Chomsky and Deconstruction: The Politics of Unconscious Knowledge

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Chom sk y a n d D econst ruc t ion

10.1057/9780230117051 - Chomsky and Deconstruction, Christopher Wise

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The Timbuktu Chronicles, 1493–1599 C.E.: Al Hajj Mahmud Kati’s Tarikh al-fattash (2011) Being Arab: Arabism and the Politics of Recognition (2010) Derrida, Africa, and the Middle East (2009) The Yambo Ouologuem Reader (2008) Developing American Studies at Arab Universities (2004) The Parachute Drop (2004), by Norbert Zongo (Christopher Wise, translator) The Desert Shore Literatures of the Sahel (2001) Yambo Ouologuem: Postcolonial Writer, Islamic Militant (1999) Litteratures du Sahel (1998) The Marxian Hermeneutics of Fredric Jameson (1995)


Christopher Wise, Previous Publications


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Th e Pol i t ic s of Uncons c ious K now l e d g e

Ch r istoph e r Wi se


Chomsk y a n d D econst ruc t ion


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CHOMSKY AND DECONSTRUCTION

Copyright © Christopher Wise, 2011. First published in 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 970–0–230–11082–3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wise, Christopher, 1961– Chomsky and deconstruction : the politics of unconscious knowledge / Christopher Wise. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978–0–230–11082–3 (alk. paper) 1. Chomsky, Noam. 2. Deconstruction. 3. Linguistics—Philosophy. 4. Language and languages—Philosophy. I. Title. P85.C47W573 2011 410.92—dc22

2010024783

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: February 2011 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.


All rights reserved.


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For Rosanne Kanhai and Bongasu Tanala Kishani


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All of this is done without reasons, just as we follow rules ourselves without having reasons (“blindly”). —Noam Chomsky


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Introduction: The Politics of Unconscious Knowledge

1

One

Cerebral Hermeneutics

21

Two

The Ungiven-Given

63

Three

Locke’s “Misreading” of Descartes and Other Fairy Tales

107

Four

Identity Politics and the Pedagogy of Competence

135

Notes

163

Works Cited

183

Index

193


Con t e n t s


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Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromsoe - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-08 10.1057/9780230117051 - Chomsky and Deconstruction, Christopher Wise

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Th e Pol i t ic s of Unconsc ious K now l e d g e

It is not enough to have ideas. One must also have thoughts. —Friedrich Nietzsche By rights, the content of historical and positive knowledge is not required, as shocking as that may appear. It remains external to the philosophical act as such. —Jacques Derrida

The following book on Noam Chomsky is written in response to my own situation as a professor of English and Comparative Literature in the United States. Before writing this book, I sometimes taught Chomsky’s books on U.S. foreign policy but did not find his linguistic writings particularly compelling and so ignored them. Much of my previous research has been focused in Africa and the Middle East, including postcolonial studies. While a faculty member at the University of Jordan in Amman in 2001–2003, I taught Chomsky’s books on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and also wrote op-ed pieces for the English-language newspaper, The Star (formerly The Jerusalem Star). The historical crises of that period—that is, from 9/11 through the outbreak of the U.S.-Iraq War—inspired me to read Chomsky in a more systematic manner, but also to more carefully investigate his idiosyncratic views about language. On the one hand, Chomsky seemed an exemplary oppositional figure in Edward W. Said’s sense, one worthy of careful attention if not emulation. On the other hand, Chomsky’s scornful attitude toward major theorists such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and others essential to the field of postcolonial studies left me somewhat bewildered. It also seemed paradoxical that, in his regular attacks upon philosophical rivals like Derrida, Foucault, and Julia Kristeva, Chomsky never included the name of Edward Said, although the latter’s views about language are


I n t roduc t ion


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far closer to those whom Chomsky reviles than to his own. One problem with criticizing Chomsky’s views, especially for those who tend to agree with his courageous analyses of U.S. foreign policy, is that one risks undermining political objectives shared with him. Therefore, it is tempting to simply ignore Chomsky’s diatribes on deconstructive theorists1 such as Derrida rather than risk giving theoretical fodder to reactionary critics of Chomsky such as David Horowitz, Alan Dershowitz, and others, who are not themselves able to articulate a compelling critique of his views.2 Arguably, it is better to suffer Chomsky’s abuse in silence rather than attempt to set the record straight on his poststructuralist rivals, given the obviously valuable work that he has performed on behalf of oppressed peoples everywhere. In any case, this was my feeling when I lived in Amman, Jordan, where I looked to Chomsky as an exemplary oppositional figure, as I was struggling to articulate my own critique of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. After my Fulbright grant was revoked, due to the impending U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, I returned to my hometown in the United States, which was awash in a sea of American flags, as well as to the state university in Washington where I have been a faculty member since 1996. The discrepancies between the uses to which Chomsky’s texts are put in these dramatically different settings seemed striking to me, if not surreal. While my Palestinian and Jordanian students carefully read important books like Fateful Triangle (1983) and World Orders, Old and New (1994), thoughtfully applying them to the tragedy of their own lives, the majority of my U.S.-based students studied Chomskyan “biolinguistics” and did not believe that Chomsky’s foreign policy writings merited any comment, much less careful scholarly investigation.3 In the U.S. setting, students and faculty who adhere to Chomsky’s linguistic theories are often indifferent, when they are not openly contemptuous, of Chomsky’s political views. Hence, I began to feel that Chomsky’s colleagues in linguistics in U.S. academe were not only selectively reading him, but that there might be something inherently wrong about his orientation to the study of language. Later, the English Department where I teach required faculty in language, literature, and linguistics to teach a number of generic competencies in order to satisfy administrative and legislative demands that were imposed upon the university from the outside. In other words, to teach a competency was a means of satisfying the state. Required competencies in English included revision, research skills, and contextual analysis, all of which departmental faculty readily agreed were worthy of teaching.


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The faculty member in English was deemed a competent authority to teach such skills by virtue of the academic credentials gained within academe. Though faculty taught competencies in traditional areas of literary inquiry, including Medieval, Renaissance, Neoclassical, and Romantic literary periods, competency in this context did not refer to any specific movement, author, or text, but rather to a rational concept that had been emptied of historical specificity. Faculty imagined competency to be a value-free skill that served the interests of the student, the taxpayer, and the state. Linguistics faculty, who are housed in English, and ultimately the humanities college, were also supportive of teaching generic competencies, a goal that reinforced rationalist and Chomskyan notions of linguistic competence, or ratio as it is called in its classical Cartesian formulation. Yet there seemed to me something essentially problematic about this unified effort to teach generic competencies in English and linguistics courses, precisely at the moment that the United States was spending billions of dollars pacifying Iraq and Afghanistan. I was nonetheless compelled to admit that a pedagogy of generic competencies confers obvious benefits upon those faculty who teach them, for it provides a means of avoiding reference to history itself, which is often messy, uncomfortable, and controversial. Moreover, the very notion that university faculty teach value-free competencies unambiguously clarifies who it is that correctly perceives the truth, and who it is that lacks competence by virtue of the institutional roles assumed within the classroom setting. The department that teaches generic competencies, rather than affirms the value of specific and identifiable texts, is certain to satisfy university administrators who must appease state legislators’ demands for accountability. Such legislators may also assure their voting constituencies that they are riding herd on politically recalcitrant faculty and not wasting taxpayer dollars, which are being spent on fostering technical skills rather than promoting any particular ideological agendas. At the end of the day, professors who teach a generic competency have earned their paychecks by proving themselves useful to the state while avoiding the historical nightmare of post-9/11 political life. They have also, like their colleagues who teach biolinguistics, staked their own specious claims toward advancing scientific objectives, rather than merely philosophical ones. At my own university, the success of the competency model in my department inspired administrators to follow its example and to investigate the possibility that the university uniformly mandate that faculty who teach GUR courses (General University Requirements)


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must also teach generic competencies in order to satisfy state legislators’ increasingly noisy demands for accountability. Because faculty who are competent choose to teach generic skills rather than specific texts, as one might teach a mathematical formula or an abstract problem of logic, their own personal life histories may also be disregarded as insignificant. Faculty who teach competencies are not political delegates but institutionally authorized experts. Only the institutional credentials that are granted to them within academe itself are deemed worthy of merit, whereas the university is imagined as a hermetic universe that was never founded as a political act. Consequently, a pedagogy of competence is one that may dispense with the life history of the expert who professes scholarly expertise within the university. The assertion that all human beings are the same because they are all speakers of language—unlike apes, aardvarks, cats, dogs, and birds—is a defining feature of Chomskyan (and ultimately Cartesian) thought, but it is also a powerful means of leveling differences that may not seem significant to the Martian scientist, as Chomsky often puts it, but that are certainly important to those whose lives are bound to this planet at this particular moment in time. Finally, my reservations about Chomsky were compounded by my ongoing research in African studies, particularly the West African Sahel, which tended to reinforce my hypothesis that some articulations of deconstruction may share important commonalities with African and Middle Eastern views of language, especially in the writings of Derrida. This was a question I had investigated in my book Derrida, Africa, and the Middle East (2009), much of which was written at this time. That is, I did not believe that it was incidental that Derrida was born and raised in Northwest Africa, but that his thought is inextricable from the cultural setting in which it was nurtured. Although Derrida offers a uniquely Sephardic Jewish perspective, his thought is certainly influenced by prominent African and Middle Eastern ways of thinking about language. For this reason, Chomsky’s hostile diatribes against Derrida seemed xenophobic to me, and they also seemed to echo imperialist and “enlightened” responses to African and Middle Eastern views of language that I had previously studied in imperialist travelogues. I also wondered if Chomsky’s contempt for Derrida replayed the Ashkenazi scorn for Sephardic culture, a common enough dynamic in Israel and the Jewish Diaspora. In other words, I believed then and now that Chomsky assumed the defensive and reactionary posture of the European imperialist who is contemptuous of a “barbaric” culture





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that he does not understand. As my book Derrida, Africa, and the Middle East attempts to demonstrate, Derrida’s Sephardic heritage is inextricable from the Northwest African setting where Jews like Derrida lived for centuries, before the founding of the modern state of Israel. Because Chomsky does not understand Derrida’s views, he concludes that they make no sense whatsoever, that his writings are all mumbo-jumbo, flabbiness, and fraud. For these reasons and others, I seek to clarify what is at stake for deconstructive theorists who do not accept Chomsky’s views about language, but who nonetheless seek to articulate a responsible and humane politics of engagement. I argue here that Chomsky’s claim to scientific authority is a rhetorical ploy, and that he too cannot escape the fact of his human existence. He is not a Martian scientist, a figure that he commonly evokes in his studies of human language, but a human being who lives on the planet Earth. This book is therefore a response to Chomsky’s philosophy of language.4 Its ultimate objective is not really an objective at all, although I do insist upon the priority of the philosophical question over the rational hypothesis. My book is a critique of Chomsky’s scientific model of language, which shows that Chomsky too is a philosopher of language, despite his frequent disavowals.5 In contrast to Chomsky, I argue that all rational theses will short-circuit when subordinated to the “logic” of the question. Against Chomskyan objectivism, I do not assert the rational thesis of the question, but pose the philosophical question of the question.6 By way of contrast, Chomsky refers to philosophical responses to his views as disqualified from serious consideration because of their “illegitimate recourse to a bifurcation thesis” (Rules and Representations 258). For instance, Chomsky dismisses the response to his own views by Hilary Putnam because Putnam allegedly asserts “a strong version of the bifurcation thesis,” or “a substantive metaphysical thesis [my emphasis]” (19). Those who do not accept Chomsky’s hasty assessment that they advocate a metaphysical thesis are dismissed on the grounds that they are promoting “an irrational form of dualism” (The Architecture of Language 7). What Chomsky calls “an irrational form of dualism” is another way of characterizing ontological thought. By employing phrases like “the bifurcation thesis” or “the metaphysical thesis,” Chomsky transforms what Martin Heidegger once called the question that is “first in rank” into a mere rational thesis, or he construes metaphysics as yet another scientific endeavor that involves the assertion of a rational thesis.7 Ironically, Chomsky states, “though I am alleged to be one of the exponents of [the





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innate] hypothesis . . . I have never defended it and have no idea what it is supposed to be” (New Horizons in the Study of Language 66). Implausible though this claim may be, Chomsky goes on to assert that, “people who are supposed to be defenders of ‘the innateness hypothesis’ do not defend the hypothesis, or even use the phrase, because there is no such general hypothesis, rather only specific hypotheses about the innate resources of the mind, in particular its language faculty” (66). Yet, even if the theorist of the innate hypothesis does not conflate all hypotheses into a general one, the fact remains that Chomsky asserts specific hypotheses regarding the innate organic structures of the mind as a priori forms that endure in time and space. Furthermore, he posits that these innate structures are indeed shared across the human species. Chomsky complains that, “the term ‘innateness hypothesis’ is generally used by critics rather than advocates of the position to which it refers” (Reflections on Language 13). Hence, he never uses the phrase “because it can only mislead” (13). “Every ‘theory of language’ that is even worth considering incorporates an innateness hypothesis,” Chomsky insists (13). But, as we will explore here, those theories that he cites only posit quasi-innate hypotheses, which, as John Locke rightly points out, suggest that the innate hypothesis is a matter of philosophical doctrine, not scientific certainty. The quasi-innate idea is also a metaphysical idea because it is secretly an adventitiously innate idea, as Chomsky himself is finally compelled to acknowledge.8 Chomsky’s doctrine of the quasi-innate idea therefore remains indebted to the Lockean concept of the idea as a trace of the real. This book seeks to show that the demand that copious empirical evidence be produced in support of any philosophy of language—including those masquerading as brain science—is already misplaced because there is no way to ever satisfy it. To cite Heidegger, “the style of the sciences, their ‘operation,’ enjoins them to bring to light something new and, preferably, difficult; to pour forth constantly an abundance of new cognitions” (Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle 23). But it is not the aim of philosophical inquiry to say what is new. While Chomsky has published a vast number of books and articles over the past 50 years, the dogmatic tenets of his philosophy of language have remained unaltered since the publication of his inaugural book, Cartesian Linguistics (1966).9 Yet it never occurs to Chomsky that philosophical questions cannot be settled with empirical evidence alone. “Perhaps that which can be proven and consequently must be proven is fundamentally of little value,”





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Heidegger suggests (The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics 14). This is so because the demand for proof assumes the priority of the rational thesis. Linguists who adhere to Chomsky’s views on language acquisition assert that their research offers indisputable scientific evidence of the rationalist hypothesis that universal grammar is innate to the human species. The philosophical rejoinder to this assertion is that the question of language acquisition is an epistemological one before it becomes a scientific one. To ask how a child is able to acquire language is tantamount to asking how it is possible for the child to possess knowledge of the world of exterior objects, for, like all other objects that are external to humans, language is, first and foremost, an empirical trace of the real in the objective world of the senses. This is as true for Chomsky’s theory of mind as it is for Locke’s. Once this is clear, Chomsky’s epistemology may be measured in comparison with the epistemological views of many of the language theorists whom he reviles as frauds. Current empiricist epistemologies of language evolved within a post-Kantian framework, one in which the British empiricist tradition, which historically preceded Immanuel Kant, had already been rethought. Chomsky elides the fact that the Kantian a priori form is only temporal and therefore refers to nothing. That is, Kant is careful not to assign objective reality to his own a priori categories of the mind. This Kantian view is very different from that of Chomsky, who will insist that the a priori form may be construed as a spatially real entity. To cite Chomsky, “We depart from tradition in several respects, specifically, in taking the ‘a priori system’ to be biologically determined” (Reflections on Language 39). In effect, he transforms Kantian a priori structures into objective ones, thereby converting the a priori into a concrete thing that is secretly a metaphysical object. But Chomsky also claims that the child must have some empirical experience of language, however minimal, to acquire language in the first place (Cartesian Linguistics 120). This is so whether the word appears to the child as a visual object upon the lens of the eye or is felt as an invisible force that reverberates within his or her ear. Children cannot become speakers of language until they are exposed to empirical stimuli that are seen, heard, felt, and so on. Chomsky states that universal grammar exists in the mind in a spatial sense, and not as an empty temporal category, because he is in search of a solid footing. Like Descartes, Chomsky seeks a transcendental ground upon which to place his feet, and the empty and temporal forms of Kant do not provide him with the frankly logocentric—and finally theological—foundation that he seeks.





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The ultimate goal for Chomsky is to claim certain knowledge, a form of knowledge that Kant believed to be unavailable to those who are merely human. I will suggest here that for Chomsky this claim is asserted in order to gain power, not knowledge. Chomsky also argues that the validity of his linguistic analyses depends upon the strength of their explanatory power. What Chomsky calls “explanatory power” is claimed not be a matter of mere rhetoric but hard science. Chomsky insists that he is a hard scientist, rather than a flaccid humanist, and that the problems he addresses are both real and enduring. The biolinguist is engaged in “extremely hard problems,” he asserts (New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind 5). In fact, Chomsky maintains that, “all questions become harder, hence more interesting and significant—insofar as there is some truth to the strong thesis” (Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework 9). This is so because “some significant [and unverifiable] intuition may lie behind [the strong thesis]” (9). Yet, as the hard linguist proceeds with his enduringly real analyses, the firm ground upon which he stands invariably is transformed into shifting sand: “We proceed with tentative proposals that seem reasonably firm,” Chomsky states, “expecting the ground to shift as more is learned” (10). But, what is perhaps most remarkable about the hard thesis is that it is also an innocent one. Reflecting upon the less than enthusiastic reception of his views in some quarters, Chomsky states, “I once presented what I thought was an innocent and uncontroversial statement of idealization that seems to me of critical importance. . . . The formulation [still] seems to me innocent, but it is obviously far from uncontroversial [my emphasis]” (Rules and Representations 24–25). Not only is the rational theory of universal grammar “innocent,” but Chomsky also maintains that it is “simple” and “elegant”: “Much of the most fruitful inquiry into generative grammar in the past years has pursued the working hypothesis that UG [universal grammar] is a simple and elegant theory, with fundamental principles that have an intuitive character and broad generality [my emphasis]” (The Minimalist Program 29). Retaining his claim to objectivity, simplicity, and innocence, Chomsky ponders, “Exactly what is the source of the objection [to my views]?” (25). It does not occur to Chomsky that his “naïve” claim to natural innocence, even as he aggressively asserts his hard thesis, may seem to others to be a calculated form of political violence. The innocent scientist encourages his readers to “imagine a creature so magnificently endowed as to be in a position to regard humans rather in the way that we regard fruit flies” (Essays on





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Form and Interpretation 63). Yet Chomsky is also aware that his linguistic views are Machiavellian because they imply the necessity of asserting the strong thesis in the absence of founding principles in order to ground his rhetorical claims. “Often I will make some decision for concreteness in order to proceed,” Chomsky admits, “though leading ideas may not be crucially at stake in such decisions. The distinction between leading ideas and mode of execution is a rough but nevertheless useful one [my emphasis]” (Lectures on Government and Binding 2).10 In fact, Chomsky is only able to advance the claim that he has found an objective ground upon which to stand by conflating faith and knowledge, or what he prefers to call “unconscious knowledge.” Like Descartes before him, Chomsky imagines that he possesses certain knowledge of the mysterious objects that haunt the mind, which he also acknowledges are mere hypotheses that he is unable to confirm—even as he insists that he is certain of their existence: “There is no doubt that language is an innate faculty [my emphasis],” Chomsky asserts, at least not for him (The Architecture of Language 51). At the same time, human beings are comparable to rats in a maze presented with an enigma that is beyond their ability to resolve.11 By calling belief unconscious knowledge, or what is normally construed as faith, belief in the unseen and occulted thing that is lodged inside the head is converted into scientific knowledge of which one may be certain: universal grammar is the unseen thing that will always elude empirical observation, but Chomsky also asserts that we may acquire verifiable knowledge of this unseen thing, as evidenced by the external inscriptions that are meticulously catalogued by the linguist. The contradictory hypothesis of unconscious knowledge satisfies Chomsky’s irrational longing for rational certainty and gets him out of the aggravating problematic of belief. For Chomsky, this spatial structure is there as an actual object that is extended in space and is not a mere temporal category; however, to profess a rational belief of this nature is not to be in possession of a rational truth, for belief always already implies the lack of knowledge. Universal grammar is a thing that can only be affirmed as a matter of faith. It cannot be known, not even unconsciously. Chomsky asserts that belief is a form of knowledge in order to lay claim to certainty in a Cartesian sense. In this way, he may at last stand upon the bedrock of certitude that Descartes imagined he had found, thereby dismissing all doubts and anxieties. For the deconstructive theorist, by way of contrast, the human experience of anxiety is inextricable from the entity that we are.12 To banish all doubts is to





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cease to exist as a living being of limited duration on the planet Earth. In Heideggerian terms, care is a primary modality of being and “the basic state of Dasein” (Being and Time 293). This is why it is fair to say that Chomsky is literally careless in his approach to the question of language acquisition. Chomsky asserts that, “It is a historical oddity that linguistics, and ‘soft sciences’ generally, are often subjected to methodological demands of a kind never taken seriously in the far more developed natural sciences [my emphasis]” (A Minimalist Program For Linguistic Theory 62). In effect, Chomsky finds it “odd” that human beings like Heidegger and Derrida actually care about their language beyond its objective value for the natural sciences. “In the case of humans,” Chomsky states, “though not other organisms, the issues are subject to controversy, often impassioned, and needless [my emphasis]” (Deviation by Phrase 34). Chomsky’s thought is nihilistic, for his hypothesis that there is such a thing as universal grammar is an affirmation of reason that neglects to reflect upon the groundless grounds of his confident claims to rational certainty. Chomsky does not want reason to be subject to the anarchistic and atheistic tribunal of philosophy. He does not want to pose the question of why reason itself must be rendered—and to whom.13 However, universal grammar remains a pre-linguistic rule that one may only believe. The Chomskyan linguist will insist that there is actual evidence that something is really there on the human interior, while shrugging off the metaphysical implications of this “powerful” claim. Chomsky repeatedly asserts that, “There is no further ontological import to such references to mind or mental representations and acts [my emphasis]” (Rules and Representations 5). Yet he does not reflect upon the consequences of his insertion of the qualifying word “further” in this instance; for, even if there is no “further” ontological import in this case, there nonetheless remains some ontological import, a matter that is not to interrupt the musings of the serious brain scientist. To the observation that his thought may be unproblematically situated within the history of Western metaphysics, Chomsky believes that, “Talk of ‘what minds are’ makes some sense for Descartes, but not in the post-Newtonian tradition . . .” (“Replies” 258). Chomsky asserts that by calling the interior trace also occulted, he has rendered metaphysics irrelevant. But, even if what Chomsky calls universal grammar was truly there, it would still be somewhere rather than nowhere, and it would still be something rather than nothing. Chomsky’s occulted ghost does not live on the planet Mars with the extra-human observer,





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but on the planet Earth in the brain of Noam Chomsky. It is therefore as real as any other empirical object, which is to say it is a “vapor” or a trace of the real.14 This occulted vapor is alleged to be present and not absent. Universal grammar is a fixed-rule system that is alleged to be there because its existence is verified by the biolinguist’s empirical discoveries; yet no one will know for certain that universal grammar actually exists. Knowledge for the Chomskyan linguist is not knowledge. It is unconscious knowledge, or belief in a thing that is unseen. Descartes insists that the intuitive claim that the res cogitans exists provides irrefutable evidence that it was placed there by a superior power, for how else could it have gotten there? Chomsky refers to this dilemma as “Plato’s Problem” in reference to the Platonic theme of pre-existing human knowledge. However, Chomsky’s reading of Plato is superficial at best. In the dialogue Meno, for instance, Plato affirms a concept of truth as correct perception, but he also preserves the pre-Socratic notion of truth as an incalculable temporal event. As Heidegger puts it, “logos has the character of deloun, of revealing, not only in Heraclitus but still in Plato” (Introduction to Metaphysics 182). Unlike Chomsky, Plato is certainly not oblivious to metaphysical questions of temporality, forgetting, and non-being (or khora). In fact, they are central to his concerns. In contrast to Chomsky’s gloss on Plato, Derrida distinguishes between the actual writings of Plato and what he calls “the Platonism effect” (On the Name 120). While Chomsky is under the spell of “the Platonism effect,” it is not clear that he has ever actually read the writings of Plato, at least in the sense of what reading a text means to figures like Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida.15 Chomsky calls Descartes’ metaphysical essence an occulted ghost that arrived in the course of human evolution and therein imagines that he has escaped the most enduring problems of metaphysical inquiry. The evolutionary narrative that Chomsky recounts about the occulted trace also implies that the human head was an empty receptacle, or tabula rasa, before its metamorphosis into universal grammar. Hence, when Chomsky calls Locke’s doctrine of the blank slate absurd, he only means that it is no longer tenable in the aftermath of the inexplicable event of the language ghost’s mutation into an autonomous entity. Yet if a divine being did not insert the language ghost into the human being, and the ghost is not an external trace of the real, it is nonetheless there, and it is also autonomous. Furthermore, the ghost is always already in need of a placeless place in which to appear. Like Descartes’





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res cogitans, this occult ghost clearly “needs no place and depends on no material thing” (Descartes Meditations 54). In other words, the doctrine of universal grammar necessarily depends upon the doctrine of the blank slate. As a case in point, Chomsky acknowledges that what he calls deep and surface structures “need not be identical” (Cartesian Linguistics 79); or that they do not correspond in any “point-by-point” sense (80). But, if deep and surface structures are not identical, what is it that lies in between these non-identical structures, if anything? In deconstructive terms, this problem inevitably opens inquiry into the question of différance, khora, nothingness, or the blank slate (or tabula rasa). Despite the fact that Descartes explicitly acknowledges the metaphysical basis of his views, Chomsky argues that Locke failed to grasp that the Cartesian innate idea, like the “adventitious” (or empirically based) idea, must first be activated in actual historical situations involving real human beings. He also argues that Locke only criticized the doctrine of the innate idea in “its crudest form.” Echoing the views of Locke’s editor and annotator Alexander Campbell Fraser, Chomsky asserts that Descartes construed the innate idea to be a “virtually” innate idea rather than an idea that is totally independent of the world of sensory perception (Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 42 n. 3). Yet even if this reading is correct—which is debatable—Chomsky has done little more than recuperate a concept of the innate idea that is merely quasi-innate, which means that it is secretly an adventitious idea. As Locke argued, the innate idea is finally an adventitious idea, or a subtler version of the adventitious idea. Yet, if this is so, it is worth asking why the innate idea deserves to be called an innate idea at all, considering that it only seems to be independent of the sensory world. In fact, it remains utterly dependent upon the sensory world. While Descartes asserted the metaphysical existence of the res cogitans, even if this is not the case with Chomsky’s ghostly object, it should also be remembered that Locke responds to the writings of Descartes and not to those of Chomsky: hence, Locke’s critique of Descartes remains as valid as ever. But this also means that Chomsky’s repeated assertion that “Locke assails innatism in its crudest form” is misleading, to say the least, for even by Chomsky’s own admission, Descartes’ doctrine of innate ideas is far more “crude” than his own. What Chomsky fails to acknowledge are the ontological consequences of his own doctrine of the innate idea, which offers his readers no more than a virtually innate idea, or a subtler variety of the adventitious idea.





