Chomsky's criticism of Postmodernism 

"Postmodernism is cringe" -Noam Chomsky

Postmodernism: The idea that truth is always subjective, but I'm always right.

Elements of postmodernism were already alive and thriving in the early 20th century. In his 1907 essay 'The Study of Mathematics', Bertrand Russell wrote : 'Too often it is said that there is no absolute truth, but only opinion and private judgment ; that each of us is conditioned, in his view of the world, by his own peculiarities, his own taste and bias ; and that there is no external kingdom of truth to which, by patience and discipline, we may at last obtain admittance, but only truth for me, for you, for every separate person. By this habit of mind one of the chief ends of human effort is denied, and the supreme virtue of candour, of fearless acknowledgment of what is, disappears from our moral vision.'

He is not saying power difference does not exist. There is evidence, there is truth, morality. Ethics. Not everything is some game.

In a way the post modernists won. It's remarkable how much cultural commentary is now just basically an analysis of power relationships.

"Creating the impression of profundity" Yep, that pretty much sums it up.

Is he criticizing "postmodernism" or a certain group or type of academic? It sounds more like that than as you are portraying it. He doesn't talk about "postmodernism" in terms of textual criticism, but more about academic egos and those who absent themselves from social activism. This was not even remotely a "complete denunciation of the movement" as you conclude.

So Chomsky deconstructed postmodernism in terms of power relationships. What a postmodern thing to do. Derrida would be proud.

This is not a critique Postmodernism as much as it is a critique of Posmodermist scholars and intellectuals (which is a different critique and could be applied across various ideological positions).

I don't hear Chomsky, I hear someone speaking FOR him...always a dangerous practice.

Chomsky has never been one to dress himself up in fads, be they of ideas or of language. He has consistently been a serious thinker to the core, which is why I have long valued, even on those occasions I disagree with him, what he has had to say.

i've also got to admit that it's a damn clever tactic of chomsky's to use the postmodernists' own arguments against them.

I am from Brasil and I very much identify with what Chomsky says about the disconnection among the intelligensia and popular movements. I often even find latin professors deffending positions so simmilar to the US department line and reproductions of imperial myths, really terrible

But everything in this video is simply a critique of postmodernists rather than postmodernism as an idea? I don’t understand how this constitutes criticism on postmodernism at all.

Mr. Chomsky, you sir are a god-send to our times and an impeccable guide and example. Thank you.

Well, blow me down. I agree with Chomsky on something.

I honestly thought he would have stronger arguments against post modernism, other than an aggressive relativization without ideas that can stand on their own instead of just being against something.

"I don't like the cultural philosophy that derives from the existence of people like me."

there seem to be a lot of people here that vehemently anti-postmodernism/anti-poststructuralism. i would encourage you guys to read at least a bit of baudrillard and foucault to, at least, get an idea of what they're saying. chomsky, like a lot of american/analytic philosophers, has a dislike of continental philosophy. that being said, there are a lot of clever ideas in that area of philosophy, so it's at least worth reading some to get to know what you disagree with a bit more.

This may be a misreading of Chomsky by taking what he said too far. It could be that his critique was more limited to certain actors within the post modern movement that have had a negative effect, in his opinion, in shaping the movement overall. My analogy would be to certain teams acting in such a way as to change an entire sports league in some fundamental way. It would be taking that example too far to say the entire sport should be invalidated in some way or another. I'm not sure Noam was saying we should not analyze power structures and their real world applications, just the these twats have mucked it up by acting like lawyers instead of educators

In 1983 while working at a Steel mill in Cleveland my Coworker told me that "Opinions are like a$$holes everybody has one, even if you're using a colostomy bag" George "The Forge" Udovich 1931-2009 RIP

Is Chomsky's critique not a critique of the Postmodernist thinkers themselves rather than the movement and its ideas as a whole? I think the critique is sound but what about people who agree with some of its core tenets who don't necessarily participate in that academic sphere and therefore system of power?

