Chomsky on Zizek

[KurtFF8]

I just saw this posted over at Kasama, and it's quite interesting although quite disagreeable.

GWRqPbwwYS0

It makes me wonder if Chomsky ever read what Zizek had previously written about him:


Revolution at the Gates Zizek on Lenin The 1917 Writings[/I]"]It is crucial to emphasize this relevant of "high theory" for the most concrete political struggle today, when even such an engaged intellectual as Noam Chomsky likes to underscore how unimportant theoretical knowledge is for progressive political struggle : of what help is studying great philosophical and social-theoretical texts in today's struggle against the neoliberal model of globalization? Is it not that we are dealing either with obvious facts (which simply have to be made public, as Chomsky is doing in his numerous political texts), or with such an incomprehensible complexity that we cannot understand anything? If we wish to argue against this anti-theoretical temptation, it is not enough to draw attention to numerous theoretical presuppositions about freedom, power and society, which also abound in Chomsky's political texts: what is arguably more important is how, today, perhaps for the first time in the history of humankind, our daily experience (of biogenetics, ecology, cyberspace and Virtual Reality) compels all of us to confront basic philosophical issues of the nature of freedom and human identity, and so on.

Whether or not Chomsky is familiar with this passage or not, they are certainly directly related.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

chomsky has it in for anyone outside of his analytical, empirical and arrogant philosophy of certainty. watch the foucault - chomsky debate to see chomsky's limitations being exposed many years ago. someone posted it on here and there was a great discussion in the thread.

if we take it down to systems of thought, chomsky is well within the liberal lineage...

[L1NKS]

What Chomsky simply points out is, that Zizek's academic name dropping renders his work utterly meaningless in terms of political activism. To Chomsky the most important thing in political activism is connecting with the common man, empowering him by laying political everyday matters out in clear (not simplifying) terms. The use of incomprehensible academic babbling is, according to Chomsky, of no use.

However, I'm willing to concede that Chomsky got a little rough on Zizek there. I think his rather harsh criticism of Zizek is basically a result of Chomsky's experience with a tacit intelligensia, that continues to misuse it's privileges to coerce the public mind into accepting and supporting a political agenda that exclusively benefits the rich and powerful. To Chomsky Zizek's public acting and self importance has just about the same harmful effect.

[Nevsky]

What Chomsky simply points out is, that Zizek's academic name dropping renders his work utterly meaningless in terms of political activism. To Chomsky the most important thing in political activism is connecting with the common man, empowering him by laying political everyday matters out in clear (not simplifying) terms. The use of incomprehensible academic babbling is, according to Chomsky, of no use.

Isn't it more arrogant to assume that the "common man" is too stupid to understand the world and thus, should only be "activated" as a political tool instead of trying to really understand how modern society functions and enlightening the "common man" about it? I think Zizek's analysis of the core of postmodern culture will prove to be a lot more valuable to revolutionary movements than Chomsky's mere idealist activism.

[MarxArchist]

What Chomsky simply points out is, that Zizek's academic name dropping renders his work utterly meaningless in terms of political activism. To Chomsky the most important thing in political activism is connecting with the common man, empowering him by laying political everyday matters out in clear (not simplifying) terms. The use of incomprehensible academic babbling is, according to Chomsky, of no use.



This is the problem with philosophers. Academia in general, but it is next to impossible to speak about/explain very complex ideas in simplified language. This is why Marxism is so misunderstood by so many people. It takes time and effort to understand the scientific materialist analysis. Chomsky more so focuses on simplified thought experiments surrounding democracy, wage labor and such. More of an idealist approach. I'm not calling him an idealist just his method of explaining things. Zizek is guilty of this use of abstraction even more so.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I don't think either of them are interested in anything other than selling books and maybe speaking engagements in Zizek's case. Nothing gets working people all hot and bothered like a good academic rivalry!

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

Isn't it more arrogant to assume that the "common man" is too stupid to understand the world and thus, should only be "activated" as a political tool instead of trying to really understand how modern society functions and enlightening the "common man" about it? I think Zizek's analysis of the core of postmodern culture will prove to be a lot more valuable to revolutionary movements than Chomsky's mere idealist activism.

this is the nature of the discussion - chomsky is an idealist. this is why chomsky is considered a liberal, because liberals come from the tradition of idealism.

the irony is that chomsky tries to criticize people like zizek due to their reliance on academic points of reference but, the joke is that, chomsky's whole project has its roots in academia - read (or watch on youtube) the chomsky - foucault debate and witness chomsky being owned due to his assumptions about a 'human-nature'. the whole notion of 'human-nature' is within the root of western-liberal philosophy (pre-marx, in fact - Marx paved the way for seeing human-nature as a social construct). revolutionary philosophy, politics and action were never a part of this tradition since capitalism was established before marx - marx was actually the fellow who conceptualized capitalism after it had become the abysmal failure that it became and the philosophical tradition behind capitalism used the notions of there being a universal 'human-nature', which chomsky uses in his project.

tl;dr fuck chomsky, he's a charlatan (despite himself using that term to describe others as such on many occasions) and an arrogant philosopher whose methodology and, lineage of thought, link him well within the tradition of liberalism. he's not a revolutionary.

as for zizek, he's a hardcore academic and has never made as many claims towards being an advocate for social change as much as chomsky has (zizek sways around political positions all the time - let's not forget that he started out, politically, in the slovenian elections). i'm not a huge fan of zizek outside of his academic prowess but he is more honest than chomsky, in that he doesn't wholly claim to be an activist or a 'revolutionary' (he may say 'marxist' but being a marxist doesn't make one a revolutionary, especially within an academic context, i say speaking as an academic), and that is what makes him more acceptable. chomsky, despite some of his historical documentation of american atrocities, offers very little in terms of political solutions. in effect, debating these two figures is futile in our regard, when we consider these things.

point me to chomsky's revolutionary ideas. also, note that i would not claim zizek as a revolutionary - he is merely an academic and a famous one. chomsky is the same but makes claims towards being a voice for social change - point me towards this voice, in which it exists outside of the realm and lineage-of-thought as modern liberalism ('human-nature' etc) and I will begin to read chomsky in a different light. i have read him and enjoyed him, but never considered him a part of the left, despite using the terms 'anarcho-syndicalism' and 'libertarian socialism' to describe himself (i say this as, broadly, an anarchist).

we may as well say 'six of one' or 'half a dozen of the other', depending on our tradition, but we know that there is NO difference either way ;).

