8.673, Review: Barsky, R.: Chomsky Biography

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-8-673. Wed May 7 1997. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 8.673, Review: Barsky, R.: Chomsky Biography

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Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent
By Robert F. Barsky,
MIT Press, 1997, Pp. 237, ISBN 0-262-02418-7. $27.50

Hypertext version:  http://www.mit-press.mit.edu/Chomsky/

Reviewed by Fergal Murphy, University College Dublin
                <MURPC88 at macollamh.ucd.ie>

[As the book comes essentially two forms - a paper version and a
hypertext version - I will deal with the content of the book first
before going on to talk about the web site for the book.
Page numbers indicate Barsky's book unless otherwise indicated.]

In this very readable book, Barsky presents a view of Chomsky's life
through  "The Milieu that Formed Chomsky" and "The Milieu that Chomsky
helped to Create". Chomsky's Politics and Linguistics are presented as
derived from essentially the same philosophical traditions, with an
interest in the uniqueness and creativity of each individual at the
heart of Chomsky's concerns. The author points out that the main focus
of the biography he has written "is the political milieus that provide a
context for understanding [Chomsky's] approach to societal relations and
the structures that regulate them" (p.6). The author has previously
showed his liking for Chomsky's politics in the documentary
"Manufacturing Consent" and this book again portrays Chomsky as being on
the side of the angels. The book provides us with some new information
and photographs and brings together many of the strands in Chomsky's
life and work. A full analysis of Chomsky would take more than the 237
pages in Barsky's book but the book is a solidly researched analysis of
the basis of Chomsky's main philosophical concerns that can be read with
profit no matter what one's interest in Chomsky derives from.

As with any book on Chomsky, this biography will generate heated
discussion. Chomsky always provokes strong and divergent reactions but,
as the author points out, Chomsky is undeniably one of the most
important figures in modern thought (p.1).

The first section of the book - dealing with the milieu that formed
Chomsky - covers Chomsky's family and his education (both formal and
informal). The anecdotes about Chomsky's childhood show a serious, quiet
but competitive child who was used to intellectual and well-informed
debate about a wide range of topics at home. Some of the details are
already available to us from other sources but some of them are new and
Chomsky's Parents are presented very effectively. A theme that runs
through the book is that Chomsky's family was Zionist and that Chomsky
has retained the Zionism of his youth -- the Zionism of Asher Ginsburg,
pen name Ahad Ha-am -- but that this is quite a different kind of
Zionism to the kind most often encountered today.  The role of Chomsky's
uncle's 72nd Street newspaper stand in New York as an informal classroom
or "Literary Political Salon" (p.23) for Chomsky is gone over again, but
it was such a huge influence on Chomsky that no biography of Chomsky
could leave it out. The leftist ideas that were discussed there and the
impression they made on Chomsky as a teenager listening in can not be
under-estimated. It was new to me that Chomsky's uncle went on to become
a lay psychiatrist.

Perhaps the most telling lines in the section on Chomsky's childhood are
taken form Otero's "Chomsky and the Libertarian Tradition" (Otero, p.5)
where Chomsky's father (William Chomsky) is quoted as describing the
major objective of his life as "the education of individuals who are
well-integrated, free and independent in their thinking, concerned about
improving and enhancing the world and eager to participate in making
life more meaningful and worthwhile for all". Both Barsky and Otero
regard this as an almost perfect description of Chomsky.

Barsky devotes much time to the notion of Chomsky being involved in
"improving and enhancing" the world. Chomsky is presented as constantly
striving towards the creation of a "good society" (p.27). That this
'good society' is not just the best society from a range of bad ones is
exemplified in two insights of the young Chomsky. Firstly, there is the
young Chomsky's realisation that it is ridiculous to cheer for your
school team just because they are your school team (p.22) and secondly,
his realisation during the second world war that neither side was
particularly good. As Barsky puts it "How 'good' is a society that drops
atomic bombs on Japanese civilians, or reduces German towns to rubble?
Isn't there an alternative?" (p.27). The moral question that intrigues
Chomsky is not relative goodness but absolute goodness and it is the
striving for this absolute goodness that underpins Chomsky's reasoning.
The influence of Orwell's work, especially _Homage to Catalonia_, is
emphasised in the book.

