Chris Knight The Enigma of Noam Chomsky Responding to Chomsky’s interview in Radical Anthropology in Issue 2, Chris Knight explores the paradoxical relationship between his activism and his science.
Radical Anthropology: Chomsky is as a computational device.4 It’s He uses language precisely to a celebrated intellectual figurehead almost as if Chomsky the activist communicate – to denounce his own on the left. In your articles,1 you wasn’t responsible for the science. state, his own government, his own always seem negative about his That comes from a different region employers, his own institutional overall contribution. Why is that? of his brain. milieu. Short of denouncing his own science, Chomsky Chris Knight: I’m not negative at RA: Our readers might find this hard opposes just about everything he all. Whenever I read Chomsky on, to believe. What does he actually say? embodies in his alternative role. say, US policy in the Middle East, I’m always in wholehearted support. CK: ‘The one talent that I have RA: Are you saying he’s two- Who else tells the truth so bluntly which I know many other friends faced – telling one audience one and so fearlessly? don’t seem to have’, Chomsky thing and another something else? explains, ‘is I’ve got some quirk in RA: So why the criticism? Some my brain which makes it work like CK: The struggle to survive articles – in the Weekly Worker, for separate buffers in a computer.’5 under capitalism forces us all into instance2 – have been pretty savage. One component produces something like double-dealing for science for a definite intellectual much of the time. We’re forced CK: That’s a different Chomsky. constituency while the rest of him into collusion. We compete to find In those articles I’m talking about produces political stuff for a quite jobs, to survive as wage-slaves, the scientist. Distinguishing different audience. As a scientist, to establish at least a modicum of between this person and the he’s anxious to avoid slipping over economic security for ourselves. activist, an interviewer once asked into politics; as an activist, he Yet equally we need to hold our him: ‘What do they say to each strives to avoid anything to do with heads high, to maintain our self- other when they meet?’. Chomsky science.6 Each separate role comes esteem. It’s not always easy to replied: ‘There is no connection, with its own appropriate conceptual reconcile such conflicting priorities. apart from some very tenuous approach and corresponding It’s just that Chomsky exemplifies I prefer to think of him as the conscience of America. Once you view him in that light, the mysteries begin to clear
relations at an abstract level…’ 3 language, resistant to translation this more sharply than most. across the divide. ‘Now exactly So ‘two-faced’ would be unfair. RA: So Chomsky’s really two how one can maintain that sort of I prefer to think of him as the people? schizophrenic existence I am not conscience of America. Once you sure’, Chomsky admitted on another view him in that light, the mysteries CK: In the 1960s he was so occasion, ‘it is very difficult’.7 begin to clear. ‘What is important’, active people thought there must as he explains, ‘is to expose the be six Chomskys! But, yes, two In his scientific capacity, Chomsky crimes of my own state, which at least. When he speaks or views language as a biological are often hidden from view by writes politically, his passions are ‘organ’ or ‘device’. As such, it’s the propaganda institutions’.8 His engaged and he takes full personal devoid of humour, metaphor, political writings are directed first responsibility. In his scientific role, emotion, communicative intent, and foremost against the military- something quite different seems to social meaning or anything else industrial elite employing him. be happening. According to his own people normally think of as When he began working at MIT, account, one modular component language. Meanwhile, the other in his own words, ‘funding was of his brain – ‘the science-forming Chomsky continues to speak and almost entirely the Pentagon. About capacity’ – functions autonomously write much like the rest of us. half the Institute’s budget was
22 Radical Anthropology coming from two major military which he moved. In May 1995, John scientific elite. How could anyone laboratories that they administered, Deutch was sworn in as Director cope – without a modular mind? and of the rest, the academic side, of the Central Intelligence Agency it could have been something like following a unanimous vote in We can surely understand the very 90% or so from the Pentagon. the Senate, making him head of personal horror, almost personal Something like that. Very high. So the intelligence community – in responsibility, Chomsky must have it was a Pentagon-based university. charge of all foreign intelligence felt while working as a respected And I was at a military-funded lab.’9 agencies of the United States. scientist in the belly of the beast. Shortly afterwards, Chomsky was Denouncing other people’s crimes, Chomsky was conducting his interviewed about how well he’d as he puts it, is all too easy. One researches within what had known Deutch as a professional must expose one’s own crimes – the originally been part of the MIT colleague at MIT. ‘We were crimes of one’s own government, Radiation Laboratory, in which radar actually friends’, replied Chomsky, one’s own institutional milieu had been developed during World ‘and got along fine, although we – to retain one’s self-esteem, to War II. Now that Soviet Russia had disagreed on about as many things be able to ‘look at oneself in the replaced Nazi Germany as the main as two human beings can disagree mirror without too much shame’.13 enemy, the military were interested about. I liked him. We got along Chomsky could reconcile his in developing electronic systems for very well together. He’s very honest, conscience with the job he loved