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In plain terms, every time that Chomsky writes the word “innate,” he should place this highly problematic word in scare quotes because he is always already referring to a quasi- or virtually innate idea (Chomsky, Cartesian Linguistics 78). In the end, Chomsky is compelled to acknowledge that he will never be able to prove that this cunning little ghost is actually there: he may only persuade fellow biolinguists that it exists by resorting to the hard rhetoric of the strong thesis. That is, Chomsky’s ghost may only be conjured by the human voice within a conspiratorial setting, not verified with actual empirical evidence. The political and pedagogical implications of this limitation are far from trivial, as Chomsky himself might put it. Chomsky and Deconstruction shows that, in spite of Chomsky’s often-repeated claims to uphold a democratic and equalitarian pedagogy of engagement, his rationalist and other-worldly hypothesis that there is such a thing as universal grammar lays the foundation for a dogmatic ideology of competence. Chomsky imagines that he is a hard scientist, who really belongs in the natural sciences; that is, for Chomsky, the hard sciences are ideologically neutral disciplines whereas humanities programs overtly indoctrinate students into accepting dominant cultural views that he regards as anti-democratic. One reason Chomsky wishes to house linguistics programs in the natural sciences is that it will lend institutional support to his rational thesis that his linguistic paradigm is not a philosophy of language but an especially privileged means of revealing the mind’s truths. “There is a marked difference between the hard sciences and the social sciences,” Chomsky states. “In the natural sciences, the facts of nature do not let a researcher get away so easily with ignoring things that conflict with favored beliefs . . .” (Chomsky on Miseducation 20). In this account, what Chomsky calls “biolinguistics” is imagined to be yet another natural science and therefore its approach to language is unlike the more arbitrary and frankly philosophical ones housed in the social sciences. But Chomsky is also aware that the university as a whole, where the hard sciences reside alongside the “less rigorous” disciplines of the social sciences and humanities, is not an ideological neutral site, but a place where students are taught particular doctrines that are articulated in places such as the mission statements of each individual institution. These doctrines are not ungiven-givens, like the mysterious mind/brain rules that Chomsky calls universal grammar, but actually inscribed principles that have been instituted by real human beings to serve specific political purposes. Hence, Chomsky is compelled to acknowledge





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that the state-supported university in the United States indeed seeks to indoctrinate students, including in the discipline of linguistics, which he alleges is a natural science. Chomsky insists that the goal of public education in the United States is to indoctrinate students, and that those who advance within U.S. systems of higher education are only able to do so because they tend to be submissive and obedient. “The whole educational system involves a good deal of filtering,” he states, “. . . a kind of filtering toward submissiveness and obedience” (Chomsky on Democracy and Education 392). Chomsky is correct that current educational systems in the United States are institutions that deliberately seek to indoctrinate those who are educated within them. But Chomsky assumes that his readers will reflexively accept his enlightened prejudice against terms like “submissiveness,” “obedience,” and “indoctrination,” all of which are merely terms of abuse for him. Because Chomsky imagines that the phenomenological hermeneutic tradition reached its apex in the thought of Wilhelm von Humboldt,16 he is unaware that many of the heirs to this tradition have long discussed key blind spots of the Enlightenment, for instance by distinguishing between prejudices that are due to over-hastiness and those that are justifiable because they produce knowledge. As Hans-Georg Gadamer has asserted, there is a sense in which institutional authority “has nothing to do with blind obedience to commands . . . but rather with knowledge” (Truth and Method 279). In contrast, Chomsky banks on his readers’ prejudices against reflexively stigmatized terms like “obedience,” “submission,” and “indoctrination.” Yet even terms like “indoctrination” are not merely pejorative terms: they also possess a positive hermeneutic value. Hence, it is important to distinguish between indoctrination as a form of cultural brainwashing, in which the individual’s free will is annihilated, and the indoctrination that is necessary for the individual to learn anything at all, as well as to produce new knowledge that is based upon that which has already been learned. To cite Kant, “dogma is not what we ought to believe (for faith admits of no imperative), but what we find it possible and useful to believe for practical moral purposes, although we cannot demonstrate it and so only believe it” (The Conflict of the Faculties 73). Chomsky objects to current forms of education that do not allow or encourage the free use of reason, an objection that is certainly laudable; however, it remains to be asked how those within academe who wish to exercise the free use of reason may do so unless they are introduced to a body of principles that are actually spoken or inscribed by real human





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beings. What Chomsky would have his readers believe is that all current forms of education amount to no more than “mis-education,” to cite the title of one of his recent books. For Chomsky, “the best rhetoric is the least rhetoric” because rhetoric has no epistemological value whatsoever and may lead students away from the truth that is self-evident and emptied of any specific empirical content (Chomsky on Democracy and Education 376). Progressive educators must not indoctrinate their students, Chomsky asserts, which would require that their students submit to an already articulated set of principles rather than the unwritten principles of the mind/brain’s genome. Chomsky rejects the notion that true education involves any form of indoctrination whatsoever, for to accept that this is so might threaten the precarious hypothesis upon which his career has been built. Rather than teach already established principles, Chomsky insists, “It is the intellectual responsibility of teachers to try to tell the truth” (Chomsky on Miseducation 20–21). Chomsky claims that to the extent to which democratic forms of pedagogy are taught as doctrines, they should be disqualified from being considered democratic. “The less democratic schools are, the more they need to teach democratic ideals,” Chomsky states (27). In fact, Chomsky will go even further than this, asserting that, “if schools were really democratic . . . they wouldn’t feel the need to indoctrinate with platitudes about democracy” (27). A democratic pedagogy for Chomsky is democratic only if it is not taught as a matter of doctrine, which is to say a body of already articulated principles; but, if this is so, this valorized democratic principle must also apply to Chomsky’s own thesis that democratic principles should never be taught as a matter of already established doctrine. It would seem that truly democratic principles can never be articulated, only intuitively sensed. But how can we ever know what these true democratic principles are if they cannot be articulated? Chomsky wants to affirm the traditional values of a liberal democratic pedagogy but without affirming those values as an actual cultural tradition that is already articulated by established authorities. In the U.S. university setting, the state as an external agent increasingly makes its presence felt in the classroom by demanding that what happens be assessed in the form of a tangible competency, or that knowledge be produced in ways that the state may measure and evaluate. Chomsky claims that the concept of linguistic competence is scientific and not ideological, yet his views about language are certainly taught as articulated doctrines in U.S. universities and secondary schools. In some cases they are even disseminated in elementary schools. For instance, in the state of





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Washington where I live, Chomsky’s notion of linguistic competence is taught in language programs in state-supported liberal arts universities and even in K-12 schools. In an essay entitled “Linguistics in a Primary School,” Kristin Denham lists the following goal among other objectives for teachers in a primary school linguistics class: Teaching linguistics in the primary school should be pursued, she asserts, because it will “allow students to discover the unconscious knowledge they already possess with respect to language and language rules [my emphasis]” (246). Anne Lobeck similarly evokes the notion of an “unconscious knowledge of language,” which she argues is the task of descriptive grammarians to describe: “Descriptive grammar ‘describes’ a speaker’s unconscious knowledge of language—what a speaker must know in order to speak English or some other language, and descriptive grammatical analysis is therefore based on speaker intuitions about what is a possible utterance in the language [my emphasis]” (Language in the Schools 100). Lobeck places the word “describes” in scare quotes in order to suggest that descriptive grammar does not literally but only figuratively describes this “unconscious knowledge” of language since it is ultimately describing something that is by definition indescribable. To cite Chomsky himself in this regard, “The essential properties of the human mind will always escape investigation. And, I [Chomsky] am very happy with this outcome [my emphasis]” (Language and Mind 114). Lobeck’s definition of descriptive grammatical analysis strengthens the scientific authority of the linguistics expert by appealing to his/her intuitive authority or linguistic competence, but it also implies that it is indeed possible to produce such a description as an actual re-presentation of the hidden contents of the mind. However, if a grammatical description of our “unconscious knowledge” could actually be reproduced in the form of inscribed signs, our “unconscious knowledge” of language would cease to be the very thing that Chomsky claims that it is. Once our “unconscious knowledge” was transformed into knowledge that may be perceived and measured as factual datum, it would no longer remain an object that “will always escape investigation,” as Chomsky puts it, but actual knowledge, or a trace of the real. The object that exists inside of the head (i.e., universal grammar) is deemed equivalent to what exists outside the head (i.e., the word as empirical trace), a utilitarian thesis that may only be asserted since the essential properties that dwell inside the head will never be located, as Chomsky acknowledges. Hence, the Chomskyan hypothesis of unconscious knowledge also serves identifiable purposes within educational settings in the United States, for it enables





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linguists like Chomsky, Denham, and Lobeck to claim that they are teaching the rational science of language, rather than yet another philosophy of language. The explicit context of Denham’s essay, for instance, is what she calls “the need for scientific study of language [for K-12 teachers], particularly in order to meet the goals articulated in state or national accountability requirements [my emphasis]” (“Linguistics in a Primary School” 256). Despite Chomsky’s claim that there is only a tangential relation between his linguistic and political views, his hypothesis that there is such a thing as an unconscious knowledge of language obviously serves state and national interests in U.S. educational system. To Denham’s credit, she does not claim that she occupies the transcendental viewpoint of the Martian scientist, as does Chomsky. Instead, she adumbrates the obvious nature of these relations and presses Chomsky’s linguistic views into the service of the nation-state. Denham does not ask if faculty have any other responsibilities beyond those that they owe to the nation-state, nor does she ask why the nationstate may have “need for the scientific study of language.” Faculty responsibility is limited to fellow citizens of the nation-state. Moreover, it is clearly not the responsibility of faculty as faculty to ask what it is that the nation-state may do with the information that the linguist produces. Faculty may of course ask such questions, but only as private citizens, not as servants of the state. The same may be said for the faculty who adopted the competency model in my own department in order to teach English and American literature. It is not then simply the case that a pedagogy of competence is irresponsible, it is rather that the other is always already imagined as a sworn member of the national body politic. Chomsky’s often-repeated claims that his research in biolinguistics and his political activism are absolutely unrelated are therefore untenable. In fact, Chomsky’s rhetorical efforts to bifurcate these two spheres of intellectual activity ignores the fact that his own linguistic research was originally funded by the U.S. government in order to serve military purposes exclusively reserved to the decisions of the state. This fact is made clear in several of Chomsky’s early monograms in which he frankly acknowledges that his linguistic research was solicited and paid for by the U.S. Army, Air Force, and Navy, all of whom retain the right to use his research “ for any purpose of the United States Government [my emphasis]” (Aspects of the Theory of Syntax iv).17 Chomsky’s political activism against the oftenquestionable military interventions of the United States across the globe, including the employment of his own scientific research in biolinguistics,





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remain the protests of a private citizen, not a housed faculty member who is a paid servant of the nation-state. If the U.S. government wished to use Chomsky’s linguistic research for the purpose of quashing oppositional movements in places like Vietnam, Nicaragua, Palestine, and Iraq, it could do so without bothering to ask Mr. Chomsky’s permission, in part because it funded the biolinguistic research he performed, but also because he is a member of a military state that reserves the right to make hard decisions. This is also a form of “Chomskyan realism,” although as it relates to the concept of the political rather than the discipline of linguistics.18 This question is often overlooked, perhaps due to Chomsky’s global stature as an oppositional intellectual, but early academic critics of Chomsky such as I.A. Richards, Anton Reichling, Ian Robinson, and others certainly did not overlook it, as each in his own way expressed alarm at the utilitarian implications of Chomsky’s paradigm of human language.19 A common theme that runs through the criticisms of humanist academics from the Vietnam era is that Chomsky’s model of the human brain as a “language acquisition device” may indeed be appropriated by the U.S. government to develop computer technology for dubious purposes. Chomsky’s early critics expressed alarm at his dehumanizing descriptions of the human mind as “computational systems that incorporate . . . principles of efficient computation” (Beyond Explanatory Adequacy 1).20 They also objected to Chomsky’s mechanistic view that, “the language faculty has at least two components: a cognitive system that stores information, and performance systems that access that information and use it in various ways” (The Minimalist Program 2).21 Chomsky reiterated the traditional Cartesian view that “man alone is more than mere automatism, and it is the possession of true language that is the primary indicator of this” (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 8). However, this distinction that granted to man a unique place of mastery over animals did not alter the perception of Chomsky’s critics that the vengeful return of Cartesian metaphors of the human mind as a computing machine portended an alarming development in the liberal arts university setting. Chomsky’s linguistic theories can and have been used for purposes that are far from generic in an ideological sense. A “powerful” theory of rational competence, both in linguistics and literary studies, is certainly useful to the U.S. military state, a fact that was immediately recognized by the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force, which funded Chomsky’s early research. I am myself an employee of the state of Washington and a recipient of federal funding in the form of Fulbright awards. Hence, if Chomsky cannot





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escape the fact that his research has been employed in the service of the U.S. military state, the same is certainly true for me: I do not therefore claim to occupy any superior moral vantage point from which to judge Chomsky for any alleged hypocrisies. My point is rather a deconstructive one: The sovereign state always underwrites the disinterested scholarly efforts of the rational scientist within U.S. academe, whom it tolerates to conduct research within the university, while reserving the exclusive right to employ the products of that research however it sees fit. This fact is as true for Chomsky as it is for every other professor in the United States. No member of academe in the United States may escape the political fact that he/she is a sworn member of the res publica. Because Chomsky privileges the epistemological vantage point of the extra-terrerestrial observer, he never asks the question of who it is that asks questions within academe. He does not ask the question of the entity that we are, for to ask such a question undermines the ideology of competent perception. In effect, Chomsky articulates a metaphysical and occulted theory of knowledge, which he justifies on the grounds that it is efficacious. This is important to underscore because Chomsky’s contributions to contemporary critical thought cannot be evaluated until his ontological commitments are clear. This book evaluates these contributions by historicizing them and situating them within a comparative framework. Chomsky is read within the horizon of his own national identity and historical era. In contrast to studies that approach Chomsky as a linguistic scientist of the human mind/brain, this book suggests that Chomsky should be read as a phenomenological hermeneutist. It also calls into question Chomsky’s claims that his political and linguistic views are not coterminous. In both his political and linguistic writings, Chomsky bases his rational appeals to individual rights on the assertion that human beings are everywhere the same because they possess human language, a perspective that is claimed to be self-evident to the extraterrestrial observer. In the practical context of U.S. academe, one is deemed competent to the extent that one professes one’s allegiance to the university itself, which is imagined as an enclosed hermetic universe without need of an outside. The ideology of competence is therefore the ideology of the housed scholar. In practical terms this means that those who find themselves with limited access to the state-supported institution will have an increasingly difficult time getting past the doorstep should the rationalist ideology that Chomsky espouses gain further traction within the university. While this conclusion may surprise those who admire Chomsky as a champion of human rights,





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it will not surprise those who have served on hiring committees in U.S.based language departments, or those who have been denied employment on the grounds that they lacked sufficient institutional credentials in the humanities, which is to say, academic competence. Of course, this does not mean that Chomsky’s important contributions to the ongoing struggle for human rights should not be appreciated and respected, especially those that have drawn attention to urgent matters of social injustice. Although Chomsky’s philosophy of language and his political views are inextricably related, the deconstruction of one does not necessarily imply the need for the deconstruction of the other. With respect to Chomsky’s writings on U.S. foreign policy, I hope that my relative silence on this topic is taken here as a gesture of appreciation.





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Ce r e br a l H e r m e n e u t ic s

The history of philosophy consists less in the solution of its problems than in the fact that they are always being forgotten by the intellectual movements that crystallize around them. —Theodor W. Adorno

Admirers of Chomsky often compare his contributions to contemporary thought with those of the greatest minds of the past. Justin Leiber, for instance, compares Chomsky to Freud and Einstein (Noam Chomsky 22–23); Howard Gardner also compares Chomsky to Einstein, as well as Shakespeare, Beethoven, and even Socrates (Language and Learning xix). Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, who edited Language and Learning: The Debate Between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky (1980), claims that Chomsky inaugurated one of the two “major scientific revolutions of our time (xiii).1 These exaggerated claims are echoed by Chomsky himself, who repeatedly argues that very little was known about human language before he developed his revolutionary theory of universal grammar in the late 1950s. For instance, in The Minimalist Program (1995), Chomsky asserts that his theory “constitute[s] a break from the rich traditions of thousands of years of linguistic inquiry [my emphasis]” (5).2 Similarly, in Deviation by Phrase (1999), Chomsky claims that “the study of language . . . could hardly be considered seriously [until the development of his own theory]” (1). Not surprisingly, those who accept Chomsky’s claims to scientific authority tend to be less enthusiastic about his early philosophical text, Cartesian Linguistics (1966). Although I am obviously skeptical about the “revolutionary” nature of Chomsky’s philosophy of language, I will suggest here that Cartesian Linguistics is certainly worthy of careful study, and that it remains Chomsky’s most important contribution to contemporary philosophical thought. In fact, the rest of Chomsky’s career as a linguist can fairly be described as an attempt to defend the philosophical theses that are set forth in this text. This is why those who


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are new to Chomsky would do well to begin with a careful, close reading of Cartesian Linguistics, especially in comparison with the texts of those philosophers whom Chomsky identifies as sharing his concerns and anticipating his own thought. Although Chomsky discusses in some detail the philosophy of Descartes, he does not give Kant adequate treatment in Cartesian Linguistics, as he acknowledges when he states in the concluding paragraph that, “Certain major figures—Kant, for example—have not been mentioned or have been inadequately discussed. . . .” (107). In his later books on language, Chomsky sometimes respectfully cites Kant, although he also claims that he rejects a priori categorical thinking and implies that he is not himself a dialectical thinker, even going so far as to assert that he “hasn’t the foggiest idea” what multi-syllable words such as “dialectics” mean (Understanding Power 228). “When words like ‘dialectics’ come along,” Chomsky states, “or ‘hermeneutics,’ and all this kind of stuff that’s supposed to be very profound, like [Herman] Goering, ‘I reach for my revolver’ ” (Understanding Power 230). Yet Chomsky has also described his own philosophy of language as a “cerebral hermeneutics,” appreciatively citing a phrase coined by Gunter Stent (Knowledge of Language 40). In the case of the term dialectics, this concept is linked to Platonic and Kantian thought, especially in reference to the oral-aural exchange necessary to the discovery of truth. The Socratic philosopher required the bodily presence of the man whom he loved in order to inspire him to find the truth. This is why writing came to be stigmatized in Platonic thought, as opposed to the spoken or living word, which implied the speaker’s presence. However, Kantian thought is dialectical in a different sense from what is usually meant in reference to the philosophy of the ancient Greeks. Chomsky’s own thought is dialectical in a more modern sense of this term, although without ceasing to be Platonic in many important respects. What I will suggest here is that if Chomsky had adequately treated Kant at the time that he wrote Cartesian Linguistics, he would not only have gained a better understanding of the uncontroversial term dialectics, he would also have been obliged to abandon his scientific theory of universal grammar. Despite Chomsky’s claims to scientific veracity, his critics rightly view him as a linguistic philosopher whose thought has taken shape within a specific historical tradition, one that has been deeply influenced by Plato, Augustine, Descartes, Kant, and others. Chomsky’s approach to language study, which challenged the hegemony of the Structuralist linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure, is also indebted to the German philosopher





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Wilhelm von Humboldt, who is one of the more important figures in the phenomenological hermeneutic tradition. Though he sometimes rejects the term “hermeneutics,” Chomsky upholds the historical distinction first made by Humboldt between semantic and syntactic registers of language. For instance, Chomsky states that, “Many times we can’t even begin to express in words what the content of our thinking is . . . [This means] that there is a kind of non-linguistic thought going on which we then are trying to represent in language” (Chomsky on Democracy and Education 59). Chomsky therefore follows Humboldt, who also hypothesized that an innate prelinguistic structure exists in the human mind, which he called energeia, or “inner form” as it is commonly translated. Chomsky often cites Humboldt with appreciation, frankly acknowledging this important influence and criticizing early twentieth-century linguists who abandoned Humboldt’s views in favor of “the impoverished and thoroughly inadequate” theories of Saussure (Language and Mind 20). In Cartesian Linguistics, Chomsky goes so far as to claim that “Humboldt’s ‘form of language’ is essentially what would in current terminology be called ‘the generative grammar’ of a language in the broadest sense in which this term has been used” (127). Yet Chomsky has much less to say about the phenomenological hermeneutic tradition that Humboldt’s writings on language inspired, including the work of figures like Wilhelm Dilthey, Philip August Boecke, Friedrich Schielermacher, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. For Chomsky, it is as if the study of language in Germany came to a complete halt after Humboldt died in the early nineteenth century. Rather than see in Humboldt’s contribution to contemporary language studies the inauguration of the phenomenological hermeneutic tradition, Chomsky asserts that it marks “the terminal point of the development of Cartesian linguistics,” which is not rekindled until his own spectacular contributions in the late 1950s (Cartesian Linguistics 126). Perhaps the most influential thinker to come out of the phenomenological hermeneutic tradition in Germany is Martin Heidegger. In many of his early writings, Heidegger performed careful studies of pre-Socratic thinkers like Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Anaximander in an effort to understand how the thinkers of classical antiquity construed notions of truth before the rise of Platonic Idealism. After Plato, truth is linked to the matter of Logos, which is described as a fire that burns in the mind of the man who is able to correctly ascertain the hidden and true essence of all things. Unlike Aristotle, who located consciousness in the human


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heart, Plato located consciousness within the human brain. In Cartesian Linguistics, Chomsky evokes A.W. Schlegel’s description of the human reasoning faculty as “a substance which is infinitely combustible but does not burst into flame on its own: a spark must be thrown in the soul” (101). He also evokes the pre-Cartesian philosopher Juan Huarte’s notion of “the generative faculty” which he compares to human semen (121–122). Chomsky lauds Huarte as a philosopher who was aware of “ ‘the generative faculty’ of ordinary human understanding and action [that] is foreign to ‘beasts and plants’ ” (New Horizons in the Study of Language 17). All those lacking in this generative seed are akin to eunuchs (Cartesian Linguistics 122). In his response to Chomsky’s theory of language, Jean Piaget notes in this connection that the doctrine of innateness “is bound to lead to an endless regression back to bacteria or viruses” (Language and Learning 52–53). The mind’s generative fluid is “a genetically determined property,” Chomsky claims (Essays on Form and Interpretation 2). In Platonic terms, it is a pharamkon, or a kind of occult fluid. To cite Derrida, “Liquid is the element of the pharmakon” (Dissemination 152). In Plato’s Timaeus, the Logos is also described as a transcendental seed that God plants in the bone’s marrow. Not only does Plato locate the faculty of reasoning in the human brain, he also suggests that the Logos is beyond the reach of the five senses. This Ideal Word is not accessible in the realm of becoming. According to Plato, the Logos (or Ideal Word) is transcribed or written upon the Soul. In Platonic terms, the Psyche and Logos dwell in the transcendent realm of Being, not the actual world of becoming. In his early studies of Plato and Aristotle, as well as of the preSocratics, Heidegger observes that the Greek word for truth was aletheia, a word that means disclosure, or the “unconcealment of the being of Beings” (Parmenides 11). Aletheia was not an Ideal Truth but the Goddess Truth; in other words, Aletheia was not a representation of Truth, nor was she the Goddess of Truth. She was unconcealed Truth itself, the disclosure of essence as incalculable event (5). As Heidegger often points out, the opposite of this pre-Socratic concept of truth is not falsity (from the Latin falsum), but rather oblivion or forgetting (44–47). (The word aletheia is related to the Greek word Lethe, the river of forgetting.) This ancient Greek notion of truth undergoes a transformation in the thinking of Plato. It is Plato, Heidegger observes, who transforms the notion of truth, so that it comes to mean competence, correct perception, or ratio in its Cartesian formulation. In Parmenides (1992), Heidegger notes that the ancient Greeks construed the concept of the “false” (or (psuedos) to mean





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that which allows something other than what is to appear: hence, the “false” for the Greeks was a concealment that unconceals. Heidegger observes then that truth and falsity must be thought of in relation to one another. Another way to say this is that the empirical trace is always already a trace of the real. The Greek notions of truth as aletheia (or unconcealment) and the false as pseudos (or a concealment that unconceals) were later displaced by the Latin notions of truth as veritas (or the correct) and falsum (or the incorrect). In contrast to the Greek notions of truth and being, Heidegger points out, “the basic comportment of the Romans towards beings in general is governed by the rule of imperium. . . . Imperium is commandment, command” (Parmenides 44–45). Heidegger’s deconstruction of the Roman concept of truth and its relation to imperialism is relevant in this context because the Latin veritas decisively influences Western notions of truth as rectitude, certum (or certainty), adequation, ratio, correct perception, and competence. After the Romans, the false is forever equated with the wrong use of reason. For the pre-Socratics aletheia is better construed as an event that beings in the world apprehend: it is not a matter of competent, adequate, or correct perception of objective form. “For the Greeks, there would be something like the distinction between ‘object’ and ‘subject’ and the socalled subject-object relation,” Heidegger states. “But it is precisely the essence of aletheia that makes it impossible for the subject-object relation to arise” (34). Chomsky’s notion of truth as competence is deeply rooted in a Roman—and arguably imperialistic—epistemology, which broke from ancient Greek beliefs about truth. For Chomsky, as all dialectical thinkers, insists that “language has an inner and an outer aspect [my emphasis]” (Cartesian Linguistics 79). Chomsky’s view that there is a deep and surface structure to language, and that these two structures are not identical, is quintessentially dialectical in its epistemology. Chomsky makes this clear when he states that it is a “fundamental conclusion of Cartesian linguistics that deep and surface structures need not be identical” (79). In a similar vein, Chomsky claims that what he calls a “deep structure” of the mind “constitutes an underlying mental reality—a mental accompaniment to the utterance—whether or not the surface form of the utterance that is produced corresponds to it in a simple, point-by-point manner [my emphasis]” (80). Hence, Chomsky is clear that, “the deep structure is in general not identical to its surface structure” (Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar 37). This means that there is a gap, veil, or blank space between surface and deep structure, or—in Derridean terms,





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différance. Chomsky asserts that, “Idealization . . . is a misleading term for the only reasonable way to approach a grasp of reality [my emphasis]” (The Minimalist Program 7). Unlike Heidegger, who seeks to overturn the Western metaphysical tradition, and who attempts to break from modern notions of dialectics, Chomsky offers no alternative to dialectics, a term he claims he does not comprehend. However, Chomsky asserts that universal grammar is a real albeit abstract structure that dwells in the human mind, and he claims that spoken and written articulations of language offer competent representations of these real but empty mental phenomena. Citing Julien Offray de La Mettrie, Chomsky asserts that “the signs of objects and their differences ‘have been traced or imprinted on the brain’ ” (77); and, like Gottfried Leibniz, whom he also approvingly cites, Chomsky insists that “ ‘languages are the best mirror of the human mind’ ” (Knowledge of Language 1). Yet, when he is pressed to clarify his dependence upon this well-worn metaphor, Chomsky will insist that it should not be taken literally but is merely a figurative means of understanding the relation between inner and outer linguistic form. “The idea that language is a mirror of the mind is a traditional one which has received expression in various ways over the centuries,” Chomsky states. “I have never felt that this metaphor should be taken too literally” (Chomsky on Democracy and Education 69). Here, as elsewhere, Chomsky oscillates between the literal and figurative meanings of his favorite tropes, sometimes asserting their scientific value and sometimes falling back upon their merely poetic value as figures. For instance, Chomsky’s “mind/ brain” is a literal-figurative term that serves double time as a real object and an abstract concept. In this case, the organic brain is conflated with the abstract concept of the human mind, or the literal is collapsed with the figurative as it suits the needs of the argument at hand: “When we study [the brain’s] properties and manifestations,” he states, “we are studying what we call ‘mind’ ” (69). That is, the literal organ of the brain is transformed into the abstract concept of the mind, the literal-figurative catachresis that Chomsky and his followers call the “mind/brain.” Heidegger’s observation that truth is a matter of correct perception in Platonic Idealism can perhaps be more easily understood with reference to the armillary sphere from Plato’s Timaeus. For Plato, the armillary sphere is a working model of the human mind. At the center of this ancient device burns a ball of fire of the Logos, also described as the transcendental seed that the divine creator planted in the brain. The Logos is our rational faculty, but it also is the post-Platonic Greek





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word for the Ideal Word. Thoughts rotate around this burning ball of fire, much like the heavenly planets orbit around the sun. On the widest metal band of the armillary sphere may be found the signs of the zodiac, or constellated images of the stars that dwell, not only in the starry cosmos, but deep within the human interior. The beautiful form in Greek metaphysics literally glows: it radiantly shines forth, allowing the philosopher to behold its true essence. Plato asserts in The Phaedrus that, while most of us can only see through a glass darkly, the philosopher understands that an essential and radiant beauty dwells within all objects. The philosopher is the rare man who sees correctly: his vision can ascertain the true essence hidden within all things. If he can penetrate into the truth of things, it is only because the radiant and constellated forms that he beholds already reside within him. While it may be anachronistic to speak of competent perception in Plato in terms of dialectics, there is certainly a sense in which true vision in this model implies the correct subjective perception of objective form. The Chomskyan model of the human mind as hardwired for linguistic competence is comparable to this more ancient model of the psyche: in fact, the armillary sphere is a mechanical device, much like Chomsky’s metaphorical computer that is said to be equipped with universal grammar. Although zodiac constellations are not the same as computer hardware, in both cases the human brain is imagined as a kind of machine that is equipped with mental forms and that is designed for calculating the truth. Like his colleague Jerry Fodor, Chomsky believes that, to cite Fodor, “[t]he only psychological models of cognitive processes that seem even remotely plausible represent such processes as computational” (Language and Learning 17). However, whereas Plato asserts that a benign creator god designed the armillary sphere, Chomsky asserts that his machine was “optimally designed,” but he rejects the hypothesis of an optimal designer. Plato’s god is dropped from Chomsky’s homologous theory (On Nature and Language 97). This means that questions about how this calculating machine achieved its current state of complexity may be dismissed as an unscientific conundrum. Human beings “are just designed to [acquire language] at a certain time,” Chomsky states (Language and Problems of Knowledge 174). Chomsky also evokes the notion of “a super-engineer” (Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework 5). Such terms imply the existence of a designer, but Chomsky ignores the theological implications of his language. As Jonathan Barnes puts it, Chomsky is often “promiscuous” with his word choice, a problem





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that has sometimes upset Chomsky’s readers in disciplines such as philosophy, literature, or language arts (“Mr. Locke’s Darling Notion” 207). Though for Chomsky it is obvious that universal grammar really exists (22)—he claims that it is just “sitting there” in the head (On Nature and Language 108)—human beings cannot expect to know the true nature of these mysterious mental phenomena. “They are what they are [my emphasis],” Chomsky insists. They exist as real phenomena without any theological guarantees, and we must accept their existence as a “total mystery” (Knowledge of Language 267). “There is no reason at all to believe that the child’s concept of enduring and recurring physical objects derives from his reflection on the use of language. . . .” Chomsky asserts. “Such slight experimental work as exists on this matter suggests that the concept of permanent and enduring objects is operative long before the use of language [my emphasis]” (Problems of Knowledge and Freedom 12). Paradoxically, Chomsky also insists that, “there is nothing mystical about the study of the mind” (Language and Problems of Knowledge 8). The hardware of the mind is a scientific fact, of which Chomsky is certain. The fact is a fact, but also a tautology. “We can speak intelligibly of physical phenomena (processes, etc.),” Chomsky states, “as we can speak of the real truth or the real world, but without supposing that there is some other truth or world [Chomsky’s emphasis]” (79). Chomsky proposes a concept of the real that is a trace of the real, one that is comparable to Nietzsche’s ontological vapor, or what deconstructive critics alternately call the remainder, ash, ce qui reste, and so forth.3 However, Chomsky’s readers are enjoined not to pose the irksome question of the empty place of its appearance. While Chomsky’s views on the existence of universal grammar have persuaded a significant number of linguists in U.S. academe, his efforts to establish the scientific basis of his views on aesthetics and ethics have met with far less success. When addressing these other prominent philosophical themes, Chomsky’s neglect of Kant is one reason his views lack persuasive force. In some places Chomsky builds upon Kant’s aesthetics views, as when he states that, “The ‘poetical’ quality of ordinary language derives from its independence of immediate stimulation . . . and its freedom from practical ends” (Cartesian Linguistics 68); or, when he affirms the Kantian notion of the creative genius (75). In the case of the latter, Chomsky insists that certain individuals are genetically endowed with superior mental constitutions enabling them to excel in ways that are essentially mysterious (Chomsky on Democracy and Education 55).





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However, Chomsky’s belief that aesthetic principles are real organic structures of the brain conflates the biological with the metaphysical (for instance, when Chomsky states that “when we study [the brain’s] properties and manifestations, we are studying what we call ‘mind’ ” [69]). What Chomsky calls “nature” is also an all-encompassing term that enables him to collapse everything that exists in the empirical world with the abstract concept for it. “Work of true aesthetic value,” Chomsky states, “follows canons and principles that are only in part subject to human choice; in part they reflect our fundamental nature [my emphasis]” (Language and Problems of Knowledge 152). Like the innate structures that he calls universal grammar, these innate aesthetic principles are embedded in our human nature. Chomsky also makes identical claims about human ethical principles that he believes are “hardwired” into the human brain. “The same [that is true of aesthetics and language] is true of moral judgment,” he states. “What its basis may be we do not know, but we can hardly doubt that it is rooted in fundamental human nature [my emphasis]” (152). Elsewhere, Chomsky puts it this way, “We really don’t know what the fundamental principles of moral judgment actually are, but we have very good reason to believe that they’re there. . . . [This is so because] they’re largely part of a genetically-determined framework, which gets marginally modified through the course probably of early experience [my emphasis]” (Understanding Power 360). As is true of his scientific theories of language and aesthetics, Chomsky illustrates his scientific theory of universal ethics with recourse to a metaphor in which the human brain is once again compared to a calculating machine that is designed to make competent moral decisions.4 But Chomsky postpones verification of his hypotheses about these hardwired principles to some remote date during the future evolution of the species. “At the moment, we only have glimmerings of such a comprehensive integrated theory. . . .” Chomsky asserts (Language and Learning 50). While there is nothing but the promise of success at present, Chomsky remains optimistic that his theory will eventually prove tenable. Yet Chomsky also acknowledges that, “It is quite true that no observations, whether of introspection or experiment, can conclusively verify or falsify the hypotheses of linguistic theory” (51). He also does not recognize the overtly theological dimensions of this metaphor, which implies the existence of a designer of the ethical machine that he believes we are. Chomsky’s scientific certainty regarding the existence of these mental phenomena is an attitude that many contemporary critical theorists would want to call into question.





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In fact, the definitive Cartesian gesture is the assertion of the certitude of the perceiving subject, which is a primary target of deconstructive critique. In Memoirs of the Blind, Derrida points out that the word “optics” is etymologically related to the word “opinion,” and that asserting an opinion in this Cartesian sense is a matter of visual perception (13). The perceiving subject beholds an objective form that is an adequate representation of a mental structure that already exists in the human interior. Evoking the language of Descartes, Chomsky asserts that, “we know what it is that we see not ‘from what the eye sees’ but from the scrutiny of the mind alone” (Cartesian Linguistics 145). In effect, we see with the mind’s eye, which is perched in our heads like the unblinking eye of a giant Cyclops. However, the deconstructive theorist would want to ask if this mental phenomenon is actually “sitting there in the head,” in the way that Chomsky claims (On Nature and Language 108). Whenever rationalist thinkers like Chomsky assert that mental phenomena simply “are what they are,” deconstructive thinkers like Heidegger and Derrida are certain to ask if such truth claims do not promote an arbitrary metaphysics, and a disguised will to power. Chomsky claims that he does not posit any Kantian a priori categories of thought in his linguistic writings. At the same time, Chomsky affirms Kant’s views about a priori categories, but as a quaint precursor to his own more authentically scientific philosophy. For instance, Chomsky states that, “we are beginning to see into the deeper hidden nature of the mind and to understand how it works, really for the first time in history, though the topics have been studied for literally thousands of years [my emphasis]” (Language and Problems of Knowledge 91). Many of Chomsky’s critics over the last 40 years have taken issue with megalomaniacal claims of this nature, while others have criticized his illogical thesis that he does not assert Kantian a priori categories in his linguistic writings. However, Chomsky has dismissed arguments about his reliance upon Kantian a priori categories as “exaggerated” (Knowledge of Language 13). Chomsky wishes his readers to believe that his own a priori categories of thought are merely different in degree from Kant’s. Perhaps as a response to his critics, Chomsky has increasingly sought to distance himself from representational linguistics, but without abandoning his theory of universal grammar. As opposed to the more obviously dialectical approach of his earlier writings, Chomsky has increasingly advocated what is sometimes called a “nativist” approach, one in which linguists seek to exclude “any objects outside the head in the subject matters of their theories” (McGilvray “Introduction” 7).