"Please eat my stale bread. I've got few sandwitches left" -Naom Chomsky

Great description, modern day sophistry.

Postmodernism is not about the abolition of absolute truth (or reality) but of absolute certainty and people’s belief they have Truth.

Chomsky, not unlike the majority, assumes he knows what 'science' is, but he is mistaken. That is aside from the fact that 'linguistics' itself sits awkwardly even inside that assumption.

Who are the people at 2:30? I recognize Boulez, Foucault and Barthes. (Possibly also Elliott Carter.) The others?

This clip does next to nothing to describe what post modermism is and how it functions, or how a bunch of people no one can understand gained the power suggested here... WHAT authority do these academics have in "3rd world countries" that at all impacts the daily lives of the people that live there? How is that authority used? I mean....just a snippet perhaps for those who don't already know (or believe) what this clip is talking about....

When you consider Nietzsche's observation that philosophers are simply trying to rationalize their vices and then look for 5 minutes into the "proclivities" of "Saint" Foucault, it'll all start making sense.

I don't know whether or not my personal experience is representative of the general state of South America, but I don't see it around here that Postmodernism has been insulating professors from popular struggle. Many professors are away from it, sure, but of those who are active in social and political movements, most can't shut their mouths about Foucault and Deleuze. I'd like to see examples of what Chomsky says, because I see many examples of the opposite every day.

I think people that are against post-modernism have difficulty arguing against it in a theoretical level and fall back into criticizing some of it's thinkers lives and their way of writing. Most critics never try to prove that post-modernism is wrong, they all do "post-modernism bad". And in my view there's a lot of things to criticise about obscurantism, the way some post-modernist ideas are used, the establishment of french academia and the lives of some thinkers, but to me its conclusions are just the logical progression of western thought, if you look at philosophy's history it always pointed in that direction

It's tough watching the great Chomsky resort to name calling and mudslinging against continental philosophy from the analytical side of the philosophical spectrum rather than providing a substantive critique of postmodernism, which like all forms of thought is rife with both flaws and virtues. It's interesting that whoever edited this video attempts to suggest that "critique of power relations" and "distrust of grand narratives" is a bad thing? Or that its somehow not accurate that "dominant power structures shape peoples identities and worldviews"?

Chomsky definitely has a more coherent critique of post modernism than Jordan Peterson

As a physicist, I have assumed that no one who understood anything about physics could not be a postmodernist. Nature does not care what we believer or want, and I find that very charming.

Every generation thinks it is smarter than the one that came before it and wiser than the one that comes after it. George Orwell.

My discipline (Anthropology) really struggles with this. Focault, Saussure, and the like are very popular amongst the people who study Sociocultural Anthropology. I work on the Biological and evolutionary side of things, but it’s wild because we might as well be entirely separate fields. I love the behavioral sciences, so it kills me to see how much of Postmodern thought pervades amongst anthropologists because I’ve heard so many insane takes like “Conspiracy Theorists are a marginalized group” or “Obesity is not a reliable marker of health”.

Hang on, this video sounds like a low-rent undergraduate essay. The characterisation of 'postmodernism' here is a strawman, and not one universally recognised. It doesn't correspond to any of the contentions of any of the purported theorists, or the various iterations of the term in architectural or artistic movements. Postmodernity if it anything like you describe, was a counter-movement in the arts. Many detractors point to French academics like Jean Francois Lyotard as proponents of a misplaced epistemological view like the one forwarded in this video. However, what they were actually up to was describing the direction of travel in society, not making a set of epistemological claims. Be that Foucault, Baudrillard, DeBord, Bachelard, Derrida, et al. I think the 'post-truth' social-media politics and 'cultures wars' of today vindicates much of what some of them wrote. Critiques like Habermas' and Chomsky's are the weakest part of their work, and did not issue from any serious engagement with the work of those claimed to 'represent' a movement in 20th century European academic (particularly French) circles, which did not in fact exist.