We’re all supposed to keep political activism locked up in a separate box, insulated by a firewall from science. Mindless activism on the one hand; tongue-tied science on the other – that’s been the tragic result purposes of surveillance, weapons very direct. You know where only by publicly lashing out. He ‘command-and-control’ and so you stand with him.’ 11 Chomsky had to denounce the Pentagon – forth.10 Chomsky wasn’t going actively supported Deutch’s the military-industrial complex to roll up his sleeves and build candicacy for the President of sponsoring his own research. anything which actually worked. MIT, much to the surprise of his Insofar as that complex possessed a On the other hand, he had been colleagues. In the event, that bid conscience, Chomsky was it. He has inspired to take up linguistics failed owing to faculty opposition. retained that unique status to this thanks largely to his activist day. That’s why people come from friend Zellig Harris, one of whose It’s important to grasp what’s far and wide to listen to him. It’s not interests was machine translation. happening here. How many left- just his politics and it’s not just his The project to develop automatic wing academics or activists science. What attracts people – what translation by equipping a machine maintain friendships of that kind? carries conviction– is the painfully with something like ‘universal I’m not saying it’s necessarily evident tension between the two. grammar’ was officially part of wrong. Once you’ve committed Chomsky’s first job. Although he yourself to your chosen profession, RA: Yet you are implacably had other ideas, Chomsky evidently you may have little choice. opposed to his science? felt at home analysing language in But Chomsky’s ‘schizophrenic terms of postulated ‘mechanisms’, existence’ surely starts here, among CK: Chomsky resists the ‘devices’, ‘circuits’, ‘switches’, such intense social and professional behaviour of the military- ‘inputs’, ‘outputs’ and so forth. So contradictions. According to his industrial elite while endorsing it’s not that Pentagon pressure to own account, ‘the CIA does what and embodying its philosophy – its develop their ‘language machine’ it wants’, conducting assassinations, utterly bourgeois notion of ‘science’. distorted Chomsky’s thinking about bombings, invasions, mass murder Let me put it this way. Imagine the how to revolutionise linguistics. of civilians and various other crimes most reactionary possible ideology. It’s not that he took the money and against humanity.12 While aware of Imagine bourgeois individualism sold his soul. In purely intellectual the criminality of his institutional carried to its absolute logical terms, he was already there. milieu, Chomsky rubs shoulders extreme. Imagine a philosopher with these people, works for them, who took René Descartes’ dictum ‘I Now let’s consider the circles in is part of the same professional and think, therefore I am!’ as his point
23 Radical Anthropology of departure. Imagine going further is that I think they are relatively because it’s already there, being even than Descartes in insisting unimportant… Learning language present in every child thanks to its that language exists only in the is something like undergoing DNA. The child just has to find out individual head, not to enable social puberty. You don’t learn to do it; which locally conventional sound communication but merely to enable you don’t do it because you see to attach to the carburetor-concept thought. According to this ideology, other people doing it; you are just already in its brain. Asked whether no one else is required. You don’t designed to do it at a certain time’.14 Homo sapiens possessed the need language to share with anyone According to Chomsky, the concept of a carburetor thousands of else, listen to anyone else, learn underlying principles of grammar years ago, long before the invention
The brain-equals-digital-computer theory marginalises anthropology. Computers don’t have a sense of humour, don’t understand irony or metaphor, don’t try to cheat or lie, don’t have sex, don’t pursue political agendas
of motor cars, Chomsky insists that we must assume no less. As he explains: ‘However surprising the conclusion may be that nature has provided us with an innate stock of concepts, and that the child’s task it to discover their labels, the empirical facts appear to leave open few other possibilities.’ 15
So culture is irrelevant: nothing needs to be learned. Now add to this that you needn’t bother about history: the language organ doesn’t change, it doesn’t undergo significant variation, it doesn’t reflect social or political upheavals, it doesn’t evolve. Imagine someone who claimed that ©ScienceCartoonsPlus.com language was conferred on the first human being in ‘perfect’ or ‘near- perfect’ form as if by ‘a divine architect’.16 Imagine all that and you’re getting close to the scientific worldview of Noam Chomsky. I’m against it not only because it’s nonsense but also because it’s reactionary to the nth degree.