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As McGilvray puts it, “A nativist in language assumes that human beings are born with a capacity for language that need only be allowed to develop. It is not learned: it is not impressed on the mind from outside the head by culture, community, parents, or nation” (Chomsky 4). Chomsky maintains that linguistic sounds are completely “in the head,” and that “they do not issue from people’s mouths” (McGilvray “Introduction” 10). “Generative grammar follows the tradition of attempting to account for competence,” Chomsky states (Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar 30). But he also makes clear that competence is always “tacit competence [my emphasis]” (33). It is unspoken and “intuitively given [my emphasis]” (33). The problem the nativist eventually encounters is that the developing child must receive “at least some external input of the ‘right’ kind’ ” in order to learn to speak [my emphasis] (15). No matter how subtle one’s articulation of the problem, the nativist must at last acknowledge that there is some reality that is outside the head.5 Furthermore, this reality must be “the right kind” of reality—which is to say, it must adequately or correctly represent the mental image of the word that is inside the head. The external word mirrors the internal word. Without abandoning the hypothesis that sounds exist only “in the head,” the nativist will argue that the external input that the child requires is “remarkably small” (15). This miniscule linguistic input may even be “corrupt,” the nativist will insist, without considering that the very notion of corrupt linguistic input already reinforces representational linguistic theory, since it obviously suggests that there is such a thing as linguistic competence. In his earlier writings, Chomsky more frankly posits a dialectical epistemology, for instance, when he states that, “speech perception requires internal generation of a representation both of the signal and the associated semantic content [my emphasis]” (Cartesian Linguistics 106). The word “signal” here refers to the external trace that is definitely not “in the head,” but an empirical trace that is outside the head. McGilvray wants to claim that Chomskyan linguistics is not really representational because Chomsky’s representational views are “only an occasional and insignificant aspect of our use of language” (111). However, if Chomsky’s representational linguistics are indeed “occasional,” as McGilvray observes, then this is not an “insignificant aspect” of our use of language. Kant observes that absolutely everything that is empirically significant is significant only insofar as it has been activated within a specific empirical setting. Chomsky’s statement that his reliance upon Kantian a priori categories of thought is “exaggerated” reinforces the nativist thesis that the external linguistic input that the child receives is remarkably small and therefore





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not terribly significant; however, even if Chomsky posits a priori categories every now and then or occasionally, he nonetheless continues to posit them, as his critics have rightly observed, and as his view that such criticisms are “exaggerated” suggests. To quote Chomsky himself, universal grammar is a “biological endowment that is prior to any experience [my emphasis]” (Language and Problems of Knowledge 30). In Cartesian Linguistics, Chomsky states that, “language acquisition is a matter of growth and maturation of relatively fixed capacities, under appropriate external conditions [my emphasis]” (101). In this instance, Chomsky downplays the dialectical features of his own epistemology by stating that, “the form of the language that is acquired is largely determined by internal factors . . . [my emphasis]” (101–102). However, the qualifying word “largely” here makes all the difference, as does McGilvray’s qualifying statement that the empirical input is “remarkably small.” For, to cite Chomsky again, “studies show that unless humans are given at least a minimal amount of experience of the relevant kind (hearing or seeing a language spoken or signed by others, for example) before a certain critical stage, they cannot acquire full linguistic competence [my emphasis]” (120). As these examples show, Chomsky’s critics do not exaggerate his reliance upon a priori categories of thought; they merely remark upon an aspect of Chomsky’s linguistic thought that is factual. The fact that Chomsky also underscores the notion that there is such a thing as “relevant” experience shows that he upholds the Platonic view that phenomenological objects can be correctly or incorrectly perceived. Chomsky echoes Kant in denying that these mental categories are supernatural, or that they exist in any Platonic heaven. That is, Chomsky does not necessarily posit that universal grammar predates the embryonic existence of the child in any strictly Platonic sense; however, there is a temporal and existential dimension to Chomsky’s thought, as there is to Kant’s. For instance, Chomsky states that the acquisition of language “is something that happens to the child placed in an appropriate environment, much as the child’s body grows and matures in a predetermined way. . . . [my emphasis]” (Language and the Problem of Knowledge 134). Chomsky therefore describes language acquisition as an event that happens in both time and space. When the child is placed in a particular environment, Chomsky tells us, the mechanisms of universal grammar that are genetically embedded in his/her brain begin to “operate virtually instantaneously” (73). Language “just happens, the way you learn to walk,” Chomsky states. “[L]anguage is not really something you learn.





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Acquisition of language is something that happens to you; it’s not something you do” (174). Chomsky calls his description of language acquisition an “instantaneous model” (Language and Mind 187). Kant too insisted that his a priori categories of thought required given concrete situations to be activated, and he also insisted that their existence apart from the occasion of their activation was insignificant. For Kant, empirical reality necessarily involves spatial and temporal relations. This means that, for a phenomenon to be a phenomenon, it must exist in both space and in time. “It is from the human standpoint only that we can speak of space, extended objects, etc.,” Kant observes. “If we drop the subjective condition under which alone we can gain external intuition, according as we ourselves may be affected by objects, the representation of space means nothing [my emphasis]” (Critique of Pure Reason 47). In contrast, Chomsky states that, “external stimulation is only required to set innate mechanisms to work [my emphasis]” (Cartesian Linguistics 101). Chomsky adds the qualifying adverb “only” here, as if to suggest the exceptional nature of the circumstance that he describes, but the word “only” changes nothing: one might insert the word “always,” and the meaning of Chomsky’s sentence would be the same. In a gesture that would be recognizable to Leibniz and Kant, Chomsky even refers to this unique moment in time and space as the “initial ‘activation’ ” of language (102). Chomsky states that “received [empirical] signs activate within the listener a corresponding link in his system of concepts [my emphasis]” (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 21). Because he asserts that there is a “corresponding link” between what exists inside and outside the human head, Chomsky’s theory is a throwback to Adamic theories of language predating modern linguistics, especially Saussurean linguistics. His views are therefore Humboldtian, without ceasing to be Cartesian: “When a ‘key of the mental instrument’ is touched [in the world outside the head],” Chomsky states, “the whole system will resonate, and the emerging concept will stand in harmony with all that surrounds it to the most remote regions of its domain. Thus a system of concepts is activated in the listener . . .” (21). In other words, one has need of an external stimulus “to get the system functioning,” (The Architecture of Language 56). But, once the internal language system is activated, the importance of an external stimulus is almost insignificant. Chomsky notes that,



There are people who have achieved close to normal linguistic competence with no sensory input beyond what can be gained by placing one’s hand on another person’s face and throat. The analytic mechanism of the language



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His point is certainly valid; in fact, it has never been in dispute. But it does not follow from this fact that one has succeeded in articulating a deductive theory of language, rather than yet another inductive one. However, this is precisely what Chomsky claims. “That experience is required to bring innate structures into operation, to activate a system of innate ideas,” Chomsky states, “is assumed quite explicitly by Descartes, Leibniz, and others, as an integral part of theories that can hardly be regarded as ‘empiricist’ if the term is to retain any significance. . . .” (Problems of Knowledge and Freedom 17). To describe Descartes as “empiricist” or as a secretly “inductive” philosopher is not therefore inaccurate, not even by Chomsky’s own reckoning. It is that merely labeling him so levels a theoretical distinction that he believes to be important. Hence, when Chomsky calls Descartes a “rationalist” and “deductive” philosopher, he really means that Descartes is a quasi-deductive philosopher; which is to say, Descartes is actually an empiricist and inductive philosopher. The same may be said with respect to Chomsky’s own theory of language. Chomsky does insist that such stimulus “does not determine the form of what is acquired,” but he knows very well that human beings do not live only in their heads (101). And yet Chomsky repeatedly asserts that innate mental structures are real but abstract forms that are lodged in the human brain. “In natural language there is something in the head, which is the computational system,” he states. “The generative system is real, as real as the liver” (On Nature and Language 110). On the other hand, actual spoken language is an “epiphenomenon,” a word that refers to the voiced utterance, which is a trace of the real (110). But if the “abstract mental representation” is an object that is as real as the liver, the liver is more akin to the epiphenomenon (or voiced utterance) than it is to the abstract mental structure, because the liver is not an abstract structure. A surgeon can open up my body and hold my liver in his hand, even if he cannot perceive its metaphysical essence. But that same surgeon is going to have a far more difficult time opening up my head and holding in his hand the abstract mental structure that Chomsky claims is as real as my liver. In fact, he would find himself in the exact same dilemma as the young Descartes, who spent a number of years dissecting human and animal brains in search of the immortal soul, which he claimed was located in the pineal gland. Plato also believed that the soul was a kind of mystical seed planted in the brain, an obvious precursor to Descartes’ mystical


faculty seems to be triggered in much the same way whether the input is auditory, visual, or even tactual. . . . (New Horizons 121–122)



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pineal gland. Descartes’ views about the pineal gland are not only based in essentialist metaphysics, they are also linked to the Christian doctrine of transubstantiation, since he believed that “Jesus’ soul joined with the bread just as the human soul joined with the body in the pineal gland” (Zimmer The Soul Made Flesh 40). Chomsky does not believe that the obvious fact that the language organ cannot be held in one’s hands, like the liver or kidneys, poses any significant complications to his theory: “[A]n organ is not something that can be removed from the body, leaving the rest intact,” he states. “It is a subsystem of a more complex structure” (New Horizons 4). In The Architecture of Language (2000), he similarly states that, . . . in the informal sense in which the term “organ” is used in biology, one does not necessarily expect to find a “location”; the term is intended to focus attention on what appear to be components of complex systems, with identifiable properties and functions. A technical discussion that refers to the circulatory system or immune system as “organs” does not mean to imply that they can be cut of the body, leaving the rest intact. (54)

At times, Chomsky is frankly transcendentalist in his approach, as when he asserts that he is “very happy” that his abstract mental structures will never be available for observation (Language and Mind 114); at other times, however, he insists that his empty forms contain a literal content, or that universal grammar is “a real object of the real world” that brain scientists may presumably be able to locate (Language and Problems of Knowledge 61). It is not that these organs will never be found, merely that they are “difficult” to locate. Even if they are extremely difficult to locate, “the properties of the language faculty [should always be construed as] a real object of the natural world” (The Minimalist Program 11). “[W]hat is relevant and significant is often very difficult to observe, in linguistics no less than in the freshman physics laboratory, or, for that matter, anywhere in science” (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 28). Chomsky boldly asserts that, due to the discoveries of the New Grammarians, “the brain scientist can [one day] begin to explore the physical mechanisms that exhibit the properties revealed in the linguist’s abstract theory” (Language and Problems of Knowledge 8). It is an irrefutable proposition that abstract mental representations such as those posited by Kant and Chomsky will always escape investigation, since the empirical existence of a priori categories is necessarily predicated upon their activation in occasional contexts. For this reason, one





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can only agree with Chomsky’s sanguine conclusion that we will never be able to observe these essential mental properties, or that there will always and necessarily be a gap between the realms of the abstract and the actual. However, if this is true, then it cannot also be true that his abstract mental objects are as real as the liver since they are, by definition, idealized abstractions, as Chomsky himself acknowledges. In other words, an abstract mental representation can never be objectively real in the way that Chomsky implies because it is a form without content. If this form were to acquire actual, specific, or historical content, it would no longer be a form without content, but a trace of the real, like the performed epiphenomenon that Chomsky posits as theoretically distinct from what he calls universal grammar. Chomsky oscillates in his descriptions of universal grammar, which is sometimes described as an abstract and permanently inaccessible mental phenomenon and sometimes described as an organic entity that is as real as the liver. What Chomsky calls SDs, or structural descriptions, are also “expressions of language” (A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory 1). Yet when he refers to “external expressions” of UG (universal grammar), he is compelled to admit that an “expression” is a re-presentation of UG. He also states that, “one should not be misled by unintended connotations of such terms as ‘logical form’ and ‘represent’ adopted from technical usage in different kinds of inquiry” (4). Chomsky wants to keep all connotative and polysemous meanings of these terms at bay, affirming only his words’ strict denotative meanings. In other words, Chomsky seeks to keep his language about human language in place. “Note that the term ‘representation’ is a technical one,” Chomsky insists, “with no ‘representation’ relation in the sense of representational theories of ideas, for example” (Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework 3). In rhetorical terms, Chomsky’s descriptions of universal grammar are based in the literary trope called a zeugma or syllepsis, a formal trope which “consists of taking one and the same word in two different senses, one of which is, or is supposed to be, the original, or at least the literal, meaning; the other, the figurative, or supposedly figurative, even if it is not so in reality” (Fontanier Les Figures du discours 105). Chomsky’s readers are forever kept guessing as to Chomsky’s true meaning because they can never be sure if this word refers to universal grammar in its literal or figurative meaning. On the one hand, he may mean that these real structures of the brain are sitting in the head, waiting for their imminent discovery by future brain scientists; on the other hand, he may mean that these abstract representations are a





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priori categories of thought that can only be activated in occasional contexts. My argument here echoes and reinforces the views of I.A. Richards and Ian Robinson, scholars of English literature who are associated with the Cambridge School and the American New Criticism. In a brief but emblematic response to Chomsky, Richards observes that he fails to answer the question of whether grammar is “devised by the grammarian or by Nature” (“Why Generative Grammar Does Not Help” 7). Later, Robinson wrote the first sustained, book length rejoinder to Chomskyan linguistics from the perspective of the literary scholar. Robinson’s book, which was published in 1975 and titled The New Grammarians’ Funeral, is not only devastating in its critique of Chomsky, but is also filled with good humor. Robinson observes that Chomsky confuses the literal and figurative meanings of the term universal grammar, asking how it is that Chomsky can repeatedly make the same rhetorical blunder. “Now it is not my case to establish that Chomsky is an utter idiot. . . .” he states. “Chomsky is a serious man, worth some attention, and here, it seems to me, in the Laocoön embrace of a deep fallacy” (61). Robinson does not suggest that Chomsky in any way deliberately seeks to deceive his readers, but that Chomsky seems to be unaware of what he is doing. Robinson cites a telling statement from Chomsky regarding the New Grammarians’ understanding of the term universal grammar: “We [the New Grammarians] use the term ‘grammar’ with a systematic ambiguity. On the one hand, the term refers to the explicit theory constructed by the linguist and proposed as a description of the speaker’s competence. On the other hand, we use the term to refer to competence itself [my emphasis]” (Chomsky The Sound Pattern of English 3). In another place, Chomsky states, [W]e use the term “grammar” to refer both to the system of rules represented in the mind of the speaker-hearer, a system which is normally acquired in early childhood and used in the production and interpretation of utterances, and to the theory that the linguist constructs as a hypothesis concerning the actual internalized grammar of the speaker-hearer. No confusion should result from this standard usage if the distinction is kept in mind [my emphasis]. (The Sound Pattern of English 4)

In using the term “grammar” in this deliberately “ambiguous” fashion, Chomsky oscillates between its actual and abstract meanings, leaving the reader in the dark regarding which sense of this term he means in any given instance. The word “grammar” may refer to the external trace of the





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real that can be measured, or it may refer to the elusive object hidden in the mind/brain that will never be found: “A particular grammar for a single language is a compendium of specific and accidental (that is, nonessential) properties of this language,” Chomsky states (43). But, what he means by “specific,” in this case, is theoretically specific, since we don’t know what this specific thing is, nor can we say for certain that it actually exists. In fact, it exists only in a theoretical sense: universal grammar is “a theory of essential properties of human language [my emphasis]” (43). Chomsky assumes that what he calls “the rules of the phonological component of language have a fixed form and a specific organization” (14). He also asserts that these hidden and allegedly “fixed” essences in the mind will correspond “in a fixed manner determined by the labeled bracketing of the surface structure. . . .” (14). But Chomsky sets aside all questions about deep structure at the beginning of his study of the sound patterns of the English language, focusing exclusively on the surface structure for the obvious reason that only the surface structure is actually available for empirical analysis (7). Not surprisingly, at the conclusion of his study, Chomsky is compelled to acknowledge that, “The entire discussion of phonology in this book suffers from a fundamental theoretical inadequacy” (400). This is so, he admits, for [t]here is nothing in our account of linguistic theory to indicate that the result would be the description of a system that violates certain principles governing human language. To the extent that this is true, we have failed to formulate the principles of linguistic theory, or universal grammar, in a satisfactory manner. In particular, we have not made any formal use of the fact that the features have intrinsic content [my emphasis]. (400)

It does not occur to Chomsky that he has not been able to make any use of the “fact” of intrinsic content because what he calls a “fact” is not an empirical fact at all, but merely a matter of theoretical conjecture. It is nonetheless revealing that he is compelled to acknowledge that his lengthy and intricate study of surface structure has revealed absolutely nothing about the existence of any deep structural essences that are hidden in the human brain. In fact, the only thing his study has revealed is that his innate hypothesis is not verifiable, largely because it is only a hypothesis. In response to Chomsky’s rhetorical sleight of hand, Robinson wryly comments, “What Chomsky is offering is not ambiguity, systematic or not, but confusion [my emphasis]” (The New Grammarians’ Funeral 62). He also asks, “What light can be thrown by deliberately





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using the same word for things we are trying to keep apart?” (63). I do not myself believe that Chomsky deliberately intends to deceive his readers, nor do I claim that he is “in the Laocoön embrace of a deep fallacy” (61). My point here is rather that Chomsky’s oscillation between the realms of figurative and literal grammar, what he prefers to call a “systematic ambiguity,” reenacts the classical metaphysical drama. Chomsky states that “competence can be represented, to an as yet undetermined extent, as a system of rules that we can call the grammar of [a normal human’s] language” (Current Issues In Linguistic Theory 8–9). In the first instance, “competence” refers to the absent and/or hypothetical “grammar” that he believes is embedded in the speaker’s mind, what he calls “the underlying generative principle” (17). But what Chomsky calls “the grammar of language” in the second instance refers to the literal grammar that exists outside the head of the speaker. Robinson’s point is therefore well made, for it is often quite difficult to determine exactly which form of “grammar” Chomsky means. The “systematic ambiguity” in Chomsky’s theory of language creates systematic confusion for the reader, which sometimes seems to be Chomsky’s intent. For, once these two forms of grammar become indistinguishable, one no longer bothers to reflect much on the fact that the “underlying generative principle” is merely a hypothesis. The further one is enmeshed in the intricate world of surface structure, after having accepted the thesis that the hypothetical thing is an objective thing, the less one is inclined to reflect on the fact that what Chomsky calls “deep structure” is purely conjectural. My argument here is that Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar is haunted by the Platonic doctrine of the Logos, the classical distinction between the realms of Being and becoming, despite his unsubstantiated claims that universal grammar is as real as the liver. In other words, Chomsky’s theory of the mind is a metaphysical essentialism akin to many other competing philosophies of language. At times Chomsky strongly resists the suggestion that he offers a neo-Platonic theory of language, insisting that his scientific definition of language is “divorced from any metaphysical connotations” (New Horizons 75). However, he sometimes agrees that his views “might with certain reservations be called “Platonistic” (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 24). Lurking behind the empirical trace is an absent “notion” that is a real object but “without any metaphysical import” (New Horizons 75). “In investigating the ‘two worlds’ of thought and expression,” Chomsky states, “we find systematic links between them . . . and





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sometimes the ‘notion’ behind a grammatical phenomenon is as elusive as Kant’s ‘ding an sich’ [my emphasis]” (Essays in Form and Interpretation 27). Yet a notion in the mind of a scientist is not the same thing as an object in the mind of the speaker, whose “grammatical phenomenon” is under investigation. This “notion” is clearly not “an internal property of the person [who is speaking]” (Beyond Exploratory Adequacy 1). It is rather a hypothesis that is offered by the scientist. However, if this is so, why does Chomsky tell us that “ ‘the notion’ behind a grammatical phenomenon” is only sometimes as elusive as Kant’s thing-in-itself? The use of the word “sometimes” in this instance implies that there must be times when it is not as elusive as Kant’s thing-in-itself. But when does this “notion” ever disclose itself as the real thing that it truly is? For that matter, when does Kant’s thing-in-itself ever become unconcealed as a temporal event? Kant’s own skepticism in this regard caused him to bracket off the thing-in-itself as an appropriate concern for philosophy. “You could say that the structure of our experience and our understanding of experience is a reflection of the nature of our minds,” Chomsky asserts, “and that we can’t get to what the world really is [my emphasis]” (Language and Politics 468). No modern philosopher would reject the assertion that “we cannot get to what the world really is,” which is a truism of modern philosophical inquiry. That the realm of being is other than the realm of seeming is what inaugurated the thinking of figures like Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. But Chomsky implies that the realm of being is “sometimes” perceptible within the realm of sensory experience. “Any grammar of a language will project the finite and somewhat accidental corpus of observed utterances,” Chomsky states. “In this respect, a grammar mirrors the behavior of speakers [my emphasis]” (Syntactic Structures 15). Chomsky asserts that the mind’s forms (or “grammar” in the figurative sense) will “project” the empirical and external phenomenon (or “grammar” in the literal sense) and that the body of utterances produced by the speaker is only “somewhat accidental.” The reference to the verbal projection, in this instance, literally means to “spit out”: the speaker spits out or “projects” the grammatical phenomenon from his mouth. In effect, the external grammatical phenomenon is a liquid projectile. But what purpose does the qualifying word “somewhat” serve in this instance? If the projectiles of the speaker are only “somewhat accidental,” this means that they are only quasi-accidental. In effect, they are not accidental at all, but intentional. There is therefore a nexus between figurative and literal





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grammar; or, as Chomsky puts it, “The specific concern of the grammarian is to determine the nature of the abstract ‘connecting link between the world of sounds and the world of ideas’ ” (Essays on Form and Interpretation 28). But how do we know that a connecting link exists, if the notion is merely a notion, rather than an observable object? Is this object “sometimes elusive,” as Chomsky occasionally asserts, or as he suggests in more Kantian moments, is this object forever out of our reach? To cite Chomsky, a person who has successfully acquired a language is someone who has attained “a system of ‘pragmatic competence’ interacting with his grammatical competence, [that is] characterized by the grammar. Thus we distinguish grammatical and pragmatic competence as two components of the attained cognitive state [my emphasis]” (3). Yet, what Chomsky calls “the attained cognitive state” is a creative fiction, a temporal stasis during which the interior “notion” magically conjoins with the external trace. The “attained cognitive state” is the “concrete situation” that is also a theoretical fiction of the linguist: “We thus make a fundamental distinction between competence (the speakerhearer’s knowledge of his language) and performance (the actual use of language in concrete situations) [my emphasis]” (Aspects of the Theory of Syntax 4). The “actual use of language” in this case means the word as an empirical trace (or the word in the world of becoming, to put it in Platonic terms), but what Chomsky calls here “the concrete situation” is a hermeneutic and ontological concept, one that is quite familiar to readers of Heidegger, Gadamer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Fredric Jameson, etc. In Heideggerian terms, what Chomsky calls competence is akin to Rede (reason or logos) and performance to Sprache (or mere chatter), whereas Jameson will speak of the linguistic registers of the semantic and the syntactic (The Political Unconscious 108–109). All of these hermeneutic thinkers, including Chomsky, have been influenced by Humboldt, who borrowed the notion of energeia or “inner form” from Johann Goethe’s concept of the “typus” or “type” (Di Cesare “Humboldt’s Linguistic Typology” 161).6 Citing Humboldt’s notion of energeia, Chomsky asserts, “The form of language is that constant and unvarying factor that underlies and gives life and significance to each particular linguistic act” (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 17). Humboldt’s thought is a variety of Adamic linguistics, for Humboldt presupposes that the word on the human interior and its external representation enjoy an inexplicable and mysterious relation. This pre-Saussurean variety of linguistic thought is called Adamic, after the biblical figure Adam, whose





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task was to assign the proper name to all living creatures and things in the Garden of Eden. After humanity’s expulsion from the garden, the link between the proper name and the thing it signifies is severed, but the nostalgic proponent of Adamic linguistics imagines that the “correct” word is capable of releasing the disclosed essence of the thing named. This is possible because the uttered word is imagined to be a correct replica or representation of the thing named, just as it accurately replicates the inscribed word on the human interior. It was largely in response to Humboldtian and Adamic lingustic thought that Ferdinand de Saussure asserted the doctrine of the arbitrary sign, firmly rejecting the mystifying notion that words and things enjoy an inexplicable relation. This doctrine is the cornerstone of structuralist and poststructuralist thought, although Chomsky firmly rejects it: A name, let us suppose, is associated with a thing by an original stipulation, and the association is then conveyed in some manner to others. Consider the original stipulation. The name is drawn from the system of language, and the thing is chosen in terms of the categories of “common-sense understanding.” Thus two major faculties of mind, at least, place conditions on the stipulation. There are complex conditions—poorly understood, though illustrative examples are not hard to find—that an entity must satisfy to qualify as a “naturally nameable” thing. These conditions involve spatiotemporal contiguity, Gestalt qualities, functions within the space of human actions. . . . Thus it seems that there is an essential reference even to willful acts, in determining what is a nameable thing [my emphasis]. (Reflections on Language 44)

Chomsky’s nostalgic views on the proper name place him squarely in the framework of Adamic linguistic thought and theories of the proper name. They also set him completely at odds with the Saussurean doctrine of arbitrary sign. In fact, Chomsky states bluntly that, “Names are not associated with objects in some arbitrary manner” (Reflections on Language 46). He asserts that word and thing conjoin “in some manner,” although the precise nature of this relation remains an utter mystery (for Chomsky, a scientific “problem” rather than a “mystery”). This relation implies “spatiotemporal contiguity,” by which he means that grammar is both here and now, or that time is frozen for an instant in a spatial configuration. Yet, in the aftermath of this mysterious event that Chomsky believes occurs, the “spatiotemporal configuration” may no longer be construed as an object/ event that is here-now, but one that has disappeared forever from view, a





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temporal dilemma that need not disturb the repose of the serious brain scientist. Another way to say this is that Chomsky asserts a garden-variety metaphysics of presence, one that builds upon traditional Platonic and Aristotelian notions of speaking. As a case in point, Chomsky is straightforwardly Socratic in his critique of electronic media technology: “[F]ace-to-face contact is an extremely important part of human life and existence and developing self-understanding and the growth of a healthy personality and so on,” he states. “You just have a different relationship to somebody when you are looking at them than when you’re punching away at a keyboard. . . .” (Keeping the Rabble in Line 261). Chomsky’s view in this case is not incidental, but is integral to his philosophy of language. In other words, Chomsky offers a hierarchical theory of language in which writing is imagined to be a copy of speaking, which in its turn is imagined to be a copy of a word that is inscribed on the human interior. Chomsky articulates his logos-speaking-writing metaphysics in the following terms: [E]ven if the phonetic transcription were as faithful a record of speech as one could desire, there is still some question whether such a record would be of much interest to linguists, who are primarily concerned with the structure of language rather than with the acoustics and physiology of speech. It is because of this question that many structural linguists have felt that phonetics has very little to offer them and have therefore assigned to it a secondary, peripheral role. These problems do not arise when phonetic transcription is understood . . . not as a direct record of the speech signal, but rather as a representation of what the speaker of a language takes to be phonetic properties of an utterance, given his hypothesis as to its surface structure and his knowledge of the rules of the phonological component [my emphasis]. (The Sound Pattern of English 294)

Chomsky claims then that writing (or “the phonetic transcription”) is a prosthetic and inferior copy of speaking, which is a copy of the hidden word on the human interior, or what he here calls “the structure language.” The phonetic transcription “represents the speaker-hearer’s interpretation rather than directly observable properties of the signal,” Chomsky asserts, which refers again to the interior word rather than its external form (294). “Clearly, a person’s interpretation of a particular speech event is not determined merely by the physical properties constituting the event . . . ,” he claims (294). What determines the speaker’s interpretation is rather the generative “notion” that is hidden from the linguist’s view. Yet Chomsky





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does not assert in this case that sounds only happen “in the head,” as McGilvray puts it (Cartesian Linguistics 10). In fact, there is really a “physical stimulus that strikes the hearer’s ear” (The Sound Pattern of English 294). For Chomsky, there is an agreement between the internal word and the physical stimulus that strikes the hearer’s ear, but that agreement is “crude” (294). Cruder still is the agreement between the physical stimulus that strikes the reader’s ear and the written transcriptions of the linguist that replicate the physical stimulus. But it hardly matters that the first copy is a crude copy of the interior word and that the second copy is even cruder than the first because what is at stake is a hermeneutic process that takes place on the human interior; that is, “a person’s interpretation of a particular speech event [my emphasis]” (294). Chomsky offers a phenomenological and hermeneutic theory of language, one that is certainly comparable to many others that have been influenced by Humboldt. However, unlike important figures such as Heidegger, Gadamer, and others, Chomsky has little to say about objective reality apart from its importance for the linguist who busies himself transcribing the grammatical epiphenomena of his human subjects. “Unanalyzed phenomena don’t really matter much in themselves,” Chomsky states (On Nature and Language 125). Chomsky observes that “there is no point in a demand that we give answers to questions that no one yet understands and concerning which no one yet has any idea what would be relevant evidence” (Knowledge of Language 257). Hence, metaphysical and aesthetic questions of the object’s essence can be set aside, although we are not to doubt that the thing that is given to us in the empirical world is indeed something, rather than nothing at all. “What is ‘given’ is some finite object,” Chomsky insists, “a finite set of observed phenomena” (257). At times Chomsky places quotation marks around the word “given,” signaling his discomfort with it, although at other times he employs this word without quotations. Despite Chomsky’s seeming awareness that an abyss yawns beneath the problematic word “given,” he does not believe that it is a matter to disturb the serious linguist or brain scientist. “What is given to the linguist are finite arrays of data from various speech communities. . . . [my emphasis],” Chomsky states (31). Moreover, what is true for linguists, chemists, and brain scientists is also true for mathematicians: “When we study, say, the language of arithmetic,” Chomsky argues, “we may take it to be a ‘given’ abstract object: an infinite class of sentences in some given notion [my emphasis]” (30). The comings-and-goings of the scare quotes around the word





