> I think it depends on the theory, actually. As Chomsky once said, the labor
> movement didn't need the work of Derrida or Lacan to know what's right and
> wrong, or that powerful interests were working against them, or that
> corporations were screwing them. He's a big believer in a common sense of
> morality. I figure, if the theory speaks to _that_, then Zizek's point
> makes decent sense.
This is something I find perplexing about Chomsky: he claims (I believe) that the social sciences aren't really sciences because human affairs are far too complex to allow one to construct theories with the predictive power of, say, theories in the field of physics. And yet he insists that politics is really simple, that the important truths about it can be easily grasped by anybody. Chomsky claims that politics really isn't much more complicated than football, wishes that ordinary people didn't grant so much deference to supposed political experts (although I doubt that ordinary people grant nearly as much deference as he assumes), and approvingly cites Monday Morning Quarterbacking as a potential model for political discourse. Now, I don't really know if politics is more or less complicated than football, but I _do_ know that they're both often amazingly complicated. The question of whether Team A should invest X dollars in player Y or player Z is often impossible to answer without the benefit of hindsight (or, in many cases, even with the benefit of hindsight), even though plenty of fans will say they're sure that player Y is the better bet, while other fans will assert the contrary sentiment with equal certitude.
-- Luke