This is one of the reasons I really like Chomsky. Honesty and integrity with no compulsion or interest in belonging to a particular movement. He calls out bullshit disregarding political labels and does so clearly and eloquently with devastating argumentation.
@@zakshah3480 It's a fantastic book; you should also check out "Cynical Theories" by James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose. Alan Sokal himself praised the book.
@@BuGGyBoBerl The “intellectual dark web,” jordan peterson, joe rogan, dave rubin, ben shapiro, the wenstein bros, sam harris, and a few others. Altho sam harris did recently disavow the IDW for their support of trump’s election conspiracies.
I love Chomsky. I am quite left leaning and read all these fancy high brow books, yes mainly by the french, Derridas, Foucaults, Baudrillards etc...And I enjoy reading them as I enjoy Fiction...the key is never to take what they say too seriously...as a leisurely past time fine...but lets not pretend they are saying something so profound and untold...Chomsky is spot on that all this pontification is fine for people in the developed..but for real issues that pertain to the emerging countries...its actually problematic..as their academics get caught up in this nonsense... Chomsky is a true thinker..he doesn't just jump to which ever side necessary...he actually forms an opinion no matter what others think of him. Yes he is a beacon for the left..but he will not backdown for calling out the idiocies on our side too...That is so rare..most people fit neatly into a predictable box and will defend their 'side' with no account to hypocrisy
...how do you read social theory, culture theory, and historiography like fiction? Do you ever find it ironic that Chomsky dislikes modern globalism given that his opinion on postmodern thought is that it inhibits _intellectual_ globalism from a linguistics standpoint?
Postmodernism makes more sense in the field of art(meaning all kinds of creative pursuits here), because there there's some truth in that context and relativity plays a big role. You can mix elements from a lot of traditions and make new and original things. Its also the opposite way when you analyze art, because art isn't objective. Things can heavily depend on who views something, and context. There are movies that are deemed trash in its time, but are consideres classics today, for example. Like Tod Brownings "Freaks". The problem with postmodernism is when its used to talk about reality itself. Then it becomes almost some kind of academic quasi-religious nonsense, because it unevitably crashes with real science, and postmodernists has traditonally started to attack anything that claimed to have empirical data or facts, because that is "fascist" or whatever. This was a problem in the 70s, where even illnesses was sometimes supposedly social constructions. Alan Sokal's book "Intellectual Imposters" really highlights the worst of them, and like Chomsky says, some of it is really quite embarrassing, because these were some of the most highly deemed intellectuals at its time. Postmodern thinkers did hit a wall at some point. Today postmodernists are a bit more nuanced though. They don't deny the hard sciences as much, but its still probably more leaning on explaining humans through the scope of culture, and not wanting to involve biology and evolution as much. Which probably is fine to a degree, because the whole "nature or nurture"-debate is complex.
The nature or nurture debate is complex, but one thing that is certain is that BOTH play a role. At the moment most SJWs insist that most things are 100% society and 0% biology, and they are absolutely wrong about that. But they HAVE to believe that. If they believe the disparity between male and female behaviour is even just 10% caused by genetics/hormones/etc. then it means feminists have to accept the reality that having 50% of politicians, engineers, CEOs, programmers, etc. be women is not going to happen, at least not without having to use force, or an immense amount of cultural subversion.
I agree that postmodern philosophy is a very valuable aspect of art. You could say that postmodern philosophy is itself art. Creating concepts is art, Deleuze admitted to philosophy being a practice of concept creation. However, would you say that postmodern thought is not applicable to cultural analysis? Is science not a part of culture? Are the to such a degree that no such connection can be made?
He started saying that "postmodernism has had a terrible effect on the Third World" after his visit to Brazil in the 1990s. I don't think that's a coincidence.
I was puzzled by his statement re: Third World. I assumed po-mo is equally harmful to developed world, but having been at the heart of this cult in my university in Delhi, I have fully realised how detrimental this non sense is to the developing world.
Thank you so much for your critique on post-modernism. Academic philosophy is just rampantly corrupt with their stupid bullshit. I really takes a genuine intellectual to see through their crap.
