Beginning with his criticism of the Vietnam War in the 1960s, MIT professor Noam Chomsky has become better known for his radical politics than for his theories of language. These essays scrutinize both the theories and the politics: linguists Paul Postal and Robert Levine reevaluate Chomsky's linguistics to find parallels with his politics; scholar Paul Bogdanor explores Chomsky's hatred of Israel; Ronald Radosh and David Horowitz discuss Chomsky's gloating reaction to the September 11 attacks; and other authors examine Chomsky's Holocaust revisionism, apologies for Khmer Rouge tyrant Pol Pot, and strident views on America's policies in Latin America.
Any analysis of the syntax of time is based on a paradox: it must include a syntax-based theory of both tense construal and event construal. Yet while time is undimensional, events have a complex spatiotemporal structure that reflects their human participants. How can an event be flattened to fit into the linear time axis? Chomsky's The Minimalist Program, published in 1995, offers a way to address this problem.
With this study, Vanderbilt professor Barsky follows up Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent, his first expositionary volume on the octogenarian MIT linguist-cum-political writer. It focuses on how Chomsky's political writings-often published in small venues and in reaction to developing events-get disseminated and used throughout the world. The result is an indirect approach to a compelling subject, namely: what are Chomsky's politics, and what broader lessons can be drawn from them? Barsky begins by defining what he calls "The Chomsky Effect," whereby Chomsky's ideas get distorted and argued about in degraded form, whether by bolsterers or naysayers, resulting not only in bad arguments, but in undeserved infamy for Chomsky.