[L1NKS]

Isn't it more arrogant to assume that the "common man" is too stupid to understand the world and thus, should only be "activated" as a political tool instead of trying to really understand how modern society functions and enlightening the "common man" about it?
Maybe I didn't make it alltogether clear. Chomsky is outspokenly opposed to the notion that it takes a specialized class of men to lead and protect the majority of the public. The "common man" is - like any other man - capable of understanding matters of any kind, especially those that are concerned with the state of the community he lives in. It is just that - and now comes the punchline - the "common man" is not supposed to. The elites that own the mass media control debates by, among other things, framing of issues. Whatever information does not fit into supporting the interests and needs of the rich and powerful, will be rendered unimportant and goes unreported.

To now undo these harmful effects that elites (specialized classes) have brought upon the "common man", it takes the efforts of as many people as possible, not of another specialized class. Therefore engaging in academic debates that are framed by terms only a few philosophy majors (a specialized class) are able to comprehend, is obviously counter-productive. Chomsky does not imply that the "common man" does not have the capacity to understand the debate, it just that he does not have the time, a privilege given to a minority, to engage in learning a specialized terminology. Moreover Chomsky does not imply that philosophical theories can not be useful. He just states that they hardly represent suitable means of addressing everyday political problems and make as many people as possible act on their beliefs and decent impulses.

This is - as I get it - what Chomsky's political work is all about: making people use their innate capacities of understanding and thinking, so that they start regaining their say in all matters that determine and shape the conditions of work and life, of the community they live in.

I understand that Leninists on revleft oppose his approach.

[Lord Hargreaves]

The word Chomsky uses in the youtube clip often is "posturing". Zizek is "posturing". I actually think you could have all the time in the world for Theory and academic philosophy and still think this about Zizek. He takes a kind of hyper-critical, almost remorselessly cynical, position on most things, so one never really knows what his political positions are and what he really thinks.

His political philosophy (like Badiou's) is based on a formal, empty idea of revolution as an utterly absolute ontological break from the present... but it is as if this is more about proving himself to be more-radical-than-thou, more macho and balls out and less wet and liberal, than everyone else (this sells books to white middle class youth who feel guilty about their privilege). It is so left that it becomes sheer nihilism (a problem with the ultra-left in general)

But when it comes to it, the ideas as such don't really mean anything. If you actually set out a political programme, there is always the risk that someone will outflank you on the left and you will lose your street-cred. Zizek avoids this simply by keeping silent on such questions (like if you set out an idea for a socialist economy, someone can come back at you and say "what do you mean you want a socialist economy? Shouldn't we be rejecting the idea of economy itself? We need to be more radical!" etc etc)

[ed miliband]

The word Chomsky uses in the youtube clip often is "posturing". Zizek is "posturing". I actually think you could have all the time in the world for Theory and academic philosophy and still think this about Zizek. He takes a kind of hyper-critical, almost remorselessly cynical, position on most things, so one never really knows what his political positions are and what he really thinks.

His political philosophy (like Badiou's) is based on a formal, empty idea of revolution as an utterly absolute ontological break from the present... but it is as if this is more about proving himself to be more-radical-than-thou, more macho and balls out and less wet and liberal, than everyone else (his sells books to white middle class youth with guilt complexes). It is so left that it becomes sheer nihilism (a problem with the ultra-left in general)

But when it comes to it, the ideas as such don't really mean anything. If you actually set out a political programme, there is always the risk that someone will outflank you on the left and you will lose your street-cred. Zizek avoids this simply by keeping silent on such questions (like if you set out an idea for a socialist economy, someone can come back at you and say "what do you mean you want a socialist economy? Shouldn't we be rejecting the idea of economy itself? We need to be more radical!" etc etc)

you're right about zizek's millenarianism and ideological posturing, but this has nothing to do with ultraleftism, which is a tradition zizek has absolutely nothing to do with (and vice versa). zizek's actual political practice sees him supporting obama and syriza, with some added stalinist kitsch; a reheated eurocommunism with jokes about gulags.

[Lord Hargreaves]

you're right about zizek's millenarianism and ideological posturing, but this has nothing to do with ultraleftism, which is a tradition zizek has absolutely nothing to do with (and vice versa). zizek's actual political practice sees him supporting obama and syriza, with some added stalinist kitsch; a reheated eurocommunism with jokes about gulags.

Zizek's philosophy entails a kind of ultraleftism - i.e. there is nothing to defend or worth defending within our current political systems, liberal democracy is as bad as anything else, reformism and anarchist-style activist politics are equally useless, a sympathy for insurrectionism, etc. - even though he 1) has nothing to do with the tradition of ultraleft politics, and the concrete political positions historically taken by ultraleftists; and 2) he supports various politicians whenever it suits him (but always in an ironic, how-clever-am-I kind of way).

He uses the figures of Lenin and Stalin to pose as a tough guy, since he enjoys taunting liberals, but he doesn't share any of their politics (as you acknowledge when you call it "stalinist kitsch"). So the ultraleft vs authoritarian Marxism debate is not at all relevant here. I also don't see how Zizek could be called a eurocommunist

[G4b3n]

I side with Chomsky on this issue. The agenda of the opposition ought to be legible for the working man. I am not calling the average worker stupid, but I am saying that the average worker doesn't have the time or resources to study theoretical politics all day.

