/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6425326]

>86 years of age

So what will happen when he is kill? Will that be the final death blow for the Left?

[Anonymous No.6425402]

No we still have intersectional feminism.

They will take care of everything because of intersections.

[Anonymous No.6425407]

>>6425326
Norman Finkelstein should have been his protege/successor but he dicked around way too much Alan Dershowitz.

[Anonymous No.6425415]

>>6425326
>Will that be the final death blow for the Left?

lol, the final death blow to the Left was the fall of the Soviet Union.

[Anonymous No.6425420]

as if an obscure theoretician ever really mattered in the development of a zeitgeist

[Anonymous No.6425422]

>>6425326
the left will die when everybody will understand that the females are just as bad as any man

[Anonymous No.6425426]

>>6425326
For someone who criticizes Derrida, Lacan and Foucault as being vague 2smart4u pseudos he sure is full of ambiguous ad hominem moral relativist rhetoric. I don't know much about linguistics but if his contributions to that field are as shallow as his so called philosophy then I don't think he'll even be remembered by anyone other than plebs. The man is a charlatan.

[Anonymous No.6425430]

http://jim.com/chomsdis.htm

Maybe you'll still have Zizek

[Anonymous No.6425432]

>>6425426
>I don't know much about linguistics
So why would you even mention it?
Do yourself a favor and take a few minutes to read about "universal grammar [UG]."

[Anonymous No.6425434]

>>6425415
No anon, it was the rebirth.

[Anonymous No.6425436]

>>6425407

Finkelstein focuses almost exclusively on Israel-Palestine. By his own testimony he's not the kind of scholar Chomsky is, though he's in the same analytic-left tradition (if we can give it a name).

The idea is to critique power but to do it in the least exciting and most difficult way: using masses of historical and contemporary sources to show patterns of injustice.

He won't have a "successor." That's the whole point. There's no "Chomskyism" that needs to be transmitted after he's gone.

>>6425326

I think it will spur a revival of interest in his work, possibly short-lived, possibly fruitful. The left will carry on in its drunken stupor until it sobers up and realizes it needs to clean house or until it becomes completely (and not just mostly) irrelevant.

[Anonymous No.6425440]

>>6425426
chomsky's contribution to linguistics cannot be overstated.

[Anonymous No.6425465]

>>6425426
>moral relativist rhetoric

wtf, Chomsky is a borderline moral absolutist.

Have you ever even heard him speak on terrorism and American foreign policy?

[Anonymous No.6425472]

>>6425426
So youre mad that he criticizes Israel.

[Anonymous No.6425490]

>>6425326

We will be free when he is dead.

He accomplished absolutely nothing on the throne, and the working class is now unsalvageable because of it.

[Anonymous No.6425493]

>>6425436
You're right and I would agree. I am genuinely concerned about what would happen if Chomsky dies. I don't think there is anyone as authouritative as he is on american foreign policy. On a pure intellectual level he is pretty up there considering his entire professional life was strictly working in the sciences (his political writings were additional to this).

>>6425426
If your 'critical' theory cannot be effectively explained to the level of the general public then there is a problem with the theory. If theoretical physicists can adequately explain what they do then why can't you? To me a lot of academics in the social sciences and humanities use postmodernism and critical theory as a way to deflect and hide the true academic merit of their work and justify their subservient positions within a structures of power that is hostile to any true and sustained critics such as those like Chomsky.

If the future of the left is Zizek and post-structuralists then we are going to be in the shits.

[Anonymous No.6425529]

>>6425432
unfalsifiable post hoc bullshit.

[Anonymous No.6425547]

So I was in a /sci/ thread with people listing favorite scientists and linguist was a an option and I noticed many people listed chomsky. However, from this thread /lit/ seems to dislike him? What is good/bad about chomsky?

[Anonymous No.6425552]

>>6425547

Read him for yourself. If you're not up to reading him, watch some of his lectures on Youtube.

[Anonymous No.6425583]

>>6425547
Don't take your advice from angry people across a gulf as wide as the Internet.
He's got a bunch of free lectures anywhere you'd care to look, find out for your own self.

