Just a few amendments. I think that Chomsky is self-reflexive and is very aware of his limitations. That is why he often points to other kinds of "intellectuals" that should be the ones we know about and listen to. That is why he has often acknowledge that he is writing to the relatively privileged and often says to them that if they don't realize they are privileged they are simply deceiving themselves.
I have mentioned the kinds of "alternative" intellectuals he admires before. He talks about such "organic" intellectuals (but not in these Gramscian terms) often. He says constantly, that they should be the ones who are admired, and whose notions should be debated, and not his notions on politics... certainly not his alone.
But look at Carrol's locution in his opening sentence. He calls Chomsky "a hero of the anti-imperialist effort". This is in fact correct, but its correctness is unfortunate for Chomsky. He realizes it is unfortunate, and he realizes also that he works hard at what he does, so that this unfortunate position of his is in some sense his doing. He constantly says that the only reason his position is unique is because people hunger for people to say the things he is saying, and that in fact thousands of other people should be doing the kinds of things he is doing, and could probably do it better. (False modesty? Sincere modesty? In fact his modesty is in someway actually part of the problem.) But he has been unable to analyze the kind of "celebrity" and "heroism" and "star worship" that our cultural system constantly creates. He criticizes it and acknowledges it, but he has no analysis of it the way such intellectuals such as Sartre. did when he constantly reflected upon the the limitations and boundaries of his position as an intellectual.
This is what Carrol is pointing to when he says that Chomsky "doesn't know himself." But I think that if you think about how he constantly writes about the hypocrisy and ideology of intelligentsia you will see that the problem isn't that he doesn't know himself, it is that he wants is to completely divorce himself from the star-system that our intelligentsia functions within, He thus thinks that it is only giving into the whole mishigosh if you analyze yourself (personally) within it, in the way that say a Sartre did or a Gramsci implied an intellectual should. This I think is a mistake on his part, but it is a slightly different kind of mistake than Carrol is claiming.
Jerry
On 12/17/06, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
>
> Chomsky has been a hero of the anti-imperialist effort in this nation;
> he is indeed a national treasure as someone once said. I have found his
> books of great use myself. I hope they will continue to be of use. I
> admire him this side idolatry.
>
> That said, Tayssir continues to make Chomsky look like a real fool. Or
> perhaps Chomsky does it to himself. He perhaps too readily assumes that
> there are no important fields of knowledge or experience outside his
> ken, and hence does not allow for the existence of such fields of
> knowledge and/or experience, and hence blunders terribly.
>
> An anecdote, which I may have recounted in the past. About 30 years ago
> I led a study group in a reading of _Wages, Price and Profit_. Several
> members of the group were not skilled readers, and though that text was
> intended for a semi-general readership, it is not easy. Drawing on one
> of my fragments of knowledge in reference to reading difficulty, as well
> as Sweet's method of teaching Latin at Michigan back in the '50s, I
> taped the whole of the book. Then these unskilled readers read as they
> listened. The pace of the tape forced them (but also allowed them) to
> read much more rapidly than they ordinarily did. They got along fine in
> their reading of the work. (Unfortunately, the casette was lost later.)
> In the quotation above Chomsky appears really naive about what are the
> barriers many people encounter in reading. He also seems utternly
> innocent of the fact that many people who either can't or won't read
> anything of any complexity whatever _can_ follow remarkably complex
> arguments given orally. That is why Chomsky's lectures are are highly
> illuminating for many who, quite frankly, would toss his books aside in
> frustration and/or boredom.
>
> In the language of the old humanism (Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Austen,
> Wordsworth, Arnold,the New Critics, Chomsky just doesn't know himself,
> is not aware of his own limitations. He simply doesn't understand at all
> why so many people can't read his books but can follow him in his
> lectures or in his conversation.
>
> This difficulty that so many 10s of millions of intelligent people have
> in reading anything more complicated than a road sign but can follow
> quite complicated oral presentations is one of the reasons why the
> natural form of agitation is one-to-one or small group conversation, or
> extremely brief and grotesquely over-simplified leaflets.
>
> Carrol
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-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/
His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/
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