[ed miliband]

Zizek's philosophy entails a kind of ultraleftism - i.e. there is nothing to defend or worth defending within our current political systems, liberal democracy is as bad as anything else, reformism and anarchist-style activist politics are equally useless, a sympathy for insurrectionism, etc. - even though he 1) has nothing to do with the tradition of ultraleft politics, and the concrete political positions historically taken by ultraleftists; and 2) he supports various politicians whenever it suits him (but always in an ironic, how-clever-am-I kind of way).

point one is crucial though; devoid of any historical context, one could perhaps make a crude argument that julius evola's philosophy "entails a kind of ultraleftism", which would be absurd, of course. the ultraleft emerged from a real movement, ultraleft positions are not based on attempts to appear more "radical" than everyone else, but to defend a communist, internationalist perspective.

zizek's explicitly said, for example, that liberal democracy needs the far left to save it, and said so in a positive manner -- "communists" should work with liberals to save liberalism. you couldn't get further from the ultraleft there.

[human strike]

zizek's explicitly said, for example, that liberal democracy needs the far left to save it, and said so in a positive manner -- "communists" should work with liberals to save liberalism. you couldn't get further from the ultraleft there.

I think his point was actually that liberalism isn't viable anymore and that liberals have to side with communism in order to avoid totalitarianism.

[ed miliband]

I think his point was actually that liberalism isn't viable anymore and that liberals have to side with communism in order to avoid totalitarianism.

oh, fair enough, it's been a while since i heard him make that argument and i haven't paid attention to him since; the point remains though, regardless of how that is meant to be understood, there is no "ultraleft" perspective there, philosophical or not.

[Lord Hargreaves]

Zizek's position - as whatever singularity translates it - is actually ultraleftist. There is no such thing as liberalism: you are either a communist shirking your historical responsibilites, or you are actually an apologist for capitalism.

Hardt and Negri's Empire is dismissed as the capitalist manifesto for the 21st century. Anarchist politics is dismissed as an exercise in psychological enjoyment that actually gives support to the state. Feminism, anti-racism and green politics are dismissed as "identity politics", often in ways uncomfortably similar to how genuine reactionaries deal with these movements. Orthodox Marxism is actually the height of idealism. It is easy to get frustrated with Zizek because he needs to seek out novelty and you never really know where you are with him.

[Rafiq]

Zizek, while politically lost, as a quasi marxist is more on par with our current condition than any other left intellectual. On violence, Zizek is phenomenally correct. His writings on Christianity are objectively valid as well. Any future generation of Communists will have to look to Zizek on at least a small level in the same way Marx and Lenin looked to Hegel.

[Lucretia]

Isn't it more arrogant to assume that the "common man" is too stupid to understand the world and thus, should only be "activated" as a political tool instead of trying to really understand how modern society functions and enlightening the "common man" about it? I think Zizek's analysis of the core of postmodern culture will prove to be a lot more valuable to revolutionary movements than Chomsky's mere idealist activism.

No, it's not arrogant, because many academics also have a hard time understanding Zizek and they're trained to swim in opaque and obscure theoretical jargon. Despite your populist posturing, it's not reasonable to expect somebody who works as a hotel clerk, or a waitress, or a busdriver, or a grade-school teacher to understand his convoluted writing. In fact, it's reasonable to assume the opposite.

And no, postmodernism is utterly useless as a guide to political action. At best, all it has done is reminded what you might term "modernists" to be more critical about their assumptions before proceeding.

[Lucretia]

I think his point was actually that liberalism isn't viable anymore and that liberals have to side with communism in order to avoid totalitarianism.

Too bad he was scooped by almost 100 years by Rosa Luxemburg on that one. I guess she doesn't count because she didn't use the words of continental hermeneutic navel gazing... err, sorry, "philosophy."

[Nevsky]

And no, postmodernism is utterly useless as a guide to political action. At best, all it has done is reminded what you might term "modernists" to be more critical about their assumptions before proceeding.

Maybe postmodernism feels useless to you but many other people can relate to the here and now more easily than to 200 year old economists or "actually (not anymore) existing socialism". I would still be an opposer of marxism if I never came across people like Zizek. I as a marxist-leninist believe that we cannot win over nowaday's working class with old, dusty proletarian rhetoric no one except communists wants to hear. We need to understand how today's capitalism operates, how it is able to ideologically control the masses. We need to identify the zeitgeist to apply marxist theory to our reality; and that's what Zizek is all about.

[Lucretia]

Maybe postmodernism feels useless to you but many other people can relate to the here and now more easily than to 200 year old economists or "actually (not anymore) existing socialism". I would still be an opposer of marxism if I never came across people like Zizek. I as a marxist-leninist believe that we cannot win over nowaday's working class with old, dusty proletarian rhetoric no one except communists wants to hear. We need to understand how today's capitalism operates, how it is able to ideologically control the masses. We need to identify the zeitgeist to apply marxist theory to our reality; and that's what Zizek is all about.

"Feels useless" to me? Um, no, the primary philosophical thrust of postmodernism (as opposed to postmodernism in the arts) is a critique of what Lyotard deemed "meta-narratives" or "grand narratives," like Marxism, that attempt to make sense of the sweep of human history by grounding it in certain transhistorical principles and ontological claims -- like the philosophical anthropology Marx laid out in the Paris Manuscripts as the basis for historical materialism. It also seeks to undermine what it terms "essentialism" and "foundationalism." While the latter is a necessary corrective, and actually isn't specific to postmodernism, the former effectively undermines the kinds of knowledge claims about who we are as individuals and as a society in way that makes makes strategic determinations about how to progress impossible.

The only claims it allows are those that are acknowledged to be entirely "perspectival" and explicitly framed as a "feeling" (per your usage above). Anything beyond this, like the sorts of ontologizing that would be necessary to challenge capitalism as a system (and not just in localized ways), or might help determine which "feelings" are more closely aligned to the way the world happens to be, are once again rejected because it is viewed as some kind of non-localized, trans-historical "grand narrative" with a "God's eye view" of the "Truth" (always capitalized). The authors who try to blend postmodernism with Marxism into a kind of "post-Marxism" (like Mouffe and Laclau) all write from this, erm, "perspective."

This is why, while postmodernism has produced some insights useful to activists still pursuing "modernist" projects, it cannot on its own provide any kind of useful political framework for determining what is to be done.