I mean Academic, which actually creates this continental/analytical divide. (It shouldn't be there, if you are a philosophical 'purist'.) All the great names in the history of philosophy were great thinkers -- so many of them true philosophers. Now, go through the last few editions of the academic journals and see what you find. THAT is academic philosophy.
Language is the currency of all discourse, even scientific discourse. People who really do know what they are talking about still have to use words. Unfortunately, some of the protectors and masters of the language itself (the linguists and philosophers) are like Zimbabwean central bankers, devaluing that linguistic and intellectual currency, and still others busy in ivory towers churning out counterfeits; discouraging people generally from thinking the words said by the experts mean anything. But sometimes the words do have meaning! You can occasionally find people who are still using language in good faith. It's time to take the counterfeit currency off the market.
The Jean Bricmont and Alak Sokal books he's referring to are 'Intellectual Impostures' and 'Fashionable Nonsense'. I'd seriously recommend them, purely for entertainment value if nothing else.
I have to agree with Chomsky about the nonsense: some time ago I was discussing with a postmodernism follower, and I pointed out something about the moral progress of Western civilization, something about the fact that we did things that today would be considered morally unacceptable. He answered that philosophically "moral progress" is a nonsensical construction, since it implies the existence of an external world, an assumption which has been proven wrong by many philosophers. I mean..come on
What you mentioned is a form of solipsism, for which they can argue if they want, however it is not necessarily an idea associated with postmodernism. The whole critique of "grand narratives" deals with the possibility of single universal interpretation/meaning of progress. Critique of grand narratives does not imply critique of progress/change itself.
Let's set something straight here. Postmodernist is basically an umbrella term used to lump together thinkers who had very little to do with each other, that sometimes actually rejected the label and that worked in a variety of fields. Like many lines of thought it influenced and shaped current epistemological considerations for the better in a number of fields. Because, like with most lines of thought, you take some and you leave some, mostly because they're part right and part wrong. The entire dismissal or acceptance of a body of work I think is suspicious and probably rooted in a lack of critique/self-critique. Now, Chomsky might argue (and I don't know to what extent he's right) that the right parts consisted of truisms, yet it appears it did take those people, and others, to shed light on things that were in fact not considered, truism or not. In fact, I would challenge the notion that what appears self-evident to Chomsky actually is to everyone else; his point on women in science is case in point, in that most people wouldn't even have a second thought about it being an issue, let alone see it as reflecting power structures. After all, a lot of people still hold the belief that science has no internal politics, which is more of a utopian ideal than a reality. Anyways, the postmodern rejection of science has now itself rightly been rejected in most, if not all, of social sciences, while its ideas on the politics of knowledge are still relevant and applicable, and actually very important, including in natural sciences to an extent (think of financing, publication, value judgments, including research choices, etc). For instance, in my own field, namely anthropology, postmodernism played a key role in criticizing inadequate methods and developing more reliable ways of ethnographic inquiry. In a way it basically forced people to rethink what they took for granted and helped us progress. That's why I'm kind of surprised by the feelings people seem to have on this issue. Postmodern thought represents a challenge on sciences which in turn makes them stronger and more reliable. Let's also remember that postmodernist thinkers were not the only ones criticizing scientific epistemology, especially in relation to natural sciences (in fact most of them did not directly address it). Not even a century ago logical positivism was the norm, and a lot of (misinformed) people who value science today still think in its terms. So I'd advise to be careful and not go to the other extreme, namely scientism. Using science also means understanding its workings, its limitations and its ever evolving nature in terms of both knowledge and the means of acquiring it. All the while not elevating science to some sort holy panacea, at which point it just stops being science and becomes at best the very rhetoric postmodernists criticized or at worst some cult where people accept ''experts'' claims on a purely authoritative basis, which, I would argue, is pretty easy to come across around youtube, the internet and society at large.
I don't understand his point on truisms either. Science would seek to QUESTION truisms in order to validate our underlying assumptions rather than ASSUME them to be right prima facie. I don't see how using social science ("polysyllables") in that pursuit is mere aggrandizing. Rather, that would seem to be a major outlet for social sciences. Proving what we think we know to be right or - even more interestingly - WRONG.
