Bad Subjects on Chomsky

Gordon Fitch gcf at panix.com
Mon Aug 12 04:52:44 PDT 2002


Joe Lockard:
> ...
> The entire book does not contain more than one word of sympathy or
> solidarity towards September 11 victims. Chomsky's stern
> philosophical style does not embrace empathy, which for better or
> worse represents the contested heartland of American politics. This
> is a remarkable absence, unconscionable for its dismissal of human
> lives as sub-history. As a political traumatologist speaking to the
> international press (a majority of interviews published here are
> with European media), Chomsky adopts the manner of a Puritan
> minister on the fate of sinners in the United States. In his
> unrelenting moral sobriety, Chomsky remains incapable of
> articulating rhetoric of sympathetic and passionate identification
> with a US voting public that can alter national policies. September
> 11 becomes only another excuse to exercise moral castigation.
> ...

I find this sort of demand for performance -- of anger and grief, which I believe are supposed to equal sympathy and solidarity, a sort of Two Minutes' Hate -- very odd. Some people are now tiring of these performances, and others are growing angry because they want more performance. I've run into this elsewhere on the Net. In this case, Chomsky is being faulted not entirely because his failure to perform adequately shows moral deficiency, but also because it doesn't sell well with the voters, which is a surprising criticism given that this has never been Chomsky's stock in trade.

Maybe people who feel an urgent need for further rituals could be more specific about what it is they desire, so that others could have the opportunity of enacting them correctly. But I am not hopeful. We are supposed to _just_know_.

It is true that Chomsky's analyses of 9/11 are somewhat simple-minded, but it is evidently almost impossible to be simple-minded enough for a people raised on television where history does not exist and every problem can be solved by an exercise of righteous violence in the last five minutes of the program. I think those with a concern for his reaching out to the voting public contradict themselves if they fault his simple-mindedness.

-- Gordon



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