And if you think "dusty rhetoric" is "rhetoric people can understand without a Ph.D. in modern literature," then, yes, I suppose the classical Marxist canon is replete with it. I don't think this is a bad thing, however.

[blake 3:17]

Chomsky on philosophy is terrible. I really enjoyed Zizek's Less than Nothing which is kind of remarkable. His discussion of Fichte is great.

[L.A.P.]

Chomsky is such a fucking self-righteous grouch, now. Chomsky can keep his "serious work" on how Thomas Jefferson was an anti-capitalist, 'justice' being anything but a historically salient word, and other transcendental categories (oh fuck, now I'm posturing). I'll take Zizek's tic-ridden rambling any day.

also, Chomsky works closely with cognitive and behavioral neuroscientists. "serious fields of study" that reduce social relations to processes in the brain and attempt to turn social constructs into transcendent signifieds (fuck, I keep on posturing).

[KurtFF8]

Slavoj Žižek Responds to Noam Chomsky: ‘I Don’t Know a Guy Who Was So Often Empirically Wrong’ (http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/slavoj-zizek-responds-to-noam-chomsky.html)



Earlier this month we posted an excerpt from an interview (http://www.openculture.com/2013/06/noam_chomsky_slams_zizek_and_lacan_empty_posturing .html) in which linguist Noam Chomsky slams the Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek (http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/biography/), along with the late French theorists Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida, for cloaking trivial ideas in obscure and inflated language to make them seem profound.
“There’s no ‘theory’ in any of this stuff,” Chomsky says to an interviewer who had asked him about the three continental thinkers, “not in the sense of theory that anyone is familiar with in the sciences or any other serious field. Try to find in all of the work you mentioned some principles from which you can deduce conclusions, empirically testable propositions where it all goes beyond the level of something you can explain in five minutes to a twelve-year-old. See if you can find that when the fancy words are decoded. I can’t. So I’m not interested in that kind of posturing. Žižek is an extreme example of it.”
Chomsky’s remarks sparked a heated debate on Open Culture and elsewhere. Many readers applauded Chomsky; others said he just didn’t get it. On Friday, Žižek addressed some of Chomsky’s criticisms during a panel discussion (http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2013/07/london-critical-theory-summer-school-2013-friday-debate-ii/) with a group of colleagues at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities in London:
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Žižek’s remarks about Chomsky don’t appear until about the one-hour, 30-minute mark, but Sam Burgum, a PhD student at the University of York, has transcribed the pertinent statements and posted them on his site, EsJayBe (http://esjaybe.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/zizeks-response-to-chomsky/). Here are the key passages:
What is that about, again, the academy and Chomsky and so on? Well with all deep respect that I do have for Chomsky, my first point is that Chomsky, who always emphasizes how one has to be empirical, accurate, not just some crazy Lacanian speculations and so on… well I don’t think I know a guy who was so often empirically wrong in his descriptions in his whatever! Let’s look… I remember when he defended this demonstration of Khmer Rouge. And he wrote a couple of texts claiming: No, this is Western propaganda. Khmer Rouge are not as horrible as that.” And when later he was compelled to admit that Khmer Rouge were not the nicest guys in the Universe and so on, his defense was quite shocking for me. It was that “No, with the data that we had at that point, I was right. At that point we didn’t yet know enough, so… you know.” But I totally reject this line of reasoning.
For example, concerning Stalinism. The point is not that you have to know, you have photo evidence of gulag or whatever. My God you just have to listen to the public discourse of Stalinism, of Khmer Rouge, to get it that something terrifyingly pathological is going on there. For example, Khmer Rouge: Even if we have no data about their prisons and so on, isn’t it in a perverse way almost fascinating to have a regime which in the first two years (’75 to ’77) behaved towards itself, treated itself, as illegal? You know the regime was nameless. It was called “Angka,” an organization — not communist party of Cambodia — an organization. Leaders were nameless. If you ask “Who is my leader?” your head was chopped off immediately and so on.
Okay, next point about Chomsky, you know the consequence of this attitude of his empirical and so on — and that’s my basic difference with him — and precisely Corey Robinson and some other people talking with him recently confirmed this to me. His idea is today that cynicism of those in power is so open that we don’t need any critique of ideology, you reach symptomatically between the lines, everything is cynically openly admitted. We just have to bring out the facts of people. Like “This company is profiting in Iraq” and so on and so on. Here I violently disagree.
First, more than ever today, our daily life is ideology. how can you doubt ideology when recntly I think Paul Krugman published a relatively good text where he demonstrated how this idea of austerity, this is not even good bourgeois economic theory! It’s a kind of a primordial, common-sense magical thinking when you confront a crisis, “Oh, we must have done something wrong, we spent too much so let’s economize and so on and so on.”
My second point, cynicists are those who are most prone to fall into illusions. Cynicists are not people who see things the way they really are and so on. Think about 2008 and the ongoing financial crisis. It was not cooked up in some crazy welfare state; social democrats who are spending too much. The crisis exploded because of activity of those other cynicists who precisely thought “screw human rights, screw dignity, all that maters is,” and so on and so on.
So as this “problem” of are we studying the facts enough I claim emphatically more than ever “no” today. And as to popularity, I get a little bit annoyed with this idea that we with our deep sophisms are really hegemonic in the humanities. Are people crazy? I mean we are always marginal. No, what is for me real academic hegemony: it’s brutal. Who can get academic posts? Who can get grants, foundations and so on? We are totally marginalized here. I mean look at my position: “Oh yeah, you are a mega-star in United States.” Well, I would like to be because I would like power to brutally use it! But I am far from that. I react so like this because a couple of days ago I got a letter from a friend in United States for whom I wrote a letter of recommendation, and he told me “I didn’t get the job, not in spite of your letter but because of your letter!” He had a spy in the committee and this spy told him “You almost got it, but then somebody says “Oh, if Žižek recommends him it must be something terribly wrong with him.”
So I claim that all these “how popular we are” is really a mask of… remember the large majority of academia are these gray either cognitivists or historians blah blah… and you don’t see them but they are the power. They are the power. On the other hand, why are they in power worried? Because you know… don’t exaggerate this leftist paranoia idea that ”we can all be recuperated” and so on and so on. No! I still quite naively believe in the efficiency of theoretical thinking. It’s not as simple as to recuperate everything in. But you know there are different strategies of how to contain us. I must say that I maybe am not innocent in this, because people like to say about me, “Oh, go and listen to him, he is an amusing clown blah blah blah.” This is another way to say “Don’t take it seriously.”
via Partially Examined Life (http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/)
Related content:
Noam Chomsky Slams Žižek and Lacan: Empty ‘Posturing’ (http://www.openculture.com/2013/06/noam_chomsky_slams_zizek_and_lacan_empty_posturing .html)
Noam Chomsky Calls Postmodern Critiques of Science Over-Inflated ‘Polysyllabic Truisms’ (http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/noam-chomsky-calls-postmodern-critiques-of-science-over-inflated-polysyllabic-truisms.html)


