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."
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CB: Oh, now I remember. Chomsky is anti-theory ( that's part of how he gets to "anti-intellectual") He is, consistently, an intellectual "anarchist", as well as an anti-state anarchist.. "Theory" is sort of like a state for him.
However, in being anti-theory , he automatically falls and fits into the Anglo-American mega-trend of empiricism/positivism, the illusion that humans or intellectuals function without theories, and ultimately that individual humans and thinkers develop knowledge mainly from their individual, empirical experiences.
All intellectuals, including Chomsky, have theory, which is socially and transgenerationally developed, not individually. Denial of that one has a theory (socially developed) just means one operates with an unconscious theory. His own linguistic theory tends to an individualist human nature idea, which fits with empiricism/positivism, what Marx terms an Robinsonade.
However, Chomsky's unconscious theory must be pretty good , or at least his practice is good. Chomsky , the headless horseman leading our movement.