[Anonymous No.6425596]

>>6425547
lotta edge on this board, anon. chomsky's contribution to linguistics, political/social theory, and in general dissecting current events through the decades speak for themselves

[Anonymous No.6425597]

>>6425326
>tfw Bill Murray will die in your lifetime, too

[Anonymous No.6425620]

not /pol/, but I'm always slightly sceptical about the intellectual, secular Jews who criticise Israel, but not other forms of Jewish exceptionalism. In other words they are non-Zionist, but only because they want Jews to maintain their status as an elite within non-Jewish societies as opposed to forming their own nation

I remember a French communist member who objected to Israel on the grounds that they were behaving "like the goyim"

[Anonymous No.6425628]

>>6425620

>not /pol/

try again

[Anonymous No.6425637]

>>6425597
> you'll never hang out with Bill Murray in his upstate New York home while drinking wine, eating steak and discussing Hunter s. Thompson with him.

I can't sleep anymore

[Anonymous No.6425660]

>>6425547
Shills try to make it cool to hate Chomsky.

>>6425620
> french communist dislikes secularism

Sounds like bullshit.

[Anonymous No.6425717]

>>6425660

I don't know if you read French but...

https://histoireetsociete.wordpress.com/2011/12/23/allez-tous-vous-faire-voir-a-bas-le-monotheisme-fetons-le-solstice-dhiver-par-danielle-bleitrach/

>Bref je ne veux pas devenir aussi con que les gohims

"In short I don't want to become as dumb as the goyim"

[Anonymous No.6425739]

>>6425660
>Shills try to make it cool to hate Chomsky
he was literally blown the fuck out by William Buckley. Even Timothy Leary held his own against Buckley. Foucault completely destroyed him and now he refuses to debate Zizek because he is afraid of being remembered as the moron that he actually is.

[Anonymous No.6425848]

>>6425717

Gilad Atzmon is very strong on this point. Jewish "anti-Zionists" are very dangerous because they present the Israel/Palestine conflict as a new form of colonialism, which it is evidently not. Chomsky's view also seems to be that America uses Israel as some kind of colonial outpost, which is dubious to say the least. Even from a real-politic perspective America's genuine best interests are hampered by its support for Israel.

The "anti-Zionist" jews also consistently maintain that zionism and the Israeli attitude to the Palestinians has nothing to do with wider Jewish cultural attitudes

[Anonymous No.6426066]

>>6425739

>he was literally blown the fuck out by William Buckley.
>Foucault completely destroyed him and now he refuses to debate Zizek

[Anonymous No.6426212]

>>6425848
>Jewish "anti-Zionists" are very dangerous because they present the Israel/Palestine conflict as a new form of colonialism, which it is evidently not.
>which it is...not

[Anonymous No.6426298]

>>6426212

What country is invading another country? The use of the word 'colonialism' implies that Israeli occupation is identical to British/French/Dutch colonial projects

Chomsky consistently presents the conflict as another American imperialist venture. At some points he goes so far as to claim that the Jews are being 'used' by those horrible Americans. The reality is the opposite, although Chomsky consistently tries to underplay the importance of groups like AIPAC, as well as overplaying the Jewish diaspora opposition to Israel, notably in his involvement with "No Goys allowed" groups such as the JVP.

Their consistent line is that the Zionism they oppose (Chomsky is himself a liberal Zionist) has nothing to do with Jewish attitudes to non-Jews and is instead driven by American imperialism.

Finkelstein is also suspect in this regard. He claims that liberal American Jews are turning away from Israel, whilst the facts simply don't tally with this view.

I should add that I'm a long time reader and admirer of both these men, I just believe that they are not quite as universalist and non-tribal as you might first think on this particular question

[Anonymous No.6426309]

>>6426298

ohhhhh boy... oh boy.

I vote we just ignore him before this derails into a non/lit/, /b/-tier politics thread.

Have self control anons. Restrain your fingers.

[Anonymous No.6426317]

>>6425326
that guy is totally irrelevant to the Left

[Anonymous No.6426348]

>>6425493
>If theoretical physicists can adequately explain what they do then why can't you?
Theoretical physics is not the same as critical theory

Theoretical physics engages with the empirically observable, while critical theory concerns itself with perceptual experience as filtered through the epistemological structure of language. It examines the phenomenological experience of the merging point between reality and fiction, and as a consequence cannot have any basic tenets other than the instability of meaning itself. Chomsky is simply too caught within his analytical framework to acknowledge that his notion of linguistics is actually complimentary to the continental approach. Everyone who dismisses it as obscurantist is just failing to see that it requires a lot of pre-existing knowledge from a huge variety of fields to make sense of.

[Anonymous No.6426361]

>>6426309

Are you going to offer any kind of rebuttal?

I suggest you read Mearsheimer and Walt's paper, the Israel Lobby and Foreign Policy.

Then read Chomsky's criticism of it, alongside his consistent underplaying of the impact of groups such as AIPAC.