from anyone at all. You know it all are internal features of your RA: Does Chomsky really deny already thanks to your genes. As innate ‘language organ’, installed language’s communicative function? Chomsky explained following a somewhere in your brain. Even lecture about language acquisition: the meanings of words are fixed CK: Language, he insists, ‘is not ‘I emphasized biological facts, and I internal features of this organ, so properly regarded as a system of didn’t say anything about historical not even these need be learned. Take communication… It can of course and social facts. And I am going to the word ‘carburetor’, for example. be used for communication, as say nothing about these elements in According to Chomsky, no child can anything people do – manner language acquisition. The reason needs to learn this lexical concept of walking or style of clothes or
24 Radical Anthropology hair, for example. But in any useful person suddenly got the language a very rare person, almost to the sense of the term, communication faculty, that person would have point of non-existence, who can is not the function of language, great advantages; the person could tolerate what’s called “cognitive and may even be of no unique think, could articulate to itself its dissonance” – saying one thing significance for understanding the thoughts, could plan, could sharpen, and believing another. You start functions and nature of language.’17 and develop thinking as we do saying certain things because it’s in inner speech, which has a big necessary to say them and pretty It’s easy to see why Chomsky must effect on our lives. Inner speech soon you believe them because say such things. To communicate, is most of speech. Almost all the you just have to’.20 Chomsky’s you need someone else. If use of language is to oneself....’19 achievement in this respect – his language were to be regarded as success in splitting himself in two communicative – hence social – I’ve dwelt on all this not to convince – then became in subtle ways a then its study would amount to some you that it’s complete nonsense. model for the rest of us. To this day, kind of social science. Linguistics Of course it’s complete nonsense! we’re all supposed to keep political might then have to retain some That’s not my point. The job of activism locked up in a separate connection with the social science an anthropologist is to conduct an box, insulated by a firewall from tradition, influenced as that is by analysis, something like decoding science. Mindless activism on the Marx. To make matters worse, a myth. Chomsky himself uses the one hand; tongue-tied science on the it might have to connect up with term ‘fairy story’, so we can agree it’s other – that’s been the tragic result. Darwinism, hence with problems pure myth. But why this particular of conflict and competition – again myth? Why those narrative details RA: But isn’t this just an arcane matters of social dynamics, social and not others? And why Chomsky? dispute over what language is and relationships. Why did that particular figure how it might have evolved? Why during that historical conjuncture does it matter so much? How far can
The scientific community needs to defend itself against political interference, no matter how cleverly it is concealed. If science is to come first, we don’t have a choice as to whether to become politically active. If you’re inactive, you’re colluding in someone else’s politics
Anticipating where all this might have to invent that curious myth? you attack Chomsky the linguist lead, Chomsky takes pre-emptive without attacking his politics as well? action. Language, he legislates, is Rather than resort to psychological unconnected with anything else in guesswork, let’s keep to things we CK: Chomsky has certainly the known universe, whether natural know about – to the institutional set things up to make it seem or cultural. It doesn’t have a history; constraints. For Chomsky to manage politically difficult. Yes, the it didn’t evolve. ‘To tell a fairy story his bifurcated life, linguistics at MIT dangers are real. I would perhaps about it, it is almost as if there was had to be perceived as non-political. hold back except for one thing – some higher primate wandering The Pentagon weren’t going to fund the revolution needs to be won. around a long time ago and some an anarchist in his anarchist role. random mutation took place, maybe His officially sponsored science RA: Winning the revolution means after some strange cosmic ray was one thing, his conscience quite overthrowing Chomsky? shower, and it reorganized the brain, another. His entire position – at the implanting a language organ in an best of times a delicate balancing CK: Winning the revolution means otherwise primate brain’.18 Why act – required constant vigilance in overthrowing that elitist philosophy, would such a miracle benefit an maintaining a firewall between the that politics, that class. It means isolated mutant, utterly alone in the two. To prevent leakage either way, putting science first, over and universe – with no one to talk to? the divide had to be categorical: above the needs of big business or Again, the objection is anticipated eliminate every trace of political the military. It means informing and legislated away: ‘Actually, you or even social content from the our practice with what’s best in can use language even if you are science, eliminate every trace of modern science, while at the same the only person in the universe with scientific content from the politics. time liberating science from its language, and in fact it would even How does all this get internalised? current institutional fragmentation have adaptive advantage. If one Chomsky tellingly observes: ‘It’s and political marginalisation. More
