I would like to think that the traditional left has had as much of an
influence on the academy as the pomos have, but it doesn't seem to be true.
Noam Chomsky, whose critique of pomo I agree with, has had a pretty small
audience for his political writings. Until the recent pamphlets published by
Odonian press, his largest-selling book was "The Manufacture of Consent,"
(co-authored with Ed Herman). This book sold about 25,000 copies. This is
very sad but true, and I think if it weren't for his academic superstardom
in linguistics, he wouldn't have gotten as far as he did. It is very
difficult in this society to speak the unvarnished truth to power and get a
hearing, either inside or outside of academia. So while it may be true that
Chomsky as an individual has "done more to popularize such critical thinking
in the U.S. than any professor of identity ever has," the same is not true
for the intellectual current that Chomsky represents versus that represented
by pomo-- at least in the last couple of decades. Hundreds of thousands of
college students who will never hear of Chomsky will get their introduction
to at least some aspects of critical thinking through pomo courses and
pomo-trained instructors.
The comparison with Chomsky is a good one though, for illustrating a
couple of points. One is that the pomos have been able to establish
themselves in academia partly *because* they have developed an inpenetrable
jargon that serves (as does most of the math in economics) to insulate them
from criticism of the non-initiated. Chomsky, on the other hand, in order to
write books on politics, has had to pursue a second career of scholarship
(in addition to having become one of the most cited authors in history in
the course of his first career), which most of us are not capable of
managing.
Back when deconstruction was the rage, I used to ask my pomo friends
why they needed all that jargon, when Chomsky was doing a fine job
"deconstructing" all sorts of horrible institutions (and language), without
any of it. I never got much of an answer.
The other comparison with Chomsky speaks to Doug's second point: the
idea of "a polyphony of local narratives and situated knowledges" is much
less threatening to academics then having to tell them they are flat out
wrong about some really obvious phenomena in the real world. This is another
reason for pomo success in the academic world, and I think from a
sociology-of-knowledge standpoint, a big reason for the staying power of
their relativist epistemology.
--- On Sun, 17 Nov 1996 14:03:06 -0800 (PST) Doug Henwood
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>At 7:06 PM 11/16/96, Mark Weisbrot wrote:
>
>>IMHO, the pomos have made a major positive contribution by
>>transforming a large part of the humanities' undergraduate curriculum, to
>>the point where it is now common for freshman comp. courses to question
such
>>"myths" as American democracy, equality of opportunity, etc.
>
>Did the pomos do this? Really? Old-fashioned lefties have been trying to do
>this for decades without the benefit of having read Of Grammatology. Noam
>Chomsky, who is probably more anti-pomo than I am even, has done more to
>popularize such critical thinking in the U.S. than any professor of
>identity ever has.
>
>A theoretical problem: if there is no truth, only provisional constructions
>of truth, and if there is no master narrative, but only a polyphony of
>local narratives and situated knowledges, than how can you criticize the
>official (celebratory) version of history as "false"?
>
>Doug
>
>--
>
>Doug Henwood
>Left Business Observer
>250 W 85 St
>New York NY 10024-3217
>USA
>+1-212-874-4020 voice
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>email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>web: <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html>
>
>
-----------------End of Original Message-----------------
-------------------------------------
Name: Mark Weisbrot
E-mail: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Preamble Center for Public Policy
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