The site has audio of the original talk embedded.

[KurtFF8]

And it continues. I'm sure Zizek's pride will make him respond to this:

Fantasies by Noam Chomsky (http://www.zcommunications.org/fantasies-by-noam-chomsky)


I've received a number of requests to comment on the post: “Slavoj Žižek Responds to Noam Chomsky: ‘I Don’t Know a Guy Who Was So Often Empirically Wrong’” (http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/slavoj-zizek-responds-to-noam-chomsky.html).

I had read it, with some interest, hoping to learn something from it, and given the title, to find some errors that should be corrected – of course they exist in virtually anything that reaches print, even technical scholarly monographs, as one can see by reading reviews in the professional journals. And when I find them or am informed about them I correct them.

But not here. Žižek finds nothing, literally nothing, that is empirically wrong. That’s hardly a surprise. Anyone who claims to find empirical errors, and is minimally serious, will at the very least provide a few particles of evidence – some quotes, references, at least something. But there is nothing here – which, I’m afraid, doesn’t surprise me either. I’ve come across instances of Žižek’s concept of empirical fact and reasoned argument.

For example, in the Winter 2008 issue of the German cultural journal Lettre International, Žižek attributed to me a racist comment on Obama by Silvio Berlusconi. I ignored it. Anyone who strays from ideological orthodoxy is used to this kind of treatment. However, an editor of Harper’s magazine, Sam Stark, was interested and followed it up. In the January 2009 issue he reports the result of his investigation. Žižek said he was basing the attribution on something he had read in a Slovenian magazine. A marvelous source, if it even exists. And anyway, he continued, attributing to me a racist comment about Obama is not a criticism, because I should have made such remarks as “a fully admissible characterization in our political and ideological struggle.” I leave it others to decode. When asked about this by Slovene journalist/activist Igor Vidman, Žižek answered that he had discussed it with me over the phone and I had agreed with him: http://www.vest.si/2009/01/31/zizkov-kulturni-boj/. Of course, sheer fantasy.

It’s not the only case. In fact, he provides us with a good example of his practice in these comments. According to him, I claim that “we don’t need any critique of ideology” – that is, we don’t need what I’ve devoted enormous efforts to for many years. His evidence? He heard that from some people who talked to me. Sheer fantasy again, but another indication of his concept of empirical fact and rational discussion.

Accordingly, I did not expect much.

Žižek’s sole example is this: “I remember when he defended this demonstration of Khmer Rouge. And he wrote a couple of texts claiming: `No, this is Western propaganda. Khmer Rouge are not as horrible as that.’ And when later he was compelled to admit that Khmer Rouge were not the nicest guys in the Universe and so on, his defense was quite shocking for me. It was that `No, with the data that we had at that point, I was right. At that point we didn’t yet know enough, so… you know.’ But I totally reject this line of reasoning.”

Let’s turn the empirical facts that Žižek finds so boring.

Žižek cites nothing, but he is presumably referring to joint work of mine with Edward Herman in the ‘70s (Political Economy of Human Rights) and again a decade later in Manufacturing Consent, where we review and respond to the charges that Žižek apparently has in mind. In PEHR we discussed a great many illustrations of Herman’s distinction between worthy and unworthy victims. The worthy victims are those whose fate can be attributed to some official enemy, the unworthy ones are the victims of our own state and its crimes. The two prime examples on which we focused were Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in the same years. A long chapter is devoted to each. These are very telling examples: comparable atrocities, in the same region, in the same years. Victims of the Khmer Rouge are “worthy victims,” whose fate can be blamed on an enemy. The Timorese are “unworthy victims,” because we are responsible for their fate: the Indonesian invasion was approved by Washington and fully supported right through the worst atrocities, labeled “genocidal” by a later UN investigation, but with ample evidence right at the time, as we documented. We showed that in both cases there was extraordinary lying, on a scale that would have impressed Stalin, but in opposite directions: in the case of the KR vast fabrication of alleged crimes, recycling of charges after they were conceded to be false, ignoring of the most credible evidence, etc. In the case of ET, in contrast, mostly silence, or else denial.

The two cases are of course not identical. The ET case is incomparably more significant, because the atrocities could have easily been brought to an end, as they finally were in September 1999, merely by an indication from Washington that the game is over. In contrast, no one had any proposal as to what might be done to end KR atrocities. And when a Vietnamese invasion brought them to an end in 1979, the Vietnamese were harshly condemned by the government and the media, and punished, and the US turned at once to diplomatic and military support for the KR. At that point commentary virtually ceased: the Cambodians had become unworthy victims, under attack by their KR torturers backed by Washington. Similarly, they had been unworthy victims prior to the KR takeover in April 1975 because they were under vicious assault by the United States in the most intensive bombing in history, at the level of all allied bombing in the Pacific theater during World II, directed against the defenseless rural society, following the orders transmitted by Henry Kissinger: “anything that flies on anything that moves.” Accordingly little was said about their miserable fate, then or until today.

