Product Description

The political and linguistic writings of America's leading dissident intellectual. He relates his political ideals to his theories about language.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #443841 in Books
• Published on: 1987-09-12
• Released on: 1987-09-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

From Library Journal
From the 1960s to the present, linguist Chomsky has been a prominent critic of American foreign policy, influential in radical and scholarly circles. This collection offers a broad sampling of Chomsky's best writing on the subject. The essays are typical Chomsky: long, analytical, probing, and controversial. Some have appeared in earlier collections; others are expanded transcripts of recent lectures. The most familiar are concerned with U.S. policy in Vietnam, Central America, and the Middle East. Editor Peck gives us an overview of Chomsky's writings in his useful introduction, though he tends to be extravagant in his praise. Even more useful is a long interview with Chomsky himself. Highly recommended for all academic libraries. Thomas A. Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, Pa.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap
The political and linguistic writings of America's leading dissident intellectual. He relates his political ideals to his theories about language.

Customer Reviews

Exercise skepticism
Chomsky never asks you to take his word for it. He challenges existing beliefs and paradigms and refutes them, providing evidence of his assertions. You, as the reader, are invited to read what he writes, agree or disagree. Chomsky invites readers to question what information they are given and exercise simple reason and skepticism in evaluating that information.

The introduction to this collection of essays (and informative interview) is excellent. It provides a basic overview of Chomsky's philosophy (if you could call it that.) I felt that this book was basic reading, particularly for those who are new to Chomsky's works. In the introduction Peck writes that freedom and the process of indoctrination go hand in hand... and in America freedoms exist "within an ideological consensus that limits debate and protects powerful interests in ways all too similar to those in which obviously repressive societies operate." The entire book (and Chomsky's many other works) provide evidence of these statements. Chomsky is meticulous in combing for details and wants readers to release themselves from the mindlessness of taking information (or veracity of readily available information) for granted. Conventional media are seemingly free from having a burden of proof and need not provide any evidence to support their claims. This is not only the fault of media outlets. The media do what they can get away with. Discriminating, thoughtful readers seeking information should not accept that.

One of the most apt analogies Chomsky makes in the interview is that professional sports, as an example, are one means for deflecting attention from real and important issues. The layperson can argue and analyse football to death and feel comfortable making his/her own analysis of athletics. However, these same people see world affairs and politics as out of the realm of their experience and expertise and do not even attempt to learn about it. Naturally something is to be said for the fact that many Americans so not have interest in these affairs and are more interested in sports... but it is a cyclical and indoctrinated response. From a young age, Americans are indoctrinated to focus on what their favourite team is doing as opposed to what is happening in another part of the world.

An interesting thought to ponder (at least for me), though, is that in reading the older essays, Chomsky discussed the lack of access to unbiased information. I wonder if this has changed or even been revolutionised by access to electronic publications and communication and technology in general? Or is this just wishful thinking?

Indispensible
An indispensible anthology from America's foremost foreign policy critic. James Peck, the book's editor, presents an excellent introduction, outlining core themes that unite the wide-ranging material. There is much that is familiar to long-time Chomsky readers, but much that is also less familiar, such as personal background that may help explain the MIT professor's remarkably creative and heretical career. Included among the miscellainea, is a section on his work in linguistics, a critique of B.F. Skinner's behavioral approach, and a defense of freedom and equality-- a compatibility often derided in more conservative circles. Of course, there are the more familiar researches on Latin America, Southeast Asia, and other frontier hotspots that define the American imperium. Unfortunately missing because of publishing date are researches on Washington's more recent adventures in Panama, Iraq, and Yugoslavia. Though the tune may change, the music remains the same.

At bottom - and what renders the MIT professor a non-person to state and media alike - is his view of Washington not as vaunted leader of the free world, but as a self-serving imperial power, neither better nor worse than its predecessors, but with greatly expanded reach and killing power. To put the point briefly: behind sterling academic and intellectual credentials, he mounts a leftish, but non-Marxist, expose' of Washington's most cherished foreign policy pieties. Just as effectively, he is careful not to put forth a central thesis, theory or organizing idea, that might distract from the damning indictment his case studies provide of global interventionism. Shrewdly, he lets the unexpurgated record speak for itself without the distraction of abstract issues, which allows the reader to draw his or her own conclusions as to ultimate causes of this imperial behavior.

