Chomsky @ The Byte; Maine Statement on Digital Poetry

—– Original Message —–
From: "Jim Andrews" <[email protected]>
> Pretty much all undergraduate students of Computer Science study some of
Noam Chomsky's work.
> Most people know that Chomsky is a Linguist, but not too many know that he
was originally
> trained in Mathematics. He made some fundamental contributions to Computer
Science via his
> observations about the structure and properties of grammars. Computers
have to parse language
> quite a bit using the rules of a language's grammar, and Chomsky's work is
relevant here. We all
> know what he has done since then. He is not so much known for his work as
a Linguist now as his
> being a conscientious objector and critic of abuses of power, particularly
in the west, and even
> more particularly by the United States. And it is the language of power he
pays particular
> attention to in the media. "The manufacture of consent" being his most
famous description of how
> power industrializes discourse, how power machines consent.
>
> I bring him up because he is really an inspirational figure not only to
activists around the
> world but also to many of his colleagues in Linguistics and Mathematics.

National Post
Wednesday, June 12, 2002

Matt Welch's critique of the left generally and of Noam Chomsky in
particular (Manufacturing Dissent, June 8) was particularly good. He let
Chomsky indict himself with his own words. As a professional linguist I have
had some dealings with Chomsky, both with regard to linguistic theory and
with regard to politics as well.

For a figure as prominent as Chomsky, he has exhibited some troubling traits
over the past decades.

He has denied taking certain positions in his linguistic work, when one can
grab the book and flip to the page where he in fact asserts that very
position.
Like Cronos of Greek myth, he also devours his own children. I sat in one of
his lectures at the University of Toronto in the mid 1980s and watched him
denounce the efforts of his own followers (who had filled the first three
rows).

For decades, Chomsky has also asserted that language is genetically encoded
in all its important aspects (those not so encoded are, as you might expect,
not important), playing lightly with alternative notions such as those of
Jean Piaget or ignoring humanistic arguments such as those of Oliver Sacks,
while in the next breath he has assumed the absurd position that language
has no evolutionary history.

While he is justly famous for his incisive criticism of B.F. Skinner's
superficial theory of the human mind, behaviourism, Chomsky's own vaunted
promise of delivering an alternative never really bore fruit. Throughout the
years from 1957 onward, when he published his critique of Skinner, he has
basked in a glow of intellectual celebrity unprecedented for a linguist. Yet
to many of us in linguistics this has seemed a persistent puzzle. His ideas
often seemed garbled and his heart clearly lay in politics and not with
language.

He is a political contradiction as well. He bitterly denounces in a
consistently casuistic manner the nation in which he has spent his entire
life and career, while speaking against it in terms that would rarely be
tolerated by any other nation. The very fact that he has enjoyed such a
career without interference discredits the very same criticism that has
formed its backbone. Chomsky, whatever his flaws, assumes almost a tragic
aspect. He is caught between a radical humanism wherein freedom must be
total to be worthwhile and a vision of humanity as unique by virtue of
language. He cannot embed his vision of freedom within the constraints of a
state, and at the same time he cannot free his vision of language from the
unyielding bonds of genetics.

Welch's most important point, however, is that because of Chomsky and others
like him, dissent has itself become discredited. Its state is parlous if not
terminal. Without credible and dispassionate dissent, government tends
inexorably to excess. So do academic theories. Chomsky's legacy may yet
prove to be an ironic one: that U.S. government and that of the West
generally may slip into true tyranny for lack of balance.

John Colarusso, professor, anthropology, modern languages and linguistics,
McMaster University, Hamilton, Ont.


> A large part of the
> 'frame' of his life has been concerned with issues of language. In
Linguistics. In Mathematics.
> In politics. And in media. It is language and its powers and properties
that he has dealt with
> so passionately all these years, as a subject unfolding with great
relevance to our time. The
> foci and intensities of language are not the sole domain of poemy poets.
>
> When we look at the role of language and the machine in what Chomsky has
studied, or what Godel
> accomplished, for instance, we sense that language has become a field of
study and relevance
> even in mathematics, never mind computer science, and that the most
intense involvements in and
> contributions to language shifted some time ago from poemy poems to this
other kind of
> perspective on language and the machine. It is, uh, the era of atomic
language, perhaps, like
> the previous era was of nuclear physics.
>
> A moritorium on programming, literary or otherwise, is not exactly going
to happen any day now.
> A luddite approach to it is not progressive. One may legitimately wish to
be conservative of
> poetry's intensities of language while pressing on with
discovering/creating the human
> dimensions of language and art amid the machine. Because it isn't going
away and, instead,
> society is becoming increasingly mathematized and computerized, with no
end in sight to this
> process. Prometheus didn't put the fire out for fear it was too dangerous
for humans. Who would
> unknow what they know? And who does not want to know more? There is as
much threat concerning
> the 'loss of our humanity' via failure to grapple with this as there is in
seeing what we
> become, intensely, in the meantime and with blood running through these
technological extensions
> of our humanity. So that poetry informs the machine, not simply the other
way around.
>
> ja
> http://vispo.com
> http://webartery.com
>
> + gET readY for the En-gArde!
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