“They muddy the water to make it seem deep!” Zen. Chomsky is correct in saying PM is a self-referential maze of ever decreasing circles. But not all of PM is unhelpful, we should not throw the baby out with the bath water. Foucault’s work on the notions of the Clinic and the Panopticon are genuinely useful and in many ways dovetail into Kuhn’s work on the Nature of Scientific Revolutions and paradigms. I consider that Chomsky is also correct in saying that academics need to exit their ivory towers and conference circuit gravy train and more readily and robustly apply their work directly with the aim of building more intelligent, resilient, utilitarian and open political systems. He himself is, and has been for several decades now, a prime example of walking that talk. More power to him and his calm, empirical, persistent and progressive approach. Namaste.

"There is no certainty and there are no absolutes." "Are you sure?" "I'm absolutely certain of it!"

Yet, and despite abundant critiques indeed, over decades, of French "philosophy", Chomsky is at the very forefront of that "Post-Modern" thinking. He only ever think of international political problems in terms of morality. He never, EVER considers the "raison d'État", the principles that forces any government to defend its interests and the militaro-strategic situation encountered by States. Only the morality of interventions. International politic is NOT moral. And it's exactly the problem we encounter today in Western societies: we put morality, not democracy, not legality, not feasibility, not practicality, not the economy, but morality and morality only at the forefront of any question or problematic. Chomsky is very much a proponent of Post-Modern thinking. He is one of its fathers.

Your presentation of this subject was really superbly done. You used clear simple language which was precise and explained the topic very well. Thank you.

I was mocked by other grad students because of my skepticism of postmodernism. I was labeled as a reactionary.

Postmodernism is supposed to a critique, the original goal of which is to bring clarity to meaning through contextualization. It is simply an extension of the overly polemical characteristic of western academia. And Professor Chomsky’s critique of postmodernism will be welcomed by true postmodernists

Fascinating that Chomsky denied the Cambodian, Rwandan, and Balkan genocides continues to have something to say about reality and power structures.

The parallels between postmodernism and invented "religions" like Mormonism and Scientology are remarkable. The fable of "The Emperor's New Clothes" predicted all of this.

Chomsky never once could demonstrate he actually understood what post-modernism is, much less give us a succinct critique of it. He only seemed annoyed with specific people involved with the movement in the 60's and 70's, which is fair enough I guess, but hes attacking the character of the people behind the social movement, and never really the substance of any real philosophical writing. You can criticize the well known people in the movement, you can critique the accessibility of the writings, but that is no replacement for a critique of the substance behind the writings. Post modernism isn't one thing or philosopher. It's an undercurrent that runs alongside modernism and entails various philosophical critiques and descriptions of modernity. This video (and Chomsky) is randomly cherry picking shit about power relations, but that was primarily Foucault. There are probably a hundred different schools of thought within "postmodernism", from just as many different philosophers. Hell, much of Zizek's work is trying to critique and deal with post-modernists, specifically Deleuze. He is a Uber modernist and humanist, but even he recognizes that post-modernist critiques deserve more respect than what Chomsky's lazy anti-intellectual ass gives it.