I'm not sure that logical positivism was ever the norm. It was the "hot" school of philosophy in the 20's, 30's, 40's, but you wouldn't find a majority of philosophers (or, especially scientists) who even then, say, thought moral or aesthetic claims were statements devoid of meaning. I think that post-modernists were engaging in a straw-man argument if they presented themselves as coming to the rescue against those wicked logical positivists.
fattony638 so, you are saying in summary to be skeptical about “expert opinion” in a long winded crescendo of rhetorical banter, of course? How does any of this so called analysis help society at any turn at all except to give self appointed thinkers a debate club to exercise their enormous egos and inflated opinions if their own intellect? Here is a “truism”. If you are outside and uncovered when it is raining outside, you will get wet.
You state "his point on women in science is case in point, in that most people wouldn't even have a second thought about it being an issue, let alone see it as reflecting power structures. After all, a lot of people still hold the belief that science has no internal politics, which is more of a utopian ideal than a reality." Clearly you are not a scientist, as every thing that you say in that sentence is as wrong as it can be. Perhaps by "a lot of people" you mean non-scientists. Ask any scientist and they will tell you that science is *full* of internal politic, and that yes, the lack of women is a real problem, and is indeed a result of the power structures of old, many of which still persist. However, it is still true that "science" as an abstract thing, is the best way that we have of determining the truth, and that despite all the failings that "scientists" may have, the "science" itself is still about as objective as it can be, and is by it's nature self correcting. There may be internal politics, and sometimes it can get in the way of the path, but in the end, the science is still what is important, and that is what matters. All you discussion of "scientism" is really the sort of thing that we hear non-scientists saying all the time. And do you know the *best* way to avoid anything like that ? It is to actually edicate people in "science" from an early age, and by that I do not mean teach them all about "scientific facts", but to teach them abiut the scientific method, to inculcate from an early age about logic, rational thought and how toi evaluate evidence. What you are talking about is a religious way of thinking about science, and no scientist, or at least no good scientist, would ever tell you that this was a good idea. And this is a major difference between sciuentistst and the sort of "strong program of science" post modernists that Chomsky is discussing, which is a the post modernist will say that everything is subjective, and science has all these human issue, so is itself just subjective and can't be believed, and scuentists shouldn;t be trusted, but scientists will tell you that yes, observations are subjective, and science has all these human issues, and so you shouldn't trust scientists, and as a scientist, you shouldn't even TRUST YOURSELF, as you can easily be wrong, or mistaken, so you have to trust the world around you, and trust the mechanism of science that it is self correcting. The problem with the "scientism" argument that you make, is that is is too closely alinged with misconceptions amongst the public of what science actually is. For instance, you might often hear people complaining thet "This scientist said this, and this other one said that, so they can'yt even agree amongst themselves, so we shouldn't believe any of them" which totally misunderstands the point of scientific discourse and how it works, since the fact that scientists can disagree, is one of the principle strengths. And youe "scientism" is justy the oposite of that, where you blindly accept what any "scientist" says. An informed person would understand how science works, and would understand that there is established science, relativity, evolution etc, and there is cutting edge science, and that cutting edge science has a lot of unknowns, and a lot of disaggrements, but you can not take all that is said completely seriously, but that the more establishes science, is by and large unasailable and has been so well established by all available evidence, that it would be foolish and demonstrably wrong, to actually question it. That is not scientism, that is just the honest evaluation of the evidence.
