Chomsky llive on the net tonight (1 Viewer)

damien said:
do you have a bet with someone concerning how many posts you can mention that on before this evening?

how long do you think you could hold christopher hitchens in a figure four leglock?
 
the 'private' talk consisted of 60 people 1 chomsky, 4 questions, 2 long answers, then he left. It was only half an hour long.
So if anyone feels like they missed out, you didn't.

The talk in UCD the other day was much more in depth, yeah, he's not exactly captivating, but he's got some good shit to say.

But some people I was sitting with just didn't understand what he was on about. Surely this negates the whole point of being a great thinker, if the only people who can understand you have 3rd level educations or are mad into reading politics, ie. a very small % of the population.
 
mazzyianne said:
But some people I was sitting with just didn't understand what he was on about. Surely this negates the whole point of being a great thinker, if the only people who can understand you have 3rd level educations or are mad into reading politics, ie. a very small % of the population.

Really? I wouldn't have thought there was much to not understand .... or was he talking about linguistics?
 
mazzyianne said:
the 'private' talk consisted of 60 people 1 chomsky, 4 questions, 2 long answers, then he left. It was only half an hour long.
So if anyone feels like they missed out, you didn't.

The talk in UCD the other day was much more in depth, yeah, he's not exactly captivating, but he's got some good shit to say.

But some people I was sitting with just didn't understand what he was on about. Surely this negates the whole point of being a great thinker, if the only people who can understand you have 3rd level educations or are mad into reading politics, ie. a very small % of the population.
I think that a lot of the issues he talks about are quite complex, disentangling all the double talk of politicians and treaties takes a good deal of lingustic skill which he of course has in spades. But aside from that you are right he's not a popularizer ,a polemicist or a politcian. He's a hard core academic and deals mostly with the facts. I went to the talk last night,
I nearly started laughing when he first started talking, I was instinctually expecting him to say thank you after all the applause but He launched straight into it. great. He is so unconcerned with celebrity and rhetoric and trying to be 'captivating' and that's what makes him such a bresh of fresh air, such an antidote to politicians. If the world was a sane place that's what all politicans would be like.
Maybe it's up to others to popularize his stuff, make it more accesible
to more people, but the danger is over simplification.
 
Latex lizzie said:
boring boring speaker

pot-kettle.jpg
 
hugh said:
Really? I wouldn't have thought there was much to not understand .... or was he talking about linguistics?

Nope.
There is loads not to understand. He talks in a very sarcastic way and with an in depth knowledge of the history of US foreign policy. He also uses very academic language which most people aren't used to.
I mean, the place was mostly full of academics but lots of students found it hard to understand. When I saw him live via satelite a few (4/5?) years ago in ucd some of it went totally over my head.

Anyways, I think he's great, but I'm just saying he's got a lot of good stuff to say that should be more accessable to everyone.
 
I came across some anecedote from an activist in the 1970's who described how when Howard Zinn rolled into town his talks would be witty, with a flowery acerbic delivery that you could really enjoy sitting through, where as when Chomsky came on it was as if a cloud of guilt hung over the audience as each person felt they should have a note book and pen out taking down references. You could see that in his talks this week alright. But the bloke seems well aware of his purpose, it gets illustrated in Manufacturing Consent where you have something like 40 pages asserting the propaganda model then maybe 400 or something where he relentlessly, and as objectively as possible illustrates the model in practice. That seems to be what he does in his lectures as well, the sort of assertions that govern most left wing rethoric and educational talks are backed up with a relentless potted history and critique that is usually lacking. He seems intent on highlighting dichotamies which is something of a nifty rethorical device. For instance in his tuesday talk, his "conservative recommendations" (his words) for American foreign policy were not his own opinion, but were preferential options agreed by the overwhelming majority of the population as sourced in opinion polls in the mainstream press. In this illustration that the actions and expressions of the ruling elite there are soo removed from the desires of its people there lies an implicit critique of contemporary democracy, that is expressed without resorting to slogans and assertions that are sometimes groundlessly put forward as political arguments. There's certianly something to learn from this style - especially given the inability of elite circles to argue back against him. If he confuses people its probably a good thing, as in challenging so many of the assumptions of popular belief you undermine a lot of presupposed ideas and at least people might be tempted to explore a little more the basis of their own views.