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“given” serve no clear purpose, other than to remind Chomsky’s readers that he is aware that this word marks a difficult problem, but one he refuses to discuss. However, in accepting the given as given, Chomsky unwittingly reaffirms a key tenet of the phenomenological hermeneutic tradition, but his articulation of this problematic is shallow, if not cynical. Hermeneutic thinkers such as Husserl, Heidegger, and Gadamer similarly argue that the phenomenon is always already given and must therefore be accepted as such, only they would not agree with Chomsky’s conclusion that “there is no point in a demand that we give answers to questions that no one yet understands” (257). Like Heidegger, they might sometimes ask from whence this “demand” originates (What Is Called Thinking? 6); or, like Gadamer, they might assert that “understanding is never a subjective relation to a given ‘object’ but to the history of its effect” (Truth and Method xxxi). In contrast, Chomsky maintains that, “We shouldn’t as scientists look at humans with that natural prejudice of daily life” (Language and Learning 77). This view certainly puts him at odds with more traditional phenomenological hermeneutic theorists such as Gadamer. Whereas Chomsky believes that empirical data may simply be discarded if they do not suit the rational aims of the language scientist, Gadamer insists that, “hermeneutic experience must take everything that becomes present to it as a genuine experience” (463). For Gadamer, we are not free to reject empirical data that do not suit our theoretical paradigms, however many difficulties this may pose for us. True hermeneutic experience “does not have prior freedom to select and reject,” Gadamer asserts. “Nor can it maintain an absolute freedom by leaving undecided matters specific to what one is trying to understand” (463). For Gadamer, the beautiful object is the most important example of the given phenomenon that eludes all rational, instrumental, and scientific analysis, for it causes us to wonder about the object as object, in a manner that turns back our efforts to subordinate it to our narrow scientific paradigms. The beautiful object that is sensuously abundant cannot be rationally analyzed, but this does not mean that the given phenomenon that we behold “doesn’t matter much in itself,” as Chomsky asserts. The experience of the beautiful, as Gadamer observes, shows that “the universal expressed by the mathematical formulation of the laws of nature is not the only kind of truth” (The Relevance of the Beautiful 16–17).7 In Cartesian epistemology, the rational ego (or “I”) is precisely what is given, which is to say that Descartes asserts that the “I” exists, although he does not ask what existence itself is. As Heidegger has observed,





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Descartes asserts his belief in the existence of the self, but he has much less to say about the problem of the meaning of Being. In other words, Descartes does not ask what the “is” is. The “am” in the cogito ergo sum is taken for granted. To ask the question of the “is” is a well-known Heideggerian theme, perhaps the defining theme of the phenomenological hermeneutic tradition. Heidegger asserts that the existence of the person who poses a question is always already implied in the question that is being asked (Pathmarks 82). By way of contrast, Chomsky repeatedly evokes the figure of the Martian scientist, looking down on our planet from above, as he struggles to come to terms with the language of earthlings. It is highly unlikely that Heidegger, Gadamer, or Derrida would evoke the recurring figure of the Martian scientist, which for them would amount to an ontological absurdity. As stated previously, though he steadfastly denies that his position is theological, Chomsky repeatedly appeals to an “extra-human observer” in justifying his rational and scientific theory of language. “Imagine an extra-human observer looking down at us,” Chomsky states. “Such an extra-human observer would be struck precisely by the uniformity of languages. . . .” (Chomsky on Democracy and Education 62). Mere earthlings without access to this extraterrestrial perspective tend to be obsessed with differences between themselves and their languages, whereas the Martian scientist focuses on the similarities between language speakers. The figure of the Martian scientist or extra-human observer is not incidental, but a defining feature of Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar, which he describes as absent rules that are inscribed in the human brain. But, if the brain is inscribed with innate laws, Chomsky argues that these laws were inscribed by no one for no reason. For Chomsky, there is no such thing as a divine rulegiver, nor is there any extra-human observer looking down on earth from outer space. Yet Chomsky often appeals to this rhetorical device in the name of rationality and science, not theology. Chomsky affirms that universal grammar is mirrored in the actual language that we speak, but he sometimes asserts that our innate human consciousness, which is mirrored in the real world, is a given ontological structure that is also real in a spatial sense, although currently unavailable for empirical observation. In other words, universal grammar is a spatial object in the human interior. More forthright hermeneutic and deconstructive thinkers, by way of contrast, are aware that the rationalist thesis of correct representation is interdependent with the concept of the perceiving subject. Neither competence nor subjectivity is taken for granted, nor can they be in the





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aftermath of Nietzsche’s contributions to contemporary critical thought. Both ideas are subject to careful and rigorous analysis that is informed by the history of Western philosophy. Oblivious to questions of temporality, Chomsky claims that language is not something a child learns, but an event that happens in the life of the child. Language “just happens,” Chomsky insists, “it’s not something you do” (Language and the Problem of Knowledge 174). But, if language is something that just happens to the child, it follows that the child is not a free agent who initiates the event that occurs. The child is instead a passive object upon which an action—the event of language—occurs. If this is so, it remains to be asked if the child can ever be said to acquire language at all, since the word “acquire”—as it is commonly used in the English language—implies that the child is a subjective agent who performs the action of acquiring. In fact, “acquire” in the ordinary dictionary sense means “to gain possession by one’s own efforts.” If language is an event that happens to us as passive objects, we cannot ever acquire it; in fact, language would be something that acquires us. On the other hand, if language is something that human beings acquire, as Chomsky argues, then language cannot be something that ever happens to us; it would instead be an action that we perform in a conscious manner—the act of acquiring. Hence, the only person who can be said to acquire language is the Chomskyan linguist, who is responsible for transcribing and analyzing the epiphenomenal data of his or her human subjects. To make this point is to again raise I.A. Richards’s question of whether grammar in Chomsky’s theory is “devised by the grammarian or by Nature” (“Why Generative Grammar Does Not Help” 7). But I am also suggesting that Chomsky’s theory of language provides us with an implicit answer to this question, which is that it is indeed the grammarian who acquires language, and not the child whose language is under study, and whom Chomsky describes as a passive object with respect to the happening of language. Yet Chomsky occasionally qualifies his view that language is an event that happens to the child by adding the phrase “as if ” to his formulation of this problematic: “The result of language acquisition is as if it were instantaneous [my emphasis]” (Knowledge of Language 54). Like Chomsky’s occasional quotation marks around the word “given,” the qualifier “as if ” functions as a rhetorical signal to alert his readers that he is aware of a difficult problem, one that he declines to discuss. Still, he cannot imagine that by merely signaling his awareness of a problem’s existence he has given





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it due consideration. To merely acknowledge the systematic ambiguity of one’s thought does not validate it. “The principles of universal grammar are part of the fixed structure of the mind/brain,” Chomsky states, “and it may be assumed that such mechanisms operate virtually instantaneously [my emphasis]” (Language and Problems of Knowledge 73). Chomsky here seems to mean that the child learns language in a way that is “as if ” it were instantaneous but in fact is not really instantaneous in any actual sense of the term. Elsewhere, as we have seen, he states that “language acquisition is as if it were instantaneous [my emphasis]” (Knowledge of Language 54). Language acquisition for Chomsky would then be a quasi-instantaneous happening, which means that the rapid event of language acquisition is not really rapid, but only quasi-rapid, since this event does not happen all at once, but at successive moments in time. Chomsky describes his theory of language acquisition as an instantaneous model, but he also posits that universal grammar is prior to language acquisition. By instantaneous, Chomsky therefore means occasionalist, or that language is activated in particular social settings. The empirically real here is, as in its classical Kantian formulation, both a spatial and temporal phenomenon. In effect, Chomsky posits that universal grammar is an a priori category, or that it is prior to language acquisition, which would make it a temporal category in the ordinary Kantian sense, yet he also posits that it is a category of space that is “as real as the liver.” What these two competing theses assert is that universal grammar is both a spatial and a temporal structure, or it is a “here-now” as Derrida might put it. The mental phenomenon that is universal grammar is a form that endures in both time and space. It is a metaphysical object, even if it is only a trace of the real. But Chomsky also posits a phenomenological thinking of the external trace, even as he brackets off all phenomenal traces that do not suit his theory, which is to say, even if his thinking of the trace is utilitarian. When Chomsky calls language acquisition instantaneous, he does not mean that it happens all at once, but that it happens on the occasion of the child’s insertion into situations where actual language is spoken. The instant is therefore not a single instant, for if it were the organic structure that Chomsky calls universal grammar could not exist as an object that is prior to the child’s epiphenomenal performance of language. This is why the instantaneous event can only be virtually instantaneous, or as if it were instantaneous. This happening that is language is a series of occasional instances, or





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a succession of present moments. Instantaneous for Chomsky does not mean that the child gains the whole of language all at once, but rather that acquired language is here-now, here-now, here-now, here-now, etc. In other words, language acquisition is limited only by the death of the speaker. Chomsky asserts that, “encyclopedic knowledge does not stop growing, [and] that is true for language as well; for example, you keep learning more and more words, but the system doesn’t fundamentally change. . . .” (Language and Learning 128). The instantaneous happening that is language is an event that never ceases to happen, so long as the child remains alive. Language would never finally happen in Chomsky’s instantaneous model of language acquisition since it could never be fully present to the child all in a single instant. The instant is instead a series of instances, or it is an instant that never arrives. Space and time conjoin in a single, rapid instant that is followed by another instant that is also here and now. Hence, it is meaningless to assert that universal grammar is prior to its epiphenomenal or spoken performance, unless Chomsky means it in a strictly Kantian sense, as an empty category of time, but not as a real organic form. If universal grammar were an organic or spatial form like the liver, rather than a temporal category as in Kant’s metaphysics, the instantaneous happening that is language would always be here, but it would never be here now. This is why Chomsky’s use of the word instantaneous really means occasionalist, as Barnes has observed, and why his thinking on matters of temporality is Aristotelian, to the extent that he can be said to offer any thinking about time at all. In other words, Chomsky describes time as a succession of temporal presents. The event that is language happens over and over again in the child’s development, as language is learned. The happening that is language is not a happening that is beyond humanity’s ability to calculate. It is instead a recurring event, or a succession of happenings, which can only mean that it happens throughout the child’s entire life, and that language is not something that can ever be acquired. It follows then that there is no such thing as language acquisition, for language cannot be acquired. The belief that language can be acquired is a metaphysical fantasy. Language can only be said to exist in any actual sense as an external trace of the real. Nor does the claim that a brain scientist may one day discover the absent mental form that Chomsky calls universal grammar solve the problem. One may, of course, believe this metaphysical proposition, but to hold such a belief is hardly a matter of scientific truth.





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The epiphenomenal or spoken word is a trace of the real, as is the visual or written word, but the former does not have the objective character of the latter: It does not endure in space as does writing, which stays around long enough for the linguist to study it. Chomsky believes that the linguist is authorized to assert claims of scientific truth claims about the innate mental phenomena of those whose words he or she studies. “It is important to bear in mind,” Chomsky states, “that the study of one language may provide crucial evidence concerning the structure of some other language, if we continue to accept the plausible assumption that the capacity to acquire language . . . is common across the species” (Knowledge of Language 37). Chomsky celebrates the invention of writing as an event that facilitated and prefigured the alleged discovery of deep structures within the minds of those whose spoken words the biolinguist affixes to the flat surface of a sheet of paper (On Nature and Language 45–46). But he also asserts that alphabetic literacy offers us a privileged glimpse into the secret and hidden workings of the human mind: “The invention [of alphabetic literacy] succeeds because it reflects the nature of the language that the little characters are used to represent” (Chomsky on Democracy and Education 73). What Galileo calls “the greatest of all human inventions” is great for Chomsky precisely because it reveals how “an infinity of expressions” can be constructed from 25 to 30 inscribed characters (New Horizons 4). The rules that are imprinted on the mind/brain are most revealingly represented by the relatively small number of inscribed letters that exist on the flattened sheet of paper that is smeared with printer’s ink. Chomsky does not theorize temporal differences between written characters, which are visual objects that endure in space, and oral sounds, which do not enjoy the same longevity in the world of space. In other words, he does not consider that the oral-aural word seems to have the character of an instantaneous temporal event, whereas writing is an instant that has been slowed down on the linguist’s behalf. Yet, this slowness is necessary in order for the biolinguist to explore the deep structures that Chomsky claims exist within the mind of the child acquiring language, as well as the mind of the linguist who transcribes the child’s spoken words. Chomsky asserts,



The construction of a grammar of language by a linguist is in some respects analogous to the acquisition of language by the child. The linguist has a corpus of data; the child is presented with analyzed data of language use. The linguist tries to formulate the rules of language; the child constructs



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Despite the similarities in their tasks, Chomsky acknowledges that what they do is only analogous “in some respects.” In Rules and Representations, which was published in 1980, or five years after he made the above comments, Chomsky acknowledges that “there is a tension here between what is sometimes called ‘genetic’ and ‘analytic’ accounts of knowledge” (Rules and Representations 270). But, twenty years down the road, Chomsky bluntly states that, “The linguist and the child face radically different tasks [my emphasis]” (New Horizons 54). This is so, he says, because “the child, endowed with certain innate capacities, acquires knowledge of a language automatically, and with little if any choice in the matter” (54). By way of contrast, he states, “the linguist is trying to find out what knowledge the child acquires, and what innate properties of the mind/brain are responsible for this process of growth. . . .” (54). The biolinguist performs the task of acquiring the language of the speaking subject by laboriously affixing the speaker’s words upon a spatial surface, and the results of this scholarly labor are believed to replicate the typographic object embossed upon the brain’s genome. The inscribed text that exists on the flattened sheet of paper mirrors the “abstract mental phenomenon” that exists as a second substance within the brain of the speaking subject, a second substance that is both identical to and different from the externally inscribed text. Because the external trace is an accurate copy of the internal trace, the linguist transcribing the child’s spoken words gains privileged insight into the mysterious contents of the child’s mind, which is substantiated with the appeal to the linguist’s intuition. The linguist can therefore be said to know the mind of the speaker better than the speaker does; which is to say, the linguist possesses conscious knowledge of the speaker’s mysterious unconscious knowledge. Chomsky asserts that it is possible to mediate between different languages because there is some absent or third language that guarantees the possibility of translation. Yet, Chomsky differs from most hermeneutic thinkers in the extravagance of his claims about his factual and scientific discoveries regarding the contents of the mind of the other. This point is worth underscoring because it differentiates Chomsky from many of the deconstructive thinkers whom he dismisses as fraudulent. In the writings of Heidegger and Derrida, for example, the question of ethics is generally construed in terms of our relation to the other. Ethics are not


a mental representation of the grammar of the language . . . [my emphasis]. (The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory 11)



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described as organic structures that are hardwired into our brains, and that are currently inaccessible. For the deconstructive theorist, the scientific claim to know what is hidden in the mind of the other is dangerous because it risks not letting the other be fully other. Chomsky does not allow the other to persist in his/her being but instead reinvents the other as a lesser version of the person claiming knowledge of that which is hidden—and which will always remain hidden. For this reason, many of Chomsky’s contemporaries would recoil from his claims to knowledge of that which is permanently concealed. As Gadamer puts it, “The true historical object is not an object at all, but the unity of the one and the other, a relationship that constitutes both the reality of history and the reality of historical understanding” (Truth and Method 299). For Derrida too, there is always and necessarily a gap between the actual words that we use and the irreducible place from which we speak, if it is a place. This gap, which Derrida sometimes calls différance, is good, healthy, and necessary. In fact, to speak of différance is merely another way of invoking what Chomsky himself discusses when he asserts that, “it is a fundamental conclusion of Cartesian linguistics that deep and surface structures need not be identical” (Cartesian Linguistics 79). For if these structures are not identical, there must be an empty space between them enabling Chomsky to differentiate between them in the way that he does. Différance is not a concept that was invented by Derrida but is at least as old as the Western metaphysical tradition and probably far older. In the Timaeus, Plato too speaks of the placeless place called khora, or the empty receptacle. For Plato, khora is a kind of “third” space that “provides a position for everything that comes to be” (Timaeus 71). Although Chomsky often evokes what he calls “Plato’s problem,” or the enigma of the innate human capacity to think rationally, he seems oblivious to this elemental aspect of Platonic thought. In other words, Chomsky lacks a serious consideration of the problematic of nothingness. As academics in wider fields of engagement began to access Chomsky’s views, many criticized his assertion that there is such a thing as “unconscious knowledge” of the mind’s universal grammar (Knowledge of Language 269). “That the principles of language and natural logic are known unconsciously, and that they are in large measure a precondition for language acquisition rather than a matter of ‘institution’ or ‘training,’ ” Chomsky writes, “is the general presupposition of Cartesian linguistics [my emphasis]” (Cartesian Linguistics 101). Prominent critics of Chomsky in this respect include Barnes, Michael Dummett, John Searle,





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W.V. Quine, Colin McGinn, Stephen Stich, and Charles Hockett. Those who took Chomsky’s views seriously as philosophy, rather than uncritically affirmed his descriptions of them as hard science, converged in their dissatisfaction regarding what seemed to them such an obviously illogical hypothesis. Their criticisms did not lead Chomsky to abandon his contradictory hypothesis or to modify it in any significant way. In fact, Chomsky tends to reiterate his already well-known views in his responses to his critics, rather than to directly address their concerns. As Dummett observes, Chomsky’s rejoinders to those who criticize his linguistic theories “often boil down to saying that they have begged the question, or are appealing to prejudice rather than to rational grounds, without any recognition that there is a genuine force to their contentions or a genuine problem to be solved” (“Objections to Chomsky” 5). His responses to his critics have nonetheless been revealing. In one case, when his theory of unconscious knowledge was criticized as unsubstantiated conjecture, Chomsky countered that he “proceed[s] in practice by taking a realist stance towards theoretical discourse [my emphasis]” (252). Chomsky’s statement may seem confusing since his use of the term “realist” is again somewhat promiscuous, to cite Barnes. What Chomsky means by “realist” in this case is not what is commonly meant in philosophical debate. Chomsky does not mean realism here in any Thomist sense, or as a metaphysics asserting an essence that is concealed behind the form that appears. Although he insists upon the objective nature of the mind’s contents, Chomsky also claims that he is Kantian when it comes to the question of things-in-themselves. While Kant and Chomsky bracket off the question of things-in-themselves in their respective epistemologies, Kant studiously avoids assigning objective content to the a priori categories of thought. That is, Chomsky agrees with Kant that, “the world of the noumena is forever closed to us,” but he does not agree that the mind’s contents are devoid of objective form (251). In Greek metaphysical thought, phenomena appear in the realm of becoming as a temporal event but precisely as a trace of the real (or a concealment that unconceals), whereas the “noumena” is the essence of the thing that exists only in the realm of Being. Chomsky reflexively affirms Kant’s theoretical move of suspending the question of the essence of the thing, its occult quidditas, and, like Kant, Chomsky does not thereby assert that there are no such things as noumena, merely that they are “forever closed off to us.” To speak of noumena therefore is to raise a metaphysical, rather than a scientific, question. Chomsky argues





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that such questions fall outside the concerns of the biolinguist; but it is Chomsky himself who raises them in his discussion of the inaccessibly of the noumena. True scientists must offer rational hypotheses about the mind’s objective contents, Chomsky insists, despite the fact that they may never possess knowledge of their concealed essence. “Realist” in this case therefore means pragmatic, but Chomsky’s use of this term is closer to how it is more commonly employed in foreign policy debate, as linked to figures like Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Hans Morganthau, and even Chomsky’s old nemesis Henry Kissinger. Chomsky’s use of the term “realist” is linked to the concept of the political, as in Carl Schmitt’s sense (The Concept of the Political 30–31). What it implies is that in exceptional circumstances, particularly in extremely difficult and dangerous instances, one must respond by acting decisively, even if it is impossible to know the right course of action. Realism then is related to the concept of the foe that must be killed in order to preserve one’s very existence.8 In certain circumstances, one must be a realist and make hard decisions even when one knows that one cannot ever know for certain that the right decision has been made. One cannot know if one is correct, but one must act because one is finally compelled to by the circumstances in which one finds oneself. It is not possible for Chomsky to know if his hypothesis about universal grammar is true, so he tells us that he takes a “leap in the dark” and accepts that it is true. If we take this leap with him, Chomsky suggests, our skepticism about his rational hypothesis regarding universal grammar will vanish in the face of the mounting empirical evidence he believes his theory will generate. Citing the historical situation of nineteenth-century scientists, Chomsky states, “Skepticism with regard to the realist stance [of practicing nineteenth-century physicists and chemists] diminished in practice as evidence converged” (Knowledge of Language 252). His view here is akin to the right-wing Israeli view about creating facts in the West Bank; this too is political realism, but in the arena of foreign policy, where the use of this term is more common. The Likud politician knows very well that his actions will create a certain outrage in the international community but calculates that the world will eventually adjust to the new political reality. Right or wrong, one creates facts on the ground. This is the sense in which Chomsky means that he is a realist. He is not a Thomist contemplating the wonder of God’s creation, but a hard-nosed politician doing what he must in order to create facts. Chomsky urges a realist strategy as a program for fellow





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biolinguists. He does not worry about the groundlessness of his own theory of language, since he believes that all theories of language are finally groundless—or suspended over an abyss. “Although many feel that this stance is somehow illegitimate,” he states, “ that it goes beyond the evidence, the issues are not crucially different from those that arise in any intellectual work of significance” (252). Chomsky believes then that all scientists without exception act without knowing. “All of this is done without reasons,” Chomsky states, “just as we follow rules ourselves without having reasons (‘blindly’) [Chomsky’s emphasis]” (236). His scientific views are as groundless as anyone else’s, even by his own admission, but he believes that he can create enough facts on the ground to carry the day. Chomsky is therefore the Ariel Sharon of language studies. In certain circumstances, one must be realistic and resign one’s self to acting in a violent and arbitrary fashion because “the significant questions have to do with the persuasiveness and explanatory power of the theories and the quality and scale of evidence bearing on them” (252). Setting the question of professional ethics aside, Chomsky insists, “No issue of principle arises in connection with the first step of the argument [my emphasis]” (252). In addressing issues of social justice, Chomsky will insist that, “a truly decent person will always seek to discover forms of oppression, hierarchy, domination, and authority [my emphasis]” (Language and Problems of Knowledge 154). But, what is universally true for the activist who is charged with making the world a better place, is apparently not true for the linguist, who must more realistically cast principles aside in order to create scientific facts. It is not then the Nietzschean critic who claims that questions of power are finally what is at stake in Chomsky’s hypothesis regarding the “real” existence of universal grammar, it is rather Chomsky himself who asserts that his own theory of language is suspended over an abyss, or that it is completely groundless. But Chomsky also wants his readers to believe that his views about language are in no way utilitarian or politically driven. “There is no issue of ‘utility in all of this” (235), he illogically insists. It’s just good clean science. The Neo Grammarians “proceed in practice by taking a realist stance towards theoretical discourse” (252). They are compelled to do what all scientists must do, and it is not fair to single them out any more than one singles out the chemist. Realists act because they are compelled to act by necessity, by the circumstances that compel them to articulate powerful hypotheses and then substantiate these hypotheses with created facts on the ground.





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“I just make these determinations, without reasons,” Chomsky states, “just as I follow rules, without reasons, as a reflection of my nature [my emphasis]” (235). It is in Chomsky’s “nature” to make necessary decisions, even if he cannot know why he does what he does. For Chomsky, like the rest of us, is blind. Theoretical decisions are therefore made in the dark, in blindness. We can never know if our theories are the right ones; it is rather a matter of what theory is endowed with the most “explanatory power.” Chomsky knows then that his theories are groundless. He states very clearly that he asserts his hypotheses without reasons. This is another way of saying he makes decisions without reasons. Decisions are made from the abyss of unknowing. Citing Richard Popkin, Chomsky describes his viewpoint as a variant of “constructive skepticism.” The constructive skeptics, of whom Chomsky counts himself a member, follow Kant in “recognizing that ‘the secrets of nature, of things-in-themselves, are forever hidden from us” (240). Despite our inability to fathom these hidden secrets of nature, the constructive skeptic believes that human beings “possess standards for evaluating the reliability and applicability of what we have found out about the world,” which is for Chomsky, “the standard outlook of modern science” (240). What matters then is the “prescriptive force” of one’s theory, which Chomsky claims is not a utilitarian thesis. “You should do what you think is right and not what’s going to be tactically useful,” Chomsky insists (Chronicles of Dissent 353). Yet the Heideggerian critique of Nietzsche’s doctrine of the will to power could certainly be applied to what Chomsky calls here his “constructive skepticism,” for Chomsky is essentially claiming that scientific technology creates its own truth, or that scientific technology is a “bringingforth.” To quote Heidegger, technology “belongs to bringing-forth, to poiesis: it is something poetic” (The Question Concerning Technology 13). In other words, Chomsky is Nietzschean to the extent that he believes that “art is worth more than truth” (86). The Heideggerian critic of Chomsky would no doubt want to ask the more essential question of the meaning of being itself, or “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing? ” (Heidegger Introduction to Metaphysics 1). This is not, however, a question for which either Chomsky or Nietzsche has much patience. Nietzsche’s view that the “thing-in-itself is not the least worth striving for” is echoed in Chomsky’s scientific hypothesis that it is the language scientist who creates his own facts, regardless of their essential groundlessness. To cite Chomsky once again, “no issue of principle arises in connection with the first step of the argument [my emphasis]” (Language and





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Problems of Knowledge 252). Although Chomsky insists that his philosophy of language is not a metaphysics, and that ontological inquiries into his rational science of language are irrelevant, he unwittingly reinscribes the Heideggerian notion of technē as “the violence-doing of the knowing” (Introduction to Metaphysics 127). Chomsky’s comments upon the arbitrary nature of his approach echo Heidgger’s metaphysical view that, “With de-cision, history as such begins. In de-cison, and only in decision, is anything decided. . . .” 116). The word “de-cision” is an English translation of the German “Ent-scheidung” and is hyphenated in both versions to underscore the root scheiden, which like the Latin root of decision means “to cut.” To make a decision is to “take a stab,” or make a beginning. Numerous critics of Chomsky have observed that his argument on behalf of an unconscious knowledge of the rules of language is deeply problematic.9 Yet Chomsky has sought to deflect such criticisms with the telling response that, “nothing turns on the matter” (Knowledge of Language 244). Certainly, nothing turns on the matter, although not in the way that Chomsky wishes to use this phrase, which is simply to mean that his critics are engaged in scholastic quibbling over his word choice. If they prefer, he will substitute the word “cognize” for “know,” as if this word substitution will solve the problem. “I think that for the theory of knowledge, we need a concept that is close to the term ‘know,’ where it is clear, but that may sharpen or extend its normal usage” (265). Because “the term ‘cognize’ is similar to the word ‘know,’ ” Chomsky suggests that it may be a good candidate for what he means by “unconscious knowledge” (265). But Chomsky is not terribly worried about such small terminological matters, for he feels that “not much seems to be at stake” in these merely scholastic criticisms of his word choice (269). In fact, nothing at all is at stake, but the problem of nothingness is, in his view, not a legitimate concern for rational scientists. Chomsky recommends that we substitute the word “cognize” for “know”; however, the word “cognize” comes from the Old French connoistre, meaning “to know,” and ultimately the Latin cognosere, meaning “to learn,” whereas the term “knowledge” comes from the Old English cnawan. Both words are linked to the Greek word gnosis, and share the same word root gno. The difference between the ability to “know” or “cognize” something is therefore negligible. In other words, to speak of a form of cognition without cognition is as contradictory as to speak of a form of knowledge without knowledge. “To avoid terminological confusion,” Chomsky asserts, “let me





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introduce a technical term . . . namely ‘cognize’. . . . The particular things we know, we also cognize . . . [my emphasis]” (Rules and Representation 69). But how does introducing a new word, which has the same meaning as the one that it replaces, enable us to avoid terminological confusion? In fact, it tends to introduce more terminological confusion since it creates the false impression that we are talking about two entirely different forms of knowledge, when, in fact, they are one and the same. For, if the form of knowledge that Chomsky’s calls “unconscious knowledge” was truly “unconscious,” it would not be knowledge at all; such “knowledge” only becomes knowledge when it is brought within the framework of human consciousness. The problem does not then lie in Chomsky’s arbitrary word choice in describing the knowledge or consciousness that he believes to be innate, but in the paradoxical assertion that this hypothetical structure is an “unknown-known,” as Donald Rumsfeld might put it.10 Barnes was the first to identify the real problem with Chomsky’s theory of innate knowledge, which is that Chomsky confuses belief and knowledge. “[K]nowledge (unlike belief ) is not, or not merely a mental state,” Barnes states, “hence the condition of an infant’s mental tables, even if it qualifies him as a believer, cannot qualify him as a knower” (“Mr. Locke’s Darling Notion” 212). Instead of his postulation of universal grammar, Barnes suggests, Chomsky “could and should have contented himself with [positing a theory of ] innate beliefs” (212). Chomsky has flat out denied that it is true that he has failed to “distinguish adequately between knowledge and belief or to distinguish the linguist’s explicit knowledge from the speaker’s implicit knowledge” (Rules and Representations 270). But, he has also responded to his critics by generating yet more innate hypotheses about “I-belief systems” and by blurring recognizable boundaries between belief and knowledge. “Knowledge of language does not, of course, exhaust the contents of mind,” Chomsky has stated. “A grammar is a cognitive structure interacting with other systems of knowledge and belief. . . . [A]nalyticity will not always be distinguished from shared belief ” (Essays in Form and Interpretation 36–37). As a last resort, Chomsky shrugs off the entire question by stating that insufficient data exists to enable him to comment on the problem: “There has been much interesting discussion about a theory of belief and its possible place in accounting for thought and action,” he states. “But substantive empirical work that might help in examining, refining, or testing these ideas is scarcely available” (New Horizons 33). Many of the deconstructive





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theorists whom Chomsky dismisses as “fraudulent” have written extensively on this problematic, but without reference to Chomsky’s theory of innate knowledge, which conflates these two distinct themes of critical inquiry. One of the most defining features of Heidegger’s approach is his emphasis upon what the Zusage, or what he calls the “piety of thinking.” “The more questioningly we ponder the essence of technology,” Heidegger states, “the more mysterious the essence of art becomes” (The Question Concerning Technology 35). By art, Heidegger means here the kind of art that Chomsky claims is a matter of hard science but is in fact a form of poiesis: a “bringing-forth” that is groundless, or without principle, as Chomsky himself describes his own linguistic theory. Technology for its own sake, or technology without questioning, is impious, according to Heidegger, for “questioning is the piety of thought [my emphasis]” (35). Techne¯ or “violence doing” without questioning is mere violence doing. Heidegger does not mean here a form of interrogation that refuses to accept nothing (or will not accept silence) in response: in fact, torture is also a kind of questioning, but an impious one that demands absolutely that the truth be told. In contrast, Heidegger means “ ‘piety’ in the ancient Greek sense, as obedient, or submissive, or submitting to what thinking has to think about” (On the Way to Language 72). Heidegger’s definition of belief is indebted to Nietzsche’s definition, which is a “holding to what is true and maintaining oneself in it” (Nietzsche, Volume Two 124). Heidegger generally accepts this definition but more simply reformulates it as a “holding-for-true” (124). To hold something for true is not the same as to know for certain that something is true. Derrida has written extensively on the Heideggerian theme of the “piety of thought,” or the question of the Heideggerian Zusage, which means “accord, acquiescing, trust, or confidence” (Acts of Religion 95). While Derrida criticizes Heidegger, insofar as Heidegger asserts that belief in a theological sense has no place in thinking, Derrida emphasizes those places in Heidegger’s thought where Heidegger acknowledges the trust that necessarily comes before knowing. Whereas Chomsky theorizes that human beings already know language before they hear it, Derrida suggests that we must first believe in the truthful word of the other as a necessary condition of our knowing. “You cannot address the other, speak to the other, without an act of faith, without testimony . . .” Derrida asserts. “This ‘trust me, I am speaking to you’ is of the order of faith, a faith that cannot be reduced to a theoretical statement, to a determinative judgment: it is the opening of the address to the other” (Deconstruction in a Nutshell 22). Derrida