Cambodia scholars have pointed out that there has been more investigation of Cambodia from April 1975 through 1978 than for the rest of its entire history. Again, not surprising, given the ideological utility of the suffering of worthy victims, another topic that we discussed.

In these books and elsewhere we compiled extensive documentation showing that the pattern is quite normal: Cambodia under the KR (but, crucially, not before and after) and ET constitute a particularly dramatic example. We also observed that the pattern cannot be perceived, giving many examples and offering the obvious explanation.

What we wrote about the vastly more important case of ET, then and since, has been virtually ignored. The same is true of what we and others have written about Cambodia during the periods when they were unworthy victims, under US attack. In contrast, a considerable industry had been created, with much hysteria, seeking to find some errors in our review of the evidence on Cambodia under the KR and how it was treated – so far, without success. I am sure I speak for Ed Herman in saying that we’d be glad to have it reprinted right now, along with the much more important work on the unworthy victims, just as we were happy to review the facts and the storm of criticism a decade later.

It is not too surprising that no errors have been found. We did little more than review what was in print, making it very clear – as one of the commentators on Žižek quotes – that “our primary concern here is not to establish the facts with regard to postwar Indochina, but rather to investigate their refraction through the prism of Western ideology, a very different task,” and a far simpler one. We wrote that we cannot know what the actual facts are, but suggested that commentators keep to the truth, and that they pay attention to the documentary record and the most qualified observers, in particular to the conclusions we quoted from US State Department intelligence, recognized to be the most knowledgeable source. Furthermore, the chapter was carefully read by most of the leading Cambodia scholars before publication. So the lack of errors is no great surprise.

Of much greater general interest is the fact that to this day, those who are completely in the grip of western propaganda adhere religiously to the prescribed doctrine: a show of great indignation about the KR years and our accurate review of the information available, along with streams of falsification; and silence about the vastly more significant cases of ET and Cambodia under US attack, before and after the KR years. Žižek’s comments are a perfect illustration.

As the reader can easily determine, Žižek provides not the slightest evidence to support his charges, but simply repeats what he has probably heard – or perhaps read in a Slovenian journal. No less interesting is Žižek’s shock that we used the data that were available. He “totally rejects” this procedure. There is no need to comment on a remark that gives irrationality a bad name.

The remainder of Žižek’s comments have no relation to anything I’ve said or written, so I will ignore them.

A question remains as to why such performances are taken seriously, but I’ll put that aside as well.



Noam Chomsky

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I think the opposition between Chomsky and Žižek is essentially a false one: if anything I think their work is complementary, and at the same time, both useful and flawed. I think Chomsky's empirical investigations and detailed media studies provide an excellent picture of reality in which to ground Žižek's grappling with ideology. In terms of their political visions, however, both are fundamentally liberals, albeit of different sorts, Chomsky fetishizing an "authentic" democratic practice that will fulfill the enlightenment project of "Liberté, égalité, fraternité," while coked-out Žižek has a mushy hard-on for dark side of that same project: the law making violence, the Committee(s) for Public Safety, etc. Žižek actually has a word for this implied "dark side", but I can't remember what it is right now.

[Delenda Carthago]

Chomsky might be a reformist, but Zizek is a total clown.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

[. . .]while coked-out Žižek has a mushy hard-on for dark side of that same project: the law making violence, the Committee(s) for Public Safety, etc. Žižek actually has a word for this implied "dark side", but I can't remember what it is right now.

Obscene supplement!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Chomsky might be a reformist, but Zizek is a total clown.

I think you maybe miss the significance of "the clown" as a symbolic figure. I'm sure Žižek intends to be just that: a figure that can speak ugly truths by virtue of their ridiculousness.

[KurtFF8]

And it's getting more popular. Hopefully Zizek responds to the latest Chomsky writing

The Slavoj Žižek v Noam Chomsky spat is worth a ringside seat (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/19/noam-chomsky-slavoj-zizek-ding-dong)




In the great spat between King Kong Chomsky and Tyrannosaurus Žižek people are often asked which side they are on. Or maybe they are not, because until now these two great beasts have been roaring and knocking down trees without anyone outside leftist discourse hearing them fall. But maybe we should think who we would cheer on, because this is a debate about something very important – namely the relationship between theory, ideology and reality.

Noam Chomsky, the professional contrarian, has accused Slavoj Žižek, the professional heretic, of posturing in the place of theory. This is an accusation often levelled at Žižek from within the Anglo-Saxon empirical tradition. Even those like Chomsky who are on the proto-anarchist left of this tradition like to maintain that their theories are empirically verifiable and rooted in reality.

Žižek has countered with the side-swipe that nobody had been so empirically wrong throughout his life as Chomsky. He brought up Chomsky's supposed support for the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s and Chomsky's later self-justification that there hadn't been empirical evidence at the time of the crimes of the Khmer Rouge. It has all got rather heated and intemperate, but then, debates on the left are like that. More time is spent ripping flesh out of each other than it is trying to find a common cause against an apparently invisible and impregnable enemy. But terms have to be defined, ground has to be laid out.

Chomsky is also probably still smarting from his encounter with Michel Foucault in 1971, on questions of human nature versus socialisation. Foucault argued that human society produced ideas in individuals which were the product of the power relationship between those individuals and society. In Foucault's view society took precedence and individuals are unable to uncouple themselves from the power relations at play and which soaked through everything. In which case, it is necessary to have a speculative theory about how the relations of power might work in psychoanalytical terms. This is part of a long tradition of Ideologiekritik.

Žižek stands in this same continental tradition (as well as against it, but, hey, that's his job) of asking ontological questions – that is, questions about being as an abstraction – rather than trying to find out through supposedly scientific methods what human nature actually is. There is an old joke that goes "the Anglo-Saxon philosopher will accuse the continental of being insufficiently clear, while the continental philosopher accuses the Anglo-Saxon of being insufficiently." For Žižek there is no finished human nature, but rather simply a process of working out how human beings are in the world. At the core of this argument is a question of whether the word "real" is spelled with a capital letter or not.