25 Radical Anthropology specifically from an anthropological science? scientific, unlike social science. point of view, winning the Language enters into everything revolution means gaining a proper CK: Chomsky’s linguistics is humans do, so whoever conquered understanding of what it means to supposedly non-political. In reality, linguistics, subordinating it to be human. The idea of a mutation though, it’s about as political as the methods of natural science, suddenly installing language is you can get. Prior to Chomsky’s might well hope to conquer the a complete distraction – in my intervention, no one defined rest. And so it turned out. In the view a deliberate one. Whether language as biology and nothing eyes of his supporters, Chomsky language emerged gradually or else. While everyone agreed that was the figure who ‘stormed the suddenly, we need to understand language must have biological Winter Palace’, acting as the most the precursors, the constraints and underpinnings, it was equally prominent standard-bearer for the above all the social dynamics. If the understood to be social, cultural, so-called ‘cognitive revolution’ process was sudden – as Chomsky institutional to the core. It took which quickly came to dominate claims – that implies a social Chomsky to re-invent linguistics as much of linguistics, psychology, revolution. Either way, we need to a rigorously ‘Cartesian’ discipline cognitive science and philosophy. learn as much as we can about that – one confined within the borders He didn’t have to engage directly
The thread connecting Khlebnikov via Jakobson to Lévi-Strauss and Chomsky was a certain conception of freedom — a yearning for necessity imposed not externally but from within
momentous process, that event. of supposedly ‘natural’ science. with anthropology: the revolution was powerful enough to produce More effectively than any During the late 1950s and 1960s, ripples almost everywhere. The intellectual before or since, Chomsky received massive agenda was to discredit Marxism Chomsky has made it seem institutional support for his and replace it with a ‘naturalised’ illegitimate to base revolutionary intervention, which promised to psychology – psychology politics on science. Activists, he turn the tide against the continuing conceptualised as natural science. says, should keep science at arm’s intellectual influence of Marx. Cultural and social phenomena length. You couldn’t get further To finally discredit Marx, there would from now on be explained by away from Marx! Here’s an example seemed to be no choice but to go invoking this or that module, this of how he justifies that stance: ‘The the whole way – the entire western or that fixed property of the brain idea that deep scientific analysis intellectual tradition of social conceived as a digital computer. tells you something about problems science had to go. Could the clock of human beings and our lives and be turned right back to Descartes Central to the ‘cognitive revolution’ our inter-relations with one another or even to Plato? Chomsky offered was this bizarre idea: the human and so on is mostly pretence in my nothing less. No other intellectual brain is a digital computer. It’s opinion – self-serving pretence was in a position to deliver on that a theory which marginalises which is itself a technique of extraordinary promise. No one else evolutionary biology, anthropology, domination and exploitation and had the necessary moral authority sociology and the humanities should be avoided’.21 Marxist or ambition. And as it turned in general – intentionally so. intellectuals, says Chomsky, out, it was a hugely successful Computers don’t have a sense always try to manipulate the attack, whose ramifications of humour, don’t understand masses by invoking the authority are still very much with us. irony or metaphor, don’t try to of science. His own view is that cheat or lie, don’t have sex, don’t activists don’t need science at all: You have to remember that pursue political agendas. Look at everything people need to know linguistics, in the immediate Chomsky’s language organ: it’s as about political matters is present post-war period, was effectively disembodied and lifeless as that. on the surface for all to see. ‘the crown jewels’. It was that There’s apparently no connection discipline within the humanities with the rest of the brain, and no RA: But maybe Chomsky is right which seemed closest to natural connection either with the rest of on that score? Surely it would be science. Mathematics and natural or social life. Provoked by disastrous to mix up politics with physics were viewed as genuinely Chomsky as he relentlessly pursued