Total respect for Chomsky, his thinking, his experience, his observations, and also all respect to this attempt to critique something important, but we need actually engagement with a broad sample of what those who claim to be postmodernists actually say, and their couterarguments to criticism. This makes broad claims and generalisations about postmodernist thought and thinkers, many of which many of them themselves would challenge, and many of which are not what is often actually being said in the works critics draw these conclusions from. Many of the observations about the culture around it, of the status, power, financial reward, attention, etc., etc., is probably all true, but is a phenomenon surrounding it, and not the thing in itself. Many of the examples given of seemingly silly conclusions drawn or claims made by postmodernists are perhaps also true, but a mere list of such examples, not exploring where they might not exist at all, or where they might be looked at in proper context and seen to be not saying at all what people claim they are saying. There's a bunch of crap in there for sure, but that does not establish the whole venture as so flawed. It's like when the UK's Daily Mail finds immigrants defrauding the benefits system and presents that and all the realities around it that meant those immigrants could do that as a broad reality that means immigrants are a nuisance, the benefits system money merely thrown at the lazy, and the governmental systems that exist merely dumb, politically correct and wasteful. A broad look at the whole reality these examples sit in shows a very different reality in which these rare problems, dysfunctions, exploitations, and misunderstandings are inevitable hiccups in a system on the whole that makes a lot of sense. This cherry-picked bunch of criticisms and examples doesn't give a true critique of post modernism. Near the beginning a list of characteristics and central themes of postmodernism is given. These are generally taken by critics to mean that they think all proposed truths are as valid as each other, or that there is no objective reality, and that everything is a social construct, and that where the truth lies is merely a question of where the power lies, but none of these things are actually claimed by any of those listed scepticisms, which are merely a highlighting of how people variously relate their truths to their own situation and experience, and that the closed patterns of understanding we can get caught up in need to be questioned so as to in fact try at least to get closer to objective reality. I'm not saying you're wrong in any of this, just that it seems to merely be listing narrow criticisms of narrow aspects in narrow contexts, seen as shallowly at it is narrow, and therefore not to be really either clearly demonstrating real rot at the real fundament of postmodernism, nor even to be showing the more robust arguments Chomsky has. My basic response to this fashionable attacking of postmodernism in recent years is that both positive claims about it and negative ones seem to be simplistic, lacking context, and caricaturing it, and not reading it deeply or in proper context, and so it's a waste of time, and encourages me merely to go and actually read a lot more postmodernism. I feel quite sure that I'd find a lot of worth in it, even if all the negative things connected to it that are listed here are absolutely true, because it's so narrow a view, and so much cherry picking and merely listing negative critiques of it, or negative phenomena attached to it, and also often ver y rushed conclusions drawn about it that don't actully refer to the fullness of the ideas that it discusses, suggests, explains, makes claim to, etc., etc. It might seem clever that Chomsky turns their own arguments against them, and he probably is particularly doing this with those who wouldn't recognise that they're not applying the same standards to themselves, but that does not actually establish that the vast majority of them indeed would, and do apply the same standards to themselves. Just like the motivation of status, celebrity and material reward driving the activity of people criticised does not demonstrate that that drives them all, nor, even if it did prove that was true of all of them, prove that the original ideas were flawed in themselves. There is no actual dismantling of post-modernism here at all, just examples of where it does, or might, have negative outgrowings, and where it might be negatively exploited, and we don't know how often or rarely, because that context isn't given either. The closest to an actual discussion given to it is at the beginning, where all it is is a list of areas in which postmodernism questions with how much faith and confidence we should take claims that may have more of a subjective, biased or entrenched, habitual or systemised viewpoint than initially seems to be the case. That is actually the opposite of a denial of objective truth, yet....

Wait, a structuralist analysis of postmodernism? Oh the irony. Even the haters have to admit that Foucault has aged well. What's interesting is the intention behind Chomsky's attacks.

Well, if he critiques postmodernism using its own tools and concepts, does that invalidate postmodernism, or does it prove it right? Both options seem reasonable to me.

I just get the instinct that most commentary on postmodernism doesn’t get to the heart of the ideas but it is a commentary on the groups that are a side effect of post modernist view.

Chomsky has always been very rigid and shallow in his thinking about Postmodernism. This is weak, and has more to do with the problems with French academic rock-star culture than postmodern philosophy.

This guy is criminally underrated. I hope the algorithm blesses your channel. I'm a newbie to your channel but I am absolutely eating up the chomsky content. Would love a succinct breakdown of chomsky and skinner's beef back in the 19th century 😂

You’d have to understand what they are putting across in order to be shocked.

Does anyone really think that PROFESSORS are in power and in control of substantive financial resources today? In what universe is power concentrated in academia as opposed to banking, pharmaceuticals, technology, and media production/distribution? Chomsky has a ridiculously overblown view of academia...