For the empiricists the word "real" refers to something, well, real; something pre-existing which has to be uncovered. For the Žižek/Lacan tradition, the word is spelled "Real" and refers to something which isn't real, is inaccessible, and which can never be defined as it is still, with Hegel, "im werden" (or, in becoming). This "Big Other", as Lacan termed it, is the hole occupied by the absent father or God, so that the Real is only present through its absence. This sort of stuff is dismissed as charlatanry by those who want something concrete to hold on to, whereas for the continentals the hole was always part of the whole. Our being is conditioned by absence, by the something that is missing and by the desire to fill that gap.

Of course, when people look back from the future they will probably laugh about these debates and perhaps wonder whether they were the reason great beasts like this eventually went extinct; but to paraphrase Bertolt Brecht, somebody has to do the dirty work so that "those who come later" can look back and laugh.

• This article was amended on 19 July 2013. It originally referred to Chomsky's support for the Khmer Rouge in the 1960s. 1960s has been corrected to 1970s and the qualifier "supposed" has been added

[Delenda Carthago]

I think you maybe miss the significance of "the clown" as a symbolic figure. I'm sure Žižek intends to be just that: a figure that can speak ugly truths by virtue of their ridiculousness.
Hardly.

[Rafiq]

Chomsky is a piece of shit and an intellectual coward, a moralist, a liberalist, an overall bourgeois ideologue, an intellectual chameleon. This high fool, this shitty contrarian running dog of the bourgeois state is comparable to a teenage Satanist: Simply to be a contrarian. A teenage Satanist tries so very hard to oppose Christianity when in fact his very recognition of the false dichotomy between 'Satan and God' 'Holy or Unholy' makes him all the more a christian as he still presupposes the Christian framework, he just assumes the illusionary enemy of the Christians he hates.

In this sense, Chomsky is a contrarian who still pre supposes the underlying foundations of bourgeois ideology, Chomsky simply represents the negative end of the bourgeois stick, but he still resides on the axis of "positive and negative" bourgeois thought. Chomsky recognizes his own negativity as well. He secretly champions capitalist relations and ideology but thinks there needs to be a balance. Come any revolution, he will be the first to oppose it. He's a coward and an enemy of any Marxist or even anarchist for that matter.

[Karlorax]

Chomsky correctly calls out Zizek's sloppy speculations.

Postmodernism? Derrida? Zizek? Is there any serious philosophy in Europe? I'm sure there is, but it surely is less trendy.

[Rafiq]

Chomsky correctly calls out Zizek's sloppy speculations.

Postmodernism? Derrida? Zizek? Is there any serious philosophy in Europe? I'm sure there is, but it surely is less trendy.

Of course. Chomsky, of course, has the authority to determine, and measure the quality of philosophy, because that's something he has such a great grasp of. Of course, European philosophy is all garbage, what we need is Chomsky's simplistic Idealism.

[Karlorax]

If you want to serious investigations into language, study Chomsky. If you want to impress pseudo-intellectuals at the cafe, study Lacan, Derrida, and Zizek.

[L.A.P.]

Zizek seemed very disinterested and patronizingly simplistic in his rhetoric, and Chomsky just caught him slip and decontextualized his point. I'm grabbing popcorn.

[RadioRaheem84]

What the fuck was that video? Chomsky the anti-theoretical supposed successor to classical liberalism, the self evident philosophizing borderline liberal is criticizing Zizek?

I agree that things have to be simplified in order to decode a lot of the political and economic rhetoric of the ruling class but does that mean we cannot understand and theorize the system that give them power, that makes them the ruling class?

When I read Chomsky, he simplifies political and economic rhetoric to such a common level that it almost, almost sounds like conspiratorial new world order outlook rather than a total systemic critique. It's almost liberal-ish and one can come away from it really thinking that buzzwords like corporatism, corporate mercantilism, etc. are sound explanations of today's complex political economic affairs.

When I hear or read Zizek, he doesn't sound like a pompous posturing intellectual like Chomsky claims. He sounds like an funny, eccentric but sound minded intellectual breaking down the rhetoric and getting us to think for ourselves about the system.

Marxists like Zizek and David Harvey really give people the tools to think about the system itself, it's presuppositions, and it's mechanism. People like Chomsky just focus on the people at the top and what they do and what "power" does. He doesn't mention where that power comes from, why do they have it, why do they wield it?

I am just blown away at how arrogant Chomsky can be sometimes.

[Yuppie Grinder]

I don't like either but Zizek is much smarter than Chomsky.

[KurtFF8]

So Zizek finally wrote out his response (http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1365-some-bewildered-clarifications) to Chomsky. He claims that Chomsky shouldn't have been responding to his improvised remarks at a talk he was given and instead this is the "real reply" in a sense.

It's too long to just repost but I recommend checking it out, it's quite interesting.

[Nevsky]

If you want to serious investigations into language, study Chomsky. If you want to impress pseudo-intellectuals at the cafe, study Lacan, Derrida, and Zizek.

Your rhetoric is a hundred times more pseudo-intellectual and pretentious than the intellectuals in question could ever be.

[darkblues]

db

[L.A.P.]

What Zizek cites Chomsky saying on Cambodia from Distortions at Fourth Hand in the Nation June 6, 1977

Space limitations preclude a comprehensive review, but such journals as the Far Eastern Economic Review, the London Economist, the Melbourne Journal of Politics, and others elsewhere, have provided analyses by highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence available, and who concluded that executions have numbered at most in the thousands; that these were localized in areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence and unusual peasant discontent, where brutal revenge killings were aggravated by the threat of starvation resulting from the American destruction and killing. These reports also emphasize both the extraordinary brutality on both sides during the civil war (provoked by the American attack) and repeated discoveries that massacre reports were false. ... To give an illustration of just one neglected source, the London Economist (March 26, 1977) carried a letter by W.J. Sampson, who worked as an economist and statistician for the Cambodian Government until March 1975, in close contact with the central statistics office. After leaving Cambodia, he writes, he 'visited refugee camps in Thailand and kept in touch with Khmers,' and he also relied on 'A European friend who cycled around Phnom Penh for many days after its fall [and] saw and heard of no ... executions' apart from 'the shooting of some prominent politicians and the lynching of hated bomber pilots in Phnom Penh.' He concludes 'that executions could be numbered in hundreds or thousands rather than in hundreds of thousands,' though there was 'a big death toll from sickness'—surely a direct consequence, in large measure, of the devastation caused by the American attack. ... If, indeed, postwar Cambodia is, as Lacouture believes, similar to Nazi Germany, then his comment is perhaps just, though we may add that he has produced no evidence to support this judgement. But if postwar Cambodia is more similar to France after liberation, where many thousands of people were massacred within a few months under far less rigorous conditions than those left by the American war, then perhaps a rather different judgement is in order. That the latter conclusion may be more nearly correct is suggested by the analyses mentioned earlier.