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identifies what he calls a “universal structure” that is prior to language, but he does not describe that structure as an innate form of knowledge of which human beings are unconsciously conscious. This difference between Derrida and Chomsky may illustrate a key criticism that scholars have repeatedly articulated in their criticisms of Chomsky’s proposed innate mental structures, which is that Chomsky’s hyperrationalist theory leaves no room for the possibility of faith. One might, of course, take issue with Derrida’s description of belief as a “universal structure,” which for some might imply yet another essentialism, and one also might criticize his occasional descriptions of this structure as “messianicity,” a term that is certainly too moribund. Yet, “Faith,” as Derrida articulates it, or the Zusage in its Heideggerian formulation, does not refer to any specific religious tradition, but is better construed in generic terms as trust, credit, piety, belief, or confidence. A child cannot learn language without the other, whom the child absolutely relies upon to speak the truth, just as the helpless child must trust that the other will provide for his or her every need. Faith is not unconscious knowledge, but “belief in things unseen,” in its classical Pauline formulation. The child listens to the other but without knowing. The child trusts, believes, and gives credit to the other. Belief is not a structure of knowledge. It is instead a necessary condition of the child’s relation to the other, to insure the child’s very survival. Hence, a child cannot know, but can only believe, can only trust or give credit to the other. The child looks to the other to learn language and would not be able learn language without this faith, but the faith of the child is not a form of knowledge, and it underscores our total dependence upon the other for survival. Faith is born in blindness, as one feels one’s way through the darkness. In spite of mounting criticisms of his theory of unconscious knowledge, Chomsky has steadfastly maintained this problematic notion throughout his career, insisting that there are matters that we “literally ‘ know’ to be incomprehensible [my emphasis]” (Knowledge of Language 223). As stated previously, Chomsky often places scare quotes around words that harbor difficult and complicated questions, especially those that tend to undermine his views. In this case, whether we “know,” or simply know— without scare quotes—a matter to be incomprehensible, makes no difference, except that Chomsky wishes his readers to understand that he realizes his statement is somehow problematic; for, if we “literally” know something to be true, then Chomsky’s quotation marks around the word “know” are contradictory because they suggest that we are not supposed





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to take the word “know” to be literal, but merely figurative. In this case, we only figuratively know, rather than literally know, which is to say we do not know if the matter at hand is incomprehensible or not. In other words, we simply don’t know. We are lacking in knowledge. And, because we are lacking in knowledge, Chomsky is compelled to acknowledge that what he calls the “rules” of language must be applied in the absence of this knowledge. “Each application of a rule is ‘a leap in the dark’ [my emphasis] (225),” Chomsky states in a decidedly Kierkegaardian tone. “My application of a rule ‘is an unjustified stab in the dark,” he insists. In Heideggerian terms, Chomsky has made a de-cision [Ent-scheidung]; he has made a “stab,” a cut, or opening. “I apply the rule blindly [Chomsky’s emphasis]” (225). Chomsky follows his Kierkegaardian statement that we must all take “a leap in the dark” when it comes to the application of rules, with a veiled reference to the knife of Abraham. When it comes to the rules of language, we are all of us like Kierkegaard’s homicidal Abraham, who was required to commit the monstrous act of murdering his own son on an altar to the Lord. We apply the rule, but we do not know why we apply the rule, nor can we justify why we must apply it. We follow the rule “without reasons,” Chomsky states, for we are “just so constituted” (225). In the final instance then, Chomsky acknowledges that we “have no grounds for [our] knowledge in any useful general sense of the term and no reasons for following the rules” (225). We “just do it” (225). Chomsky’s oblique reference to Kierkegaard, which is not attributed beyond the ambiguous quotation marks, is revealing for it shows that what Chomsky means by “rule” is actually “law,” even the law of the father, as in the Hebraic term milah, referring to the cut that is made into the the foreskin of the penis and the name that is given to the child at the moment of his or her violent insertion into language. The rule is the law of the de-ciding father, and the law is what is given. It is the trace of the real that is traumatically inscribed upon the child’s flesh. The rule is what is given. To talk about the rule is therefore to talk about totemic marking. This rule is what is given to us by the other. In an act of arbitrary violence, the other cuts his name into our flesh. The rule is precisely that which is given to us by the other, and if it is not, if there is an internal rule, this rule is given to us by no one; in effect, it is a rule that is given to us without a ruler or lawgiver, or it is a rule that is given by an Absolute Other in a theological sense. Chomsky unwittingly rearticulates the Pauline notion that there is such a thing as figurative rather than literal rules, as in the ancient metaphor of “circumcision of the heart” (Romans 2:28–29). This means that Chomsky believes that there





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are figurative laws, and this is a theological notion. Chomsky will not assert that the concept of the rule is interdependent with the concept of the other, nor does he affirm the theological notion of the Absolute Other, but he maintains his belief in the internal rule, the rule that came into being of its own volition. However, if internal rules that are given by no one actually do exist, as Chomsky insists, the internal rule that is given by no one would be the ungiven-given. But since Chomsky insists that the rule has indeed been given to us, or that the rule is something rather than nothing, the rule cannot be construed as nothing at all. Although Chomsky does not assert his belief in a divine rule-giver, he is unable to articulate his scientific views of language without “promiscuous” recourse to theology. Chomsky does not then make good on his claim to offer his readers a rational science of human language, or even a philosophical theory of language that is also scientific. This claim should instead be construed as a rhetorical ploy to bolster the prestige of his own philosophy of language at the expense of that of his rivals, whom he dismisses as frauds. Chomsky’s postulation of an innate form of knowledge first came to prominence in the United States as a reaction against hegemonic views of language that prevailed in U.S. academe in the 1950s, and his book Cartesian Linguistics should be read with that historical context in mind. If Chomsky’s linguistic theories fail as science, they are also not terribly compelling as philosophy or phenomenological hermeneutics. This results not from any “genetic deficiency” on Chomsky’s part, as he sometimes puts it, but rather his dogmatic view that a phenomenon as complex as human language can be comprehended with exclusive reference to the natural sciences.





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Th e Ungi v e n- Gi v e n

The reason for the failure of a rational culture lies not in the essence of rationalism itself but solely in its being rendered superficial in its entanglement in”naturalism” and “objectivism.” —Edmund Husserl

Noam Chomsky has often described the writings of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, and related thinkers as “incomprehensible gibberish” (Chomsky on Anarchism 216). Chomsky states that it may be due to a personal deficiency that he is unable to understand their writings, but his statements to this effect do not encourage his readers to believe that this is really the case. “It’s entirely possible that I’m simply missing something,” Chomsky states, “or, [it is possible] that I just lack the intellectual capacity to understand the profundities that have been unearthed in the past 20 years or so by Paris intellectuals and their followers . . .” (“Noam Chomsky on Post-Modernism”).1 Ironic statements of this nature invite Chomsky’s readers to draw the opposite conclusion, which is that he does not believe that he is intellectually deficient, and that his failure to understand his contemporaries is because they write “incoherent sentences,” and their “inflated rhetoric is largely meaningless.” In the preamble to the televised debate between Chomsky and Foucault, the Dutch moderator Fons Elders stated: “Perhaps the best way to compare both philosophers [Chomsky and Foucault] would be to see them as tunnellers through a mountain working at opposite sides of the same mountain with different tools, without even knowing that they are working in each other’s direction” (The Chomsky–Foucault Debate 1). Elders suggests that Chomsky and Foucault must be read comparatively as philosophers, despite their obvious differences, and regardless of the reservations that each might have with this description. On at least one occasion, Chomsky has reiterated


Ch a p t e r Two



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Elders’s description of differences between Foucault’s approach and his own, agreeing in an interview that he and Foucault were “climbing the same mountain,” as Chomsky rephrases this metaphor, or that they both shared similar philosophical goals (The Chomsky–Foucault Debate 132). James McGilvray reinforces Elders’s comparative viewpoint in his recent “Introduction to the Third Edition” of Chomsky’s Cartesian Linguistics (2009), which he wrote with Chomsky’s editorial oversight. In his introduction, McGilvray describes Foucault as an empiricist linguist “by virtue of being anti-nativist and externalist” (22). McGilvray observes that this is a theoretical distinction that Chomsky too adopts in many of his books (112). In The Minimalist Program (1995), for instance, Chomsky invokes the concept of “E-language, where E is to suggest ‘external’ and ‘extensional’ ” (16). However, Chomsky evades the obviously metaphysical connotations of his terminology, merely asserting that his use of this term is in his view “unproblematic” (16). “One might define E-language in one or another way,” Chomsky states, “but it does not seem to matter how this is done. . . . Hence it will play no role in our discussion” (16). Unlike Foucault, but also unlike Derrida, Lacan, Kristeva, and many other poststructuralists, Chomsky affirms what McGilvray describes as a “Romantic Rationalist” and “internalist” orientation to language (Cartesian Linguistics 6). In contrast to the concept of E-language, Chomsky uses the term “I-language” in order “to suggest ‘internal,’ ‘individual,’ and ‘intentional’ ” (The Minimalist Program 15). Chomsky states, “The concept of language is internal, in that it deals with an inner state of [the] mind/brain, independent of other elements in the world” (15). In this connection, McGilvray notes that, “Chomsky is what philosophers call an internalist . . . the science of language is a science of a specific mental faculty that operates inside the head, not of any linguistic phenomena outside the head” (Chomsky 3). McGilvray further states, So when Chomsky constructs with a computational theory of language, he is concerned with the computations (linguistic mental/neural processes) that relate one set of linguistic mental events to another, not with what is outside the head, or with any relationships between these mental events and things or situations outside the head. . . . [T]he theory deals with linguistic mental events alone and supposes that they occur in relative isolation from other mental events . . . . [my emphasis]. (4)



As we have seen in the previous chapter, however, this does not necessarily mean that Chomsky denies the existence of empirical reality that



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is “outside the head,” or even the implicitly dialectical nature of his own theory of language (though he illogically refuses the Kantian notion of “dialectics”). As McGilvray puts it, “Internalism . . . is primarily a matter of maintaining inside the head/outside the head distinctions” (4). Following McGilvray and Chomsky by implication, one may characterize theorists like Foucault and Derrida as “empiricist” and “externalist” philosophers of language, unlike Chomsky and McGilvray who are rationalist and internalist philosophers of language. Since I am also adopting Chomsky’s and McGilvray’s argumentative terminology, I will henceforth refer to language theorists who are empiricist and externalist as “EE” theorists, whereas those who follow Chomsky’s rationalist and internalist views will be referred to as “RI” theorists; however, it should be clear that these terms are drawn from those first adopted by McGilvray and Chomsky. It should also be clear that I reject Chomsky’s suggestion that the philosophical terminology he adopts is somehow “unproblematic” (The Minimalist Program 16).2 Although McGilvray perhaps oversimplifies matters by drawing such broad distinctions, his approach is helpful as a starting point in conceptualizing key differences between theorists like Chomsky/McGilvray and Derrida/Foucault. Moreover, to characterize theoretical differences in the manner adopted by McGilvray and Elders is to do more than merely reject one’s philosophical rival as pretentious. McGilvray infers that Foucault is an EE theorist from Chomsky’s own theory of language. EE theorists like Foucault and Derrida—but also phenomenologists such as Husserl, Heidegger, and Gadamer, as well as British empiricists like Locke, Hume, and Hartley—typically forefront the question of the phenomenal trace, or the concrete word that appears in the realm of the senses, rather than any abstract concept of language that is said to be imbedded in the human mind, but that is currently hidden from perception. To take the case of Derrida’s and Chomsky’s respective critiques of Saussure, it is fair to say that, while their respective starting points are different, it does not necessarily follow that Derrida is a fraud because he adopts an EE approach, whereas Chomsky is an honest truth-seeker because he adopts an RI approach. This is no doubt why Chomsky’s hostile rhetoric may appear in the eyes of many of his contemporaries as a thinly veiled attempt to avoid dialogue, research, and critical debate. Certainly, Chomsky’s strategy is not persuasive in any rhetorical sense, except perhaps to those who also wish to avoid critical engagement with the work of thinkers like


the ungiven-given / 65



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Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva, and others, who are admittedly not easy to understand. Chomsky typically depicts the Behavioralist thought of B.F. Skinner as the culmination of the EE approach to the study of language, suggesting that his own early critique of Skinner in the late 1950s provided the world with the conclusive rebuttal to all those who adhere to such ill-founded views.3 In fact, Chomsky has claimed that he originally went to so much trouble to analyze Skinner’s work in such detail because Skinner, in his view, offers “the most careful and thoroughgoing presentation of [EE] speculation [about language]” (Cartesian Linguistics 113). Arguably, however, Skinner’s work is little more than a footnote in the history of contemporary critical thought about language, hardly a figure whose theories are seriously debated among prominent EE theorists today. Yet Chomsky claims that his early critique of Skinner was a kind of compliment that he paid to Skinner, for he “does not see any way in which [Skinner’s EE] proposals can be substantially improved . . . [including EE critical thought in the domains of ] modern linguistics, psychology, and philosophy” (“Review of B.F. Skinner” 142). Skinner remains for Chomsky the best representative of EE language theorists, including Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva, etc. For Chomsky, the case against the EE view of language was closed in the late 1950s, never to be reopened. This also means that we need not bother with tardy EE theorists like Foucault and Derrida, whose thought reached its apex in the writings of Skinner in the 1950s; that is, before either theorist had published anything, or at least anything of significance. As a matter of fact, Chomsky never again makes any effort to seriously evaluate EE language theorists, instead devoting the remainder of his career to defending the RI views that he lays out in his early work, Cartesian Linguistics. Chomsky has acknowledged that he once tried to read Derrida’s Of Grammatology (1966), which includes significant analysis of Saussurean linguistics, but Chomsky’s remarks do not seriously invite scholarly dialogue. “So take Derrida, one of the grand old men,” Chomsky states, “I thought I ought to at least be able to understand his [book Of ] Grammatology, so I tried to read it. . . . [But] I found the scholarship appalling, based on a pathetic misreading: and the argument, such as it was, failed to come close to the kinds of standards I’ve been familiar with since virtually childhood” (“Noam Chomsky on Post-Modernism”).4 Chomsky overlooks the fact that he was born two years before Derrida, and that he too is a “grand old man” in the eyes of his admirers. In another place, Chomsky describes the work of theorists like Derrida, Foucault, and Kristeva as “comical





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postmodern gibberish” (Chomsky on Anarchism 216). The contributions of such theorists are “very inflated,” Chomsky states, “a lot of television cameras, a lot of posturing. [But, when you] try to decode it and see what is the actual meaning behind it, things that you could explain to an eight-year old child. There’s nothing there” (216). But Chomsky never provides any rational analysis of those theorists whose work he denigrates in such extreme terms. In an article that has widely circulated on the Internet, for instance, Chomsky states that it would be very easy for him to provide an analysis of Derrida’s interpretation of Saussure, but he declines to do so because he doubts that anyone would bother to read it, and because he does not think that Derrida’s reading of Saussure “merits the time [it would take] to do so” (“Noam Chomsky on PostModernism”). But it is worth asking if Chomsky declines to provide an analysis of Derrida, Foucault, and other EE language theorists because he indeed cannot understand them, as he himself has suggested. Given Chomsky’s failure to critically engage the writings of Kant and the phenomenological hermeneutic tradition (with the obvious exception of Humboldt), it is not inconceivable that Chomsky may lack sufficient preparation to perform such a task. In other words, Chomsky appeals to his intellectual celebrity, rather than his readers’ capacity to reason, since he refuses to analyze Derrida’s views. In contrast, this chapter will follow the approach of Chomsky’s colleague McGilvray, accepting his broad rubrics in contrasting the writings of Chomsky and Derrida/Foucault, at least as a starting point in articulating key differences in their views. In other words, I will argue that it is fair to describe Derrida and Foucault as EE theorists of language, whereas Chomsky and his followers may be described as RI theorists of language. But, having conceded the above, I will also insist here that the differences between EE and RI language theorists are indeed philosophical, which is a conclusion that is implied by the very comparative terms that McGilvray adopts, and that Chomsky sometimes adopts as well (The Chomsky–Foucault Debate 132). But if this is so, it follows that Chomsky’s suggestion that his linguistic and political views are only tangentially related is not viable. For instance, Chomsky often insists that EE views are inherently imperialistic and racist, whereas he asserts that RI views are inherently liberating, non-racist, and democratic. His most vitriolic and extreme accusations in this regard were made in the context of a well-publicized debate between Chomsky and Jean Piaget, during which he accused his EE interlocutors of advocating “religious dogma disguised in the name of science”





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(Language and Learning 271). At the same time, Chomsky emphatically denied the dogmatic implications of his own theory—that is, the fact that his own theory was actually articulated as a theory—and illogically maintained that he did not himself offer an articulated theory of language, but was only arguing on behalf of “open-mindedness” (310). In his earlier books, Reflections on Language (1975) and Language and Responsibility (1978), Chomsky also criticized the allegedly repressive nature of EE theories of language, as opposed to the inherently “progressive” nature of his own views about language. For instance, Chomsky stated that “the success of empiricist beliefs . . . might be associated with the fact that they offer a certain possibility for formulating racist doctrine in a way that is difficult to reconcile with traditional dualist concepts concerning the ‘human essence’ ” (Language and Responsibility 92). Elaborating on this point, Chomsky states, “it is worth investigating the question whether colonial ideology did in fact exploit the possibilities made available by empiricist doctrine to formulate more easily the kind of racist beliefs that were employed to justify conquest and oppression” (93). In contrast, Chomsky claims that “Cartesian dualism raises . . . ‘a modest conceptual barrier’ to racist doctrine [and] the reason for that is simple. Cartesian doctrine characterizes [all] humans as thinking beings” (92). This is a matter that is here only noted in passing, but I momentarily draw attention to it to underscore that Chomsky’s contradictory argument that politics and linguistics have no intrinsic relation is not tenable, and that Chomsky’s many statements, such as those cited above, show that he himself suggests that there is an intrinsic relation between one’s linguistic and political views. In other words, Chomsky does acknowledge that there is a “possible connection,” or at least “potential connection” between politics and linguistics, especially pertaining to how one defines human nature, but he typically qualifies this admission by insisting that theoretical connections of this nature are matters of conjecture, not science, implying that he himself prefers to engage only in scientific debate when it comes to matters of human language. “Whether that connection [between linguistics and ultimate questions of human nature] can actually be made substantive, who knows?” Chomsky rhetorically asks. “It’s all so far beyond scientific understanding at this point that you can’t even dream about it. So, that’s the main reason I don’t talk about these things much” (Understanding Power 217). But Chomsky does talk about these things on a fairly regular basis, as when he asserts that the theoretical complexity of EE thinkers like Derrida and Foucault offers





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proof of their elitism and anti-democratic views, versus the inherently democratic nature of RI theorists like himself. In the case of Chomsky’s own difficult linguistic writings, the complexity of his texts is excused by both Chomsky and McGilvray on the grounds that he is performing actual scientific research, and that it behooves the RI language scientist to eschew common sense in the interests of advancing authentic scientific knowledge. It goes without saying that only dogmatic RI theorists will accept the extreme conclusion that RI language theorists perform legitimate scientific research, whereas EE theorists of language are unscientific frauds and charlatans. Furthermore, to grant that Chomsky alone performs legitimate scientific research is tantamount to accepting his view that the study of language belongs in the natural sciences, rather than the humanities. Chomsky’s lack of success in making this case can be measured by the fact that the academic study of language, including RI paradigms, remains firmly housed in humanities programs. I note in passing that it is ironic that extreme RI paradigms of language are taught within many humanities programs in the U.S. today as offering unambiguously scientific rather than merely philosophical theories of language. Chomsky’s rhetorical posturing with respect to his EE colleagues therefore serves an ideological function, which is to advance his own philosophy of language at the expense of his academic rivals, whom he describes as frauds. In contrast, Elders and McGilvray acknowledge that RI and EE theorists offer competing philosophies of language, a viewpoint that tends to undermine Chomsky’s argument that RI theorists exclusively practice hard science whereas their EE colleagues promote quasi-religious cults. The more balanced viewpoints of Elders and McGilvray also tend to undermine Chomsky’s claim that his political thought is only marginally related to his theory of language, which is merely another way of asserting Chomsky’s ideologically driven thesis that RI theorists should be construed as natural scientists, rather than mere language philosophers. As we have seen in the previous chapter, Chomsky’s own philosophy of language tends to militate for the annihilation of philosophical investigation in the name of science. However, his theory of language is also haunted by the very metaphysics it seeks to banish. Chomsky does not wish to consider the groundlessness of his own philosophical views, which are the basis for both his linguistic and political thought, although he is sometimes compelled to do so, as when he responds to the concerns of his critics (Knowledge of Language 236). That is, Chomsky





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is at times forced to acknowledge the nihilistic premises of his theory of language, but his acknowledgment of these premises does not lead him to reexamine his claim to speak in the name of scientific certainty. To say then, as Derrida does, that Chomsky lacks a cogent theory of sovereignty is to say that Chomsky fails to adequately reflect upon the violent and arbitrary nature of all forms of authority, especially those exercised in the name of reason.5 What is true for the linguist—who, Chomsky acknowledges, makes decisions “blindly” and “without reasons”—is also true for the responsible politician: both the linguist and the politician must act without knowing, but without ceasing to be responsible for their actions. “A truly decent and honest person will always seek to discover forms of oppression, hierarchy, domination, and authority . . .” Chomsky will rightly insist (Language and Problems of Knowledge 154). But will that same “truly decent and honest person” have the courage to acknowledge that he or she inevitably asserts a violent and hierarchical perspective whenever making a determination in the name of reason? In the case of his linguistics, Chomsky elides the groundlessness of his claims to scientific authority, except in those rare instances where his critics compel him to acknowledge them. In his political writings, Chomsky similarly lays claim to scientific authority, asserting a biological basis for ethical decision-making. As a result, he often assumes an unassailable posture of total self-righteousness, even humorlessly comparing himself to the Hebrew prophets of old, whereas EE theorists and other political opponents are denounced as “secular priests” (On Nature and Language 162–163). It is fair to say then that the myopia of Chomsky’s linguistic thought is replicated in his political thinking, which is hardly surprising given their shared philosophical basis. In both cases, a more careful reading of Kant might have led Chomsky to very different conclusions. Whereas Kant affirms that a priori categories are meaningless outside those actual contexts of their activation, Chomsky does his best to avoid this conclusion, although he is sometimes compelled to admit that it is inescapable. Therefore, Chomsky is compelled to acknowledge that there is indeed a world that exists “outside the head,” as McGilvray puts it (“Introduction” 7). As we have also seen, the uncontroversial term dialectics is inextricably linked to Kantian thought, which offers a theory of knowledge that—to put it somewhat anachronistically—can be said to mediate between EE and RI theories of the real. Of course, both EE and RI theorists might resist this formulation, albeit for different reasons. Whereas Chomsky





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will claim that he does not even understand the pretentious word “dialectics,” perhaps due to a genetic deficiency, EE poststructuralists like Derrida and Foucault might want to assert that, with Nietzsche and Heidegger, they offer a theory of language that has broken with Kantian dialectics. The question of whether or not EE theorists indeed have succeeded in forging a non-dialectical theory of language is complicated and open to debate. In the case of Chomsky, however, he certainly does not successfully break with Kantian dialectics. Chomsky militates for a return to Cartesian rationalism, but without adequate consideration of Kant’s historical contributions to modern thought, as he himself once acknowledged but without seeking to redress this neglect (Cartesian Linguistics 107). Chomsky’s failure to adequately engage the critical thought of Kant is the main reason he is able to steadfastly affirm his paradoxical hypothesis that universal grammar may be construed as both an abstract mental structure and a real bodily organ. Because Kant argues that a priori structures of consciousness have no meaning outside the historical context of their activation, he is not as vulnerable to poststucturalist critiques of Enlightenment thinkers that have been centered on questions of sovereignty, or the power/knowledge nexus, as Foucault might put it. Nor is he as vulnerable to Gadamer’s influential critique of the Enlightenment’s “prejudice against prejudice” (Truth and Method 270). The critique of the Enlightenment on such grounds is as old as the Enlightenment itself: Joseph Marie de Maistre, for example, offered a strong rebuke to Enlightenment thinkers with respect to matters of sovereignty very early on, from his perspective as a conservative Roman Catholic. De Maistre observed that written laws are always already dependent upon a hermeneutic process of interpretation that determines their final meaning. De Maistre asked who it was that would determine the meaning of the republican constitution, especially in exceptional circumstances, for instance, such as when the existence of the state was threatened. The deciding power would inevitably lie outside the written constitution, de Maistre observed, and as a conservative Catholic thinker, he wished to locate that power in the law that is “inscribed on the fleshly tablets of the human heart,” but also in the Papal Seat, which he believed to be the highest authority on earth. By way of contrast, Kant was a monarchist, but he also affirmed the importance of free assent to the law in the Categorical Imperative to “act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” The key to understanding Kant’s view is that the maxim is not an internal rule





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in any RI sense, but an external rule to which all humanity freely gives their assent. In other words, the maxim of the Categorical Imperative actually exists in both time and space, not merely as an empty hypothesis within the human interior, which is the case with Chomsky’s doctrine of a biological ethics. As is also true of his hypothesis regarding universal grammar, Chomsky’s argument on behalf of a hardwired ethics that is concealed in some unknown cavity of the brain is literally a useless thesis outside those specific instances when Chomsky’s absent ethical structures are activated in the external world that lies outside the brain. As a matter of fact, if such structures exist at all, they only exist on those occasions when they are activated in time and space. Because Kant acknowledges that a priori categories of thought are utterly dependent upon their activation within actual worldly contexts, he eschews a merely reactionary and anarchistic concept of the law; that is, Kant acknowledges that all rules necessarily imply the existence of rule-givers, which is not the case with Chomsky. However, Kant suggests that we may ourselves become our own rule-makers by freely giving our assent to the one rule that all humanity without exception is able to affirm, which is the Categorical Imperative. Chomsky only seems to accept the Categorical Imperative, which can be inferred from his often-repeated statements to this effect, such as his view that “any structure of hierarchy and authority carries a heavy burden of justification, whether it involves personal relations or a larger social order” (Chomsky On Anarchy 192). But Chomsky will not deliberately articulate this maxim in any empirical way because to do so would be to deny the law of anarchy that he affirms—the law of no law— and instead freely affirm an actual and preexisting law, which would mean giving up one’s filial resentment against the law. Chomsky falls prey to the Enlightenment “prejudice against prejudice,” or the oedipal illusion that it is possible to escape paternal and conventional authority altogether. In other words, Chomsky claims that he will submit only to the nonexistent internal law that is given by absolutely no one for no reason, but he also acknowledges that “unless humans are given at least a minimal amount of experience of the relevant kind [my emphasis],” it will not be possible for them to know anything at all (Cartesian Linguistics 120). Chomsky must finally submit to the empirical rule that is “outside the head,” despite his repeated disavowals of this fact, for this is the price he must pay for his claims to knowledge. In contrast to Kant, Chomsky will only affirm internal rules that are given by no one for no reason. These are rules that we must submit to





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“blindly,” Chomsky states (Knowledge of Language 236). Paradoxically, he denies the existence of a divine rule-giver while clinging to the theological notion of the internal rule. Chomsky is a self-proclaimed anarchist, but this does not mean that he does not believe in rules, or in the placeless place called the khora: it means rather that he will only profess his obedience to rules that he imagines exist in the deep recesses of the human brain. However, Chomsky does not believe that the rule that is written on the human interior was written by a divine being. It is rather an ungiven-given. Yet in the world that he acknowledges exists outside the head, Chomsky does not wish to affirm any empirical rules at all. As an anarchist, Chomsky expresses his allegiance to the law of no laws, or the rule of no rules, which is secretly a means of affirming an ungiven rule that allegedly exists within the human interior. Whenever possible Chomsky either denies or minimizes the significance of the empirically given rule, including Kant’s Categorical Imperative, which is not an ungiven-given on the human interior, but an empirically given law that we freely embrace. Unlike Kant, Chomsky is oedipal in his resentment of the law, for he desires total freedom from all given authority. But he ignores the truism that authority is not finally about obedience, but knowledge. Without rules there can be no knowledge, and I do not mean here absent rules that await discovery by future brain researchers, but actual rules that exist outside the head. By way of contrast, Chomsky denies the empirically given law, at least when contingent circumstances do not compel him to affirm it. This denial is what most distinguishes him from theorists like Derrida, Foucault, and Lacan. Whereas Chomsky repeatedly asserts that it is language that makes us fully human, his philosophical rivals will qualify that claim by asserting that language is not simply a hypothesis that dwells within the human interior, but a traumatic wound that is inflicted upon us from the outside. For EE theorists, it is the wound in Oedipus’s foot that makes him fully human, not a magical bean floating around his skull. It is the name that is cut into our flesh that is the guarantee of our inclusion in the human community, which is not an intuitive hypothesis but an empirically verifiable trace of the real. This does not mean that violent acts of inscription are free from the necessity to satisfy the requirement of rational justification. “It is not tradition but reason that constitutes the ultimate source of authority [my emphasis] . . . ,” Gadamer states, “[for] true prejudices must finally be justified by rational knowledge, even though the task can never be fully completed” (Truth and Method





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272–273). But in contrast with Chomsky, the EE theorist will insist that there is no way to appeal to the rule of reason without reference to an empirical rule that already exists in time and space. Furthermore, to be situated within an existing legal tradition need not mean that one is necessarily enslaved to the law, for there is no form of human existence that is not in some way bound to preexisting institutions. This is why hermeneutic theorists like Heidegger, Gadamer, and others will affirm that the phenomenon is “always already” given, rather than a law that can be dodged with reference to an absent genome. To imagine that it is possible to evade empirical laws in the way that Chomsky suggests is an oedipal fantasy. Chomsky sometimes seems to be aware of this, as when he states that, without a certain “tension between necessity and freedom, rule and choice, there can be no creativity, no communication, no meaningful acts at all” (Chomsky on Anarchism 113). But this awareness does not lead him to abandon his efforts to articulate a concept of rules without reference to external stimulus. Chomsky imagines ethics to be an a priori structure of consciousness, but he also describes this empty mental structure as a biological organ that is—at least for the moment—unavailable to all “truly decent” persons, who must make competent ethical decisions in the interim. Truly decent persons are compelled to act according to the empirically given circumstances that obligate a response, and Chomsky is not reticent about discussing such circumstances, despite his well-known anarchist credentials. On the one hand, Chomsky will insist that “all structures of hierarchy and domination are fundamentally illegitimate” (Chomsky on Anarchism 156); on the other, he acknowledges that one must support existing hierarchical structures as a matter of pragmatic necessity. For instance, Chomsky will insist that fellow anarchists must support some governmental programs (such as health care, education, welfare programs, and so forth), although he holds out the utopian hope that these programs may one day vanish (193). He also acknowledges that a standing army may be necessary to support a future anarchist revolution, and that revolutionary anarchists may sometimes be compelled to use violence to achieve a just end. “I don’t want to be glib,” Chomsky states, “[for an anarchist revolution] might need tanks, it might need armies” (141). Yet Chomsky’s realistic concession with respect to the momentary needs of the revolution, especially the necessary exercise of violence, in no way causes him to wonder if his view that hierarchical structures are “fundamentally illegitimate” might be in need of revision. “I am not a