The other main area of influence in Chomsky's early life occurred during
his university career. The huge influence Zellig Harris had on Chomsky
has been the accepted for many years now. Barsky adds a new dimension to
our picture of Harris' influence on Chomsky by presenting the political
ideas that were part of student life at the time, particularly groups
like Avukah and Hashomer Hatzair and the role that Harris played in
them. Harris not only influenced Chomsky but also many other students at
the time and not just in the political realm. Hilary Putnam reports in
his preface to "The Form of Information in Science" that "the powerful
intellect and personality of Zellig Harris drew me like a lodestone"
(quoted on p.58 of Barsky). The picture that emerges of the political
milieu that Chomsky was exposed to in University is one of a strongly
libertarian tradition that rejected any hardline Stalinist, Trotskyist
or Marxist approach but instead allowed for a more open-minded
exploration of left-wing ideas including those of Rocker and Pannekoek.
The point is made that these are not the ideas that we associate with
this era because they were the ideas of an uninfluential minority in
American society but they are the ideas that interested not only Chomsky
but many other students and teachers as well - Harris included. We
understand from this that Chomsky is not working today in some isolated
cocoon but is simply continuing the kind of exploration of ideas that he
was involved in as a student. He is remaining true to the insights that
occurred to him earlier in life.

One interesting anecdote from his university days involves Nathan Glazer
(a member of Avukah) and the effect Harris had on him. When Chomsky met
Glazer he "asked him whether he knew Harris. He said yes ....... I
didn't tell Glazer why I'd asked. The reason was that he was mimicking
all sorts of idiosyncratic Harris gestures" (p.59) Anyone who has seen
Chomsky lecture would recognise exactly the same thing happening when
students of Chomsky's give talks. The gestures Chomsky uses with
expressions like 'Leaving that aside' or the mixture of nodding and
shaking the head that accompanies a readiness to deal with the point
being raised re-emerge in many of his ex-students. It is a measure of
Chomsky's influence as a teacher that his gestures also become part of
the gestural repertoire of his students.

The philosophical background to much of Chomsky's work is to be found in
the work of Humboldt and Descartes. Barsky devotes an entire chapter to
tracing the effects of Humboldt and Descartes on Chomsky. And in the
course of this chapter Barsky recounts the unfounded attacks Hans
Aarslef made on Chomsky's _Cartesian Linguistics_ but neglects - as he
too often does - to give proper bibliographical references for the books
and articles involved. Barsky's contents himself with listing what he
calls "works consulted" (p.221) but the works consulted by Barsky do not
represent the full list of books that one might like to consult after
reading this biography. Barsky's citations of the "works consulted" also
jar somewhat as the books are listed by author and then alphabetically
by title rather than by year of publication. References in the body of
the biography to books in the bibliography give the author's name and,
where the author has more than one listing in the bibliography, an
abbreviation of the title of the book. I found this system fairly
cumbersome to decode - but that could just be my problem!



The second part of the book deals with the milieu that Chomsky helped to
create. Barsky charts Chomsky path from student to teacher. The main
focus of the book becomes Chomksy's political activism as he emerges as
a leading spokesman against the Vietnam war. It also mentions
collectives such as South End Press and "Z Magazine". While the issues
of how Universities deal with dissident intellectuals are dealt with
fairly quickly (and more information about this topic is available in
_The Cold War & The University_, Barsky does venture into the territory
as to whether universities are useful institutions at all. This is a
question that will eventually have to be addressed, especially given the
critique of Intellectuals as commissars that Barsky deals with in the
last section of the book.

The target of this part of the book would appear to be the Modern French
Intellectual tradition and the Postmodernism that it spawned. Chomsky is
quoted as saying that: "Intellectuals try to make it look difficult;
postmodernism carries this to extremes, in my opinion". In the section
"Chomsky on the French Intellectual Tradition", Chomsky is quoted as
saying: "almost no one in France has ever had any idea of what my
political or academic work is about" (p.196) this must be because they
have yet to learn "how to tell the truth, to pay attention to the facts
and to reach standards of minimal rationality" (p.197). Foucault comes
out relatively unscathed from the sideswipe at postmodernism. As Barsky
notes (p.195) "... Chomsky and Foucault are often on the same
wavelength".