I’m not going to defend postmodernism as a “movement,” because I don’t think it is a unified movement, that is a lie spread by anti-postmodernists. Postmodernism began as a term to describe architecture that declared itself post-modern architecture. All the shit attributed to post modernism is as much a part of the period within which postmodernism emerges as it is some deliberate scheme of mass postmodernists. Blaming post modernism for the period it emerges is like blaming modernism for WWI.

It a popularity contest in the end, isn't it? Except that Chomsky has already won by virtue of surviving all the other dudes. Literally, the last word on the topic...this clip is just a cheap dig without any engagement on the debates.

Alan Sokal exposed their academic BS in one of their leading journals. Postmodernists wallow in nonsense, with intense devotion.

there´s no substantial critique of post-modernism in this video. Actually, it shows that the ones who did it don´t understand it at all. In the beginning, I was enthusiastic by the title of the video and was really interested to see an actual critique of post-modernism, but there´s none.

Really great video for outing Chomsky of not understanding “postmodernism” (whatever that is) or any post-structuralist philosopher. The real problem here is academia, which some of the more prominent writers have indeed circumvented. Chomsky’s opinions everywhere outside strict linguistics are idiotic.

I have spent a great deal of time on Derrida and do think that he can be understood and that his ideas and reasoning are in fact quite profound. It is also to be noted that his concepts draw heavily on his philosophy predecessors such as Husserl, Heidegger, Saussure, Hegel - to mention but a few. Even those subjected to his readings eg Rousseau, Levi-Strauss contribute to his philosophy. I do not pretend to know much about his contempories - but to dismiss him as simply too difficult or obscure is also bad philosophy. There are parts of his work which are vogue seeking or sensationalist, but not what I would call the core.

How to develop an excellent critique of a philosophical movement. 1) Become an elite professor. 2) Ignore the work of others for 50 years in neighboring fields. 3) Dismiss the work. 4) Watch as admiring acolytes repeat the dismissal.

Chomsky is the old guard. Postmodernists are more common than this video makes them out to be. Kurt Vongergut, Jean-Paul Sarte, John Fowles to name a few. Their ideas are represented in more works than you may think! Catch-22, American Psycho, Naked Lunch. This video paints Postmodernism as an absurdist abstraction. That is a lay interpretation. Postmodernism explores reality as a place much more complicated than we can perceive, and sees the human as overly confident in its abilities to perceive ideas both local and theoretical. To the brief “scientific” point touched on but not explained in this video, neuroscience and physics have concluded as much is true: we vastly oversimplify our reality. We are simply limited in our capacity to understand reality. We see tuberculosis, to borrow his example, as a singular thing. In reality it is millions of organisms, interacting with billions more, waging a massive war in an organism which is independent of, but also dependent on, the organ where TB wages it’s war. As a result, TB has different outcomes for different people and the course of it depends on thousands of factors (including those as distant as where you lived as a child and the climate where you live now, for example). Another example: consider a car. Cars are viewed as independent objects, despite their being very complicated, we feel we “know” them. Of a car’s many parts, none can operate on their own as a car is intended. In this way, a car is fundamentally different from its parts. Conversely, none of its parts could be mistaken as a car on their own. Nor could a car with its parts strewn about in the back seat operate as a car. The idea and the function of the car relies on each part, their position in space and the forces acting on them. Therefore, knowing about a car is the same as knowing about its parts and how they fit together. The view of the car as this standalone object is therefore an oversimplification. This is Postmodernism, a nuanced but comprehensive view of an object, concept or structure. “Why not take it further?” a Postmodernist might ask the mechanic, “why not learn about chemistry and corrosion and physics and wear?” In this way, Postmodernism is absurd because it never ceases to seek more information. Is this not what we should want for ourselves too? Postmodernism asks us to investigate everything to see its formal causes, and it teaches us how to do so. In learning about Postmodernism, you also learn about yourself and your life as subjects of your study. It is a fantastic and enriching experience. I am not saying they got everything right and that they’re not pretentious, but they are valuable. To learn more, consider reading on Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Jean-Paul Sarte, Simone de Beauvoir. It’s taxing at first, but more rewarding than Chomsky would have you believe.

