Two or more generations of left activists have grown up reading Noam #Chomsky's fearless exposure of the US imperium.

Radical Anthropology

Chomsky has had towering impact since the 50s on the cognitive revolution across the human sciences, far beyond linguistics, matching his extraordinary prominence as virtually the conscience of America. In 'Decoding Chomsky', Chris tried to work out what connected his science and his politics, with the Two Chomskys apparently 'not on speaking terms'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoding_Chomsky

thomkennon

@RadicalAnthro also structuralism (I'm a Deleuze stan.. ) ; )

ArchaeoIain

@RadicalAnthro really good read. Thanks, Chris. I'm not completely convinced that you are not dealing with three Chomskies: the linguist, the activist and they sybarite.

Radical Anthropology

@ArchaeoIain interesting. The idea of a sybaritic Chomsky seems improbable, but perhaps he had a glimpse of it late in life thanks to 2nd wife Valeria?! He certainly got used to rubbing shoulders with those in power knowing they were war criminals.

ArchaeoIain

@RadicalAnthro it is difficult to construct him as a rabid pro-Zionist like Epstein given his writings against the destruction of Gaza. So I would settle for sybarite.

Radical Anthropology

@ArchaeoIain more and more contradictions

Radical Anthropology

Chris had to write this to work out what connected his science and his politics in complete contradiction. Only then could he start on his latest work on 'The Revolutionary Origins of Language' (Yale UP, due late 2026, with Jerome Lewis)

Here's a free download of Chris' excellent book:

https://z-lib.gl/book/4999344/4bdcce/decoding-chomsky-science-and-revolutionary-politics.html

Radical Anthropology

Chris writes: 'Some... blamed his behaviour on a blindness... to gender issues and.. problems of sexual violence' referring to the horrible email on 'the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women'. And we remember the peculiar historic association, from the classical Greek, of women's wombs with the word 'hysteria'.

Chomsky's politics always lacked a sex/gender component and so does his thinking on the emergence of language. His Cartesian 2nd Cognitive Revolution in linguistics celebrated Mind over matter, with the body completely subsumed.

#sex #gender #violence #Chomsky #Epstein

ArchaeoIain

@RadicalAnthro many thanks to both of you.

GinevraCat

@RadicalAnthro That looks really interesting.

Radical Anthropology

@pvonhellermannn yes absolutely. Chris was entirely baffled by the question, why was Chomsky's linguistics effective mumbo-jumbo. There had to be an underlying reason.

Radical Anthropology

@MarciaW yes, that's very true. There is now very limited support on Universal Grammar, but NC was far more political than scientific in debate

David Michaels

@RadicalAnthro Chomsky's assistance in mentoring Jeffrey Epstein should be a wakeup call. His job was to neutralize the leftists and the centrists while providing a road map for the fascists to steadily gain and maintain power.

#Chomsky was a traitor aiding and abetting operatives and assets of the Soviets and Russians.

icastico

@RadicalAnthro

There is no dichotomy. Chomsky’s work, whether linguistic or political, has always been the ephemeral fluff of a blowhard. Proclamations without worry about evidence constructed to “feel” right. I recall watching à talk by him about an Israeli atrocity that included a number he pulled out of his ass. He said - you can look it up- and the website included a citation to facilitate that. The citation cited a different source, which looped back to Chomsky making the same claim in an earlier talk. It was true, Chomsky believed, because HE said it was true. To challenge his claim was unthinkable to him. His scientific work, better couched as theoretical speculation, worked the same way. He ignored Epstein’s crimes because Epstein flattered him. It’s that simple. Imho.

Radical Anthropology

@LaNaehForaday I am very sorry to hear what happened to you (I have some serious family dysfunction too).

Of course, we do not justify it.

David Michaels

@pkw Jeffrey Epstein's Russian visa application sponsored by the FSB M00 Vympal leads to the conclusion that he was an FSB asset trained in deep penetration, espionage, and sabotage. Noam Chomsky chose to support his efforts, according to their email exchanges. This is not polarizing rhetoric. It went on for 16+ years!

Quasit

@RadicalAnthro I'm disgusted. Years ago I corresponded with Chomsky about a moral issue that was bothering me. Now I know that he wasn't worth the effort!

yianiris

It may be naive of me to ask, if Newton was a rapist, would the theory on gravity still be valid? Would F=m*g where g=9.81m/s^2 at sea level?

Would the theory on value (Das Kapital) be invalidated if found that K.Marx slept with his maid while his wife was dying in the next room?

If I developed a machine that produced clean water, even in a hot dry day, with a tiny bit of power/fuel use, and published the design under GPL, would it matter
who/what I am?

@RadicalAnthro
#marxism #materialism

Radical Anthropology

@yianiris but the difference is Chomsky's supposed 'science' is actually up the wall. He was a huge but absolutely dire influence on cognitive science for the whole second half of the 20th.C. which had a bad bad impact, above all for materialists (we are marxist materialist anthros). Science stands up because it is collective not because it's guided by severe vested interest.

He was the first one to invent 'modularity' with a language module. He opened the gates for rubbish evolutionary psychology. We oppose that by understanding science in a social world. Chomsky completely rejected any social aspect in the investigation of language.

Per Helge Berrefjord

@RadicalAnthro
Please read:
https://www.aaronmate.net/p/noam-chomskys-wife-responds-to-epstein