Barsky does not spend too much time dealing with the ins and outs of
Chomsky's linguistic work - that would just take too long - but he does
pick out certain highlights along the way. He refers to the so-called
Linguistic Wars and notes that Harris' book on the Interpretive /
Generative semantics debate is fairly selective in its omissions,
neglecting to point out that all the appointments in MIT at the time
were of generative semanticists, while those people Chomsky was actually
working with were not appointed (p.151). But the more telling point
about the linguistic wars is that Chomsky was at this time simply very
busy with other issues like the Vietnam War. Chomsky is quoted as
dismissing Harris' analysis as belonging to that view that "everything
must be a power play" and refers to Harris as a "postmodern historian"
(p.151); 'postmodern' always being a term of derision in Chomsky's
lexicon, and not unreasonably.

The book does spend too much time on the Faurisson affair, however. This
is presumably because it keeps being brought up by people who are not in
possession of the facts. It is a pity that this affair keeps cropping up
but it does help to demonstrate Chomsky's adherence to his beliefs and
an unwillingness to join in the chorus against a fashionable enemy of
society - in the same way that he wouldn't cheer for his high school
football team simply because that was what everyone else around was
doing. Chomsky believes that people have a right to free speech and that
Faurrisson should have a right to say what he thinks. The fact that
Faurrisson is wrong about the gas chambers can be easily seen in what he
has to say; demonising him does nothing except make those demonising him
feel self-righteous.

Barsky's book is, overall, a fluid and accessible account of Chomsky's
life and work that can be read by people with either no knowledge of
Chomsky's contribution to modern intellectual life or by people seeking
to gain a deeper insight into the mind that produced the books and
articles that they have read with either delight or frustration. It is a
work written with passion and insight and shows Barsky's deep commitment
to the "good society" that Chomsky also aspires to.


- -------------------------------------------


The web site associated with the book utilises the net to hugely
increase the range of Barsky's text. While the actual book suffers from
a bad system of citations, the hypertext version of the book allows for
very clever cross-referencing and provides an opportunity to leave the
book to view other sites where more information can be obtained about
whatever the topic at hand is. This makes the hypertext version of the
book a better research tool. The hypertext version basically shows you
the book chapter by chapter (5 chapters in all) with each chapter then
presented section by section. Each section occupies a page with the
links to other sites in the left-hand margin. To use the hypertext book
one must have a browser that deals comfortably with tables and graphics
- but most do at this stage. Of course the speed at which the book loads
will depend on the time of day. I found it easier to deal with outside
American office hours (5 hours behind me in Ireland) and so read it
mainly in the mornings and later in the evening.

The one flaw in the way pages are presented is that the numbers of each
section in a chapter are only in the top lefthand of the page so that
one has to scroll or link back up to the top of the page to go to any
section other than the next. Having the sections across the bottom of
each page would be an improvement.

One great feature of the hypertext version is the chronologies (or
"timelines" as they are labelled on the site) which give a very clear
snapshot of the main events in the book as well as other events that are
important in understanding the periods covered in the book. The
timelines also allow one to go straight to parts of the book that are of
interest as well as sites elsewhere on the web. The timelines are
separated into Political, Philosophical, Linguistic and Personal
chronologies and dovetail with each of the  five chapters. They provide
a great way of understanding how the various strands in the book tie in
with each other. Hypertext books will never replace books as we know
them, simply because one needs access to a computer and the net to read
and use them but as a supplement to the book, this hypertext version
allows for an extra dimension to the reading experience that shows how
the web can be used to augment a written text.


- ------------------------------------------------------------

Bibliography:

Chomsky, N. et al (1997), _The Cold War and the University: Towards an
Intellectual History of the Postwar Years_. New York: The New Press.
Harris, R. A. (1994), The  Linguistic Wars. Oxford:OUP.
Otero, C. (1994), "Chomsky and the Libertarian Tradition" in _Noam
Chomsky: Critical Assessments_. London:Routledge.

- ------------------------------------------------------------

Feargal Murphy is a lecturer in the Department of Linguistics in
University College Dublin.
homepage: http//www.ucd.ie/~artspgs/gogs.html
- ==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--

FEARGAL MURPHY
Dept of Linguistics
University College Dublin
Dublin 4
Ireland

http://www.ucd.ie/~artspgs/gogs.html

feargal.murphy at ucd.ie

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