Chomsky: "post mod...er.... frankfu......buh.... Where am I"

"There is very important book by Jean Bricmont and Alan Sokal, I forget what it's called, Dangerous Solutions or something. Where they simply go through, (they happen to concentrate on Paris which is the centre of the rot but it's all over), and they go through the most respected French intellectuals and run through what they say about science, and you know it's so embarrassing, that you kind of cringe when you read it."

When and where in the interview Chomsky said Postmodernism is this or that!?

idk y but at 2:08 when it cuts to chomskys legs dangling i lost it he looks so small.

Aren't we past all that by now? Aren't we into the era of post-postmodernism? Edit: aka metamodernism.

"Postmodern methodology is stupid and baseless, so I will use it to critique postmodernism..."

4:00 The French Intellectual Media Phenomenon provokes Competition for Crazy things to Say.

For a long time, I didn't think Postmodernism was all that relevant except in France or hoity-toity universities northeastern US, however, when I look at the tactics used to attack vaccines and science here in the US and around the world, you can see that it can have major ramifications like the US having 5 times the death rate by Covid compared to Australia, Japan, Norway, or Isreal. The evangelical movement focuses on the “personal” experience with "god" and not the theological or ethical relation to “god” in the past. The gun phrase "Gun don't kill, people kill" is exquisite post-modern because it divorces the object from the intention of the object. In the US we had 45.2K gun death in 2020.

As far as i have understood choamsky ... He is very pragmatic...... He dismisses anything which is obscure and doesn't help common people directly or indirectly..... That's why he is very much against post modernism and i am trying to understand Foucault and derrida and it's very complex ....... What the hell can a common person gain from it except abstract concepts

I don't understand why you don't let Chomsky speak for himself. His critiques of PM are perfectly clear and understandable, and -- no offense -- but much better than your inadequate explanations.

Liked and subscribed: a great summary of Chomsky's position.

I'm in 4th year for Socio-Cultural Anthropology and I get this. Next year I will be out on the street, explaining to my homeless friends how Strauss considers incest to be the basis of all culture, and how phonemes resemble kinship cladograms. *hey guys where you going?*

The power of correlationism cannot be understated.

Chomsky is spot-on in his analysis of power dynamics.

Did ChatGPT write this? This was a stream of grammatically correct yet dead end assertions, cobbled together with audio and video clips removed from their context, to essentially say, "Postmodernism is bad umm kay?" By showing us pictures, are we expected to merely dismiss and sweep aside, Foucault, Derrida, and Lacan? If I were to classify a postmodernist, it would be in the practice of epistemic dis-integration, for the sake of being "edgy". This video was a narrative of epistemic dead-ends - ironically very similar to postmodernism - the very thing in which it seeks to disparage.(!)

Really enjoyed this. Thanks for your efforts!

Nobody took Postmodernism seriously for years until the marxists realized in the 70s how potent an ideological weapon it could be. It allowed ANY statement of fact or of a claim of truth to be instantly swept aside. It was a huge win also for feminism and for Catholicism (you can read scripture to mean anything you want, so just like when scripture was in latin and greek, you have to rely on the priest to tell you what God's will is).

This is the same Noam Chomsky who basically said that "Pirahã doesn't violate the rules of universal grammar because I said so" right?

