Noam Chomsky’s well-known political views have tended to overshadow his groundbreaking work as a linguist and analytic philosopher. As a result, people sometimes assume that because Chomsky is a leftist, he would find common intellectual ground with the postmodernist philosophers of the European left.
Big mistake.
In this brief excerpt from an interview, Chomsky is asked about the ideas of Slavoj Zizek, Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida. The M.I.T. scholar, who elsewhere has described those figures and their followers as “cults,” doesn’t mince words:
What you’re referring to is what’s
called “theory.” And when I said I’m not interested in theory, what I
meant is, I’m not interested in posturing, using fancy terms like
polysyllables and pretending you have a theory when you have no theory
whatsoever. So there’s no theory in any of this stuff, not in the sense
of theory that anyone is familiar with in the sciences or any other
serious field. Try to find in all of the work you mentioned some
principles from which you can deduce conclusions, empirically testable
propositions where it all goes beyond the level of something you can
explain in five minutes to a twelve-year-old. See if you can find that
when the fancy words are decoded. I can’t. So I’m not interested in that
kind of posturing. Zizek is an extreme example of it. I don’t see
anything to what he’s saying. Jacques Lacan I actually knew. I kind of
liked him. We had meetings every once in awhile. But quite frankly I
thought he was a total charlatan. He was just posturing for the
television cameras in the way many Paris intellectuals do. Why this is
influential, I haven’t the slightest idea. I don’t see anything there
that should be influential.
Πηγή:openculture
Πηγή:openculture
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