@jamspandex4973 HI jam, I think there's been a misunderstanding here. I'm far from disagreeing on science being the best method we have to approximate our understanding of reality, especially compared to religion. Clarifying this I think is especially important considering our comments being written respectively before and after the covid pandemic, which threw science into a crisis of confidence it didn't deserve and that is. frankly. extremely alarming. Now, when discussing postmodernism, we have to take into account the historical context into which it arose, and the fact it actually isn't an actual ideology -- as I stated, most thinkers who are said to be postmodernist never used the term and some explicitly rejected it. The point I was making concerning blind faith in science and ignoring internal politics, which were aptly raised by such thinkers in their time, was not aimed at science per se, but at a way of naively idolizing science which actually resembles religion. The reason I felt compelled to comment on such a phenomenon is because I witnessed it in interactions on social media as well as in academia, as did the aforementioned thinkers. Of course, a lot of contemporary scientists will readily and correctly acknowledge science as a fallible social enterprise where power structures can be obstacles, but the point is such self-critiques weren't always, historically, that forthcoming. In other words, some -- like yourself -- will readily admit those obstacles and try to account for them -- I don't deny it. Yet, some did and worse, still try to deny those potential failings -- maybe less so today than before, but again the critiques we are talking about are decades old. Anyhow, let's just say the point only aims at the people still holding the bag, so to speak -- more people than you might think, which says more about them than about science itself. As for the feminist critique, again, you take some, you leave some. Here's an interesting example. For a time gametes were thought, in the scientific community, to be active in the masculine case and passive in the feminine case. Yet we know today this conception was an incorrect result of cultural interpretation of biological data. What eventually made us aware of such a mistake? well obviously science itself as a self-correcting enterprise. Yet, science, as a social enterprise, still needs to be pushed and critiqued in such a way to not be complacent with itself -- complacency is a very human trait and science is nothing if it isn't human. Sometimes it can do so from the inside, like each of us who is sometimes aware of its own fallibility. And yet, some other times, it sure needs some pressure from the outside, like each of us who sometimes need to be reminded not to be too cocky. "Postmodernism" played such a role -- though again, in general, you take some and you leave some (some did go too far in my opinion). So yeah, we agree any good scientist _should_ think in such terms, yet point is in a lot of people's experience a lot of scientists still don't and a lot of non-scientists are especially worse in this respect. This should be acknowledged and pushed against.
I got my MA in Anthropology and Chomsky is right. I remember discussing Marx with a classmate and he kept repeating "Marx was a materialist, he was a materialist" I really did not know what it meant so I asked him and he sheepishly said he didn't know. The seminars were just circle jerks with people using big fancy words that had absolutely no meaning.
This is a super important point you make, but also lots of physics students can't take an differential equation and express it in discrete terms. There is a different skill set between relating complex ideas to each other and distilling them into simple terms
I'm sorry, but it definitely is his voice. I'm listening to Manufacturing Consent on audiobook and I can digest the information pretty easily, but when I'm listening to Chomsky himself, I just can't follow him.
I like his voice. It's not as blemished by emotion as a lot of other people who talk about real world issues. It's the appropriate tone to talk about that kind of thing.
spot on. its about sounding nice and smart and lots of insecurities. i never understand why though. natural science/math/engineers dont use that words to sound smart, its their vocabulary for real problems (in general). the issue here is that many people dont bother too much about it and you need to put in some work to get to a certain depth to understand it. however if you dont bother you cant understand. its not mainly because its super complex or needs absurd IQ. its simply because people dont put in enough effort and it often leaves the field of first hand experience (you dont see quantum physics in your daily life while you see whats going on in politics etc). so dont be insecure that you dont understand their stuff. its not because they are special, its because they work there. you also dont expect to build your own bath and do the plumber jobs perfectly. not your profession. so why get insecure when you dont understand it or when they win big prizes. after all our society heavily relies on them. ps: humanities arent obsolete by any means. they are needed but dont expect to be the same as stem fields.
The book is by Alan Sokal et Jean Bricmont, and its title is “Intellectual Impostures : Postmodern Philosophers' Abuse of Science”. It’s a great read. The specific joker that Chomsky talks about is Bruno Latour.
you cant make an equal comparison between actual, measured, testable science and someone waxing poetic about gender roles in TV sitcoms. it's not the same thing
One last thought in reference to your pointing out of page 376. I read this point on history and relativism being used to "debunk" objectivity as pointing to a very small segment of postmodern thought - nihilism(of which I am not an adherent). Just as in science, there is a spectrum of postmodern thought. The scientific fundamentalists, much like their religious counterparts, have difficulty with ambiguity. The world must be black and white as well as aligned with their own taxonomic ranks.
If we compare the two schools of continental philosophy and anglo-saxon & American analytical philosophy, it's clear that the continental philosophy (postmodernism) the latter school has contributed much more to understanding repression, sociological affairs, political causes in the third world etc. Foucault's contribution, whom Chomsky debated in the 70s, exceeds any narrow analytical mathematical formula in the social sciences and has probably "helped" the third world much more.