Challenging the official record is, of course, no easy task. If America behaves like a typical great power, it also filters its self-perception as a great power must. Which is to say, that like other empire builders of the modern era, Washington must disguise its imperial actions in moralistic terms to make them palatable to publics and elites alike. Thus, self-deception in America operates, and must operate, on a grand scale, as witnessed in recent interventions in Kosovo, Kuwait, Nicaragua, and a host of other Pentagon undertakings. All are retailed to an ideologically conditioned public as humanitarian rescues. Nonetheless, should this prism fail, as in Vietnam, Chomsky harbors no optimistic expectations as to how the public might react. Disillusioned voters might continue pragmatic support of the imperial regime or they might not. What is interesting is that the regime acts as though it can't take the risk-- thus the rigid ideological controls that continue to manage popular perceptions regardless of the facts. The latter of course makes up Chomsky's target of debunking attack.

The book can only be considered anti-American by those who believe that it is the actions of Washington and Wall Street that define our collective soul.

The Responsibility of Intellectuals.
When I was a graduate student, I had read quite a bit in Chomsky's thinking about media, but not much further. I had certainly heard and read sound bites about his other opinions, but never got around to reading more of his work. When I came across The Chomsky Reader, it seemed like a good chance to remedy the lack and also to get a sense of what, if any, further reading I wanted to do in his body of work.

It also seemed like a good book for trains, planes and cars-- essays and pretty dense essays at that. I thought it had a good chance of lasting me for quite a while while traveling.

My reaction to the work was mixed. As always, I enjoyed the interview with which Peck prefaces the work. I also enjoyed the selections of essays on the Responsibilities of Intellectuals and Interpreting the World. In general, however, I got a lot less out of it than I expected and was honestly left with a lingering sense of disappointment.

Chomsky spends much of his political essays dissecting writers with whose points he is in disagreement. This is a normal trope, and not necessarily a bad one. When I read, say, Arendt discussing other writers on revolution I am interested in what she has to say even if I don't know the other texts as intimately as she does. But there's something about the way Chomsky goes about it that brings the Dutch idiom "ant neuker" (look it up) to mind. He seems much more interested in being right then he is in anything so banal as the interests of the reader. He often doesn't bother to draw his larger conclusions out again for examination, and contents himself with arguing with the absent author line-by-line. If I knew that author or the subject matter well, I suppose that it would be a valuable dialogue. But even though I have read a fair amount about, for example, the Spanish Civil War, I am not up for a blow-by-blow argument about what POUM did at precisely what point. This reaction may say more about me than it does about him, dunno. It feels kind of ironic since a lot of what he writes about is against the culture of academics and experts and for engagement of the normal thinker in political issues. The normal thinker may see Chomsky's welcome mat, but that barrier to entry is pretty darned high.

What bothered me more is that I was less impressed with his logical reasoning this time around. I had always admired his rigorous rationality. What I realize now is that I mistook the fact that he irritated everybody for evidence of truth and objective analysis. I noticed in these essays that the structure frequently went:

complex argument. subtle reference to past thinker that I have to look up. final summation: "So and so says such and such, but he's wrong. It isn't true."

Next paragraph.

He may be right that such and such isn't true, but he frequently doesn't build his assertion under with anything more than a smart tone and a flat conclusion. Also not terribly helpful for the reader.

This makes it sound as though I didn't get anything out of the essays. He's a smart guy, so-- of course-- I did. And none of my criticisms mean that he isn't right-- just means that he annoyed me, didn't convince me, and reminded me of a particularly obnoxious ex-boyfriend. YMMV.

(The fact that I would be reminded of an ex-boyfriend while reading Chomsky automatically disqualifies me from the club of people smart enough to read him, I believe.)