A literati roundup: Noam Chomsky to Postmoderns: Over-Inflated ?Polysyllabic Truisms?…

Noam Chomsky Calls Postmodern Critiques of Science Over-Inflated ?Polysyllabic Truisms?

To the delight and satisfaction of hundreds of our readers, we recently featured an interview in which Noam Chomsky slams postmodernist intellectuals like Slavoj Zizek and Jacques Lacan as ?charlatans? and posers. The turn against postmodernism has been long in coming, a backlash the political right has made theater of for years, but that thinkers on the political left, like anarchist Chomsky, Marxist Vivek Chibber, and self-described ?old leftist? Alan Sokal have pursued with just as much vigor (and more rigor). In the interview clip above, Chomsky makes a blanket critique of what the interviewer calls the ?left criticism of science? as imperialist, racist, sexist, etc. His answers shed quite a bit of light on what Chomsky perceives as the political ramifications of postmodern thought as well as the origins of the discourse.

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The Science of Familiar Strangers: Society’s Hidden Social Network

The familiar strangers we see everyday on the bus and in the supermarket form an important hidden network at the heart of society, according to the first city-wide study of these passive links

 

Activism of Bits / Activism of Bodies

Australian digital campaigning organization GetUp! is getting heavy criticism.  The organization, similar to MoveOn.org in the US, is fighting the privatization of public broadcasting and some people aren?t happy about it.  Their members aren?t just being called ?clicktivists,? a familiar taunt, they?re being called ?sheep.?

 

Losses and gains in world of publishing

The new economics of publishing means publishers are tougher on authors, but at the same time writers are enjoying a host of fresh opportunities

 

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