complexity

Mohammad Bamyeh: Anarchy as Order "freedom and complexity are inseparable"

Theme of Chomsky's critique of Skinner, and in his "debate" with Foucault... Foucault insisting that the historical contingency and limitations of utopian ideas in the present makes them ill-suited to unknowable future circumstances; Chomsky acknowledging the limitations, but arguing that the process, the effort to make society more just according to an inchoate utopian vision, is nevertheless worthwhile and important. Foucault arguing that we lack the sophistication to make sufficiently complex plans for a just society, Chomsky arguing that we must try anyway. As has been pointed out (into? film-book?), the "debate" was more of an amicable conversation.

And yet, Chomsky's "propaganda model" (The Manufacture of Consent / Manufacturing Consent) has been criticized, rightly, as unsophisticated, specifically for failing to adequately take into account the difficulties faced by individuals in the media systems he, rightly, criticizes. The New York Times editor interviewed in the film Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media argues that Chomsky mistakes the results of deadline pressures and human error for deliberate cover-ups, etc. — which is precisely the point that Joseph Heath makes, very forcefully, in his discussion of collective action problems (and sub-optimal equilibria) faced by media organizations (Problems in the Theory of Ideology).

Radical or critical?

Fraser: What's critical About Critical Theory? (and... Why Doesn't This Feel Empowering?"...)

"Do You Sincerely Want to be Radical?" Phillip E. Johnson "'contradiction'" "... is not a logical contradiction at all but merely a reflection of the complexity of human relationships. Children love their parents but resent parental supervision, adults desire the secu- rity of marriage but chafe at its restrictions, and citizens regard the police both as protectors and oppressors." "What conceivable political change could alter all this, assuming that it ought to be altered?"

Johnson's critique is clearly in line with Heath's indictment of the countercultural idea, and with the comments Thomas Wolfe makes in the CHomsky film "a way for academics to feel like a clergy..."

status

Postmodernism For Beginners (audiobook): "We want a theory of everything: anarchy!"

theologian Reinhold Niebuhr "Everybody understands the obvious meaning of the world struggle in which we are engaged. We are defending freedom against tyranny and are trying to preserve justice against a system which has, demonically, distilled injustice and cruelty out of its original promise of a higher justice. "The obvious meaning is not less true for having become trite. Nevertheless it is not the whole meaning." By claiming that "Everybody understands" something, is Niebuhr demonstrating a refusal to insult people's intelligence similar to what Heath argues for (in Problems in the Theory of Ideology)? Is this refusal similar to May's / Rancièr's idea of assuming equal intelligence?


 * distinctions**

accumulating complexity

Fraser's four-celled matrix Mark Leier: militance and radicalism feminism: power over / power to Chomsky: Goals and Visions bell hooks: critique vs. dismissal Linklater: apathy vs. withdrawal (in disgust)

see paradox, irony