26 Radical Anthropology his ‘revolutionary’ agenda, the psychology’, it has only ever been and astral projection’ module.24 ‘linguistics wars’ of the 1960s and applied to just one species – our And so it goes on. Anthropologist 1970s were a disaster for everyone own. Have you ever heard of Pascal Boyer views religious ideas – an intellectual defeat from ‘the evolutionary psychology of as wholly ‘natural’: the modular which we still haven’t recovered. elephants’? Or ‘the evolutionary brain determines which notions psychology of social insects’? Such floating around are likely to get The outcome is that our current things don’t exist because no self- discarded and which passed on.25 state of knowledge resembles a respecting biologist would ever Pioneers in establishing this broken mirror, each fragment consider going down that road. You Alice-in-Wonderland approach telling its own story. We need to put can’t study animals by extrapolating are psychologists John Tooby together the big picture, fighting for from supposed computational and Leda Cosmides. Not satisfied conceptual unification regardless mechanisms inside their brains. with modules in single digits, of the political consequences. You Animals think, they are intelligent, they need vast armies to solve can’t get away from politics – from they are conscious in various ways. every conceivable problem. ‘On power differences, conflicts of But to understand what’s happening, this view’, as they explain, ‘our interest and so forth. In principle, scientists set out from what they do. cognitive architecture resembles
Have you ever heard of ‘the evolutionary psychology of elephants’? Or ‘the evolutionary psychology of social insects’? Such things don’t exist
however, scientific research involves So-called ‘evolutionary psychology’ a confederation of hundreds of accountability and collaboration on is restricted to humans because thousands of functionally dedicated a level transcending such things. our minds alone are imagined computers (often called modules) The scientific community needs to be digital computers whose designed to solve adaptive problems to defend itself against political internal features can be studied endemic to our hunter-gatherer interference, no matter how cleverly independently of what we actually ancestors. Each of these devices it is concealed. If science is to do. has its own agenda and imposes come first, we don’t have a choice its own exotic organization as to whether to become politically A person, according to evolutionary on different fragments of the active. If you’re inactive, you’re psychologist Steven Pinker, is a world’.26 Invent enough modules colluding in someone else’s politics. ‘digital mind in an analog world’.22 and you can ‘naturalistically’ The mind/brain is a digital explain what you like. RA: Can you explain the impact computer, so it doesn’t matter on Darwinism of that ‘cognitive what the physical brain is actually RA: And the effect on revolution’? made of – digital ‘software’ (mind) anthropology? carries identical information CK: A completely new version regardless of the ‘hardware’ (brain) CK: In anthropology, the results of Darwinism emerged, based on which it runs. So let’s ignore have been far-reaching and on the idea that humans alter matter: mind comes first. In similar overwhelmingly reactionary. Take, their behaviour according to how spirit, archaeologist Steven Mithen say, the study of cargo cults in corresponding ‘modules’ evolve pictures Homo sapiens evolving Melanesia. When these were first inside their heads. Nobody ever with a mind divided up into (a) studied, anthropologists treated thought of explaining animal social, (b) natural history and (c) them as indigenous responses behaviour in this way, but then technological intelligence – three to colonial and post-colonial no one ever thought of animal computational modules in all.23 exploitation. The natives apparently brains as digital computers – But what about, say, shamanism? suffered from a strange delusion. In they’re evidently nothing of the What’s the modular explanation for the light of their own tribal values, kind. So we had this new kind of that? The answer duly appeared in a they imagined there must be justice Darwinism, utterly different from scholarly journal: shamanism is the somewhere in the world. When anything Darwin himself could distinctive output of a previously forced to concede that this wasn’t remotely have envisaged. Described unsuspected ‘soul flight, soul so – the rule of the white man was by its supporters as ‘evolutionary journey, out-of-body experience manifestly unjust – they refused