[Anonymous No.6426369]

>>6426348
>Theoretical physics engages with the empirically observable

[Anonymous No.6426374]

>>6425493
>muh I don't understand it therefore it's wrong.

[Anonymous No.6426460]

>>6426369
I'm not versed enough in theoretical physics to make any real claims about it, but I think I'm right in saying that it is a branch of physics, which by definition engages with the natural and observable world. However, the very fact that you've chosen to pick up on such a banal and irrelevant misunderstanding and not my actual point either suggests you don't understand what I've written, or you simply have no ground on which to argue with me.

[Anonymous No.6426646]

>>6425326
He's Left in USA. In Brasil we call then Center-left.

[Anonymous No.6426652]

>>6425415
>>6425434
it was both

[Anonymous No.6426679]

>>6425426

>but if his contributions to that field are as shallow as his so called philosophy

they aren't.

[Anonymous No.6426716]

>>6426679

they are

http://www.chrisknight.co.uk/decoding-chomsky/

[Anonymous No.6426775]

What debate did you watch? He made Buckley look like a child, and his debate with Foucalt was more like a discussion and neither side clearly destroyed the other.

[Anonymous No.6426895]

>>6425848
>>6425717
So you admit you hate Chomsky only because he criticizes Israel?

Just be honest, for fuck's sake.

[Anonymous No.6426898]

>>6425326
>Will that be the final death blow for the Left?
Hopefully

[Anonymous No.6426903]

Here's the Chomsky vs Foucault debate in a nutshell
> Chomsky: They know they're doing it
> Foucault: They're in denial that they're doing it
> Idiots: X wrecked Y!

[Anonymous No.6426916]

>>6426348
You see, I understand what you've written, and I understand what you're trying to say critical theory is concerned with. I can see why these concerns could be interesting to some people (though to me they are thoroughly boring intellectually), but I don't think anyone says all critical theorists are worthless. I respect philosophers like Foucalt, Adorno, and Barthes. But the ones commonly criticized, i.e. Lacan, Derrida, and Zizek, I think don't have anything substantive to say. When I say I can't understand them, what I actually mean is much of what they say is either obvious or nonsense, and I think Chomsky thinks the same way. And I'm sure I have the required prior knowledge to read these authors. I have a PhD. Also its clearly not that the stuff is conceptually too hard for me to understand. Hegel is notoriously hard and yet I read Hegel in high school (my father is a university professor in Philosophy...had me reading the greeks in middle school). And yet when I read people like Derrida, and the critical theorists influenced by Lacan, it all just seems so devoid of any substantial meaning. Not to mention that they write so fucking imprecisely it's like they're trying to hide the fact that they aren't saying anything. They're all jokes, and fewer than five of the 20th century critical theorists will be remembered in just 50 years.

[Anonymous No.6426951]

>>6426895

I don't 'hate' Chomsky at all. I admire him greatly and have read him since I was a kid.

I think you've got the wrong end of the stick, I am absolutely pro-Palestine and anti-Zionist. If I were to criticise Chomsky it would be that on this issue he often stops short of fully addressing Jewish lobbying power and Jewish exceptionalism/"chosen-ness", which is of course a racist and anti-universalist attitude

I find it odd, for instance, that a universalist and atheist would join Jew-only political groups such as JVP. Why can't he join a wider, universalist movement?

[Anonymous No.6426981]

>>6426951
Maybe he's an Iranian agent trying to take them down from the inside?

[Anonymous No.6426995]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz6Vbl-TWgI

[Anonymous No.6427106]

>>6426916
>what I actually mean is much of what they say is either obvious or nonsense
That is precisely the point. When your analysis is directed at something which is neither falsifiable nor deals in absolute abstraction, then you're essentially justified to dip into almost any area of academic enquiry, and your writing will inevitably end up as a patchwork of real and unreal explanations. While I don't claim that any of the theorists you've listed have something of value to offer - although I'd certainly argue the case for Zizek - I think the field of critical theory as a whole has been absolutely necessary in establishing a kind of anti-discourse, in that its 'patchwork' intersectionality allows it to identify and challenge any and all forms of oppression.

>Also its clearly not that the stuff is conceptually too hard for me to understand. Hegel is notoriously hard and yet I read Hegel in high school (my father is a university professor in Philosophy...had me reading the greeks in middle school)
Hegel is not critical theory. Hegel is still written from within the traditional, dialectical form of discourse which Derrida, Deleuze and Lacan have all challenged. If you think its an issue with your understanding of the theory's 'concepts', then you're still not embracing the true potential of post-modern thought