> > I'm pretty indebted to the classics - Marx, Freud, the Frankfurters -
>> though it may not always show. Theories don't come much Bigger than
>> those.
>
>I still think we're talking past one another. By Big Theory, I think I mean
>what Chomsky rejects, which is the pretensions that social science needs to
>trade in "sophisticated" (i.e., unclear) ideas in order to produce results.
Derrida doesn't equal Theory. Not even he would claim that. But most people would find Marx, Freud, and the Franks both tough going and largely a waste of time. I suspect Chomsky would be among them. Though he's never explicit about his theory, I'm guessing he thinks that things are, or can be easily made, transarent. I don't think so. I think social life is full of complexities and contradictions; things aren't always what they seem; and people don't always understand or act in their own interest.
I've been reading your book in prep for our interview tomorrow, and I see that you reject Marcuse and Ewen in favor of straightforward explanations - that the masses are coerced, cajoled, seduced, and/or hoodwinked by their masters. In the specific case of you're book, they're forced or lured into overconsuming. But I think this underestimates the degree to which people are complict in their own subordination, and even come to enjoy it. Or, worse, don't even experience shopping as a compulsion or a form of subordination, but a pleasure. But we can take this up tomorrow.
Doug