I read Sokal's 'Fashionable Nonsense' and it confirmed most of what I felt about the French 'intellectuals'. Thank you, Mr. Chomsky, for pointing out this nonsense.
I think that stuff was very popular up until the 70s or the 80s. It's outmoded now. Though as Chomsky mentions, that strain of thought held the spotlight in France longer than pretty much anywhere else.
Since you have read the book then you will understand the excerpt from my paper: "In the radical pursuit of the will to will-lessness, mechanical objectivity was thought to be the method through which the self could be fully suppressed, resulting in pure objective knowing. (continued in the next post)
When I think of debate, I think of a dialectic between two opposing worldviews in which the goal ideally is to convince each other that that they are mistaken and/or that your position is correct. What you're referring to sounds like an argument, which sadly, is what many debates devolve into these days. A prime example of this is the "debate" between Alan Durshowitz and Norman Finkelstein.
@fede2 Lol at "she visited me.. she was a flaming maoist" .. also what's the famous article chomsky wrote about postmodernism? any idea what its called or where to find it? cheers
Ok I respect your point about artists having little financial leverage.I am happy to be proved wrong...In NZ where I live the university trained artists all seem to be doing "research" on arcane matters relating to worthy sociological "issues" ordained as such by the academic institution..... Maybe that is not the case in New York where you live?...My personal experience of "postmodernism" is the dreary word count and discipline of academic writing...
I would really like to find what this video snippet is from. I really enjoy these criticisms within the left. The postmodern stuff has really fooled me before, where I racked my brain to try and figure out what they were saying, believing that they must be rather smart because of their polysyllabic ways. Oh, a little searching, and this comes from a giant worthwhile to watch interview, here's the same section: Science, Religion & Human Nature - The Chomsky Sessions - (2)
How lucky for me that you actually know Peter Galison personally. I would be thrilled to send to him the paper I wrote and from which I quoted below. Let's let Peter decide for himself what he thinks of my take on the book. By the way, did you post this before or after you drank the keg of beer in your photo? ;)
All things have vagueness and clarity. Numbers break down at a certain scale just like words do. I mean yes, simple numbers work, but numbers can be complex and have more room for misunderstanding their meaning. For example the meaning of numbers is interpreted by a reader, and continuously checked alongside the math. Math happens to be good at showing meanings. Both literary critics and scientist follow this model in math form. This math or descriptive model is science.
Agreed . I know I'm giving out my age , but I've read Chomsky since 1980 . I really wish he would stick to linguistics , and the philosophy of science .
Chomsky relentlessly refuses to adhere to any ideology or simplistic categorization, sincerely expresses his views without fear of the reprisals. There are so few public intellectuals in the English speaking world as rational and benevolent as he is.
Basically, postmodernism is a set of thought-terminating cliches. Hipster science and philosophy I don't always agree with chomsky, but at least he usually has something interesting to say on a given subject.
I would like to read more about the time when postmodernism was taking over the humanities. There must have been resistance, surely, from professors who noticed that their collegues were no longer researching or teachiong the subject in a meaningful way. Why did it fall to outsiders like Alan Sokal to call bullshit? I want to know the details of how they took with so little apparent resistance.
I'd like to know more about what he means when he says this kind of gibberish has a more negative impact on third-world countries, being from a third-world country myself. Any links?
Chomsky's generalizations about postmodernism and continental philosophy make perfect sense for someone who refuses to engage with it, but as a linguist, it's frustrating that he talks about concepts relevant to modern discourse using the definitions of enlightenment-era thought.
I like post-modernism's distrust of meta-narratives and teleological history, because I see this kind of thinking as essentially utopian and quasi-religious (I'm thinking of the myth of progress, and blissful end-of-history type narratives). Post-modern aesthetics can also be interesting. Chomsky makes some really good points though. I think we're beginning to see some of the post-modernist fervor from the 1980s and 90s be tempered to an extent, but there are definitely some very far reaching conclusions that still come out of a lot of post-modernist criticism. I think post-modernism has done a lot to open up new and freer avenues to thinking about art and culture. This has had good effects, but in some ways needs to be reigned in, especially in regards to the liberties post-modernists sometimes take with science and history. In the end, some things are heteronormative, patriarchal, white, capitalist, social constructs. But not everything. Lol.