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committed pacifist . . .” Chomsky acknowledges, “but any recourse to violence must be justified, perhaps by an argument that it is necessary to remedy injustice [my emphasis]” (The Chomsky–Foucault Debate 139). In another hypothetical instance, Chomsky will speak of the necessity of using physical coercion to keep his own grandchildren safe from darting into oncoming traffic, but he will not dwell for long on the more complicated implications that are implied by this paternal act of coercion (Chomsky on Anarchism 179). All of these contingent instances, which are presented by Chomsky himself, refer to actual—or “factical,” to put it in Heideggerian terms—circumstances that oblige Chomsky to act in a provisionally ethical manner, at least until some future date when the ethical genome that is lodged within the brain is discovered. Chomsky follows the lead of Descartes, who similarly felt compelled by the factual conditions of his daily life to adopt a provisional code of ethics, so he could withdraw to his private chamber and sort out the interior dilemmas that beset him. Although Chomsky acknowledges that he is required by contingent circumstances to adopt a merely provisional ethics, this omission in no way deters him from criticizing fellow language theorists as illegitimate “secular priests” who have enjoyed significant academic success because they are, in his view, institutional “beneficiaries . . . who can offer a service to [current illegitimate] systems of power and domination” (174). In other words, Chomsky does not necessarily claim that his own ethical views are legitimate, whereas the views of his EE rivals are illegitimate, at least not in the contingent circumstances of the moment where he must cobble together a provisional ethics; instead, he suggests that his own best estimates about ethics are merely less illegitimate than those of his EE counterparts, who are obviously lacking in ethical and intellectual integrity. “The state is an illegitimate institution,” Chomsky insists, “but it does not follow from this that you should not support the state, [for] sometimes there is a more illegitimate institution that will take over if you do not support this illegitimate institution” (212). Chomsky therefore argues that we should provisionally accept his views about language, politics, and ethics because the views of his EE rivals are even more illegitimate and indefensible than his own. As a matter of fact, Chomsky would have us believe that to lend support to the views of EE theorists is tantamount to perpetuating historically racist and imperialist systems of domination that continue to imperil the world (Language and Responsibility 92–93). Chomsky rebukes EE theorists in the name of a concealed and impeccable ethics that he claims will one





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day be disclosed, but he also criticizes them in the name of a less stellar and fallen ethics, which he acknowledges is illegitimate and based upon current and contingent obligations. He nonetheless insists that his own provisional ethics is vastly superior to the racist and imperialist ethics of his rivals. Obligations compel us to act, Chomsky admits, but he does not admit that ethics themselves inevitably involve empirically given obligations, for to do so would force him to ground his appeals to an innate ethics within the actual world of time and space. In opposition to Chomsky’s view, the hermeneutical and deconstructive view is that obligation is always already “a kind of scandalon for ethics,” to cite John Caputo (Against Ethics 5). Obligation scandalizes ethics because it does not lie hidden in any murky realm of metaphysical truth (or “scientific” hypothesis), but in the more pedestrian realm where our children might dart into oncoming traffic. “Ethics contains obligation,” Caputo states, “but that is its undoing (deconstruction)” (Against Ethics 5). This is so because “ethics harbors within itself what it cannot contain, what it must expel, expectorate, exclude” (5). The deconstructive view is that ethics are always already contaminated with the obligatory fact, or they are nothing at all (that is, an ethical genome or the abyss of nothingness). Chomsky’s hypothesis regarding the existence of innate ethical structures that are hardwired into the brain is literally useless. This is so because the hypothesized biological existence of these structures serves no identifiable purpose in the actual decision-making processes of daily life, which Chomsky himself is finally compelled to acknowledge. This hypothesis does, however, enable Chomsky to assume a posture of total righteousness in the fallen realm of daily life since he may always evoke his absent ethics rather than risk affirming any actual obligation that is sullied by the mundane sphere of real life. Moreover, it provides him with a convenient club that he may use to bludgeon his political opponents. While one might argue that Chomsky’s essentialist ethics may be useful as a kind of strategic essentialism, especially in order to critique U.S. foreign policy, such an argument is not only patronizing toward Chomsky (and would probably not be welcomed by him), but it also fails to consider that Chomsky’s essentialism is not strategic but biological. This is why, for instance, Chomsky can humorlessly assert that the human situation is comparable to that of laboratory rats in a behavioralist maze– but with absolutely no ear for the disturbing force of his trope (Knowledge of Language 223). Among EE theorists there has been some





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debate regarding the contrasting positions of Heidegger and Nietzsche with respect to the question of essentialism, which may have some bearing upon this question. Some theorists such as Derrida, Caputo, and Giles Deleuze have criticized Heidegger for his nostalgic essentialism, since he rejects Nietzsche’s more radical critique of Western metaphysics. But, as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has suggested, there is not finally much theoretical difference between Heidegger’s allegedly backward-looking essentialism and the more radical Nietzschean critique of Western metaphysics. “Whether we declare ourselves as essentialists [that is, Heideggerian] or antiessentialist [that is, Nietzschean],” Spivak states, “if we realize that our ontological commitments are dependent on various forms of coding, we can presuppose a variety of general catachrestic names as a ground” (Outside in the Teaching Machine 16). Spivak’s point reiterates the basic Kantian and hermeneutic view that all human knowledge, for it be knowledge, must exist in both time and space, or in the empirically real world. Hence, whether one asserts the existence of a hypothetical essence in either a Chomskyan sense (as both a temporal and biological structure) or in Heideggerian sense (as a primordial event that was once disclosed to Dasein), or one prefers to assert in a more radical Derridean sense that there has never been any essence, only the irreducible longing for the disclosure of essence, one cannot not affirm the always already given that is evidently a trace of the real, if it is not the real itself.6 “There is not much theoretical difference between pure essence and pure difference,” Spivak states. “Discontinuity must traffic in minimal continua. [Hence,] we go back to ce qui reste [that which remains], fragments of essences to reckon with” (20). It is in this sense that Chomsky’s ethical hypothesis is idle speculation, for it changes absolutely nothing in the real world of what is, the world of “fragmentary essences,” as Spivak puts it. This is why Chomsky must constantly defer the discussion of innate ethics, or assert that, “knowing little about the matter [of innate ethics], we are compelled to speculate” (Language and Problems of Knowledge 153). He is certainly correct that this is so, but he is wrong insofar as he asserts that the discoveries of future brain scientists will disclose the hidden truth about human ethics, which he claims lie concealed in the human brain (154). “We don’t know what the fundamental principles of moral judgment actually are,” Chomsky states, “but we have every reason to believe that they are there [Chomsky’s emphasis]” (Understanding Power 360). But, even it if it were true that these hypothetical first principles were actually “there”





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in the manner that Chomsky claims, they would have no significance until they assumed an empirical form that was accessible to human beings; that is, until they were first mediated by human language that is “outside the head.” Even if a great number of scientific discoveries such as those Chomsky foretells were made, the meaning of every single discovery of the future brain scientist will be forever dependent upon their empirical “forms of coding,” as Spivak puts it, and they will always already “presuppose a variety of general catachrestic names as a ground” (Outside in the Teaching Machine 16). This being the case, it bears asking once again why it is that Chomsky believes that he is entitled to disparage fellow language theorists as “secular priests” who are the alleged “beneficiaries” of illegitimate institutions, whereas he himself is somehow able to escape this dismal fate? Unlike EE theorists who are false prophets that merely interpret existing phenomena, Chomsky suggests that he is an authentic prophet who speaks in the name of absolute truth. In fact, Chomsky argues that the Hebrew word “prophet” really means “intellectual,” and he points out that the Bible distinguishes between “true prophets” such as himself and “false prophets” such as his academic rivals (On Nature and Language 163). “Consider the Old Testament . . . ,” Chomsky encourages us. “The prophets offered critical geopolitical analysis and moral critique and counsel. Many centuries later, [the prophets] were honored; at the time, they were not exactly welcomed” (162–163). But Chomsky is even more explicit than this: “The prophets were the dissidents,” he states, “the false prophets were the commissars” (163). This is obviously Chomsky at his most pompous and bombastic, but his views bear citing here because they help to illustrate the extent to which Chomsky will go to vilify his political and academic rivals. When criticizing EE theorists, Chomsky does not adopt the disinterested rhetoric of the natural scientist ever in search of new discoveries, nor does he adopt the tolerant rhetoric of the Enlightenment rationalist. Instead, he thunders from the pulpit like a Bible-belt pastor who is certain of his own salvation. Chomsky’s suggestion that political dissidents such as he may be said to occupy a prophetic status in society is coterminous with his exaggerated claims to scientific certainty in the realm of linguistics. In both instances, Chomsky assumes the posture of the man who is entitled to disclose the truth of the law, which he carries within him. Moreover, the truths that he discloses are alleged to reveal “the deeper hidden nature of the mind . . . for the first time in history [my emphasis]” (Language and





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Problems of Knowledge 91). Chomsky’s megalomania then is no idiosyncratic quirk. It is instead a predicable consequence of the quasi-scientific posture that he adopted from early in his career; that is, Chomsky poses as the man who is endowed with correct perception, which is the recognizable stance that post-Cartesian metaphysicians have always assumed. This entrenched metaphysical position is the primary target of deconstructive critique, a target that is shared by both Heidegger and Derrida despite important differences in their respective projects. These thinkers suggest that post-Cartesian claims to certainty are deeply problematic because they reveal a profound “indifference, not only for the question of Being, but [also] for that of the entity which we are [my emphasis]” (Derrida Of Spirit 18–19). In Being and Time, Heidegger observed early on that Descartes’ thought was reliant upon Aristotelian and Thomist metaphysics and terminology, but this fact is often overlooked by those who follow in Descartes’ foot steps: “Everyone who is acquainted with the middle ages sees that Descartes is ‘dependent’ upon medieval Scholasticism and employs its terminology,” he states. “ But with this ‘discovery’ nothing is achieved philosophically as long as it remains obscure to what a profound extent the medieval ontology has influenced the way in which posterity has determined or failed to determine the ontological character of the res cogitans” (46). Heidegger’s comment illustrates the theme of the “forgetting of Being,” applied in this specific instance to the historical reception of Descartes’ thought: and, certainly, it is uncontroversial to observe that Chomsky is deaf to the Aristotelian and Thomist dimensions of Descartes’ writings. But the more important consideration here is the fact of Chomsky’s indifference to such themes, which is hardly unique to Chomsky, but is rather typical of modern metaphysical thought. “With Descartes begins the completion and consummation of Western metaphysics,” Heidegger observes (The Question Concerning Technology 140). In this sense, Chomsky is by no means a kind of dissident prophet whose views run contrary to the spirit of his age, as he often claims, but an all too common modern philosopher whose views are fully in step with the times. It is precisely Chomsky’s indifference to philosophy that emboldens him to stake such a noisy claim to scientific certainty. But, for Heidegger and Derrida, whenever a rational thesis is aggressively asserted, unaccompanied by a pious spirit of questioning, the philosopher who boldly claims to speak in the name of truth—but, in fact, asserts a groundless thesis—inevitably





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risks falling prey to what Heidegger calls “the destitution of spirit.” According to Derrida, what constitutes evil for Heidegger is precisely “the certainty of the cogito in the position of subjectum and therefore [the] absence of originary questioning, scientific methodologism, leveling, predominance of the quantitative, of extension and of number—so many motifs which are Cartesian in type” (Of Spirit 63). Derrida’s brief overview of the Heideggerian notion of evil could also serve as a concise summary of Chomsky’s philosophical views. It should also be clear that Heidegger is not necessarily critiquing Descartes himself, who, as stated earlier, does not really sever his affiliation with Scholastic metaphysics. Rather it is the thought of the post-Cartesian philosopher who for Heidegger is beset with a destitution of spirit, for it is the RI theorist—and not Descartes himself—who is stridently indifferent to the groundlessness of his aggressive claims to speak in the name of truth. My point here is not to demonize Chomsky in the manner in which he demonizes his EE rivals, but rather to clarify what is at stake in his rhetorical claims to both prophetic and scientific veracity, at least from an informed EE perspective. What should be clear is that the entire strain of deconstructive thought offers a direct challenge to nearly everything that Chomsky holds dear as a language philosopher. Hence, Chomsky is certainly justified in feeling threatened by deconstructive theorists, but not because they write “incomprehensible gibberish,” as he would have us believe. Nor is it particularly surprising that Chomsky shrinks from a confrontation with his more formidable EE rivals, instead preferring to attack an easier target such as B.F. Skinner. However, Chomsky’s increasingly shrill denunciations of his philosophical rivals reveal that he is not altogether clueless regarding the threat that they represent to him, for otherwise he would desist from hurling so many unprovoked insults at them. EE theorists would obviously reject Chomsky’s argument that RI approaches to the study of language are inherently liberating and democratic, whereas EE approaches to language more easily lend themselves to racist and colonialist appropriation. In fact, Chomsky’s view in this instance bluntly contradicts one of the most influential theses of postcolonial theory, articulated by Frantz Fanon, who renounces traditional humanist thought as a tool of the racist colonizer.7 Fanon’s calls for a “new humanism” were partly inspired by his conviction that past humanist thought offered a convenient means for the West to reinvent the colonized other as a weaker version of itself. The native was said to be the “same”





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as the European settler, but with a difference: he was a sort of caricature of Man, a failed and underdeveloped replica of the real. For Fanon, the RI claim that “we are all the same” has historically meant that the colonized is transformed into a distorted image of the colonizer. While both the European settler and the native may possess reason, or the rational faculty of language, the colonizer imagines the native to be an incompetent representation of the human essence that both possess. The native is therefore a kind of “dangerous supplement” to the European settler: He is a mere copy of a copy. This insight led Fanon and many other postcolonial theorists to conclude that RI theories of identity in no way provide the solution to the problems of racism and imperialism, as Chomsky suggests, but actually provide an epistemological framework for them. There are obviously important differences between EE theorists such as Fanon and Edward Said, who have more conservatively argued on behalf of a neo-humanism, and Derrida and Spivak, who have sought to articulate a posthumanist (and arguably even anti-humanist) “ethics,” but all of these postcolonial theorists have criticized RI concepts of self for enabling racism and imperialism, especially metaphysical notions of self that have been influenced by Descartes. Chinua Achebe in particular has singled out Cartesian notions of self for promoting an astoundingly arrogant epistemology, one that he finds extremely abhorrent when compared to traditional West African beliefs about human identity. In a lecture given at UCLA in 1984, for instance, Achebe referred to Descartes as “the cause of a gigantic philosophical accident” (“The Writer and His Community” 50–51). While EE theories of identity may certainly be criticized for whatever role they may have played in perpetuating racist or imperialist structures of domination, especially as articulated by British empiricists such as Locke and Hume, it is simply false to suggest that RI theory is inherently more progressive, democratic, and anti-racist than EE theory. In fact, for many postcolonial EE theorists, the RI view is deeply problematic precisely because it uncritically posits a shared human essence and thereby risks ignoring irreducible differences between the settler and native. RI theorists such as Chomsky affirm a relation with the other that is based in sameness, whereas the EE theorist prefers to assert the fact of irreducible difference, and worries that the RI claim that we are all the “same” is a means of obliterating what it is that make each of us unique. Postcolonial EE views about self do not eschew RI thought, merely because it emanates from the West, but instead offer thoughtful responses to RI views, which EE theorists have measured and found





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wanting. For instance, theorists such as Spivak are very much aware that basic epistemological issues are at stake in this debate: “Whatever the political necessity for holding the position,” Spivak states, “and whatever the advisability of attempting to ‘identify’ (with) the other as subject in order to know her, knowledge is made possible and sustained by irreducible difference, not identity” (In Other Worlds 254). This is so, Spivak observes, for “knowledge is never adequate to its object” (254). Spivak’s insistence upon irreducible difference and the inadequacy of knowledge to its object, reiterates fundamental themes in the thought of EE theorists such as Heidegger and Derrida, but here appropriated in order to critique Western imperialism and racism. By way of contrast, the RI view is predicated on the assumption of a “determinate head-world relationship,” as McGilvray puts it (“Introduction” 8), and, as we have seen, no matter how subtle Chomsky’s articulation of nativist epistemology, he is finally compelled to acknowledge that there must be “at least a minimal amount of experience of the relevant kind ” in order for human beings to “acquire full linguistic competence” [my emphasis] (Cartesian Linguistics 120). Although Heidegger qualifies his critique of Cartesian epistemology, underscoring the fact that Descartes was aware of his indebtedness to Scholastic metaphysics, he also criticizes post-Cartesian metaphysicians such as Chomsky who have brushed aside philosophical inquiry in order to follow what Heidegger perceives to be a diabolical itinerary wherein scientific technology comes to be pursued for its own sake. But, unlike Descartes, the post-Cartesian philosopher no longer knows why scientific discoveries are worth pursuing and does not even believe that such questions are worth raising. RI epistemology arguably transforms man into a mere technological object and, in doing so, enslaves man to man (to him/ herself ). “In the planetary imperialism of technologically organized man,” Heidegger states, “the subjectivism of man attains its acme, from which point it will descend to the level of organized uniformity and there firmly establish itself ” (The Question Concerning Technology 152). This increasing uniformity threatens the future of humanity, Heidegger asserts, for “the modern freedom of subjectivity vanishes totally in the objectivity commensurate with it” (153). This insight, however, is not available to the RI theorist who is trapped in an epistemological view that is predicated upon the need for the narcissistic objectification of man, and who is perpetually driven to transform himself into a technological object of his or her own making. Thus, what the post-Cartesian





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and Chomskyan man experiences is not freedom, but enslavement to the rational idol that he himself constructs. Yet, Heidegger also observes that, “a different kind of I-ness and egoism is also possible; for man constantly remains determined as I and thou, we and you” (152). This is the sense in which, for the EE theorist, “ethics” is better construed as the relation to the other, rather than an indwelling or innate principle that is just sitting “there” in the head (Chomsky Understanding Power 360). There is no ethical “there” there, for the EE theorist, or if there is, it is forever hidden from view. These are only a few reasons why it is extremely problematic to assert, as Chomsky does, that EE doctrine enabled racist beliefs which helped to justify conquest and oppression, whereas RI doctrine repelled racist and imperialist ideology because it posited an “invariant human essence” (Language and Responsibility 93). From an EE perspective, the exact opposite is true. The post-Cartesian notion of self is historically inextricable from the European imperialist enterprise, which is a view that is widely shared among most postcolonial theorists who, in many other respects, may differ from one another in far-ranging ways. In contrast to Chomsky, EE theorists have emphasized that the sovereign exercise of reason inevitably perpetuates a hierarchical structure that is arbitrary, exclusive, and violent. This is so because representational metaphysics is based on the assumption that it is possible to correctly mirror the truth that is said to exist on the human interior within the external world of the senses. Because we do not have access to the indwelling truth (whether we assert that this truth is transcendental in a Platonic sense or is merely unavailable in a Chomskyan sense), it is not possible to finally know if the image of that truth that we ourselves construct is either an accurate or inaccurate reflection of the real original. Necessity will at last compel us to assert a truth claim, or to maintain that our image of the real is indeed a correct depiction of that absent ground, but in doing so we inevitably exclude other possible representations, which are arbitrarily denigrated as inaccurate. For instance, the European settler believes that he is the enlightened man of reason, whereas the colonized native is a not quite accurate copy of the settler, although he too is ostensibly a man of reason. Like the settler, the native indeed mirrors the Word that is inscribed on the soul or heart, but the native does not perfectly replicate it: he is a less legitimate copy of the original. The native, like woman, becomes a “dangerous supplement” to the more legitimate representative of the truth that is the settler. The





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supplement is dangerous because it may usurp the legitimate place of the original image. Now, the violence that is enacted against the native in racist and imperialist discourse, and that is enacted against woman in phallologocentric discourse may be terrible, violent, and arbitrary, but it is hardly irrational. In fact, anytime that one asserts that one’s fabricated representation of the truth is the most accurate, while knowing very well that one’s truth claim is finally “a stab in the dark,” as Chomsky himself puts it, one inevitably and necessarily excludes alternative representations of the truth as promoting less legitimate, or less accurate images of the truth that can never be verified since it is by definition not available to empirical investigation. RI epistemologies, which are based in the metaphysical view that truth is a matter of correct perception, do not raise a “modest conceptual barrier” to racist and imperialist doctrines, as Chomsky claims, but are in fact inextricable from such doctrines, which have—not coincidentally—been carried out in the name of the Enlightenment throughout history. The same is true of ideology about gender differences in the Christian West, which is predicated on the notion that woman is less rational than man because she is a less accurate copy of an anthropomorphized Word that is gendered in a particular way. Derrida’s writings on the logic of the dangerous supplement have shown that whenever a rational decision is ventured, one inevitably creates a hierarchical structure that is violent, arbitrary, and exclusive. For Derrida, it is a rationalist fantasy to imagine that one can escape performing such exclusive acts of violence by invoking an abstract principle of justice that is said to lie concealed within the human interior, but can never become manifest in the actual world that is inhabited by real human beings. In other words, the ethics of Chomsky are necessarily as violent, arbitrary, and exclusive as the ethics of all those who claim that they are morally competent. But if Chomsky were to fully accept the philosophical implications of his “constructive skepticism,” as he calls it, he would no longer be able to speak as the righteous dissident who is uniquely entitled to reveal the truth of the law that he carries within him. Heidegger, Derrida, and other EE theorists suggest that the ethics of RI theorists such as Chomsky tend to obliterate the otherness of the other. Yet they also suggest that a different kind of relation to the other is possible, following Kierkegaard in trying to envision an ethics without ethics, or an ethics that is not based in any appeal to an absent mental form (whether one calls that form a transcendental ideal or a real but





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concealed structure within the human interior). Another key figure who advocates a notion of ethics in terms of one’s relation to the other is Immanuel Levinas, who has served as an important source of inspiration for Derrida, and who is critical of Heidegger’s more metaphysical orientation to the question of ethics. Although the views of Levinas and Heidegger should obviously not be conflated, as well as the views of other key EE theorists such as those cited here, most share Heidegger’s opinion that “a different kind of I-ness and egotism [than that posited by Descartes and post-Cartesian thinkers] is possible; for man constantly remains determined as I and thou, we and you [my emphasis]” (The Question Concerning Technology 152). In addition to Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, who both offered powerful and influential critiques of Greek notions of ethics, Heidegger deconstructs post-Platonic views of ethics in his essay “The Anaximander Fragment,” which is a text that Derrida discusses at some length in Specters of Marx, where he builds upon Heidegger’s etymology of the Greek word dike, which is commonly translated as “justice.” I draw attention to these texts here because Chomsky and Foucault most dramatically disagreed in their famous television debate over the question of justice. Contrasts between EE and RI theorists are perhaps nowhere sharper than in their respective approaches to questions of ethics and justice. I would again emphasize here that there are important differences between EE theorists with respect to these matters that should not be elided; 8 but, for the sake of the matter at hand—which is to come to terms with Chomsky’s criticisms of EE theorists as the undeserving beneficiaries of illegitimate power structures—it is important to bear in mind that EE theorists such as Heidegger, Levinas, Foucault, Derrida, and many others would certainly be skeptical regarding Chomsky’s dogmatic view that the fundamental principles of moral judgment are part of “our fixed biological nature” (Understanding Power 360). In the course of their brief debate, Foucault asks Chomsky three separate times, in a matter of a few minutes, if Chomsky’s ethical appeals and views of justice are based in a transcendental notion of ethics. Foucault’s questions to Chomsky are worth citing in their entirety. First, Foucault asks Chomsky about civil disobedience in the United States, for instance while protesting the Vietnam War. “When in the United States,” Foucault asks, “you commit an illegal act, do you justify it in terms of justice or a superior legality, or do you justify it by the necessity of class struggle . . . ?” (The Chomsky–Foucault Debate 47). When Chomsky does not respond in any clear way to the question, Foucault asks the same question for a second





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time: “Are you committing this act [of civil disobedience] in virtue of an ideal justice or because the class struggle makes it useful and necessary?” (48). When asked this second time, Chomsky indeed confirms that he appeals to an ideal concept of justice, which surprises Foucault enough that he asks Chomsky a third time, “So it is in the name of a purer justice that you criticize the functioning of justice? [my emphasis]” (49). Chomsky agrees that this is indeed the case, affirming his belief in a “real” notion of justice that is—at least in the printed version of this debate—not surprisingly placed in scare quotes, which, as we have already seen, is Chomsky’s preferred method of indicating his awareness of a metaphysical problem that he does not wish to discuss. “I think there is some sort of an absolute basis [of ethics],” Chomsky states, “[but] if you press me too hard I’ll be in trouble because I can’t sketch it out” (55). However, Chomsky nonetheless asserts that his hypothesized absolute ethics “ultimately resides in fundamental human qualities [where] . . . a ‘real’ notion of justice is grounded” (55). Although their views are not identical, EE theorists such as Foucault, Derrida, Levinas, Heidegger, Spivak, Caputo, and many others would most likely find Chomsky’s assertions about ethics and justice to be extremely problematic; and, they would probably share Foucault’s surprise and incredulity that Chomsky does not even seem aware of why his views seem so untenable. This is not necessarily to assert that Chomsky is mistaken in his ethical hypothesis (although I obviously believe that he is mistaken), but that it is indeed remarkable that Chomsky has so little awareness of this defining theme of contemporary critical thought. In fact, Chomsky does not even seem to understand the question when it is first put to him, and when he does understand it, he is compelled to acknowledge that he has nothing to say regarding the question that Foucault has asked. In fact, Chomsky bluntly contradicts himself, stating, “Well, look, I’m not saying [that] there is an absolute [ethics]. . . .” (53). Chomsky does not finish his sentence, but instead asserts that he is not a “committed pacifist” and acknowledges that there are circumstances where violence is necessary in pursuit of revolutionary goals. However, the use of violence, Chomsky insists, is only legitimate “because a more just result is going to be achieved [my emphasis]” (53). We will need to return to Chomsky’s thesis that it is sometimes necessary to commit acts of violence in the name of justice, especially in Chomsky’s cursory reading of Rousseau’s A Discourse on Inequality, but for now I draw attention to the fact that all the EE theorists cited here would no doubt be skeptical regarding Chomsky’s appeal





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to what Foucault alternately calls a “superior legality,” “an ideal justice,” and a “purer justice.” Chomsky asserts his belief in the existence of an internal rule system, or an ungiven-given, that is authorless but nonetheless not nothing; that is, the ungiven-given is something, whether one prefers to construe it as a full-flown metaphysics or as a phenomenon (or a trace of the real). One of the key themes of deconstructive thought, which recurs in numerous essays by Derrida, and which is relevant to Chomsky’s view of innate rules, or what we are calling here “the ungiven-givens,” is the theme of the gift, but also what Derrida has called “the state of the debt.” Chomsky calls himself an anarchist, refusing to accept the legitimacy of the law that is already given in the empirical realm, instead professing his faith in the ungiven rule (or innate law) that he claims is both a real form and an abstract category of thought, or a figurative-literal rule. He does acknowledge that human beings are obliged to follow empirically given laws that are outside the head, which are necessarily enforced with violence, but he does not accept that such laws are legitimate; instead, he asserts that some empirically given laws are less illegitimate than others, and we must follow those laws that are less illegitimate than those that are completely and obviously illegitimate. Chomsky similarly asserts that his own philosophical views about language are not really legitimate, but that they are less illegitimate than those of his EE rivals, whose views amount to fraudulent gibberish. Chomsky takes his stand with the ungiven-given law, which is the completely just law that is not sullied by the empirical sphere where rules entail obligations. Now, the deconstructive theme of the gift, which is particularly prominent in Derrida’s later writings, has turned on this very question; that is, “Is it possible for one to give a gift to the other that does not entail any obligation, or can there be such a thing as a perfectly given gift?” The perfectly given gift would be the gift that does not accumulate any obligation to the giver but is completely debt-free. In fact, such a gift would be an ideal gift, rather than an empirically given gift. The appeal to both the ideal gift and the innate rule are in both instances appeals to spheres that are free from mundane obligations in the phenomenal world. For Chomsky, the innate rule is the ungiven-given that is perfectly just but currently unavailable. By way of contrast, the actually given rule is that rule that is given to us by the other, who is not a divine being but an actual person; it is the rule that is inscribed on the flesh, the rule that hurts, but that binds us to the other and that confers certain rights upon us, as well as





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accruing empirical obligations upon the giver. These rules are not innate rules that brain scientists might one day find but rules that are verifiable by simple observation. They are not figurative rules, or figurative-literal ones, but merely literal ones. Chomsky’s innate rules, on the other hand, are hy pothetically literal, but for the time being they are only figurative. Should Chomsky’s figurative-literal rules become actual, or literal and figurative at the same time, they would exist in the realm of perfect justice that is uncorrupted by mundane obligation, but also the fallen empirical realm where humanly given rules entail ordinary obligations, which must be enforced with recourse to violence. Foucault asks Chomsky three times if his critique of unjust laws is based in an appeal to a more perfect justice, or to a metaphysical notion of the law entailing no obligation, or to ungiven-givens that accumulate no debt. Derrida similarly suggests that Chomsky lacks a fully developed concept of sovereignty, which is another way of saying that Chomsky does not seem to comprehend that ethical decisions must be made in the dark, without ethical competence, but that they are not for all that unjustified. Ethical decision-making is unavoidably arbitrary, violent, and exclusive, for it entails performing an act of violence that is done unconsciously but is not therefore irresponsible. Chomsky too sometimes acknowledges that he is a “realist,” and, as we have seen, realism is a term that harkens to what is called real politik (or political realism in the discourse of foreign policy debate), which he appeals to in order to justify his groundless linguistic hypotheses. Chomsky’s ethics are similarly underwritten by a political realism that is unarticulated, but that may be logically inferred with reference to his linguistic thought. In both cases, as well as with respect to aesthetics, Chomsky claims that he is a hard scientist, rather than a mere philosopher, but his scientific claims are less developed when applied to his views about ethics, or ungiven rules that entail no actual obligations. By way of contrast, EE inquiry into ethics has emphasized the importance of our relation to the other, which does not entail any hypothesis about an absent ethical genome that awaits its discovery by future brain researchers, but instead involves actual interactions with real human beings in the fallen world of appearance. Ethics is about our relation to the other, how we respond to the other, or our actual responsibilities to the other. In his essay “The Anaximander Fragment,” Heidegger carefully examines the Greek word for justice, which is dike, comparing it to the Greek word for injustice, which is adikia. His objective is not necessarily to suggest that the ancient





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Greeks possessed the ultimate truth about justice, but rather to see what can be learned from exploring the history of the concept of justice. What Heidegger finds is that Greeks like Anaximander construed justice in terms of “jointedness,” whereas injustice meant somehow being “out of joint.” For Anaximander, to be “in joint,” or to be just, necessarily implied being in joint with the other, whereas injustice meant being out of joint with the other, or that there was something not quite right in one’s relation to the other. Heidegger offers a careful presentation of this problematic, which is further explored in Derrida’s Specters of Marx. It is worth noting Heidegger’s view since it harkens to a notion of ethics that does not eschew empirical obligations, or the actual world of ordinary human beings with commonplace obligations to the other. Instead, Heidegger explores how the Greeks, before the rise of idealistic thought systems, construed ethics as a matter of right relationship with the other. For Heidegger, a just relationship to the other, or a relationship that is “in joint,” implies letting the other be who the other is, without seeking to transform the other into a distorted version of oneself; that is, the EE view of ethics is the opposite of the RI view that ethics entail the claim that we are the same as the other because we both partake of an identical human essence. Ethics from an EE perspective instead implies that one must acknowledge the other’s irreducible difference. “The giving designated [by Anaximander],” Hedegger states, “can only consist in its manner of presencing” (“The Anaximander Fragment” 43). The gift for Anaximander is not then a mysterious ungiven-given that is absent (whether we construe it as transcendental in the conventional Platonic sense, or as an absent organic structure in Chomsky’s sense), but a gift that is here now in the ordinary world of appearance. “Giving is not only giving away [for Anaximander],” Heidegger states. “Originally, giving has the sense of acceding to or giving-to” (43). This “giving-to” means giving-to someone who actually exists. It means a “giving-to” within the context of a relation to the other who is not posited as nowhere in Chomsky’s notion of the innate rule that is given by no one. “Such giving lets something belong to another which properly belongs to him [my emphasis],” Heidegger states (43). What is given, or what is just, is letting the other be other. One is “in joint” with the other when one lets the other be other without seeking to convert the other into a copy of oneself. This view of ethics is anti-evangelical. While there are obviously variants on this perspective, as well as important debates and disagreements among EE theorists (for instance, as evident in Levinas’s





