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Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by TaylorAlexander on Saturday March 13, 2021 @07:06PM (#26451426)
Adding this to my watch list! Chomsky really helped open my eyes about the world. I never understood how certain structures of power maintain control over society until I started listening to him. I’m so happy many of his talks are on YouTube.
Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by bnbond on Saturday March 13, 2021 @07:13PM (#26451480)
Agreed. He’s a good entry point to that sort of critical theory. The Foucault Chomsky debate is on YouTube, though I find it very hard to follow.
Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by alecco on Saturday March 13, 2021 @08:47PM (#26452024)
It’s very interesting how Foucault fans think he won. He only kept trying to move the point of the conversation to madness and how the powers that be used it. Perhaps it’s a good example of fanaticism vs old school reasoning. Chomsky didn’t “win” because the conversation was constantly derailed. It was a waste of time. Don’t try to reason or debate fanatics.
Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by llamaz on Sunday March 14, 2021 @01:56AM (#26453359)
I'm not a Foucault fan, and I used to hold the same opinion as you. But now I realise the exchange was, as you say, a "waste of time".

Chomsky doesn't seem to have read up on the issues Foucault is talking about, and he admits as much in an interview on the topic, about how he was surprised that he could not find /any/ common ground from which to build a conversation with Foucault.

This is more of a failure of communication on the part of French intellectuals, who use verbose language helps keep their radical tradition so insular.

So... it's what you would expect an exchange between the analytic and continental philosophers to be like. Chomsky takes the enlightenment humanism tradition for granted, and assumes he can find common ground with Foucault there, but Foucault had been working in a tradition where the humanism vs anti-humanism debate (e.g. Althusser) was front and center.

In fact, Foucault himself was on the anti-humanist side. (anti-humanism doesn't mean "evil", it's just an unfortunate tongue-in-cheek terminology). What you end up with is Foucault trying his best to introduce Chomsky to the basics of a core part of the French intellectual tradition, more-or-less unsuccessfully.

What the debate highlights is the extent of the divide between continental philosophy and analytical philosophy. It doesn't make new ground.

Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by alecco on Saturday March 13, 2021 @07:40PM (#26451627)
He was very inspiring. But he broke my heart when he supported Chavez unconditionally. Even if years later he retracted support for some journalist being jailed. Too little, too late.

Be sure to check out Manufacturing Consent (90s) and his criticism of the raise of (Maoist) Posmodernism in academia (interviews and lectures from the 80s). Do it before it gets removed.

Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by abalone on Saturday March 13, 2021 @09:53PM (#26452379)
Source? Chomsky has been quite critical of Chavez.[1] As with most things in the world there are pros and cons but I would be interested if you could cite an example of “unconditional support.”

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/03/noam-chomsky-h...

Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by alecco on Sunday March 14, 2021 @08:54AM (#26454971)
Please read your own link. Chavez waved Chomsky's work at UN and asked for him to be named ambassador to Venezuela.

Chomsky supported Chavez' oil sector and other seizures. He turned a blind eye when Chavez armed civilian militias in 2005. Ignored all the blatant election fraud and growing corruption, and the long list of growing human rights abuses.

But he took issue when Chavez jailed an opposition journalist. He did this 180 turn in 2011, as per your own link. After over a decade of support and close friendship.

That's why I said, too little, too late.

Chomsky also supported many other messianic personalistic murderers like that in Latin America. It's sad, but he is just human and very, very old.

Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by abalone on Sunday March 14, 2021 @03:16PM (#26457970)
That is Chavez supporting Chomsky, not Chomsky “unconditionally” supporting Chavez. You offer no support or citation for your claims.
Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by maroonblazer on Saturday March 13, 2021 @07:54PM (#26451708)
>his criticism of the raise of (Maoist) Posmodernism in academia (interviews and lectures from the 80s)

Are there links you can recommend?

Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by alecco on Saturday March 13, 2021 @08:40PM (#26451992)
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=chomsky+on+postmodernism

The results are a good start. I read all this a long time ago so I don’t have a list of links. I’d stay on his work and opinions before 2000.

The Documentary “Is the man who is tall happy” is easy to watch. His academic material is borderline incomprehensible. There was a Chomsky generator somewhere.

Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by TaylorAlexander on Saturday March 13, 2021 @10:18PM (#26452488)
You’re right about his academic work. I read one book with Chomsky cited as the author that was actually a transcription of some interviews of him. And then I read a book he wrote and it was a very different style! I find his speaking to be clear and easily digestible, while some of his writing can be very difficult to read.
Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by TaylorAlexander on Saturday March 13, 2021 @08:13PM (#26451812)
Ah yes Manufacturing Consent is a good one! And you’re right I should start pulling down some backups of these videos.
Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by sudosysgen on Sunday March 14, 2021 @12:10AM (#26452961)
Be very wary of people trying to somehow link postmodernism with Maoism/Marxist modes of analysis.

Indeed, postmodernism itself was a reaction to the perceived failure of Marxism (the failure of liberalism was already accepted in most academic circles), and the two are violently opposed.

Attempts to somehow liken the two are generally motivated by classical liberals trying to guilt-by-association all post-liberal ideologies and critical frameworks.

Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by alecco on Sunday March 14, 2021 @08:58AM (#26454995)
Chomsky says once the atrocities of Mao and USSR were known in the 70s, the millions murdered, these intellectuals morphed into Posmodernism. He stated it's the same people. He even gives the specific names. Watch the interviews and lectures from the 80s and early 90s.
Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by sudosysgen on Sunday March 14, 2021 @09:53AM (#26455425)
Go ahead, give me specific names.

There were a lot of people that after the atrocities of the USSR and Mao simply stopped being hard-line Marxists and became Postmodernists. Others became revionist Marxists to attempt to learn from those disasters. That doesn't mean being both at the same time, and Postmodernism itself is quite a ways older than them.

Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by alecco on Sunday March 14, 2021 @09:13AM (#26455099)
[edited]

Instead of a bunch of links to academic works, why don't you go to "liberal" academia and see what is imprinted in tshirts and who they have in their portraits.

Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by krapp on Saturday March 13, 2021 @08:09PM (#26451790)
>and his criticism of the raise of (Maoist) Posmodernism in academia

I'm sorry but in a country where people call Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton communists without a hint of irony I can't help but at roll my eyes at such a premise.

Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by alecco on Saturday March 13, 2021 @08:42PM (#26452008)
This was 30 years ago. And Chomsky is far left. I’m not. I like to read far and wide, as long as it’s not propaganda. Older works tend to be better.
Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by sudosysgen on Sunday March 14, 2021 @12:03AM (#26452934)
Have you read enough to realize that Maoism is incompatible with postmodernism?
Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by abalone on Saturday March 13, 2021 @10:00PM (#26452410)
This is a completely reasonable and realistic premise. Within the Left community there are plenty of Marxist-Leninist academics and there was a significant overlap with postmodernists, perhaps owing to its roots in the Parisian intellectual scene. Chomsky is a Libertarian Socialist.
Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by sudosysgen on Sunday March 14, 2021 @12:04AM (#26452937)
Marxist-Leninst academics are quite ferociously opposed to Postmodernists - postmodernism is completely incompatible with Marxist intellectual frameworks which are thoroughly modernist.

It's not a reasonable and realistic premise - it's word salad trying to scare.

Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by a0-prw on Sunday March 14, 2021 @08:03AM (#26454631)
> It's not a reasonable and realistic premise - it's word salad trying to scare.

Thank you for that, sir :) True and funny at the same time.

Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by alecco on Sunday March 14, 2021 @09:04AM (#26455034)
Many of those self proclaimed Postmodernists have Che Guevara t-shirts and portraits of Mao, unironically. What they say does not match what they actually support and do.
Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by tsimionescu on Sunday March 14, 2021 @08:41AM (#26454844)
Can you find a single marxist-leninist who is also a postmodernist??

Postmodernism rejects any theories of the world that have any kind of absolute structure, while marxism is explicitly about defining such absolutes. In marxism, all people are either workers or capitalists (or outside the system); any good has an intrinsic value, and any work has an intrinsic plus-value; and on and on.

You can also see this in the art favored by countries which liked to claim to be marxist-leninist (though they weren't). Far from being post-modern, it was in fact traditionalist and realist.

Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by abalone on Sunday March 14, 2021 @03:13PM (#26457951)
Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by tsimionescu on Sunday March 14, 2021 @03:39PM (#26458211)
As far as I can tell, she is a postmodernist who started out as a Marxist, but has later abandoned it. At the very least, it doesn't seem to have had any prominence in her works, which are focused on personal psychology and feminist theory.

I do admit that I may be completely off base, I know very little of her beyond what I could find on Wikipedia (which does list her as Marxist, but provides no further insight on why) and a handful of scholarly articles.

Note: a much better example you could have given was Slavoj Žižek, to which I have no answer..

Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by a0-prw on Sunday March 14, 2021 @07:40AM (#26454516)
Chomsky identifies himself as an anarchist not a "libertarian socialist".
Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by abalone on Sunday March 14, 2021 @02:59PM (#26457811)
Here is Chomsky describing what Libertarian Socialism is, how such a highly organized society would be constructed, and that it is “traditional anarchism” while noting that “anarchism” is a broad term.[1]

[1] https://youtu.be/b3m4aRQ9QvQ

Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by alecco on Sunday March 14, 2021 @09:01AM (#26455020)
This is correct. On paper he identifies as anarcho-sindicalist. But in mainstream terms "libertarian socialist" would be easier to understand.

On the other hand, Chomsky supported many socialist and even marxist leaders. Like Chavez nationalizing every profitable sector of the economy. Note this is very not anarchist as it concentrates power in the state and a rulin elite. Perhaps he was blinded by his anti-war and anti Western establishment feelings. Who knows.

Re:Chomsky – The Machine, the Ghost and the Limits of Unders... by a0-prw on Sunday March 14, 2021 @11:04AM (#26455983)
Of course he "supported many socialist and even marxist leaders". That's often been the direction to go to support actual, suffering, real people practically. It doesn't mean he thinks that's the ideal. Yes, compromises are made constantly.