On Thu, 5 Nov 1998, Carrol Cox wrote:
> My main point (and perhaps I shouldn't have added to it as I did) was
> that dragging "pomos" into the debate over human nature was ridiculous.
I do think that much that passes under the name of Postmodernism is ridiculous, but I'm not sure that "dragging them into the debate" is, given that a good deal of noise (with reactionary political implications) is currently coming from self-styled PoMos about how statements about human nature are per se inadmissible. (See, e.g., the recent books by Terry Eagleton and Perry Anderson).
Chomsky has been attacked from early on by social-constructivists of various types (including some soi-disant Marxists) for his account of language: it can't be true, they said, because it was insufficiently social. ("`Biological endowment,' indeed!"). But the question is not whether his views are Marxist or PoMo, but whether they're correct.
--C. G. Estabrook