“They saw their injured country's woe;
The flaming town, the wasted field;
Then rushed to meet the insulting foe;
They took the spear, - but left the shield.”
―Philip Freneau
.
And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain, But who can get another life again?
Archilochus
Saturday, January 30, 2016
Abundance or Empty Politic?
Substitute Progressivism or Conservatism (or any other ideology) for the Inerrant Bible in this video's example. An Objet Petit 'a is at the center of ALL democratic politics. Their is no "Master Signifier", only S2.
FOR WHAT IT MAY BE WORTH [I admit to a hatred of Noam Chomsky]:
Noam Chomsky’s well-known political views have tended to overshadow his groundbreaking work as a linguist and analytic philosopher. As a result, people sometimes assume that because Chomsky is a leftist, he would find common intellectual ground with the postmodernist philosophers of the European Left.
Big mistake.
In this brief excerpt from a December, 2012 interview with Veterans Unplugged, Chomsky is asked about the ideas of Slavoj Žižek, Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida. The M.I.T. scholar, who elsewhere has described some of those figures and their followers as “cults,” doesn’t mince words:
What you’re referring to is what’s called “theory.” And when I said I’m not interested in theory, what I meant is, I’m not interested in posturing–using fancy terms like polysyllables and pretending you have a theory when you have no theory whatsoever. So there’s no theory in any of this stuff, not in the sense of theory that anyone is familiar with in the sciences or any other serious field. Try to find in all of the work you mentioned some principles from which you can deduce conclusions, empirically testable propositions where it all goes beyond the level of something you can explain in five minutes to a twelve-year-old. See if you can find that when the fancy words are decoded. I can’t. So I’m not interested in that kind of posturing. Žižek is an extreme example of it. I don’t see anything to what he’s saying. Jacques Lacan I actually knew. I kind of liked him. We had meetings every once in awhile. But quite frankly I thought he was a total charlatan. He was just posturing for the television cameras in the way many Paris intellectuals do. Why this is influential, I haven’t the slightest idea. I don’t see anything there that should be influential.
Chomsky might well be talking about himself. As a punctilious and fairly astute connoisseur of English grammar, usage and style I have to say most of the fantastic fabrications of twentieth-century "intellectuals," so-called philosopher strikes me as pompous, pretentious, circumlocutory, self-aggrandizing gobbledygook –– a determined effort to make relatively simple ideas seem arcane and and so extremely difficult to comprehend as to be confounding.
The conclusion we are supposed to draw, I suppose, is that we are shallow, unintelligent, imperceptive, lazy-minded, and lacking in imagination if we can't seem to grasp the supposedly deep significance of it all.
Chomsky's "whole language" theory that makes him such a famous "linguist" is the biggest crock of sh*t ever blurted. Plato disproved him 2,400 years before he even stated it. THIS is why Chomsky is opposed to "theory"... he knows his entire claim to fame is a fraud.
And I love the Chomsky-Zizek feud. Zizek proves Chomsky a fool at every turn.
I find Chomsky's points far easier to grasp than zizek's (whose discursive style I enjoy, but rarely leaves any lasting pression). Might just be that Chomsky and I have more language in common. FreeThinke, have you tried Chomsky's exercise? Did you find no kernel of information in Chomsky's discourse? I usually do, if that counts for anything. (And, what about zizek, what do you take away from him?)
Disputes between great thinkers are nothing new or special and don't prove anything. Einstein for quite some time rejected early Big Bang theory, as well as early quantum physics.
Chomsky and Zizek share more than they realise/accept.
I used to believe Freud was a complete charlatan. No more.
I know Marxists who completely reject Zizek and I know some who adore him.
15 comments:
My diagnosis is this:
That boy most desperately needs to get laid.
w/o a doubt!
