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  Who is Noam Chomsky?
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BACKGROUND:

Who is Noam Chomsky?

by LARAY POLK
While Chávez is a fiery independent socialist, Chomsky is a methodical and systematic doubter in the tradition of Bertrand Russell and René Descartes.
Dr. Noam Chomsky received second billing to the devil this past week during a speech presented by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to the U.N. General Assembly. Chávez went to verbal and visual lengths to encourage Americans to read Chomsky’s book, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance. It is his recommendation that has been heeded; the book has reached number one in sales on Amazon.

Chávez has a reputation as an edgy leader. Chomsky is equally considered edgy, though most are unfamiliar with his particular methods of rabble-rousing. While Chávez is a fiery independent socialist, Chomsky is a methodical and systematic doubter in the tradition of Bertrand Russell and René Descartes. In most respects, the suggested reading by Chávez was an unexpected and enigmatic presentation, and it was sufficiently noteworthy as to provoke the public into acts of purchase. It remains to be seen whether those who buy the book will actually read it.

Chomsky's writings require a formidable discipline of mind. The intellectual content is not insurmountable. It is heady because it requires systematic doubting on the reader's part. The footnotes, no less important than the main text, are copious and meticulously prepared. Upon receiving flak on many occasions, Chomsky has calmly suggested that his critics read the footnotes, check the sources and then return to the conclusions. Most do not.

As has been widely reported recently in the U.S. press, Chomsky is an icon in Europe, yet remains a controversial figure in America. This disparity is both easy and difficult to fathom. His body of work is enormous and spans disciplines and decades. His critics largely focus on his recent writings centered around criticism of the foreign policies of the U.S. and Israel. He is frequently described by the catch-phrase, “The world’s leading intellectual,” though most would not be able to explain why he has earned that title. Criticism that appears at street level and on blogs usually follow along the lines of, “he hates America,” and, “I don’t care for his opinions on society.” In the most unguarded cases, he is described as “the worst kind of Jew; a self-hating Jew.”

What can be said about Chomsky with little equivocation is that his work in linguistics, beginning in the 1950s up until the present, has been revolutionary. His theories on transformational/generative/universal grammar, syntactic structures, language competence and acquisition have become the bedrock of modern linguistics.

Chomsky has been an advocate of the idea that intellectuals have an ethical obligation to involve themselves in a public way with contemporary politics.
His reputation as an activist and proponent of the far left emerged during the Vietnam War. Chomsky was an outspoken critic of U.S. involvement in Vietnam and equally was an advocate of the idea that intellectuals have an ethical obligation to involve themselves in a public way with contemporary politics. In the 1967 article, “The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” Chomsky wrote, “For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us.”

Chomsky’s life as a responsible intellectual, or, as he is often called, a dissenter, is not a separate identity from that of the linguistics professor and scholar. His identity, if viewed panoramically, is a logical extension of the Western and Talmudic intellectual traditions applied to the landscape of contemporary politics and active engagement. And at the age of 77, Chomsky continues to walk his talk.

For all those who oppose or iconically extol the persona and work of Noam Chomsky, the voluminous footnotes are there. Likewise, the reading recommendation by President Chávez is an insightful footnote as to what the world might be reading and the ways in which they may be thinking in the very near future.
Laray Polk is a political writer and activist who lives in Dallas, Texas. She can be contacted at laraypolk@earthlink.net.


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This story was published on September 26, 2006.
  

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