The clip would make it appear that he gave a complete answer without mentioning America directly as the bad guy. I was confused and disorientated. All I had to do was fish up the whole interview, and things went back to normal.
Cartesian doubt is not limited to what Descartes thought about radical skepticism. It has evolved quite a bit in several centuries. The general principle would be postmodernism's main critique of meta-narratives. Science would be considered a meta-narrative in a post-modernist perspective.
As someone who does History, I have to agree. It's not a science, and It's not a "social science." We can certainly use Science to deduce things that happened in the past, or filter out bad sources. For example, somebody once found a map showing a Viking empire in what is now the USA. However, when a Chemical analysis was done of the ink, it turned out that it was from the 1920s.In this interview Chomsky talks about a Pharoah who was diagnosed with tuberculosis, albeit thousands of years after his death, and one of these Charlatans said "How? Tuberculosis wasn't discovered until the 19th century." But there a Scientific process was used to deduce a Historical fact. Hell, that basically what lawyers do, they use the work of Forensic Scientist to present arguments about things that happen in the past (admittedly, sometimes these turn out to be pseudo-science, but that's the justice system for you) Also, we can be scientific with sources, in the sense that we can read say the Gospels and dismiss it because it depicts a man walking on water. But we can't develop working theories beyond common sense, for example "wars happen when peaceful relations between states/non-state actors break down." The problem I have with the kinds of people Chomsky criticizes is that they take the Humanity out of the Humanities. Literature Scholars, Anthropologists, etc. should be in the business of communicating their arguments to wider audiences, and widening people's minds on the cultures they live in. Once they abandon this and resort to jargon and only talking to each other, the point is lost. This what I assume he means when he says "If you do your work seriously, that's fine." To be fair, I think History has practical value beyond cultural enrichment. Should we go to War in Iraq was a question posed to a number of Middle East History experts by the Blair administration (interestingly, not by Bush) and they answered no. The argument they made not to invade was broadly how it turned out. For example, the extremists will gain power, it will be hard to impose democracy on a country not used to it, the Iranians will try and take over parts of Iraq, etc. These all turned out to be pretty accurate, and Blair should have listened. So Historians can give good political advice in that sense, if only people will listen. Sadly, we often learn from History that know one ever learns from History. However, whereas the Polio Vaccine was effective in all human subjects, there is no one solution to political problems such as these as "Social Scientists" would have us believe, nor one single cause. Like with the Iraq case I presented, they were not talking in deduced generalities, but specific conditions concerning that country and region that they had studied. That is serious and applied History, not Hegelian Dialectics or the Laconian "big other" or whatever. Hell, If studying History has had one use it was to prove those kinds of ideas to be empirical bullshit. That's all "Social Science" and really is. Bullshit agreed upon. I'm a Humanities student, not a Scientist, and I'm proud of it! Fuck Foucault!
'Either trivially true or impossible to reliably determine' - would be a better way to put it. Can you think of anything in humanities that has been determined with high confidence that isn't also just trivialy true?
"In the Nouvel Observateur, an ex-Stalinist who has changed allegiance but not intellectual style published a grossly falsified version of the contents of the petition, amidst a stream of falsehoods that merit no comment." Some Elementary Comments on The Rights of Freedom of Expression, Appeared as a Preface to Robert Faurisson, Mémoire en défense, October 11, 1980. This is probably Kristeva, too.
However,much like the subjectivity in a low-tech production of a drawing in the medium of lead pencil,the subjectivities in operating and processing mechanical aides to sight were, in the end,just as problematic.Daston and Galison point out that subjectivity of the eye in truth-to-nature is not conquered by mechanical objectivity, but rather problematized by having tolearn "twice over"(184).Mechanical objectivity turns out tobe just another way of seeing, not the portal to the objective reality.
