[lbo-talk] Noam on intellectuals

[Tayssir John Gabbour]

On 2/12/07, bitch at pulpculture.org <bitch at pulpculture.org> wrote:
> But Chomsky gets a lot nastier, I think. In a passage Tayssir quoted
> approvingly, he paints intellectuals as engaged in mutual circle jerks. I'm
> sure people are like this, but I can't imagine it's all of them. Is he just
> talking the Ivies and the big three? Because the intelligent people at
> universities and colleges across the country don't act like this.
>
> "instead of trying to provide an answer to this simple requests, the
> response is cries of anger: to raise these questions shows 'elitism,'
> 'anti-intellectualism,' and other crimes --- though apparently it is not
> 'elitist' to stay within the self- and mutual-admiration societies of
> intellectuals who talk only to one another and (to my knowledge) don't
> enter into the kind of world in which I'd prefer to live. As for that
> world, I can reel off my speaking and writing schedule to illustrate what I
> mean, though I presume that most people in this discussion know, or can
> easily find out; and somehow I never find the 'theoreticians' there, nor do
> I go to their conferences and parties. In short, we seem to inhabit quite
> different worlds, and I find it hard to see why mine is 'elitist,' not
> theirs. The opposite seems to be transparently the case, though I won't
> amplify."

Not to worry; in that quote, (nasty?) Chomsky's just referring to a
narrow group of intellectuals. Nothing like "all of them":
<http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html>

Looking at where I quoted him, I just seemed amused at the Unending
Drama of it all, like Chomsky vs. the Spartacist League, or whatever.
<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2006/2006-December/024558.html>
<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2006/2006-December/024563.html>

Incidentally, if anyone here's from the Spartacist League, what's up
with that? And does Freemasonry and the Illuminati figure into this,
or is that a whole different genre?

Tayssir