Chomsky and Deconstruction: The Politics of Unconscious Knowledge

199 Pages·2011·2.511 MB·English

by  Christopher Wise (auth.)

Chomsky and Deconstruction
Christopher Wise, Previous Publications
The Timbuktu Chronicles, 1493–1599 C.E.: Al Hajj Mahmud Kati’s Tarikh al-fattash (2011)
Being Arab: Arabism and the Politics of Recognition (2010)
Derrida, Africa, and the Middle East (2009)
The Yambo Ouologuem Reader (2008)
Developing American Studies at Arab Universities (2004)
The Parachute Drop (2004), by Norbert Zongo (Christopher Wise, translator)
The Desert Shore Literatures of the Sahel (2001)
Yambo Ouologuem: Postcolonial Writer, Islamic Militant (1999)
Litteratures du Sahel (1998)
The Marxian Hermeneutics of Fredric Jameson (1995)
Chomsky and Deconstruction
The Politics of Unconscious Knowledge
Christopher Wise
CHOMSKY AND DECONSTRUCTION
Copyright © Christopher Wise, 2011.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2011 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-29331-5 ISBN 978-0-230-11705-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230117051
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wise, Christopher, 1961–
Chomsky and deconstruction : the politics of unconscious
knowledge / Christopher Wise.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.

1. Chomsky, Noam. 2. Deconstruction. 3. Linguistics—Philosophy.
4. Language and languages—Philosophy. I. Title.
P85.C47W573 2011
410.92—dc22 2010024783
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: February 2011
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For
Rosanne Kanhai and Bongasu Tanala Kishani
All of this is done without reasons, just as we follow rules ourselves
without having reasons (“blindly”).
—Noam Chomsky
Contents
Introduction: The Politics of Unconscious Knowledge 1
One Cerebral Hermeneutics 21
Two The Ungiven-Given 63
Three Locke’s “Misreading” of Descartes and Other Fairy Tales 107
Four Identity Politics and the Pedagogy of Competence 135
Notes 163
Works Cited 183
Index 193
Introduction
The Politics of
Unconscious Knowledge
It is not enough to have ideas. One must also have thoughts.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
By rights, the content of historical and positive knowledge is not required, as
shocking as that may appear. It remains external to the philosophical act
as such.
—Jacques Derrida
The following book on Noam Chomsky is written in response to my
own situation as a professor of English and Comparative Literature in the
United States. Before writing this book, I sometimes taught Chomsky’s
books on U.S. foreign policy but did not find his linguistic writings par-
ticularly compelling and so ignored them. Much of my previous research
has been focused in Africa and the Middle East, including postcolonial
studies. While a faculty member at the University of Jordan in Amman
in 2001–2003, I taught Chomsky’s books on the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict and also wrote op-ed pieces for the English-language news-
paper, The Star (formerly The Jerusalem Star). The historical crises of
that period—that is, from 9/11 through the outbreak of the U.S.-Iraq
War—inspired me to read Chomsky in a more systematic manner, but
also to more carefully investigate his idiosyncratic views about language.
On the one hand, Chomsky seemed an exemplary oppositional figure
in Edward W. Said’s sense, one worthy of careful attention if not emu-
lation. On the other hand, Chomsky’s scornful attitude toward major
theorists such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and others essential
to the field of postcolonial studies left me somewhat bewildered. It also
seemed paradoxical that, in his regular attacks upon philosophical rivals
like Derrida, Foucault, and Julia Kristeva, Chomsky never included the
name of Edward Said, although the latter’s views about language are
2 / chomsky and deconstruction
far closer to those whom Chomsky reviles than to his own. One prob-
lem with criticizing Chomsky’s views, especially for those who tend to
agree with his courageous analyses of U.S. foreign policy, is that one risks
undermining political objectives shared with him. Therefore, it is tempt-
ing to simply ignore Chomsky’s diatribes on deconstructive theorists1
such as Derrida rather than risk giving theoretical fodder to reactionary
critics of Chomsky such as David Horowitz, Alan Dershowitz, and oth-
ers, who are not themselves able to articulate a compelling critique of his
views.2 Arguably, it is better to suffer Chomsky’s abuse in silence rather
than attempt to set the record straight on his poststructuralist rivals,
given the obviously valuable work that he has performed on behalf of
oppressed peoples everywhere. In any case, this was my feeling when I
lived in Amman, Jordan, where I looked to Chomsky as an exemplary
oppositional figure, as I was struggling to articulate my own critique of
U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. After my Fulbright grant was
revoked, due to the impending U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, I returned to my
hometown in the United States, which was awash in a sea of American
flags, as well as to the state university in Washington where I have been a
faculty member since 1996. The discrepancies between the uses to which
Chomsky’s texts are put in these dramatically different settings seemed
striking to me, if not surreal. While my Palestinian and Jordanian stu-
dents carefully read important books like Fateful Triangle (1983) and
World Orders, Old and New (1994), thoughtfully applying them to the
tragedy of their own lives, the majority of my U.S.-based students stud-
ied Chomskyan “biolinguistics” and did not believe that Chomsky’s for-
eign policy writings merited any comment, much less careful scholarly
investigation.3 In the U.S. setting, students and faculty who adhere to
Chomsky’s linguistic theories are often indifferent, when they are not
openly contemptuous, of Chomsky’s political views. Hence, I began to
feel that Chomsky’s colleagues in linguistics in U.S. academe were not
only selectively reading him, but that there might be something inher-
ently wrong about his orientation to the study of language.
Later, the English Department where I teach required faculty in lan-
guage, literature, and linguistics to teach a number of generic competen-
cies in order to satisfy administrative and legislative demands that were
imposed upon the university from the outside. In other words, to teach a
competency was a means of satisfying the state. Required competencies
in English included revision, research skills, and contextual analysis, all
of which departmental faculty readily agreed were worthy of teaching.