------- Start of forwarded message -------
From: Louis Proyect <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask], SCIENCE-FOR-THE-
[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]
Subject: Fwd: Noam Chomsky in the Ivory Tower
Date: 6/7/02 6:51:16 AM
Although Noam Chomsky enjoys a well-deserved reputation as a tireless and
effective critic of US foreign policy, there is an unfortunate tendency on
the left to view him in saintly terms. Despite the fact that Robert
Barsky's biography (http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-books/chomsky/) is written
from the point of view of an unabashed admirer, there is troubling evidence
in it that Chomsky is far from perfect.
In Chapter Four (The Intellectual, the University and the State), we learn
that Chomsky views the university as some kind of refuge from politics and
the class struggle. He also has a "hands off" attitude toward the hard
sciences that is reminiscent of the analysis put forward by social
democratic physicist Alan Sokal and his reactionary associate Norman
Levitt. As Chomsky would put it in 1996, "Nothing should be done to impede
people from teaching and doing their research even if at that very moment
it was being used to massacre and destroy."
During the time Chomsky was involved with protests against the war in
Vietnam, he was always hostile--like Theodor Adorno--to on-campus protests
that got in the way of pursuing the Truth. It was one thing to march
against the war; it was another thing entirely to occupy a building that
was dedicated to counter-insurgency research. According to Barsky, Chomsky
admired "the challenge to the universities" but thought their rebellions
were "largely misguided," and he "criticized [them] as they were in
progress at Berkeley (1966) and Columbia (1968) particularly. This is
corroborated by Norman Mailer, who spent time with Chomsky in a jail cell
after being arrested at the Pentagon protest in 1969: "He had, in fact,
great reservations about the form that the 1968 student uprisings
ultimately took."
To a large extent, Chomsky viewed student revolutionaries as foolish and
excessive. He admitted to Barsky that he took no interest in the 1968
May-June events in France. But more importantly, Chomsky was imbued with
the elitism that went with his professional territory. From the standpoint
of a neo-Cartesian linguist involved with cutting edge research, the
student 'enragés' were people from another planet. Barsky writes:
"The fact that Chomsky was immersed, primarily, in a scientific environment
had a profound impact on his perception of the role of the intellectual,
the way that institutions in this society function, and the value to
society of science. His extremely well-developed, libertarian-inspired
political sensibilities, and his awareness of individuals and groups far
more radical than those of the late 1960s, was the source of his acute
skepticism about the ability of many high-profile contemporary activists to
contribute anything of lasting value."
He quotes Chomsky: "Guevara was of no interest to me; this was mindless
romanticism, in my view."
From this standpoint, Chomsky's life-long cozy association with a
militarist institution like MIT begins to make sense. In 1969, the Pentagon
and NASA were financing two MIT laboratories. One was working on inertial
guidance systems; the other was "engaged in some things that involved
ongoing counterinsurgency," according to Chomsky's best recollection in 1996.
Chomsky *opposed* severing such ties to the military because it would
undercut the university's ability to function. Rather disingenuously he
proposed that such departments rename themselves the Department of Death,
etc. (From this rather hare-brained scheme, one can gather why so few
people have actually gone out and built organizations or developed
strategies based on Chomsky's writings.) When Chomsky has been challenged
for this posture, he offers a lame excuse: "Did you ever hear anyone
suggest that Marx shouldn't have worked in the British Museum, the very
symbol of British Imperialism?"
Chomsky's tendency to reflexively defend the right of an institution like
MIT to do research unimpeded even if it is "used to massacre and destroy"
can best be explained by his blind spot with respect to the hard sciences.
Since his intellectual roots are in the Cartesian wing of the
Enlightenment, he is ill-equipped to understand the class nature of
scientific institutions. He states:
"[T]here is a noticeable general difference between the sciences and
mathematics on the one hand, and the humanities and social sciences on the
other. It's a first approximation, but one that is real. In the former, the
factors of integrity tend to dominate more over the factors of ideology.
It's not that scientists are more honest people. It's just that nature is a
harsh taskmaster. You can lie or distort the story of the French Revolution
as long as you like, and nothing will happen. Propose a false theory in
chemistry, and it'll be refuted tomorrow."
This, of course, is exactly the stance that Alan Sokal takes in the
"science wars" debate and it is obviously false. Nazi science was virtually
synonymous with false theories. US biology was characterized by racism
through the entire 19th century and much of the 20th century. Virtually the
entire scientific establishment was suckered into the "Star Wars" project
of the Reagan era, while any novice understood that not only was the
project based on unscientific assumptions, but that it might lead to
pre-emptive nuclear strikes against the USSR.
Barsky tries to explain away Chomsky's rather naïve assumptions:
"For example, although a government might decide to give massive funding to
a researcher who is working on a truth serum so that its agents can extract
information from captured spies, that researcher will be obliged, in
formulating the serum, to analyze how particular drugs affect the thinking
process, and thus be of use to the population at large in a variety of
crucial ways."
Needless to say, this would have provided a comfortable rationale for a
Nazi scientist doing experiments on a Jewish inmate at Auschwitz.
Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
-------- End of forwarded message --------
|
