Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent - Hardcover

Barsky, Robert F.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262024187 ISBN 13: 9780262024181

Publisher: Mit Pr, 1997

Synopsis

This biography describes the intellectual and political milieus that helped shape Noam Chomsky, a pivotal figure in contemporary linguistics, politics, cognitive psychology, and philosophy. It also presents an engaging political history of the last several decades, including such events as the Spanish Civil War, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the march on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War. The book highlights Chomsky's views on the uses and misuses of the university as an institution, his assessment of useful political engagement, and his doubts about postmodernism. Because Chomsky is given ample space to articulate his views on many of the major issues relating to his work, both linguistic and political, this book reads like the autobiography that Chomsky says he will never write.

Barsky's account reveals the remarkable consistency in Chomsky's interests and principles over the course of his life. The book contains well-placed excerpts from Chomsky's published writings and unpublished correspondence, including the author's own years-long correspondence with Chomsky.

About this title

About the Author:

Robert F. Barsky is Professor of English, Comparative Literature, French, and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent (MIT Press, 1997).

From Booklist:

One can hardly complain that Chomsky doesn't write enough to give readers a sense of who he is and where he is coming from. As Barsky, a University of Western Ontario English professor who has corresponded with Chomsky since 1991, observes in his introduction, his subject "has published over seventy books and over a thousand articles . . . [in] linguistics, politics, cognitive sciences, and philosophy." But Chomsky hates biography and deplores personality cults; Barsky justifies his work by urging that "Chomsky's . . . political ideas cannot be fully understood without some knowledge of the organizations, movements, groups and individuals with whom he has had contact, either through study or discussion." His study thus focuses on two milieus: the world in which Chomsky was formed (his home and childhood, education, and professional breakthroughs) and the milieu he helped create (analyzing interactions of intellectuals, the university, and the state, and changes in intellectuals' roles in the twentieth century). An accessible overview; an appropriate acquisition where Chomsky's works circulate. Mary Carroll

About this edition

• Publisher: Mit Pr
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0262024187
• ISBN 13: 9780262024181
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 255