27 Radical Anthropology to give up. Instead, they shifted scientific theory? Is there some The Russian poet who soared responsibility from the living to dialectical process starting highest with such ideas was Velimir the dead. On the day when the dead from a revolutionary tradition? Khlebnikov – the ‘King of Time’ returned to life and established celebrated for predicting the date of their own rule, justice would at last CK: During revolutionary periods, the 1917 revolution back in 1912.29 be done and seen to be done. The those struggling for freedom Khlebnikov’s extraordinary theories white man’s cargo planes and ships invariably resist the prevailing about mathematics, historical time destined for distant lands would deterministic logic – the deadening and language – about the power miraculously reverse direction, belief in iron laws beyond anyone’s of the imagination and the magic bringing untold riches to those who power to defy or overthrow. If of words – heavily influenced had created all that wealth in the revolution is imminent, why not the young linguist and literary first place.27 The new ‘modular’ seize the moment? Why not defy critic Roman Jakobson. Why does approach, however, is to explain the law and, while you’re about it, Jakobson matter? Well, in the 1920s such phenomena psychologically. why not take on nature’s laws as he co-founded the Prague school of Exploitation and oppression well? linguistics. He later became Claude conveniently disappear. The natives’ Lévi-Strauss’ close friend and puzzling behaviour is instead During and immediately following source of theoretical inspiration. traced back to ‘micro-processes the Russian revolution, artists, poets, One final point: in the 1950s, at the psychological level’.28 The musicians and other revolutionary from his office in MIT, Jakobson mind is a mass of computational intellectuals became seized with helped Chomsky to get his first job. modules, and sometimes glitches such hopes and dreams, letting arise. The effect, needless to say, is their imaginations run wild. This RA: So there’s a thread linking to exonerate western capitalism and was the period of cubo-futurism Khlebnikov to Chomsky? colonialism. You can guess who’ll and constructivism – libertarian be funding this kind of anthropology communist/anarchist movements CK: I’ve no evidence Chomsky ever and whose interests are served! heard of Khlebnikov. But Jakobson was a huge influence on twentieth RA: Would you bracket Darwin century linguistics, hence inevitably and Marx together as victims on Chomsky. Jakobson when only a of the cognitive revolution? teenager mingled intimately with It seems an unlikely alliance. Khlebnikov, Mayakovsky and the other ‘futurists’ or ‘cubo-futurists’, CK: Darwin and Marx differed as they called themselves.30 These on many things, but they shared a iconoclasts instinctively embraced belief in the value of conflict, of the October revolution, becoming internal social struggle, of ‘civil in many ways its principal artistic war’ as engines of change. All expression. Khlebnikov explored history is the history of life-and- word roots in his native Russian death struggle for survival, whether convinced that he could unearth between organisms (Darwin) or a ‘transrational’ language of pure classes (Marx). Neither Darwin sounds common to humanity. While nor Marx saw the individual Agitrop poster by Vladimir Mayakovsky perhaps not very scientific, his work mind, whether animal or human, inspired Jakobson, who helped as capable of explaining anything. based on the idea that art was for found a school of linguistics which Both were materialists in that changing reality, not just passively eventually produced ‘distinctive they looked to the body and its reflecting it. Form takes priority over features’ theory. If anything about material interactions – the struggle content. You dream, you play, you linguistics was truly ‘scientific’, to find food, to reproduce and so fantasize – and you fight to realize this was widely tipped to be it. The on – to explain whatever might those dreams. In this spirit, Darwin approach reaches beneath cultural be happening in anyone’s mind. and Marx are turned on their heads. variation to the bedrock of human Those stereotypically grey-bearded, nature – to genetically determined RA: Presumably Chomsky is grim thinkers’ rigidly deterministic, biology and psychology. The not some malevolent scheming spiritually imprisoning ‘laws of pharynx, tongue, lips and so mastermind in the pay of the history’ – whether natural or human forth function as digital switches, Pentagon? What is the intellectual – are cheerfully defied and turned offering no intermediate states ancestry here? How does someone upside-down. Revolution transports between lips ‘open’ and lips ‘closed’, of left-wing anarchist inclination you from the realm of necessity to voicing ‘off’ and voicing ‘on’. end up generating reactionary that of freedom. By combining selected ‘features’
