Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2003 21:43:29 -0700 (PDT)
From: "J.M. Adams" <ringfingers-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: [postanarchism] Re: Chomsky on Foucault, Agamben and Negri 


The other thing with this discussion is the question
of difficulty of texts and whether they need to be or
do not need to be; I will concede Chomsky the point
that there is something to be said for honestly trying
be as clear as possible, but I will also concede to
the Situationists that there is something to be said
for being as difficult as necessary. The problem with
those who push for all radical theory to be as clear
and as simple as possible is they often end up just
repliclating a sort of propaganda aesthetic in which
there is no thinking involved and everything is just
spoonfed - this often comes off as condescendingg and
insulting to alot of people, which is why not many
people snatch up the Socialist Worker or other
tabloids of the sort. On the other hand there are
those theorists who seem to make a special effort to
be as difficult as possible so that nothing can be
grasped unless one spends literally years learning how
to decode a certain manner of speech; this isn't
condescending per se but I can see how it would turn
many people off, making them feel excluded from the
inner circle of the 'learned' the same way that
difficult poetry, literature, scientific or other
types of writing might be off-putting. From my
perspective there really is much of value to be found
in the works of Foucault, Deleuze and others who might
be said to be overly esoteric - yet for those of us
with a commitment to an antiauthoritarian ethic, to
the hopes for a world different from this one, it
seems that we would be the first to recognize that
both extremes are flawed and that there is a real
need, if we want to be saying anything of any
relevance whatsoever, to be both as clear as possible
and as difficult as necessary.

Jason 

i'm always perplexed as to the kinds of seemingly
_personal_ ire and 
frustration chomsky draws whenever he is asked (for
the umpteenth time) whether there 
is anything of value to be had from "theory" --
meaning a specific genre of 
theory, i.e., postmodern/poststructuralist theory --
and he responds by saying, 
yet again, that he doesn't find them particularly
useful.  he's a blockhead!  
he's naive!  he's willfully blind!  he's a
good-for-nothin' low-down dirty 
essentialist!  and so on.

okay, i'm caricaturing in turn.  but really, folks! 
if anybody thinks 
chomsky is not up to the task of reading a few
difficult sentences, feel free to 
explain to _me_ what the whole chomsky/lakoff/postal
debate was about.  beyond 
that, if theory is a "tool," and chomsky makes a
pragmatic choice -- this tool 
isn't the one i want to use for this task -- then who
are we to "correct" him? 
frankly, foucault does take too damn much time to
explain to most people, when 
there are infinitely many other ways, some of them
more efficient and 
felicitous, of explaining how we're being screwed
over.

as for the idea that chomsky relies on some crude
model of power which treats 
it as a kind of object or substance that one "has" or
does not "have" -- that 
just seems like an uncharitable reading of his
comments.  yes, he uses the 
phrase "to have power" in a colloquial way; only by
screening out the gist of 
what he's saying can i give that any deeper
significance.  for the gist of his 
comments indicates that power, for chomsky, is indeed
something tricky, as 
manifested in phenomena such as co-optation; at the
same time, it's not so 
complicated that we can't recognize larger,
macroscopic power formations or 
concentrations of power in institutions, which is and
has been his primary focus (and a 
worthy focus it is -- god forbid anyone suggest that
it should be 
_everyone's_ focus, to the exclusion of micro-power
phenomena, as chomsky does not).

so if you're a deleuzian, a pragmatist who regards
theory as a toolbox, why 
gripe at chomsky (as if you're _personally_
disappointed that he didn't 
validate your favorite tools with his blessing)? be a
consistent pluralist, shrug 
your shoulders, and say "to each his or her own!"


       --jesse.

===="The world is the natural setting of and field for all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not 'inhabit' only 'the inner man' or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world and only in the world does he know himself."

— Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 1945

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