I'm not sure exactly what you're saying here, but I think that you've missed my point. I"m not saying the content isn't important. Rather, I'm saying the content is VERY important. What's important is that the social formation of society is VERY influenced by the way in which common sense is formed within mass society and thus it is very important to show the historical/social formation of "common sense" so as to provide an "objective" account of the mind in any era = individuals see alternative
That being said, I can't understand anything Foucault writes, and my impression of him, and many others from that school of thought, is that their theories are more oppressively Stalinist that the most ardent old school bolshevik. Out of this comes identity politics, political correctness, and all of the negative current associations we have of the left. Sometimes I feel like postmodernism is very much a subtle, Western reworking of Stalinist social programming. Another example, Marxist critical legal theory rejected legalism and the associated state; of course the second the law schools realized the implications of Marxist legal criticism, they dropped the subject because of the nullifying implication for their own profession, and developed Postmodern critical theory, which encourage the judicial activism we put up with in our legal system now. In other words, academics quickly set to work of creating an ideology that justified the extension of legalism into social life, rather than doing the pragmatic work of using legal institutions critically for the praxis and liberation, and relying on direct action where the courts are too regressive. Postmodernists I am convinced, unchecked by other tendencies, would lead to an authoritarian society governed by legalists, highly technocratic corporate structures and the subordination of human life to machines, and relatively indifferent or even directly hostile attitude toward democratic principles in democracy like free speech.
+Robert DeVries If you can't understand a word he writes how can you possibly make a comment on his work? Foucault has absolutely nothing in common with stalin and 'social programming' ; in fact his work is largely concerned with taking apart various forms of 'social programming' . You can't form a critical opinion of something unless you actually engage with it. Dismissing something on the basis of your inability to understand it- or even read it- does not constitute substantive criticism. I don't agree with Foucault on a lot of things, but i can form that opinion because i have actually read and engaged with his work
+Robert DeVries Foucault is the most understandable person of the lot and he is an absolute anarchist. His whole body of work is trying to show that authoritarianism exists in places you wouldn't have thought about.
I have actually often used Foucault as a counter-example of a humanist theorist who actually makes sense, and who develops a consistent body of ideas based on an exhaustive amount of historical-empirical evidence. So if you don't understand Foucault, you are probably just not fit for academia.
I feel like Chomsky rambled. I was excited by the title. I want to show my CRT friends what Chomsky has to say but I was left thinking “what did I just watch”? Could anyone enlighten me. What were his main points against postmodernism?
I normally never write youtube comments, but I felt compelled to in this case. I have read Objectivity (the actual title of this book), and that is not in any sense what the book is about. I also happen to know Peter Galison personally, and I'm pretty sure he would be horrified at this description of his and Daston's work. I would particularly point you towards pg 376.
The dismissal of Latour is quite telling. He doesn't actually explain why he disagrees with it, or explain why it's wrong, he just dismisses it out of hand and he and the interviewer have a chuckle. Problem is, Latours argument is that the Pharaoh may well have died of TB when the scientific/laboratory discovery was made (in the 2000's) but he couldn't have died of TB in ancient Egypt. It's a question of metaphysics, rather than one of science. Chomsky doesn't seem to be able to see that.
What I'm saying is that PMs pose unorthodox ways of criticizing, ways that primes form over content. If we should take such a stance against "common sense" as you say, we would have no point of reference to appraise the production of knowledge. Disregard for modern science and philosophy is acceptable, but when you do PM stuff you can't take even yourself seriously! This I like in guys like Zizek and Baudrillard. They are funny and have no real pretension!
True, I had forgotten about that particular ogre! I think he teaches and works in morocco. Does anyone know what exactly Chomsky refers to when he speaks of the great damage that postmodernism is wreaking in developping countries ? I suppose that it has to do with 3rd world intellectuals challenging modern medicine etc, because it's imperialist subjective white knowledge ?
I'm not saying all philosophy that I can't understand is rubbish, because there are plenty of proper philosophers I can't understand, but some of it DOES sounds like gibberish.Take this from Alex Meinong: ''The absolute enters into but does not undergo transformation and change.'' Huh ?
One giant face palm at 4:40. So because we had not discovered TB until the 20th century, ancient people could not have died from it? So if we had no accurate understanding of acid until the modern era, an ancient Egyptian could walk into HCL acid with impunity?