FOR WHAT IT MAY BE WORTH [I admit to a hatred of Noam Chomsky]:
Noam Chomsky’s well-known political views have tended to overshadow his groundbreaking work as a linguist and analytic philosopher. As a result, people sometimes assume that because Chomsky is a leftist, he would find common intellectual ground with the postmodernist philosophers of the European Left.
Big mistake.
In this brief excerpt from a December, 2012 interview with Veterans Unplugged, Chomsky is asked about the ideas of Slavoj Žižek, Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida. The M.I.T. scholar, who elsewhere has described some of those figures and their followers as “cults,” doesn’t mince words:
What you’re referring to is what’s called “theory.” And when I said I’m not interested in theory, what I meant is, I’m not interested in posturing–using fancy terms like polysyllables and pretending you have a theory when you have no theory whatsoever. So there’s no theory in any of this stuff, not in the sense of theory that anyone is familiar with in the sciences or any other serious field. Try to find in all of the work you mentioned some principles from which you can deduce conclusions, empirically testable propositions where it all goes beyond the level of something you can explain in five minutes to a twelve-year-old. See if you can find that when the fancy words are decoded. I can’t. So I’m not interested in that kind of posturing. Žižek is an extreme example of it. I don’t see anything to what he’s saying. Jacques Lacan I actually knew. I kind of liked him. We had meetings every once in awhile. But quite frankly I thought he was a total charlatan. He was just posturing for the television cameras in the way many Paris intellectuals do. Why this is influential, I haven’t the slightest idea. I don’t see anything there that should be influential.
Chomsky might well be talking about himself. As a punctilious and fairly astute connoisseur of English grammar, usage and style I have to say most of the fantastic fabrications of twentieth-century "intellectuals," so-called philosopher strikes me as pompous, pretentious, circumlocutory, self-aggrandizing gobbledygook –– a determined effort to make relatively simple ideas seem arcane and and so extremely difficult to comprehend as to be confounding.
The conclusion we are supposed to draw, I suppose, is that we are shallow, unintelligent, imperceptive, lazy-minded, and lacking in imagination if we can't seem to grasp the supposedly deep significance of it all.
Let me quote Hans Christian Anderson:
"But he has nothing on."
Chomsky's "whole language" theory that makes him such a famous "linguist" is the biggest crock of sh*t ever blurted. Plato disproved him 2,400 years before he even stated it. THIS is why Chomsky is opposed to "theory"... he knows his entire claim to fame is a fraud.
And I love the Chomsky-Zizek feud. Zizek proves Chomsky a fool at every turn.
I find Chomsky's points far easier to grasp than zizek's (whose discursive style I enjoy, but rarely leaves any lasting pression). Might just be that Chomsky and I have more language in common. FreeThinke, have you tried Chomsky's exercise? Did you find no kernel of information in Chomsky's discourse? I usually do, if that counts for anything. (And, what about zizek, what do you take away from him?)
I find both Zizek and Chomsky to both be intellectually fraudulent simpletons. To put it politely.
And I like both Chomsky AND Zizek, so there you go!
FT on the other hand is a banal old school antisemite and beamish an anarcho-whatever fantasist.
Disputes between great thinkers are nothing new or special and don't prove anything. Einstein for quite some time rejected early Big Bang theory, as well as early quantum physics.
Chomsky and Zizek share more than they realise/accept.
I used to believe Freud was a complete charlatan. No more.
I know Marxists who completely reject Zizek and I know some who adore him.
Funny Old World, eh?
We each enjoy our particular brand's of tea. And as an ancient Sufi parable says about coffee: "He who tastes, knows; he who tastes not, knows not."
I'm a non-archist, and that's Mr. Non-Archist to you, bub
We each enjoy our particular brand's of tea. And as an ancient Sufi parable says about coffee: "He who tastes, knows; he who tastes not, knows not."
Well, precisely, in a nutshell.
I enjoy variety.
So do I. But it's best not to mix them and drink them all at the same time. ;)
The grass is always greener over the septic tank.
~ Erma Bombeck
One man's bullsh*t is another man's fertilizer.
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