'technologism'."

Slavoj Zizek was mentioned. Can't say his politics is my cup of tea, but I do find him very readable. The last two chapters of his "Welcome to the Desert of the Real" have more to say about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than Chomsky's "9-11".

For something completely different (on the "same" subject), I found "Parallels and Paradoxes", a conversation between the late Edward Said and conductor Daniel Barenboim, quite illuminating.

"but Arundhati Roy actually manages to be more irritating, more bound up in empty-headed campus-lefty clichés, and more annoying than Noam at his most tendentious. I watched her give a speech on CNN, accompanied by Howard Zinn, who I actually respect, and nearly put a brick through my TV. It's rare that one gets to watch a political "thinker" who actually inspires the reaction "Wow, he/she really could use a smack."

Well, that's pretty offensive, Phil. Is that your only encounter with Roy?

"And most of his defenders, including folks I once thought were pretty smart, like Christopher Hitchens, now piss me off to the point of literally spitting. But most of the left is just as infuriating, blinkered, and useless."

Agreed on Hitchens, but as for the rest of your comment, I find it pretty blanket and useless, too. Any specifics to offer or reasons to provide? Or is vitriol the order of the day?

"Slavoj Zizek was mentioned. Can't say his politics is my cup of tea, but I do find him very readable. The last two chapters of his "Welcome to the Desert of the Real" have more to say about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than Chomsky's "9-11"."

Take note folks, you're not going to hear that one a lot. I've poked at his writing on cinema, but thought that it wasn't worth the effort.

The man's a rock star though. You heard about his lecture at Deitch Projects, right? A friend of mine was there and said it was amazing: the gallery was *packed*, so much so they had to close the shutters and lock the doors, while some rabid Lacanians from Columbia were banging on the gates so hard that the cops were called. Substitute "public intellectual" for "celebrity intellectual" round these parts.

Well fame is a very stupid thing, whether it's rock, EAI, or theory. And not particularly interesting, especially in comparison with what Zizek actually writes. The comparison with Chomsky's book on 9/11 isn't fair either. That's a very truncated account for wide dissemination. Al's book is a better option in terms of that explanation.

I just wanted pop in here to agree with Bill that Chomsky's critique of behaviorism was terrific (and absolutely dispositive, IMHO), that his work on transformational grammar has not been "debunked," and that I also like his book, "Manufacturing Consent" (though I thought it could have been shorter and less screechy).

OTOH, like Phil, I don't care for what I've read by Roy (neither fiction nor non-fiction), and I disagree with Chomsky's political assertions about a third of the time (and his sort of Leninist method of argumentation when he's writing about politics almost always).

Also, fwiw, the Chomsky/Said stuff on Israel hasn't done much more for me than the one-sided (and unreliable) baloney that's perpetually coming out of the Zionist right. If I believed in poxes, I'd put a pox on both their houses. But alas.

whodathunkit, Chomsky has a blog.

The parenthetical in the first sentence of "The Invasion of Iraq" put a smile on my face.

Bill, I've begun the slow climb up the Foucault/Chomsky debate text and am enjoying what I can understand. The concepts are easy enough to follow, but I would benefit from understanding more of the relationship between the two speakers.

There isn't really a relationship between the two speakers, Al. It was really a one-off debate. Two people basically talking past one another.

I feel differently about the Said/Chomsky critique of Israel. I think that most of their arguments are basically confirmed even in the Israeli presses, like Haaretz. But the book Al's reading, Fateful Triangle, covers all of this the best.

sufficiently chastened for the "debunked" comment, which was at best triple hearsay and beyond my actual knowledge.

About his weblog, though: the consensus opinion online seems to be that it's not really his weblog; rather, it's excerpts from his Zmag articles compiled by the Zmag people. Doesn't really matter to me, but might to someone.

>About his weblog, though: the consensus opinion online seems to be that it's not really his weblog; rather, it's excerpts from his Zmag articles compiled by the Zmag people.

How can you tell the difference?

someone said nim chimpsky debunked chomsky's theory of innateness

i disagree with a lot of what chomsky says about linguistics, but nim chimpsky ABSOLUTELY DID NOT prove that apes could learn sgn language. on the contrary, as chomsky predicted, nim learned words but no rules for combining them.

Actually, Nim Chimpsky sort of proves Chomsky right: that humans have a unique genetic ability to do language not entirely found in other organisms.

Chomsky kicks ass. More than anyone else, he revolutionized my idea of politics, just as Michael Albert revolutionized my idea of the economy and Tim Wise revolutionized my idea of racism. Even if one disagrees with him, you can't find the shit he says just anywhere.

Frederic and John are correct. Nim Chimpsky actually proved Chomsky correct with it came to his theory that language was innate to only humans. While he(nim) was able to learn the signs, he was unable to put them together with any type of structure. Originally it was stated that nim had learned 125 signs but that was later disputed by one of the researchers who claim he knew around 25 signs.