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and Derrida’s respective critiques of Heidegger), the EE view typically eschews Chomskyan, RI, and/or evangelical notions of ethics in favor of a notion of ethics that is oriented towards actual others who exist in the real world of human obligation. Justice is a gathering of the two who remain two, while nonetheless still gathered together. If the two become one at all, they also remain the two who allow others to be the beings that they are, for this is what is just. By way of contrast, one is unjust to the other, or out-of-joint with the other, when one does not allow the other to linger awhile in his or her difference. In the craving to persist as the being that one is, one grows impatient with the lingering presence of the other and so advances the inconsiderate demand that the other be the same as oneself. Injustice is a failure of hospitality. In his paraphrase of Heidegger’s view of justice, Derrida states, “Dike is joining, adjustment, articulation of accord, of harmony,” whereas injustice (or adikia in the Greek) is “at once what is disjointed, undone, twisted, and out of line” (Specters of Marx 23). For Heidegger, the gathering of the two implies that there is a gap between them, a place that is not a place but is rather nothing at all, or nothingness itself. Thus, the just gathering of the two who are irreducibly different from one another cannot be thought without reference to this placeless place that is between the two; this is the “place” that Plato calls khora and Derrida calls différance. “In this ‘between’ whatever lingers awhile is joined,” Heidegger states (“The Anaximander Fragment” 41). The problem with Chomsky’s view of ethics is that he has not thought through what it means to posit a notion of ethics that is beyond ordinary obligation. Instead, he contents himself with advancing an abstract concept of the ethical, which he also claims is an empirical object—that is, the ethical for Chomsky, like universal grammar, is construed as the “figurative/literal” or the “intangible/tangible,” but he dismisses philosophical inquiry regarding his own hypothesis as gibberish and unscientific conjecture. Deconstructive thinkers like Derrida do not necessarily reject any concept of justice that is beyond the fallen realm of human obligation, or that circulates beyond the economy of debt and repayment, but they believe that it is important that we seek to understand the actual meaning of our own ideas. To suggest then, as Chomsky repeatedly does, that inquiry into ethics is a waste of time because it is an arena of thought that is not available to scientific investigation is misguided. In contrast, Derrida asks what is at stake whenever we appeal to a purely abstract concept of ethics,





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or a literal-figurative concept of ethics that is beyond obligation, in order to critique actions in the ordinary world where we are bound by our real duties to one another. “What is justice beyond right?” Derrida asks. “Does it come along simply to compensate a wrong, restitute something due, to do right or to do justice?” (Specters of Marx 25). Applied to Chomsky’s appeals to a justice beyond obligation, one might similarly ask if he makes such appeals in order to redress actual matters of injustice, and if so, how is it that he feels especially entitled to speak on behalf of “the fundamental principles of moral judgment” given his admission that “we really don’t know what they are [Chomsky’s emphasis]” (Understanding Power 360)? It is also revealing that Chomsky often appeals to notions of common human decency, as when he states, “A truly decent and honest person will always seek to discover forms of oppression . . . that infringe fundamental human rights [my emphasis]” (Language and Problems of Knowledge 154). However, the word “decency” in normal usage implies conformity with already existing standards of behavior. The American Heritage Dictionary, for instance, defines the word “decent” as “characterized by conformity to recognized standards of propriety or morality.” Hence, the notion of “true decency” for most speakers of American English means conformity with rules or laws that actually exist in an empirical sense, not as absent principles of the “mind/brain.” The “decent” person is the man or woman who accepts laws that Chomsky also dismisses as illegitimate, or necessary evils. It follows then that he really means that the “decent” person is the one who conforms to unknown standards of behavior that are encoded in the brain, rather than preexisting ones. But how can human beings conform to an ethical standard of which they are unaware? They can only do so, it would seem, because they are “unconsciously conscious” of what is truly decent. Unlike Chomsky who, assumes the mantle of the dissident prophet, Derrida insists that we ask if the ungiven-gift of justice is appealed to “simply to render justice or, on the contrary, to give beyond the due, the debt, the crime, the fault? [Derrida’s emphasis]” (Specters of Marx 25). To pose the question in more obviously Nietzschean terms, how does Chomsky really know—and how do any of us really know—that he is not motivated by resentment and the will to power, rather than an ethics that transcends the desire to exact vengeance upon one’s rivals? How is it that Chomsky has succeeded in attaining a pristine ethical posture, when he himself admits that we know absolutely nothing about the fundamental ethical





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principles that are hardwired into the brain? The issue that Derrida raises is not whether or not these literal-figuratives actually exist, which is beside the point, but, because Chomsky dismisses philosophical inquiry of this nature, he seems oblivious to what is at stake when he advances his own ethical hypotheses. For Derrida, there is a difference between giving justice and rendering justice. By way of contrast, Chomsky defines the rule as the ungiven-given, which in Derridean terms would amount to “the gift without restitution, without calculation, without accountability” (25). Such a gift would be completely removed from “any horizon of culpability, debt, right, or duty” (25). The question of justice then for Derrida cannot be separated from the question of the gift. But if this is true, this means that Chomsky’s concept of the rule as the ungiven-given, or the law that is perfectly given, and his hypothesis regarding a purely abstract justice that is nonetheless “there” but currently inaccessible are inextricably intertwined. For Chomsky, both are “bodily organs” that are not only similar to other organs of the body such as the heart, liver, lungs, and so forth, but virtually identical in nature (175). In fact, Chomsky employs the exact same language in describing intrinsic principles of justice, law, grammar, ethics, human rights, and aesthetics, all of which he claims are “rooted in human nature, which is part of the natural world, so that [all people] should be able to learn about [them] by rational inquiry” (Chomsky on Anarchism 173). While Chomsky rejects the ethics of EE theorists as fraudulent dogma, he does so by appealing to mystifying concepts of human nature and the natural world, which he claims to understand better than his rivals, and to purely abstract principles of right, justice, and law which he also insists are bodily organs. By way of contrast, Derrida has suggested that Chomsky has not sufficiently considered the history, structure, and logic of the concept of sovereignty, which is a polite way of saying that Chomsky’s political thought is naive (Rogues: Two Essays on Reason 102). Chomsky hastily dismisses philosophical inquiry into ethical decision-making as unscientific speculation; or, as Derrida might put it, Chomsky does not do his homework when it comes to ethics. When Chomsky does read philosophers who have written on the question of ethics, he tends to take their views out of context of their greater oeuvre in order to bolster his own dogmatic hypotheses, which he militates for in the name of scientific veracity. Chomsky’s discussions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau are particularly revealing in this respect. In his public talks, critical essays, and interviews,





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Chomsky focuses on excerpts from Rousseau’s writings where existing and obviously corrupt social systems are criticized, and where the human longing for freedom from corrupt forms of social organization is affirmed. However, Chomsky has nothing to say regarding Rousseau’s famous thesis that human beings must finally affirm empirically given laws and enter into a binding social contract with others before they can ever enjoy an experience of freedom. Rousseau’s view, in this regard, is an obvious precursor to that of Kant, who greatly admired Rousseau. Unlike Chomsky, Rousseau does not suggest that all forms of human government are illegitimate, and that human beings must therefore strive to do what has never been done in history, that is, create a truly legitimate form of government in which human beings can at last experience authentic freedom. Instead, Rousseau argues that all human governments throughout history, both now and in the future, inevitably depend upon empirically given laws to which human beings must willingly submit if they wish to enjoy an experience of freedom, even though the metaphysical grounds of the law will remain forever unknown to them. “If we simply try to define [law] in terms of metaphysical ideas,” Rousseau writes, “we shall go on talking without reaching any understanding; and when we have said what a natural law is, we shall still not know what the law of a state is” (The Social Contract 81). Chomsky often cites Rousseau’s A Discourse on Inequality (1754), where various speculations are offered to account for the rise of unequal forms of social organization, especially those that have led to the exploitation of the poor by the rich. But he neglects Rousseau’s The Social Contract (1762), which is essential to understanding Rousseau’s views on politics, and which describes the kind of social agreement that Rousseau believed was necessary in order for human beings to enjoy an experience of freedom by virtue of their having submitted to the law. In Chomsky’s superficial reading of Rousseau, however, he leaves his readers with the false impression that Rousseau believed that empirically existing laws are intrinsically corrupt, and that all existing forms of government are essentially illegitimate. “Rousseau argues that civil society is hardly more than a conspiracy by the rich to guarantee their plunder,” Chomsky states (Chomsky on Anarchism 103). This is a simplistic distortion of Rousseau’s political views, as is Chomsky’s paraphrase of Rousseau’s ideas that “governments inevitably tend towards arbitrary power, as ‘their corruption and extreme limit,’ ” and that “this power is ‘by its nature illegitimate’ ” (103). Therefore, Chomsky presses Rousseau into service to advance his own dogmatic





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views that already articulated laws—that is to say, real human laws that exist “outside the head” rather than the concealed cavities of the human brain—are essentially illegitimate, and that all those who do not share his dogmatic views may be dismissed as conservative beneficiaries of corrupt social institutions. “The essence of human nature is man’s freedom, and his consciousness of his freedom,” Chomsky states in his summary of Rousseau’s political philosophy. But he fails to acknowledge that, according to Rousseau, human beings may only experience freedom once they agree to embrace already existing or empirically real laws that enable them to become members of a collective political body, which Rousseau, following Hobbes, calls the republican body, as in res publica, or the “public thing” (The Social Contract 82). This thing that is a “mere fiction,” or a creation of human beings, is nonetheless an entity that is far more powerful than the individual with his or her anarchistic longings for freedom. The well-known paradox in Rousseau’s political thought is that all those who dare to reject the benefits that one gains from becoming a member of the sovereign body—namely, the experience of freedom that they are entitled to enjoy because they have willingly submitted to existing laws—must be “forced to be free” for their own benefit and for the benefit of all other members of the sovereign body. Rousseau states, “In order that the social pact shall not be an empty formula, it is tacitly implied in that commitment . . . that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the whole body, which means nothing other than that he shall be forced to be free [my emphasis]” (64). Rousseau’s conclusion is reiterated by Kant, who similarly observes that, “the beginning of a lawful state cannot be counted upon except by force upon the compulsion of which the public law is afterwards based [my emphasis]” (To Eternal Peace 459–460). By way of contrast, Chomsky dreams of the advent of the lawful state that is not backed up with force, and he categorically refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the use of force in any existing civil state except as a necessary evil. But, for Rousseau, Kant, and Derrida the use of force is not a necessary evil, it is inextricable from the concept of the law. Now, when Derrida states that Chomsky has not sufficiently reflected upon the history of the concept of sovereignty, he probably has in mind Rousseau’s argument that every single form of government imaginable, both those that presently exist and those that may exist at some future date—including those that tirelessly assert their fidelity to rational and democratic values that “all decent people of integrity” will embrace—are





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necessarily based in preexisting empirical laws that must be backed up by force, which is the right of the sovereign body to wield. Contrary to the one-sided and distorted image of Rousseau that Chomsky creates in his reading of The Discourse on Inequality, the Rousseau who wrote The Social Contract praises authoritarian religious figures like King Solomon, the Prophet Muhammad, and Jean Calvin, all of whom he regarded as great lawgivers who were able to articulate compelling laws to which the sovereign body could freely submit. “The Law of the Hebrews, which still lives,” Rousseau states, “and that of the child of Ishmael which has ruled half the world for ten centuries, still proclaim today the greatness of the men who first enunciated them” (The Social Contract 88). Rousseau similarly states that, “those who think of Calvin merely as a theologian do not realize the extent of his genius” (85). Although dogmatic rationalists often dismiss such figures as religious fanatics, Rousseau insists to the contrary that all those who really understand the nature of politics in the real world will perceive “the hand of that great and powerful genius which lies behind all lasting things” in evaluating the contributions of such men (88). Not surprisingly, many critics who have commented on The Social Contract have remarked on the similarities between the views of Rousseau and Machiavelli, since Rousseau appears in this later essay to be a political realist rather than an anarchist idealist, as Chomsky would have us believe. In The Social Contract, Rousseau is particularly fascinated with the figure of the great lawgiver, whom he distinguishes from the sovereign (or the fictional and collective body), for while he is certainly aware that empirically given laws are necessary in order for each member of the body to experience freedom, he does not know—nor does he believe that anyone else knows or can ever possibly hope to know—from whence such laws originate. Hence, Rousseau takes refuge in the Pauline metaphor of the internal law that “is inscribed neither in marble nor brass, but in the hearts of the citizens” (The Social Contract 99). Rousseau’s internal law is coterminous with Chomsky’s notion of the innate rule, only Rousseau acknowledges that he is appealing to belief, and not an unknown-known (or an “unconscious knowledge”), as is the case with Chomsky’s illogical hypothesis. When other merely inscribed laws whither away, Rousseau asserts, belief in the law that is written on the human heart remains “the one on which the success of all the other laws depend” (99). In fact, Rousseau insists that belief “is the feature on which the great lawgiver bestows his secret care” because it is the “immovable keystone” of the merely inscribed





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law (99). For Rousseau then, the institution of the empirical law that founds the civil state is essentially a religious event. The inauguration of all political institutions –whether one describes the inauguration of a liberal democracy or a more obviously theocratic form of government— cannot be satisfactorily explained in rational terms alone, or as an act of ethical competence, at least not until it is clear that all responsible acts are first performed without knowing as matters of faith, not rational certainty. Chomsky either does not understand, or he simply ignores, Rousseau’s more mature political view that the human experience of freedom requires empirically given laws, and that all sovereign bodies necessarily depend upon lawgivers to institute real social orders, or to articulate actual laws that exist outside the head, so that their individual members may find freedom by willingly submitting to the law. Rousseau does not have in mind here any particular religious tradition, but refers to it as a matter of faith, which is emptied of reference to any specific religion. While it is true that Rousseau is more conversant with the Christian tradition, which is hardly surprising given the historical circumstances of his birth, his appeal to the religious in more generic terms as a matter of “belief,” without reference to any specific scriptural tradition, is an obvious precursor to deconstructive notions of belief, the Zusage, or the faith that precedes the question, and is not a thesis or a rational hypothesis. For Rousseau, the Protestant reformer Jean Calvin, the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, and the Hebrew lawgiver Moses are all great men, not because they inaugurated any specific religious tradition, but because they pressed the religious into service to inaugurate the political. “We must conclude . . .” Rousseau states, “that religion and politics have the same purpose among men: it is simply that at the birth of nations, the one serves as the instrument of the other” (The Social Contract 88). The lawgiver necessarily relies upon the religious in order to provide the state with empirical laws that are outside the head rather than inscribed in the heart (or that dwell within the human interior). Rousseau refers not only to theocratic states, but also to liberal democratic ones with republican constitutions, whose authors also cannot escape the problematic of faith, not even by theorizing that faith is actually an unconscious form of knowledge. The republican constitution may very well be authored by mere human beings, who are not generally considered to be divinely inspired prophets, but the secular laws that they write are dependent upon the necessity of human belief, not competence. In Specters of





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Marx, Derrida builds upon Rousseau’s views of the religious, defining the religious as “not just one ideological phenomenon or phantomatic production among others . . . [but that which] gives to the production of the ghost or of the ideological phantasm its originary form or its paradigm of reference, its first ‘analogy’ (166). While Derrida’s articulation of what he calls the religious is certainly complex, his definition of this term especially resonates with Rousseau’s concept of the religious. What Derrida calls the “ghost” is yet another way of saying the spirit, which is the actual spoken word (spiritus, from the Latin, which means the aspirated word or spoken breath). The lawgiver speaks, or he produces empirical spirit, the real performed utterance—what Chomsky similarly calls the “epiphenomenon”—that issues from the lungs, or the very body of the speaker, whether that speaker is a religious prophet or the agnostic author of a secular constitution. Whatever the ground of the word that is spoken, or the “ghost” that issues from the mouth, it necessarily remains hidden from view, a permanent matter of conjecture. Neither Rousseau, Kant, nor Derrida suggests that the religious should in any way usurp the place of rationality in liberal democratic forms of government, but they adumbrate the clear limits of the rational faculty that human beings possess; that is, they articulate a concept of enlightened rationality that is far more profound than those of post-Cartesian objectivists and naturalists such as Chomsky. Modern concepts of sovereignty are first articulated by Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes, both of whom influence Rousseau’s concept of sovereignty, which is developed in The Social Contract. As Derrida observes, Chomsky lacks a critique of sovereignty, which is evident in his approach to ethics but also in his criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, which are inextricably linked to his RI linguistic theories. That is, Chomsky’s hypothesis that ethics are “part of a genetically determined framework, which gets marginally modified through the course of early experience” mechanically repackages his prior RI theories of universal grammar, but applied in this specific instance to matters of human ethics (Understanding Power 360). Hence, to come to terms with Chomsky’s criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, one need only apply his innate ethical hypothesis to the sphere of international relations, giving special attention to the matter of sovereignty (even if Chomsky himself is not adequately informed with respect to this concept). While there is not space here to fully address Bodin’s and Hobbes’s respective views of sovereignty, it is worth noting that both insisted on the absolute nature of sovereign power, which





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Hobbes emphasized was indivisible. Rousseau’s primary contribution to the theory of sovereignty was that he observed that sovereign power cannot be transferred, or that it is inalienable, since human will cannot be transmitted from one person to another. In a liberal democracy, where sovereign power is said to be dispersed among all members of society in equal proportion, one is confronted with an obvious paradox since sovereignty is also said to be indivisible. This paradox is “solved” by Rousseau with his concept of the political body, or the one sovereign that is made up of the entire collective body of individuals. Rousseau calls the sovereign body a “mere fiction,” although it is a fiction upon which all liberal democratic states inevitably depend. Rousseau’s notion of the sovereign body, like Hobbes’s, is historically linked to the Christian doctrine that all members of the church are part of the Corpus Christi, or the mystical body of Christ, which is ritually celebrated in the act of Communion. To speak then of the indivisible will of a collective body is problematic, for it is impossible to say where this indivisible will actually exists, in the body of the individual, or in the body of the collective? To put this in Chomskyan terms, one might ask if sovereign political bodies—for instance, in a liberal democracy such as the United States—are hardwired with innate ethical principles in the same way as organic individuals. The obviously absurd nature of such a question helps to illustrate Derrida’s point that sovereign bodies, which are “mere fictions,” are not indivisible in the way that modern theories of sovereignty, such as those articulated by Bodin, Hobbes, and Rousseau imply; or, to cite Derrida, “All the great theoreticians of sovereignty, whether it is Bodin or Hobbes, proposed . . . that sovereignty is indivisible, whether it be that of the monarch, the people, or the individual” (Cherif Islam and the West 72). But, contrary to the views of these philosophers, Derrida asserts that “today, we must take into account the fact that sovereignty is to be shared, that it is divisible” (72). Derrida suggests then that there is no longer any pure sovereignty in the modern sense, since there are no longer pure sovereign nation-states, as was true of the modern period from, say, the era of Napoleon through the fall of the Soviet Union. In one of his later books, entitled Rogues (2005), Derrida responds to Chomsky’s criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, particularly Chomsky’s book Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs (2000). In Rogue States, Chomsky defines “sovereignty” simply as “the right of political entities to follow their own course—which may be benign or may be ugly—and to do so free from external interference” (199). Chomsky confronts the problem perhaps





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most cogently addressed by Hobbes, who once called sovereignty “the artificial soul” of the body politique” (Leviathan 9).9 Because an artificial body cannot have a soul in any metaphysical sense, Chomsky rightly acknowledges that, “sovereignty is no value in itself ” (Rogue States 200). Following philosophers of sovereignty such as Hobbes, Rousseau, and Kant, Chomsky goes on to assert his view that sovereignty is “only a value insofar as it relates to freedom and rights, either enhancing them or diminishing them. . . .” (200). “[I]n speaking of freedom and rights,” Chomsky states, “we have in mind human beings—that is, persons of flesh and blood, not abstract political and legal constructions like corporations, or states, or capital. If these entities have any rights at all, which is questionable, they should be derivative from the rights of people. That’s the core classical liberal doctrine. It’s also been the guiding principle for popular struggles. . . .” (200). However, as philosophers such as Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, and Derrida emphasize, the sovereign state is a purely fictional entity by definition. A fictional entity cannot have an indivisible or irreducible soul. This is also true of the corporate entities created by the “flesh and blood human beings” Chomsky refers to in his own definition of sovereignty, which are formed in opposition to the sovereign state. That is, if one forms a revolutionary association in opposition to a repressive sovereign state, one is nonetheless compelled to bring into being yet another fictional body through a new social covenant that must also be backed up with force. Once Chomsky’s “persons of flesh and blood” form an association consisting of more than one person, they too will become yet another corporation, or a fictional body without a soul. As Rousseau observes, it is only by relinquishing individual freedoms and joining a collective association that is backed up with force that we attain new freedoms within the strictures of the social contract. Chomsky asks if the freedoms currently enjoyed in the United States “inhere in persons of flesh and blood, or only in small sectors of wealth and privilege? Or even in abstract constructions like corporations, or capital, or states?” (Rogue States 207). He also rightly observes that, “ In the past century the idea that such entities have special rights, over and above persons, has been very strongly advocated” (207–208). But once Chomsky refers to what he calls “persons,” and not simply the individual person in the singular, he has already constructed yet another fictional collective body. Chomsky’s “flesh and blood persons” are herein opposed to themselves since they are also members of the body politic and possibly members of other corporations to which he is opposed. These “flesh and blood





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persons” do not live in a state of lawless anarchy, nor do they inhabit any other nation-state than the one that they inhabit. Even if these “flesh and blood persons” do not want to belong to the nation-state established before their birth, they remain members of the body politic who are “forced to be free,” as Rousseau once put it, regardless of their personal desires. Chomsky imagines that it is possible to become “a free individual” merely by adopting a critical or oppositional stance towards the sovereign body to which one belongs. In his studies of media propaganda in the U.S. context, for instance, he suggests that it is possible for American citizens to liberate themselves from systems of indoctrination and control through education. Chomsky states that one must analyze the assumptions of the media and then examine their veracity in light of the facts one actually knows to be true. “Once one does that I think,” Chomsky states, “the world becomes rather clear. Then one can become a free individual, not merely a slave of some system of indoctrination and control [my emphasis]” (Chronicles of Dissent 12). But even if one religiously followed Chomsky’s prescriptions, one still would not become “a free individual” because one would still be a member of the body politic, fully subject to its laws. Chomsky opposes the sovereign state with yet another sovereign and fictional entity that he calls “flesh-and-blood persons,” whom he imagines can become “free individuals” without regard for the law. Yet the sovereign state already consists of flesh-and-blood persons, the very ones Chomsky invokes in his frequent references to “real” people and their rights. Derrida does not disagree with Chomsky that repressive and unjust states should be made less repressive and more just. But he acknowledges that sovereign states are always already going be repressive precisely because they are sovereign states, and that the way to make such states more just is not necessarily to construct yet another sovereign entity that you imagine is somehow more real—or a matter of true “flesh-and-blood persons”—than the fictional entity you have just dissolved. In other words, no one is ever going to belong to a “real” sovereign state because sovereign states are not real by definition. In The Beast and the Sovereign (2009), Derrida observes that the sovereign state is akin to the beast because neither has the ability to respond; they are both literally irresponsible (54–55). This is why the sovereign state is usually depicted in the form of a beast, for instance, the imperial lion, or the eagle of the United States. Both the beast and the sovereign state are outside the law because they are not responsible to the law. Hence, for Derrida, all states are essentially rogue states because they are all





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outlaws; that is, they are all fictional entities that can do whatever they wish without respect for the law. The international realm remains the realm of lawless anarchy. Derrida argues that Chomsky is right that a sovereign state such as the United States is a rogue state, but he points out that this is true of all sovereign states. In other words, Chomsky defines the rogue state as “not simply a criminal state, but one that defies the orders of the powerful—who are, of course, exempt” (Acts of Aggression 52). Derrida fully agrees with Chomsky that states such as the United States should not be exempt from international law, but that there are far-reaching consequences to this fact which Chomsky has not considered. He also agrees that it is hypocritical for the United States to label Cuba, Libya, and Iraq (under Saddam Hussein) “rogue” states; but, he also points out that Chomsky has failed to think through the far-reaching consequences of his own argument. Derrida is not attempting to exonerate the United States, but to gain a better understanding of the logic of sovereignty in order to escape the historical cycles of terror associated with the rise of liberal democratic forms of nationalism. Chomsky observes that, “In the United States, as elsewhere, foreign policy is designed and implemented by narrow groups who derive their power from domestic sources. . . . Within the nation-state, the effective ‘national purpose’ will be articulated, by and large, by those who control the central economic institutions. . . .” (Towards a New Cold War 98–99). This observation is certainly true, if not a truism. For instance, Rousseau made the same point about the inherent contradictions built into the concept of representational democracy, for sovereign will is inalienable, which is to say, it cannot be transferred from the individual person to those representing him or her. However, it is not possible to solve this problem by harkening to a mythical realm of freedom from the law that does not exist anywhere other than “the land of romance.” It is not possible to reach “the land of romance” merely because one is able to think critically and make up one’s own mind as a “free individual” about media propaganda. This sort of freedom is an illusion, a rationalist fantasy. In his brief critique of Chomsky, Derrida emphasizes that, “there is no sovereignty without force” (Rogues 101). As we have seen, however, Chomsky imagines that it is possible to avoid affirming empirical laws that are necessarily backed up with force by evoking his hypothetical ethical organ that exists in a realm beyond obligation or the possibility of enforcement. While Chomsky does acknowledge that one must finally act and use force in some circumstances, he does not affirm any





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actual existing maxim such as Kant’s Categorical Imperative, and therefore imagines that he has escaped the problematic that all empirical laws require enforcement, or they cannot be considered laws. That is, a law that is not backed up by force is not a law at all. But as Rousseau points out, even in a liberal democracy, those individual members of the sovereign body who do not wish to be free must be “forced to be free” (The Social Contract 64). Even in the most free of democracies, “freedom” depends upon the use of coercive force. For his part, Derrida will insist that “as soon as there is sovereignty, there is abuse of power and a rogue state, [for] abuse is the law of use: it is the law itself [my emphasis]” (Rogues 102). In Derrida’s view, the same is also true for the individual, for “as soon as there is One, there is murder, wounding, traumatism” (Archive Fever 78). Derrida’s views about the violent nature of the law, and about violence in general, may seem disconcerting to some, but he does not suggest that human beings possess an innate desire to inflict violence upon others, as does Chomsky. Instead, Derrida emphasizes the necessary limitations that are imposed upon us and violently enforced for the sake of entering into collective political bodies. By way of contrast, Chomsky relates the following anecdote in support of his view that we have an innate desire to hurt others: Let me tell you a personal story. I’m not particularly violent. But when I was in college, I had to take boxing. The way you did it was to spar with a friend, but we all found, and we were amazed, that pretty soon we wanted to kill each other. After doing this pushing around for a while, you really wanted to hurt that guy, your best friend. You could feel it coming out. It’s horrifying to look at, and again I doubt that people have failed to see this in themselves and something about their lives. Does that mean that the desire to hurt people is innate? In certain circumstances, this aspect of our personality will dominate. There are other circumstances in which other aspects will dominate. You want to create a humane world, you change the circumstances. (Keeping the Rabble in Line 99–100)

In Chomsky’s view we have an innate desire to hurt others, which most EE philosophers of language, including Locke, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, do not accept. In opposition to this view, Locke states, “View but an army at the sacking of a town, and see what observation or sense or moral principles, or what touch of conscience for all the outrage they do. Robberies, murders, rapes, are the sports of men set at liberty from punishment and censure” (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 72).





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This view seems to agree with Chomsky’s notion that human beings have an innate desire to hurt others. However, Locke will emphasize, “I never denied such a power to be innate, but that which I denied was that any idea or connection of ideas was innate” (72). The question of power that Locke emphasizes removes the problematic of the innate idea from the framework of objective forms in the mind. For instance, Locke emphasizes that “the great variety of opinions concerning moral rules which are to be found among men” (69). Locke firmly disagrees with Cartesian notions that innate moral rules are somehow impressed upon the mind. We may have the power to hurt others, or to refrain from hurting others, but there is nothing in our genetic makeup that predisposes us in either direction. In The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche refers to the sadistic pleasure that one gains from observing those who violate the social contract being punished (203). But Nietzsche does not suggest that this desire is innate. In fact, Nietzsche’s aim is to be delivered from the desire to inflict vengeance upon others, a goal that for Chomsky would require the human species to undergo genetic modification.10 For Locke, Nietzsche, Derrida, and other EE philosophers, desire cannot be innate because desire is not a formal object, but rather a longing for an object that is absent. The very notion of an innate desire is a metaphysical one. In contrast to RI views that emphasize the Cartesian hypothesis that we all share an identical human essence, EE theorists commonly assert that whenever we actively listen and respond to the other, we perform an action that undermines rationalist and objecitivist notions of self. “As soon as I speak to the other,” Derrida states, “I submit to the law of giving reason(s) . . . I divide my authority, even in the most performative language, which always requires another language in order to lay claim to some convention” (Rogues 101). A truly ethical relation with the other for the EE theorist therefore begins with an acknowledgement of the fact of irreducible difference. Chomsky, by way of contrast, categorically asserts that, “you’re either a machine or else you’re a human being, just like any other human being in essential constitution” (Language and Responsibility 93). While the extra-human observer may have privileged access to the essential sameness of all humanity, those who are not endowed with this god-like perspective will understandably want to insist upon the fact of their irreducible difference from the other, with whom they strive to relate in a just fashion. Relating to the other in the real world, which is not inhabited by Martian scientists, entails problems, obligations, difficulties, and complications that





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no recourse to extraterrestrial life-forms can ever hope to solve. But it was Kant and not elitist Parisian intellectuals in the late twentieth century who first pointed this out in his famous essay, “To Eternal Peace,” where he observed that all human beings are endowed with basic rights precisely because they do not have access to the extraterrestrial perspective Chomsky likes to evoke. “It is the right belonging to all men to offer their society on account of the common possession of the surface of the earth [my emphasis],” Kant states. “Since it is a globe, they cannot disperse infinitely, but most tolerate each other” (449). For Kant, we have human rights because we are all inhabitants of the globe and must have some place to set our feet. This is why Kant insists that, “No man has a greater fundamental right to occupy a particular spot than any other” (449). For Kant, the fact that we live on the planet Earth and not Mars is the reason why we are entitled to human rights as earthlings, not as Martians. Because this is so, we have no choice but to get along with other human beings who inhabit this planet with us. “Ethics” then, for EE theorists who are influenced by Kant, turns on the question of how one can welcome the other in a fashion that truly respects the other, which is to say, permits the other to linger awhile in his or her otherness. By way of contrast, Chomsky articulates an extraterrestrial ethics by appealing to imaginary observers living in outer space, who are not compelled to inhabit the globe with fellow earthlings. While there is not space here to elaborate upon the Kantian theme of hospitality, which is explored in rich detail in countless works by contemporary EE theorists, especially Levinas and Derrida, it is worth repeating that such thinkers have by no means introduced the theme of hospitality in recent years, but that it is an essential feature of the Enlightenment tradition that they extend in new and hitherto unexplored directions. In a characteristically scathing and exaggerated criticism of EE political views, Chomsky argues that, “if there is a body of theory, well tested and verified, that applies to the conduct of foreign affairs or the resolution of domestic or international conflict, its existence has been kept a well-guarded secret, despite much pseudo-scientific posturing” (“Noam Chomsky on Post-Modernism”). The truth is that numerous EE theorists have written rich, detailed, and insightful analyses that apply to the conduct of foreign affairs and the resolution of international conflict, especially with respect to U.S. foreign policy. Much current debate among EE theorists in such areas is centered on the Kantian themes of cosmopolitanism, hospitality, citizenship, and the future role of the





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United Nations in adjudicating international conflicts. Debates about these areas of inquiry are hardly a “well-guarded secret,” as can easily be verified by even the most cursory glance at current periodical literature. All of the above themes are linked to the thought of Kant, a philosopher whom Chomsky by his own admission fails to adequately discuss in his writings. Far from being discoveries that have only been unearthed by Parisian intellectuals in the last 20 years, these themes comprise many of the most enduring topics of debate that have shaped the history of the Enlightenment tradition.