Criticisms of postmodernism as a "school" and the behaviors/attitudes/opinions of its adherents are all good and well, but the core tenets of the philosophy aren't broached. I find them to be pretty uncontroversial. This summary was done by Google's AI Bard, I leave it here as an exercise for the viewers to consider: "Postmodernism is an intellectual movement that arose in the mid-20th century as a reaction to the perceived failures of modernism. Postmodernists argue that modernism was based on the assumption that there is a single, objective truth that can be discovered through reason and science. They argue that this is a naive and dangerous assumption, as it leads to the oppression of those who do not conform to the dominant ideology. Postmodernists also argue that modernism is based on the assumption that there is a single, linear history that can be understood through the study of great men and events. They argue that this is a simplistic and misleading view of history, as it ignores the complex and often contradictory forces that shape the world we live in. Postmodernists advocate for a more pluralistic and open-minded view of the world. They argue that there are many different truths and histories, and that we should not be afraid to question the assumptions of modernism. Postmodernism has had a major impact on a wide range of fields, including philosophy, art, literature, architecture, and criticism. It has also been influential in the development of social movements such as feminism and postcolonialism."

The thing about Chomsky is I really want to know what he is saying but he sends me to sleep every time with his hypnotic drone. Denneth fools me by looking kind and invested and making little dad jokes but before you know it - you’re off … he is like an angler fish god of sleep, that way, but Chomsky shows you the nature of his sleep magic right away, and then still makes it work by fixating you with the steady, slightly slurred typewriter rythm of his voice and then softly but surely exhausting your mental faculties.

The claim with Latour and TB being a social construct wasn't an ontological claim like it seems you may be insinuating. The point Latour made was that the Pharaoh dying of TB was socially constructed to be the case epistemically. Not every social construct needs to be ontological.

Certain social constructions being quite the controversial thing at the moment..

Mr. Chomsky is himself a postmodernist figure- a caricature of the expert who knows everything about any subject one cares to name.

Noam Chomstky is so right. We need more academics like him.

This isn't an analysis. It's silly name-calling.

This isn’t the harshest criticism of post modernism. This is too gentle and respectful for a bunch of pretentious bullshitters. Humanity’s understanding has by far come to stagnation due to these fools’ clowning for a full century.

Why life was better when I was young, and all I did was to work harder and harder? Whenever I distance myself from the crowded and loud city life, I feel happiness. And I am sure almost no one loves to live in big cities but the money was somehow taken away from the small establishments to feed giant companies. Therefore, we have to follow where the money is as being one of the better educated people. The other option is to work in a farm with a body that is not prepared and experienced to work in a farm. What must I do to be happy? Explain this Chomsky!

Hate the fact that there are no links to at least some of the original content! I want to see Chomskys video

Cool video, but I got the feeling that he’s going more after the thinkers and not their ideas. Is he objecting to the idea of grand narratives being false? Is he objecting to the idea of synthetic knowledge being true? At most all I got was that post modernists don’t make predictions and that’s true, but they’re not claiming to make predictions. They’re just doing philosophy which isn’t about predicting specific things about the future, unless you consider setting limits on what can conceptually be done to be a form of prediction.

When you watched the Netflix original series but didnt read the manga

Notice how postmodernism is never defined in this video, nor are any actual postmodernists ever identified. That way, the narrator can sneer and hurl insults without fear of saying anything that can be fact checked.

Am I missing something or was this almost entirely a critique of postmodernist academics rather than postmodernism itself?

hi does anyone know the book he mentions at 3:00? i keep trying to look it up, but can’t find it. i’m probably spelling authors names wrong. thanks

Aka Chomsky has never read Foucault, Derrida, or Deleuze

The irony of Chomsky being on about French intellectuals being treated as super stars...

Spoken like a true structuralist.

the most brutal critique of post modernism is post modernism itself

At 7:30 we testify an appalling truth. As a dweller of the Global South (the former third world) I can attest that those post modern french phonies did a hell of a lot of damage. All of our human science field was devastated by that gang. Foucault's involvement with degrading sexual exploitation when he visited Brasil are infamous, quite well known, on the other hand little spoken. A lesser known french 'philosopher' Gerard Lebrun, allegedly a Kant specialist, was charged with pedophilia by Brazilian police in the late 90's. Strangely, Lebrun died shortly after in his parisian apartment . What to say about Louis Althuser having strangled his wife and come clean after that? it gives some dimension of their damage.