... We do not pretend to know where the truth lies amidst these sharply conflicting assessments; rather, we again want to emphasize some crucial points. What filters through to the American public is a seriously distorted version of the evidence available, emphasizing alleged Khmer Rouge atrocities and downplaying or ignoring the crucial U.S. role, direct and indirect, in the torment that Cambodia has suffered. Evidence that focuses on the American role ... is ignored, not on the basis of truthfulness or scholarship but because the message is unpalatable.

[L.A.P.]

passage by Zizek followed by the preceding passage

I think the quoted passage confirms that my improvised resume of Chomsky's position about Khmer Rouge atrocities (“No, this is Western propaganda. Khmer Rouge are not as horrible as that.”) is a correct one. I do not agree in any way with those who accuse Chomsky of sympathizing with Khmer Rouge, although I find the parallel between Cambodia after the KR takeover and France liberated in 1944 very problematic. Did de Gaulle after the liberation of Paris order its complete evacuation? Did his government reorganize entire social life into collective communes run by military commanders? Did it close down schools? If anything, de Gaulle's first government was way too tolerant, (among other problematic measures) admitting legal continuity between the Vichy years and the new republic, so that all laws enforced by the Vichy regime (and they were numerous!) remained valid if they were not explicitly revoked. But apart from this particular point, I have some further problems with Chomsky’s and Herman’s old text.

I agree that one should approach reports on humanitarian crises or genocidal violence in Western media with a great measure of skepticism: they are as a rule heavily biased due to political and economic interests. However, although Chomsky claims he doesn’t pretend to know what actually went on in Cambodia, the bias of his own description is obvious: his sympathies lies with those who try to minimize and relativize Khmer Rouge atrocities. This bias is ideology—a set of explicit and implicit, even unspoken, ethico-political and other positions, decision, choices, etc., which predetermine our perception of facts, what we tend to emphasize or to ignore, how we organize facts into a consistent whole of a narrative or a theory. And it is this bias which displays Chomsky’s ideology in selecting and ordering data, what he downplays and what he emphasizes, not only in the case of Cambodia but also in the case of post-Yugoslav war (his downplaying of the Srebrenica massacre), etc. To avoid a misunderstanding, I am not advocating here the “postmodern” idea that our theories are just stories we are telling each other, stories which cannot be grounded in facts; I am also not advocating a purely neutral unbiased view. My point is that the plurality of stories and biases is itself grounded in our real struggles. With regard to Chomsky, I claim that his bias sometimes leads him to selections of facts and conclusions which obfuscate the complex reality he is trying to analyze

[L.A.P.]

last passage of the essay dealing with Chomsky's initial statement

And he goes on and on in the same vein, repeating how he doesn’t see anything to what I’m saying, how he cannot discern in my texts any traces of rational examination of facts, how my work displays empty posturing not to be taken seriously, etc. A weird statement, measured by his professed standards of respect for empirical facts and rational argumentation: there are no citations (which, in this case, can be excused, since we are dealing with a radio interview), but also not even the vaguest mentions of any of my ideas. Did he decode any of my “fancy words” and indicate how what one gets is “something you can explain in five minutes to a twelve-year-old”? There are no political references in his first attack (and in this domain, as far as I can see, I much more often than not agree with him). I did a couple of short political books on 9/11 (Welcome to the Desert of the Real), on the war in Iraq (Iraq: the Borrowed Kettle), on the 2008 financial meltdown (First as Tragedy, then as Farce), which appear to me written in a quite accessible way and dealing with quite a lot of facts—do they also contain nothing but empty posturing? In short, is Chomsky in his thorough dismissal of my work not doing exactly what he is accusing me of: clinging to the empty posture of total rejection with no further ado?

I think one can convincingly show that the continental tradition in philosophy, although often difficult to decode, and sometimes—I am the first to admit this—defiled by fancy jargon, remains in its core a mode of thinking which has its own rationality, inclusive of respect for empirical data. And I furthermore think that, in order to grasp the difficult predicament we are in today, to get an adequate cognitive mapping of our situation, one should not shirk the resorts of the continental tradition in all its guises, from the Hegelian dialectics to the French “deconstruction.” Chomsky obviously doesn’t agree with me here. So what if—just another fancy idea of mine—what if Chomsky cannot find anything in my work that goes “beyond the level of something you can explain in five minutes to a twelve-year-old because” because, when he deals with continental thought, it is his mind which functions as the mind of a twelve-year-old, the mind which is unable to distinguish serious philosophical reflection from empty posturing and playing with empty words?

[RadioRaheem84]

I don't know of Zizeck should bring up Chomsky's Khmer Rouge statements considering they were a big subject in David Horowitz's Anti-Chomsky Reader. Granted Horowitz was trying to paint Chomsky as an apologist for genocide, while is just pointing out Chomsky is fallible.

[GerrardWinstanley]

Isn't it more arrogant to assume that the "common man" is too stupid to understand the world and thus, should only be "activated" as a political tool instead of trying to really understand how modern society functions and enlightening the "common man" about it? I think Zizek's analysis of the core of postmodern culture will prove to be a lot more valuable to revolutionary movements than Chomsky's mere idealist activism.Is postmodernism (or any kind of 'post-' theory) or the obsessive, lifelong study thereof valuable in any sort of way? News to me.