> Jim wrote:
> >since people like
> >Kissinger or McNamara have much power on their side
> >than do people like Kolko or Chomsky why shouldn't the
> >perspectives of a Kissinger or a McNamara prevail over
> >those of a Chomsky or a McNamara? I don't think it
> >is all that surprising that Chomsky is one of the staunchest
> >critics of pomo around. He realizes whats at stake if we abandon
> >the distinction between science and ideology or truth
> >and ideology since it is radicals that are going to inevitably
> >suffer the consequences because the ruling elites have
> >the means to "privelege" their perpsectives over those
> >of anyone else.
>
> Pree-cisely.
No, not precisely at all. Everything I've read Chomsky say about pomo, has been similar to many of the arguments made on this list; that it is obscurantist or needlessly difficult to read. I've never read him to say it was *dangerous*, so much as *useless*. Big difference.
> Which evokes the question of speech codes and hate speech
> proscriptions; I have always wondered how it is that the
> pomo-istas--well, that term seems to chafe, so call them the
> linguistic left--fail to see that speech codes could, by an
> easy rhetorical flourish, be turned to proscriptions of
> "hate speech" against those ruling elites jim mentions.
I don't know how many "pomos" advocate speech codes but I've read Butler's _Excitable Speech_ and she's not a fan of them. Perhaps you should ask some of the censorious marxists around here why they don't agree with you (and me) on the issue of speech codes. With the exception of anarchists and Libertarians, I don't know of any political flavor that doesn't have a censoring faction.
--
Joseph Noonan jfn1 at msc.com