28 Radical Anthropology of this categorical kind, you can working at MIT in the first place? he went quiet on hearing the generate any vowel or consonant in Why did it seem politically terrible news about Hiroshima and any of the world’s languages. So it’s acceptable for an anarchist to rub Nagasaki. Yet the idea of science a kind of universal language rooted shoulders like that with the US against the Nazis was central to in a natural digital apparatus – a scientific and military elite? Let’s the political ethos of the time, universal alphabet of pure sounds. remember how all this started. Go especially if – like Chomsky – you back to the 1930s and to Hitler’s were left-wing and Jewish. And that Is language in its entirety a digital system? And if so, is that a reflection of the innate digital architecture of the distinctively human mind? Under the influence of Jakobson, Lévi- Strauss invented ‘structural anthropology’ on the basis of just that idea. A decade later, Chomsky was gravitating around the same body of theory. Might it be possible, he wondered, to extend distinctive features theory from phonetics through syntax all the way to meaning – to the possibility of some kind of ‘generative semantics’? The idea seemed thrilling since it offered the Kazimir Malevich, ‘The Knife-Grinder’. 1912 Velimir Khlebnikov: ‘the King of Time’ prospect of explaining language in all its aspects in purely biological, rise in Germany. Across Europe political culture didn’t just die at the purely naturalistic terms. What you had a generation of young end of the war. It lived on. When happened next is a long story. scientists, many of them Jewish Chomsky took up linguistics before Suffice it to say that from the anti-fascists and sympathisers with getting his job at MIT, it was with moment it was seriously attempted, the revolutionary cause. When the encouragement of Zellig Harris, Chomsky realised the idea wouldn’t war broke out, it was mathematics Roman Jakobson and a network of work. Intractable problems led to against the Nazis, nuclear physics radicalised scientists and scholars bitter disputes culminating in the against the Nazis, digital computers in positions of influence, many infamous ‘linguistics wars’. Despite against the Nazis. In Britain, Alan of them refugees fortunate to this, Chomsky has never let go of Turing – theoretical genius behind have escaped the gas chambers the basic idea. He continues to view the digital computer – helped semantic meanings as somehow crack the Enigma Code used by ‘internal’ – as genetically fixed the Germans to encrypt military features of the digital mind. The communications. In the United thread connecting Khlebnikov States, of course, scientists via Jakobson to Lévi-Strauss were working feverishly on and ultimately Chomsky is a the Manhattan Project – the certain conception of freedom – a project to develop the first yearning for necessity imposed nuclear bomb. If you wanted not externally but from within. an Allied victory, why not work for their war machine, for the RA: So a school of linguistics military-industrial complex, for originating among Russian your own side’s secret agents revolutionary anarchists ends up and spies? Wasn’t it all part being sponsored by the US military- of the same anti-fascist fight? industrial establishment? A teenager during those years, CK: Yes. And to understand that Chomsky was too much of an trajectory is to decode a good anarchist to feel comfortable chunk of the twentieth century. about collusion with the state. Why, for example, was Chomsky His instincts verged on pacifism: Inputs and outputs: the Enigma machine
29 Radical Anthropology in Europe. Chomsky’s approach all evil, the new totalitarian threat. of the intelligence and power we appealed to them because it seemed In place of science against the already have. We’ve invented almost mathematical, promising Nazis, you could now have science the internet – the necessary understanding beyond mere politics against Marxism – natural science communications technology – but or ideology. Could Chomsky be against oppressive and fraudulent its potential has yet to be realised. the Galileo of our age, destined to so-called ‘social science’. That For that, we need a revolution revolutionize the known world? His was the political thrust behind embracing life, politics and science. friends gave him the benefit of the Chomsky’s ‘cognitive revolution’. We need to bring together the social doubt, ensuring his meteoric rise Having defeated its enemy on the and natural sciences and help solve to ascendancy over linguistics and right, US imperialism needed to the mystery of human origins. much else. Revolutionaries usually target the left. Whatever the details, the process have to fight their way up. In of becoming human was social. Chomsky’s case, the gods seemed RA: What’s the relevance of My commitment is to the human to be hoisting him aloft. all this to our present situation? revolution: the most successful social revolution in history! We By the 1950s, of course, the official CK: There’s no point waiting did it once; we can do it again. enemy was no longer Germany – it around for a genetic mutation. was the Soviet Union. But it wasn’t Becoming human didn’t depend on RA: So when is the revolution? Any difficult for the US propaganda that when language first emerged forecasts? machine to depict Stalin as the new and it certainly doesn’t depend on Hitler, Moscow as the new centre of it now. We need to become aware CK: 2017 could be a good year!
