{"id":124,"date":"2006-03-06T14:39:00","date_gmt":"2006-03-06T22:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=124"},"modified":"2006-03-06T14:39:00","modified_gmt":"2006-03-06T22:39:00","slug":"chris-knight-the-origins-of-culture-chomsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/chris-knight-the-origins-of-culture-chomsky\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Knight, the Origins of Culture & Chomsky"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I didn’t know anything about the British anthropologist Chris Knight, until I came across an interview with him on ReadySteadyBook<\/a>, Mark Thwaite’s excellent blog. I haven’t yet gotten to Knight’s book, <\/strong>Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture<\/a>, but intend to do so as soon as possible. Reading the interview I was struck by his analysis of Naom Chomsky \u2014 not sure I totally agree, and I may <\/span><\/span>generally have queries about the Marxist presuppositions (though that spectre needs indeed to be revisited)<\/span><\/span> but it is a refreshing take, to say the least. Fo the full view go to the ReadySteadyBook blog, it’s worth the trip.<\/span>
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RSB<\/strong>: You have said that Noam Chomsky<\/a>, as linguist, is a genius who needs to be overthrown. Why is he a genius? And why should he be overthrown?<\/p>\n

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CK<\/strong>: Why is Chomsky a genius? Just about every theoretical linguist I know says that Chomsky is a genius. Even those who disagree with him seem to agree on this point. The entire modern discipline of theoretical linguistics stems very largely from Chomsky’s pioneering work. I don’t really understand the details, but my problem is that I am not a theoretical linguist. I don’t necessarily feel qualified to judge. If a bunch of nuclear physicists were to tell me that someone in their field was a genius, I would just have to take their word for it.<\/p>\n

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As for overthrowing him, the problem is this. Chomsky occupies a very peculiar institutional position in the United States and in western society more generally. Both in science and in the arts, he is the most frequently cited intellectual. The anarchist\/libertarian left look up to him with enormous respect. Chomsky tells them that his linguistic science is of no special interest to activists. He explains that science and politics are completely different, mutually autonomous kinds of activity. No form of political action can be justified by science, just as no scientific theory can be justified by politics. His personal practice reflects this: his political writings contain no science, just as his scientific writings contain no politics. Or so it seems. Of course, no single figure can be held responsible for legitimizing the chasm between the scientific community and the community of political activists. But if we had to pick on a single figure, it would have to be Noam Chomsky.<\/p>\n

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The problem is that Chomsky’s separation of science and politics is a myth. His own science – his linguistics – is political through and through. Chomsky defines language as not social. He defines it as an object inside the individual head. He says it doesn’t have any special communicative function – mostly, we use language just for privately thinking to ourselves. He says that the meanings of words are not socially negotiated but wired into the brain in advance as features of the human genome. In my view, to say all this is pure nonsense – stark, raving nonsense. But it is not politically neutral nonsense. To argue for such far-fetched positions is is to adopt an ideological stance – that of the liberal bourgeoisie. Chomsky is the most virulent imaginable opponent of social science in general and of Marxism in particular. Since the late 1950s, bourgeois hostility towards Marxism in western intellectual life has found its most extreme and articulate champion in Noam Chomsky.<\/p>\n

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Conversely, it is a myth to say that Chomsky’s political activism is unconnected with his science. The connection is intimate. Today’s most imaginative and effective political activists are constantly engaged with the findings of environmental scientists, earth scientists, economists, anthropologists, historians and others. Could we even imagine today’s environmentalist movement without the brilliant environmental science which lies behind it? Against this background, it is positively uncanny to find how little science appears in Chomsky’s writings as a political critic. We find no economic analyses, no sociological analyses, no application of theories or findings from any part of the social sciences or humanities. All we find are quotes from newspapers or reports of various kinds, telling a journalistic story. I personally tend to find Chomsky’s stories accurate – more accurate than most. I admire his political integrity and courage. But I am suspicious about Chomsky’s overall role. My view is that the ruling class are perfectly happy to have Chomsky writing this kind of thing. It doesn’t frighten them in the least because it doesn’t threaten them – Chomsky goes out of his way to construct and represent himself as a lone voice. In particular, when wearing his activist hat, he ostentatiously removes his scientific one. What would upset the ruling class would be the reverse strategy. What would upset them would be for the world community of scientists to become active while the activists became scientific. Our two communities might then hope to converge on a shared language of self-emancipation and revolutionary change. Chomsky has devoted his life to obstructing any such development. This is why I think he should be overthrown.<\/p>\n

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I didn’t know anything about the British anthropologist Chris Knight, until I came across an interview with him on ReadySteadyBook, Mark Thwaite’s excellent blog. I haven’t yet gotten to Knight’s book, Blood Relations: Menstruation...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}