One thing that got to me was the obvious seperation from engagement in political activism among the people that went to the talks, and not just anarchist activism, but of any form. As if attending Chomsky was an act within itself. This was all the more clear as I was giving out a free anarchist paper outside, in the RDS one of my fellow paper pushers raised the refusal of people to accept a free paper which challenges on a regular basis the dominant ideas of power as a question to Chomsky himself - he linked it to an "intentional ignorance" in his answer.

Perhaps Chomsky's chief failure is that his arguements are too much of a critique and he merely expresses the pro-active challenges to power as an afterthought to critiquing it. In the talk with the WSM he was remarkably chirpy about the prospects for the future in terms of a deepening of democracy and radical social movements - but if he was the expression of sixties dissent and started off in meetings of 5/6, on a pessemistic note there are far too many radical political meetings of 5/6 - so what do these 1000 that attended each talk be at? How do they envision change coming about and are just who exactly are they waiting on to carry it out?

More than anyone he is a populariser of radical ideas, as the proliferation of articles on the net, books in every bookshop in the country and the minor media feeding frenzy this week illustrates. Its probably fair to equate him with some of his own heroes such as Paine who developed a huge low level, quite but there, popularity for certain ideals.

For anyone who missed the UCD Tuesday talk, there's a good review of it in the latest Village by Harry Browne, as well as a very personal letter he sent to Chomsky highlighting his use/abuse for politial gain at the hands of Amnesty. It should be on the net later in the week if ye miss it in the shops.
 
so what do these 1000 that attended each talk be at? How do they envision change coming about and are just who exactly are they waiting on to carry it out?

Yeah, we were talking about that yesterday, there were 1000+ people at each chomsky night in ucd, mostly from ucd i'd say, and 6/7 people at the rossport solidarity campaign talk.
 
Good interview with him in the Irish Times today ....
 
I was given a 'join labour youth!' piece of paper outside the linguistics talk yesterday. apart from that (and one guy's inability to get his head round the fact that it was a linguistics lecture, not a politics one), it was very good.
 
I just watched/listened to the Tuesday lecture off the ucd website. (Cool to be able to do that when u don't have the option of attending!). Whew! Hard work. Had to keep pause rewinding as i drifted away, and had a mid-lecture break for spicy tomato soup (another for chocolate, another for mandarin oranges..). What i think is that he's quite hard to follow because his tone never changes - the sarcasm/not-sarcasm thing gave me a few problems!
But maybe it's because - as he says - we have been deprogrammed from rational debate and argument into a need for soundbites and drama. At the same time though - great man - great stuff but zzzzz! I can't help it. I can't help falling asleep to his voice!
But i'm definately glad he's there and talking and writing about all the stuff he does - and getting away with it! Takes all sorts to change consciousness. Michael Moore for the tabloid types, Chomsky for the broadsheeters. To Antrophe: I think that's the first step - consciousness changing - and following on from that will come growth in the movements for change. Is that a lazy position? I don't know - I just think that dismantelling the structures of power is an immense long slow process and it can't gain momentum until people believe in it - until there is a public resonance so to speak. So attendance at a Chomsky lecture may in fact be a revolutionary act for a portion of the mainly middle class educated people there, if it leads to their moving from seeing the absurdity of things like the "war on terror" and the "messianic mission" to beginning to question the very structures under which they are living. Because while it may be obvious to you that it should be questioned, it isn't neccessarily to them. They mightn't have been envisioning change, but their children might? I dunno really - I'm too braindead after all the concentration.
Wait - just finished watching all of it - q&a much easier to listen to - starts to talk not to drone... He's actually a bit inspirational.. Maybe I just have an old pavlovian problem with the lecturer-drone voice - makes me feel all hungover and sleepy...
 

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