Chris Knight is Professor of Anthropology at Comenius University, Bratislava, having been sacked by University of East London’s corporate management for his role in organising the G20 demonstrations in April 2009. [email protected] Neil Jackson
Notes
1. Chris Knight 2004. Decoding Chomsky. Chicago Press, pp. 84-87. 22. Steven Pinker 1999. Words and Rules. European Review Vol. 12, No. 4, 581-603. 11. Interview with David Barsamian, p. 101. The ingredients of language. London: http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/ Weidenfeld & Nicolson, pp. 269-287. old/class_text_070.pdf 12. Noam Chomsky 1988. The ‘right turn’ in U.S. policy (22 October 1986). In 23. Steven Mithen 1996. A Prehistory of the 2. Chris Knight 2007. The Chomsky Language and Politics, p. 649. Mind. London: Thames & Hudson. Enigma. Weekly Worker, 655 (January 11). 24. Michael Winkelman 2002. Shamanism US Establishment Anarchist. Weekly Worker 13. Interview with James Peck. In Noam Chomsky 1988. The Chomsky Reader. and cognitive evolution. Cambridge 656 (January 18). Chomsky’s Parallel Lives. Archaeological Journal, 12:1: 71-101. Weekly Worker 657 (January 25). Edited by James Peck. London: Serpent’s Tail, p. 55. 25. Pascal Boyer, 1994. The Naturalness of 3. The treachery of the intelligentsia: A 14. Chomsky 1988. Language and Problems Religious Ideas. Berkeley & Los Angeles: French travesty. Interview dated 26 October University of California Press. 1981. In Noam Chomsky 1988, Language of Knowledge, pp. 173-4. and Politics. Edited by Carlos Otero. 15. Noam Chomsky 2000. New Horizons in 26. John Tooby and Leda Cosmides Montreal: Black Rose Books, p. 318. the Study of Language and Mind. Cambridge: 1995. Foreword. Simon Baron-Cohen, 4. Noam Chomsky 1988. Language and Cambridge University Press, pp. 65-6. Mindblindness. An essay on autism and Problems of Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: theory of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT 16. Noam Chomsky 1997. Powers and Press, pp. xi-xviii. MIT Press, p. 156. Prospects. Reflections on human nature and 5. Interview with David Barsamian. In the social order. London: Pluto Press, pp. 29-30. 27. Peter Worsley 1968. The Trumpet Shall Sound. London: MacGibbon & Kee. Noam Chomsky 1996, Class Warfare. 17. Noam Chomsky 2002. On Nature London: Pluto Press, p. 15. and Language. Cambridge: Cambridge 28. Robert McCauley and E. Thomas 6. Noam Chomsky 2000. The Architecture of University Press, p. 76. Lawson 2002. Bringing Ritual to Mind. Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 18. Chomsky 2000. The Architecture of p. 180. 7. Interview with Carlos Otero. In Noam Language, p. 4. 29. Velimir Khlebnikov, 1990. The King Chomsky 1988, Language and Politics, p. 19. Chomsky 2002. On Nature and 98. of Time. Selected Writings of the Russian Language, p. 148. Futurian. Edited by Charlotte Douglas and 8. The treachery of the intelligentsia, p. 319. 20. Chomsky 1988. The ‘right turn’ in U.S. translated by Paul Schmidt. Cambridge, 9. Interview with David Barsamian, p. 102. policy, pp. 653-4. MA: Harvard University Press. 10. Frederick Newmeyer 1986. The Politics 21. Chomsky 2000. The Architecture of 30. Jakobson, R. 1997. My Futurist Years. of Linguistics. Chicago: University of Language, p. 2. New York: Marsilio.
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