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Loc k e’s “M isr e adi ng” of D e sc a rt e s a n d O t h e r Fa i ry Ta l e s

Newton exorcized the machine; he left the ghost intact. It was the first substance, extended matter, that dissolved into mysteries. —Noam Chomsky The ananke¯ is that there is no intact kernel and there never has been one. That’s what one wants to forget. —Jacques Derrida

Chomsky makes the case that Locke’s critique of innate ideas addresses this doctrine in a superficial form, resulting in a historical misunderstanding that he intends to rectify. According to Chomsky, Locke did not criticize Descartes, but a figment of his imagination. The prevalent view that the doctrine of innate ideas has now been discredited, Chomsky asserts, “has to do with the issue between Locke and whoever Locke thought he was criticizing in his discussion of innate ideas [my emphasis]” (Language and Mind 80–81). In this view, the “real” Descartes offered a far more sophisticated theory of innate ideas than that of which Locke was aware. Whereas Chomsky tends to be dismissive in his remarks on Locke, he says little about the dialectical epistemology of Kant that was developed as a response to the Cartesian doctrine of innate ideas. In fact, Chomsky claims that he has never been able to understand the meaning of the “pretentious” word dialectics (Understanding Power 229–230). Chomsky often asserts that he has successfully refuted Locke’s criticisms of Descartes; however, his criticisms of Locke elide what was most central to Locke’s concerns, which is that Descartes posits an untenable metaphysics of presence. Chomsky insists that it is possible to recuperate the Cartesian doctrine of innate


Ch a p t e r Th r e e



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ideas as a scientific theory of language acquisition, but his own doctrine of innate ideas is founded upon a metaphysical theory of knowledge. Because this is so, Locke’s criticisms of innate ideas remain applicable to Chomsky’s own views about language acquisition. Descartes claimed that he could not doubt the intuition of the “res cogitans” (or that he is a “thinking thing”), and that the goal of his method was certain knowledge in opposition to the speculative philosophy of the Scholastics. “My whole plan had for its aim assurance,” Descartes stated, “and the rejection of shifting ground in order to find rock or clay” (Discourse on Method 50). By way of contrast, Locke argued that even if every living person were to affirm the universal principle that we are all thinking things, it would not follow that the principle that we are all thinking things is innate; it would merely demonstrate that all people everywhere are in agreement regarding its general validity. Locke insists that no universally affirmed proposition may be construed as a correct perception of an irrefutable truth, and that no universal agreement regarding the truth of any general principle has ever existed, including the res cogitans of Descartes. Locke does accept that there are certain natural tendencies that are inherent to all human beings, but a natural tendency to behave in a certain way is not the same thing as an innate principle that dwells within the mind. Locke states, “It will be hard to conceive what is meant by a principle imprinted on the understanding implicitly unless it be this, that the mind is capable of understanding and affirming to such propositions” (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 56). It is always possible to understand and affirm propositions such as the res cogitans, but the ability to understand and affirm an articulated proposition does not mean that it is innate. Locke underscores the word “implicitly” to suggest that when Descartes invokes “innate ideas,” what he seems to mean are ideas that are virtually innate ideas. Descartes’ existential experience of the idea of the res cogitans leads him to believe—rather than to know with certainty—that this idea is innate and prior to sensory experience. Descartes therefore experiences the innate idea as if it were innate. But there is no way for Descartes to know with certainty that the res cogitans is innate; he may only experience it as if this were so. Hence, the res cogitans is a quasi-innate idea (the Latin prefix quasi literally means “as if ”). Chomsky fails to save Descartes’ doctrine of innate ideas from history’s verdict because Locke’s critique of this doctrine is not refutable on metaphysical grounds. Chomsky “solves” the problem of metaphysics in his own theory of language by inventing a fabulous





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narrative about human evolution that is comparable to the creation tale told in Plato’s Timaeus. In fact, the story that Chomsky tells about language’s origins—the so-called “cosmic ray theory”—is in many ways more fantastic than its Platonic counterpart (Chomsky The Architecture of Language 61). As stated in the “Introduction,” Chomsky’s critique of Locke seems indebted to Alexander Campbell Fraser’s editorial remarks on Locke in the margins of the complete and unabridged Oxford University Press version of Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, first published in 1891. In this volume, Fraser does far more than annotate Locke’s text in order to help the reader better understand Locke’s views; in fact, he “corrects” many of Locke’s imagined failings and recommends his own philosophical views to the reader in place of Locke’s. If Chomsky does not uncritically adopt Fraser’s views, his own critique of Locke certainly echoes that of Fraser, who imagines that he is a better philosopher than the one whom he faithlessly edits and annotates. Given the importance of Chomsky’s critique of Locke to his own doctrine of innate ideas, it is worth examining this critique in some detail and comparing it to Fraser’s, which so closely parallels Chomsky’s own, although Fraser does not of course imagine that he is a post-metaphysical scientist. In Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965), Chomsky states that, “Locke’s attempt to refute the doctrine of innate ideas is largely vitiated by his failure to observe the distinctions [between the quasiinnate and adventitious idea] . . . although this [difference] was clear to Descartes (and was later re-emphasized by Leibniz, in his critique of Locke’s Essay)” (203). Echoing Fraser, Chomsky insists that Descartes never claimed that the innate idea could function unless it was first activated in occasional situations. In Problems of Knowledge and Freedom (1971), Chomsky reiterates this point, stating, “That experience is required to bring innate structures into operation, to activate a system of innate ideas, is assumed quite explicitly, by Descartes, Leibniz, and others” (17). Similarly, Chomsky observes that, “certain kinds of data and experience may be required in order to set the language-acquisition device into operation, although they may not affect the manner of its functioning in the least” (Aspects of the Theory of Syntax 33). For instance, Chomsky states that “[empirical stimulation] is a prerequisite to the development of a concept of visual space, although it may not determine the character of this concept” (3). In seeking to clarify Descartes’ distinction, especially in order to bolster his own linguistic


locke’s “misreading” of descartes / 109



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theory, Chomsky goes on to assert that, “In studying the actual character of learning, linguistic or otherwise, it is necessary to distinguish between these two functions of external data—the function of initiating or facilitating the operation of innate mechanisms and the function of determining in part the direction that learning will take” (3). In a footnote to this text, Chomsky also asserts his view that Locke is oblivious to this distinction. But Chomsky does not address the metaphysical and ontological thrust of Locke’s critique of this doctrine. Locke suggests that Descartes experiences the mind’s forms “as if ” they were innate, but he is also aware—unlike Chomsky—that once these forms are granted an objective existence, those who make such a claim about their innate nature are engaged in metaphysical speculation rather than empirical science. In other words, for Descartes, the mind’s forms feel to him “as if ” they exist independently of the body. This was Locke’s point. His critique is in no way vitiated by his alleged “failure” to understand that Descartes secretly grasped that the mind’s innate forms had to be activated on the occasion of experience. In fact, Chomsky’s point is not relevant, for even if Descartes was aware that the mind’s forms required occasional activation, he would never enjoy intuitive certainty of their existence. Obviously, the same might be said for Chomsky’s own doctrine of innate ideas as objective forms, or the so-called innate hypothesis; that is, Chomsky feels “as if ” these hypothetical forms have an objective character—in fact, this groundless hunch propels him to posit a hypothesis that they exist, although he finally admits that he does not have privileged access to any first principle in which to ground the existential decision that he makes. Once Chomsky asserts that the language ghost is objective, he unavoidably makes a metaphysical assertion: Both the empiricist thing and the Chomskyan thing are vapors and therefore metaphysical objects, yet Chomsky’s vapor is not sensible in the same way as Locke’s is sensible, for Chomsky’s vapor is only present in a hypothetical sense, whereas the epiphenomenon of the human voice is not a hypothetical, but an actual, stimulus. In other words, there is no such thing as a hypothetical stimulus. In making his case regarding Locke’s “failure” to understand Descartes, Chomsky also asserts that, “rationalist approaches, in contrast [to empiricist approaches], assume that the form of the systems of acquired knowledge is determined by a priori principles of mind. It is important to bear in mind that traditional rationalism [Cartesianism] did not distinguish clearly between necessary and contingent properties





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in the modern sense” (The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory 13). According to Chomsky, Locke believes that the properties of mind in Descartes are necessary and metaphysical rather than contingent, whereas Chomsky asserts that they are merely contingent and not necessarily metaphysical. This is certainly incorrect with respect to the Cartesian doctrine of the soul and God. Locke’s critique of Descartes remains valid because Descartes really does posit a metaphysics, which is another way of saying that Descartes’ a priori categories are indeed necessary rather than contingent; however, Chomsky disputes this. For instance, Chomsky asserts that, “the theories of perception sketched by Descartes . . . postulated principles of mind and concepts of innate structure that would surely be regarded as empirical hypotheses regarding contingent properties of mind, in the modern understanding of these notions” (13). In effect, Chomsky claims that Descartes’ a priori principles are secretly Kantian, if rethought in modern terms. This is simply false. In fact, Descartes construes the mind as wholly separate from the human body, which he describes as a dead body extended in space (Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am 72–73). Chomsky’s misreading of the Lockean critique of Descartes is admirable in its audaciousness, but it is also preposterous. As stated previously, in contrast to the Kantian a priori categories, Chomsky’s contingent a priori forms are enduringly present, even if they are mere “vapors.” Calling his own a priori forms “contingent” rather than “necessary” does not deliver even Chomsky from metaphysics, however much he may claim that this is so. However, it is Fraser who perhaps most forcefully makes the case against Locke that Chomsky so frequently reiterates. In an annotation to Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Fraser asserts that, “even the [innate] ideas of Descartes were not regarded by him [as present] in consciousness until ‘experience’ had evoked them from latency” (37 n. 1). Fraser also claims that this is “a position that Locke’s argument always fails to reach” (37 n. 1). As a matter of fact, it is Fraser who—echoing Leibniz—articulates the idée recue so often asserted in Chomsky’s own writings that, “Locke assails [the doctrine of innate ideas] in its crudest form, in which it is countenanced by no eminent advocate” (37 n. 2). Fraser continues in this vein, asserting that, according to Descartes, the “data of experience are needed, to awaken what must otherwise be slumbering potentialities of man’s spiritual being; and . . . human knowledge is the issue of sense when sense is combined with latent intellect [my emphasis]” (37–38 n. 2). Fraser authoritatively





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claims that this “is an interpretation of the ‘established opinion,’ which Locke does not fairly contemplate” (37–38 n. 2). This is precisely the view that Chomsky adopts as his own, misleading though it may be. The key to understanding Fraser’s critique of Locke, which I have placed in italics above, is the mystifying phrase, “the slumbering potentialities of man’s spiritual being.” This phrase shows that Fraser offers a metaphysical critique of Locke, or what Chomsky himself will scorn as a “bifurcation thesis,” but if Fraser’s notion of the slumbering potentialities of “man’s spiritual being” is recast in Chomsky’s terms, wherein the obviously metaphysical formulation of “spiritual being” is now called a liquid trace, a bodily fluid, or a purely physical substance without metaphysical import, what remains is the quasi-innate idea, or one has substituted the purely innate and frankly metaphysical idea with the adventitious idea; that is, the quasi-innate idea is yet another variety of an adventitious idea. Of course, this was precisely Locke’s point: the doctrine of the innate idea, or the so-called innate hypothesis, is always already a matter of discursive construction. For Fraser and Chomsky, “Locke ignores the main issue” (39 n. 2), but this is exactly what can and must be said of the comparable views of Fraser and Chomsky with respect to their critiques of Locke. Sounding a lot like Chomsky, although he is writing in the late nineteenth century, Fraser asserts that, “The unconscious presence of principles which can be proved (by philosophical analysis) to be virtually presupposed in our certainties, and even in our assent to probability, is overlooked [by Locke] [my emphasis]” (42 n. 3). Fraser responds to an important passage in Locke’s Essay, which has direct bearing upon Chomsky’s oxymoronic notion of unconscious knowledge. Locke states, “So that to make reason discover those truths thus imprinted, is to say, that the use of reason discovers to a man what he knew before: and if men have those innate impressed truths originally, and before the use of reason, and yet are always ignorant of them till they come to the use of reason, it is in effect to say, that men know and knew them not at the same time [my emphasis]” (43). As a matter of fact, this is precisely what Chomsky does say, when he claims that there is such a thing as unconscious knowledge. But Locke explicitly rejects the idea of unconscious knowledge, and Fraser takes exception to this gesture because he believes that Locke is not sufficiently attentive to Descartes’ argument that the innate idea is virtually innate, or that it is the idea that we experience as if it were innate. Locke is certainly aware that this is an ontological argument that requires the assertion of an





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articulated doctrine in the absence of one’s ability to verify the empirical existence of the innate idea. Locke observes that there are “a million of such other propositions [as the innate idea], as many as least we have distinct ideas of that one may also give assent to” (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 52). If the proposition of the innate idea were accepted on such grounds, Locke observes, one would also have to accept that “every well-grounded observation, drawn from particulars into a general rule, must [also] be innate [my emphasis]” (55).1 What Chomsky refuses to acknowledge is that the Cartesian doctrine of the innate idea is a dogmatic or articulated rationalism. As for the quasi-innate idea, it is in fact an adventitious idea in disguise; even the virtually innate idea must be articulated by actual human beings who belong to particular linguistic communities. The virtually innate idea is also a matter of articulated doctrine since we only have access to it through empirical discourse. This fact does not free the inquirer from metaphysics but rather illustrates why metaphysics are inescapable: The ground of inquiry into the doctrine of the innate idea, as well as every other doctrine that is articulated in dogmatic form by human beings, is finally groundless. Kant reiterates this point in The Conflict of the Faculties when he states his view that “the Bible deserves to be kept, put to moral use, and assigned to religion as its guide just as if it is a divine revelation [Kant’s emphasis]” (119). What Bible-based doctrines share with Cartesian and Chomskyan doctrines of the innate idea is that they are all matters of articulated doctrines, which one may only believe. Furthermore, there is an enormous difference between asserting a doctrine’s indisputable truth versus merely affirming a doctrine as if it were true. Hence, the claim that Locke “assailed innatism in its crudest form” is completely irrelevant, for the “less crude” innate idea, which is secretly an adventitious idea, also does not evade Locke’s critique. Chomsky’s often-repeated claim that Locke did not know who it was he was criticizing when he analyzed this Cartesian doctrine is therefore as false as it is empty. Kant follows Locke in rejecting the Cartesian hypothesis of actual innate ideas, agreeing with his empiricist predecessors that the res cogitans is an occult metaphysics. Both Locke and Kant suggest that Descartes posits an ontology that is essentialist and that can therefore be doubted, no matter how confident Descartes may be in his assertion that he intuits its existence. A hypothetical substance, by definition, remains hypothetical in opposition to the sensory impression. Whereas Descartes remains deeply enmeshed in a metaphysics positing an





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ontological substance, Locke and Kant assert the priority of the actual trace of the real that appears on the lens of the eyes or is felt by other senses, rather than any occulted noumenon that is concealed behind what merely appears. But in opposition to the British empiricists, Kant insists that the human mind does not conform to observable phenomenon, as suggested by Locke, Hume, and other British empiricists, but it is the perceived object that necessarily conforms to the categories of perception within the human mind. This does not mean that Kant posits that the human mind exists as a metaphysical substance in Descartes’ sense. Kant is not arguing that he intuitively knows that he exists in any metaphysical sense, or that it is impossible for him to doubt that he is a thinking thing. Nor does Kant posit that the a priori categories of perception exist as objective forms. Kant acknowledges that it is indeed possible to doubt the existence of Descartes’ secondary substance. However, Kant argues that the phenomena that we experience within the sensory world must conform to the human mind, rather than the other way around. Kant’s epistemology implies that the human mind is indeed stable and constant, but the fact of the mind’s stability does not authorize Descartes to describe its contents in terms of any metaphysical substance that may be known. Kant states, Since, then, in metaphysics we do not find empirical principles, the concepts encountered therein must be sought, not in the senses, but in the very nature of the pure intellect, not as innate (connati) concepts, but as abstracted from the intrinsic laws of the mind (attending to its actions on the occasion of experience) and so as acquired [Kant’s emphasis]. (On the Form and Principles 395)

This statement differentiates Kant’s epistemological views from both the Cartesians and British empiricists in many important ways. Kant is critical of essentialist metaphysics in a manner that parallels the British empiricists and that contradicts the views of Descartes. To assert that it is impossible “to find empirical principles in metaphysics,” as Kant does here, reiterates the Platonic distinction between the realms of Being and becoming; but, because these realms are distinct, Kant suggests, metaphysical truths may never be observed, for they are by definition not available in the empirical realm of the five senses. In this regard, Kant’s views differentiate him from those of the ancient Greeks who did not cease to believe that the Being of beings may be unconcealed within the realm of becoming. But Kant is careful to insist that whatever it is that is





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stable and constant within the human interior should not be construed as an innate structure that it is possible to intuitively know as a matter of correct perception. Kant does not say that he knows he is a thing that thinks. For Kant, there is no mental substance that we can know merely by intuiting its existence as a matter of unconscious knowledge. Neither does Kant accept the empiricist view that all our concepts necessarily originate from sensory experience. In contrast to Locke, Kant asserts that there are some categories of the mind that are prior to sensory experience, but these categories must be activated in empirical situations. Most importantly, Kant suggests that human beings are endowed with the ability to organize sensory data according to the categories of time and space, before they encounter any specific empirical data. While the intuitive categories of time and space precede the experience of the world of sensory impressions, they are meaningless apart from the world of sensory impressions. In themselves, these categories refer to absolutely nothing. As Heidegger observes, the concept of time is, in this sense, linked to the problematic of nothingness or the abyss (Parmenides 141). To discuss the a priori concepts in terms of substance is to indulge in a speculative form of metaphysical inquiry that Kant studiously avoids. What Kant calls “pure reason” therefore refers to mental operations that function independent of sensory experience, but he never describes the mind as a second substance that is separate from the actual world of the senses in any Cartesian or Chomskyan sense. Knowledge always already begins with sensory experience. After Kant, Descartes’ theory of innate ideas is consigned to historical oblivion, much like the Scholastic system that Descartes attempted to displace but ironically reinscribed. The Cartesian hypothesis of innate ideas is virtually ignored until Chomsky attempts to resurrect it in the late 1950s. Throughout his career, Chomsky has attacked empiricist criticisms of Descartes, but he has had far less to say about Kant’s coterminous critique of Descartes. Acknowledging the metaphysical foundations of his thought, Descartes states that he is a substance which “in order to exist, needs no place, and depends on no material thing” (Discourse on Method 54).2 It is not then true that Descartes was a Kantian avant le lettre, or that his doctrine of innate ideas excluded the possibility of a form of knowledge transcending the experience of the body. In fact, Descartes clearly stated his view that it is possible to have knowledge outside the occasion of experience. Hence, Chomsky treats only tangentially what is most essential in Locke’s critique of innatism,





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which is Locke’s rejection of the metaphysical nature of the res cogitans. This is what Locke, Hume, and Kant all find unsatisfactory about Descartes’ efforts to overcome Scholastic metaphysics. They are all aware that the res cogitans is an extra-sensory essence. Since Chomsky asserts his agreement that Descartes was mistaken regarding his epistemological claims for the existence of the soul and God, Chomsky would seem—at least in some sense—to agree with the metaphysical criticisms of Cartesian innatism offered by Locke, Hume, and Kant. Yet unlike these other philosophers, Chomsky wants to save Descartes’ doctrine of innate ideas by asserting that Descartes was not merely claiming that it is possible to have certain knowledge of the soul and God. With respect to epistemological claims about the soul and God, Chomsky tends to agree with all of the above thinkers, but he also insists that Descartes argued that there is a creative aspect of the mind that is distinguishable from ordinary sensory knowledge. Yet, Chomsky’s criticisms of Locke elide what is most important about Locke’s rejection of the doctrine of innate ideas, which is Descartes’ metaphysics of presence. There is nothing “crude” in Locke’s criticisms of the res cogitans, for Descartes really does assert that the soul and God are matters of certain knowledge. Chomsky reiterates this essentially religious view when he claims that all human beings possess unconscious knowledge of universal grammar. What Locke rejects is the hubristic claim that it is possible to know with certainty that the mind exists as a metaphysical essence. He does not accept that Descartes can know with certainty that the mind’s substance exists in any ontological sense, which would be tantamount to asserting that it has been unconcealed as a temporal event. The “is” of the cogito ergo sum remains an occult hypothesis, akin to the Scholastic notion of quidditas. This is the main thrust of Locke’s criticism of the doctrine of innate ideas; hence, Locke’s criticisms of Descartes are quite on target. Locke knew very well whom he was criticizing and why, and his attacks on the Cartesian hypothesis of innate ideas should not be construed as a misplaced attack on a crude caricature of Cartesian thought. Chomsky too echoes Locke’s views when he states that Descartes’ claim to certain knowledge of the soul’s immortality and God’s existence is obviously erroneous. Chomsky himself repeatedly claims that innate ideas are both abstract concepts and organic structures. The question one must ask of Chomsky then is as follows: “What is the Chomskyan thing that exists on the human interior if it is not an essence?” If we ask that question too insistently,





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Chomsky will assert that we are harassing him. Ontological inquiry herein becomes a personal affront to Chomsky, as if philosophy were invented in order to pester him.3 But if we persist in asking this question, it is clear that the internal substance in Chomsky’s epistemology is indeed posited as a ghostly thing, or as an occulted trace of the real. Chomsky believes that he escapes the metaphysical critique originally visited upon Descartes. The hypothetical substance in Chomsky’s system is made from the same stuff as the machine of the human body, but he insists that it is also distinct from the human body and does not refer to any metaphysical essence. Once the Chomskyan trace of the real is disclosed, it will not mean that its essence will be unconcealed as an incalculable event. However, Chomsky does sometimes suggest that scientists of the brain may one day discover this mysterious substance that is both identical to and distinct from the substance of the body. At other times, Chomsky asserts that the substance of the mind will forever elude scientific attempts to locate it and place it under a microscope. But Chomsky cannot escape metaphysical critique any more than his predecessor Descartes, for his innate structure is certainly described as a concealed object that endures in both time and space: that is to say, to describe universal grammar as an objective but concealed trace, rather than a thing-in-itself, does not mean that it does not exist, for Chomsky does posit this object’s existence as an occulted trace of the real. In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke compares the mind to a blank slate, a notion Chomsky finds ludicrous. The mind cannot possibly be a blank slate, Chomsky insists, for Locke’s metaphor fails to provide an adequate solution to what he calls “Plato’s problem,” or how and why we seem to have knowledge that is prior to experience. Chomsky’s disdain for the Lockean metaphor of the blank slate reveals his disdain for philosophy itself, for what Locke calls the blank slate is comparable to what Plato once called khora, the placeless place where Being is disclosed. Locke states, “Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas: how comes it to be furnished? [my emphasis]” (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 121). To put it somewhat anachronistically, Locke refers to what deconstructive theorists, following Derrida, call différance, the blank spaces in between the typographic inscriptions on the flat sheet of paper. Without these blank spaces, the typographic inscriptions of the mind would be illegible. Chomsky’s favorite metaphor





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to describe universal grammar is a mystic alphabetic writing that is implanted in the brain by absolutely no one. The invention of alphabetic writing, Chomsky insists, “reflects the nature of language that the little characters are used to represent” (On Nature and Language 45–46). If this is so, however, the little characters inscribed on the flat surface of paper, which Chomsky asserts reflect the true nature of language nonetheless require the blank spaces that lie in between the little characters in order that those characters may be read. Without Locke’s white paper, Chomsky’s little alphabetic characters would have no place to appear: as a matter of fact, they would not be differentiated characters at all, but a meaningless smudge. Chomsky’s favorite metaphor for universal grammar ironically reinforces Locke’s argument that the mind is a blank slate, or “white paper void of all characters.” But Chomsky does not accept that the hypothesis of universal grammar logically implies the Lockean hypothesis of the blank slate, for to admit this would be tantamount to acknowledging that he does not offer a science of language but one more philosophy of language. Although Chomsky singles out Locke as the author of the “ludicrous” doctrine of the blank slate, the idea that the mind is a blank slate is more properly attributed to Plato, Aristotle, and many others, including the Islamic philosophers Ibn Sina and Ibn Tufail.4 The blank slate is Plato’s true problem. Locke himself borrowed the idea of the blank slate directly from Ibn Tufail, after reading Tufail’s philosophical novel Hayy ibn Yaqzan, which was translated into Latin in 1671, under the title of Philosophus Autodidactus. Ibn Sina and Ibn Tufail, who were steeped in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle, drew the notion of the tabula rasa from Aristotle’s On the Soul. What Aristotle described as a kind of empty writing tablet, and what later came to be known as the tabula rasa, is yet another way of talking about what Plato calls the khora. Chomsky often pits Plato against Aristotle, perpetuating the idée reçue that one was a mere idealist whereas the other was a mere essentialist, just as he often pits Descartes against Locke while eliding the historical fact of Descartes’ Scholasticism, or the fact that Descartes too was a metaphysician. Chomsky polemically asserts that Plato and Descartes “got it right,” whereas Aristotle and Locke were “on the wrong track” (Chomsky Chomsky on Democracy and Education 6). But, the idealistessentialist debate that Chomsky finds so decisive takes place within the perimeters of an ancient philosophical tradition that cannot be comprehended without reference to the problematic of being and nothingness.





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To refer to Aristotle’s notion of the tabula rasa, which Chomsky wishes to refute, is yet another way of evoking what Plato once called “a third order” in his Timaeus, which he differentiated from the orders of Being and becoming. Chomsky implicitly affirms that these realms are distinct when he states that linguistic competence and performance are not identical (Cartesian Linguistics 79). In other words, Chomsky too posits a theory of the blank slate. If the human mind is inscribed with the occulted alphabetic writing that Chomsky calls universal grammar, his ghostly characters imply the need for a place where they can appear. What Locke calls the blank slate is one way of describing the placeless place where Chomsky’s ghosts make their appearance. Hence, Chomsky cannot avoid the irony that there can be no inscription on the human interior unless there is a blank slate on which to inscribe it. In refusing to talk about the mind’s white paper, he cannot truly affirm the existence of the occulted ghost that he posits as a rational thesis. At the same time, he relies upon a neo-Lamarckian theory of evolution that is empiricist in a crudely Skinnerian sense and that presumes the mind was a blank slate in the early days of human history before a quasi-miraculous mutation occurred within it. In an early work entitled Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (1964), Chomsky states that, “The phonological component [of the generative grammar of a language] converts a string of formatives of a specified syntactic structure into a phonetic representation” (9). Although his formulation is couched in linguistic jargon, what Chomsky calls “the phonological component” is comparable to what Plato called the khoral or maternal receptacle, which Chomsky claims can be “converted into a phonetic representation.” Similarly, the “phonological component” is roughly comparable to the Lockean doctrine of the blank slate, since this component does not formally exist. In other words, a thing that is not a thing—or a structure that is not a structure—is converted into a form that is later re-presented, what Chomsky calls “a phonetic representation.” In effect, Chomsky claims that the khoral receptacle can be known because he has given it a name. Yet, even as he names this receptacle, he acknowledges that “we cannot, apparently, find semantic absolutes, known in advance of grammar, that can be used to determine the objects of grammar in any way” (Syntactic Structures 101). This unavoidable fact is true for what Chomsky calls the “semantic” as well as for the “phonological” component of generative grammar, which are roughly





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analogous to Plato’s concealed logos and the khoral receptacle. That is, Chomsky identifies what he calls “two interpretive components, a phonetic component and a semantic component [Chomsky’s emphasis]” (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 9–10). The phonetic component is the groundless ground from which the spirit (or aspirated breath) of the speaker issues, or is spit out (“projected” in Chomsky’s terminology). Although neither the semantic nor phonetic component will ever be located, there is a process of conversion that is always already at work; and Chomsky presumes that what is admittedly beyond his ability to represent, what he calls “the phonological component,” can indeed be known merely because it has been represented. But what is known is merely the representation, not the “phonological component.” The one re-presents the other. Chomsky follows Plato and Aristotle in accepting the “truism” that writing is a representation or copy of speech, or a copy of a copy. The written phonetic representation is copy of the living spoken word, which is underwritten by the absent phonetic component. In a revealing passage that discloses the phonocentric nature of his linguistic paradigm, Chomsky comments as follows: “Aristotle observes that ‘spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words’ (De Interpretatione), and the truism that writing is a derivative system is frequently repeated in grammatical studies” (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 67). For Chomsky, it is therefore a “truism” that writing is a copy of speaking, which is a copy of the absent mental image or idea. Chomsky reiterates that Platonic and Aristotelian truism. He also rejects the notion that the Adamic linguists of the nineteenth century whom he emulates confused sounds of speech with the alphabet because that is precisely what he does in his own writings on language (67). Of course Chomsky would refute this claim by stating that his references to alphabetic letterpress metaphors to describe universal grammar are merely figurative, not to be taken too literally; but the fact remains that these are the very metaphors that he evokes in describing the indescribable. While his reliance upon such metaphors is “ironic,” Chomsky’s thought is straightforwardly phonocentric and logocentric. Writing is a prosthetic and dead artifact that is a copy of the living voice of a speaker who is a living presence. Furthermore, speaking is a truer replica of the truthful word that is inscribed on the mind-brain than is writing, which is only a copy of a copy, or a dead representation of a living representation.





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Chomsky asserts, “The general problem of analyzing the process of ‘understanding’ is thus reduced, in a sense, to the problem of explaining how kernel sentences are understood, these being considered the basic ‘content elements’ from which the usual, more complex sentences of real life are formed by transformational development [my emphasis]” (Syntactic Structures 92). The “kernel sentence” here is comparable to what Derrida calls “an arch-originary intactness that has basically been forgotten in advance” (The Ear of the Other 114). It is the “arch-mother tongue” or untouchable “virginal granny” that does not exist (114–115). “The desire for the intact kernel is desire itself,” Derrida states, “which is to say it is irreducible” (115). Although the kernel sentence does not exist, Chomsky assumes that it does and does not worry his head over the fact of the kernel’s nonexistence. “The rules of the phonological component are ordered [my emphasis],” he proposes, and the representations of this component may be organized into what he calls a “classificatory matrix” [his emphasis]” (66). In language that is clearly evocative of the Platonic matrix of the khora, Chomsky states that, “the output of the phonological component can be regarded as a matrix [my emphasis]” (66). Moreover, he says, “The universal phonetic alphabet is part of a universal phonetic theory. In addition to fixed sets of features, such a theory should contain general laws concerning possible combinations and contrasts” (66). The goal for Chomsky is therefore the creation of a “fixed alphabet” of the phonological realm, which is to say the unrepresentable khoral abyss. The claim that there is a secret logic to this matrix, or that there are hidden rules of the khoral matrix that can be known and fixed in any logical sense, effectively amounts to the logocentric colonization of the matrix, or maternal receptacle, which Chomsky construes in frankly logocentric terms. By giving definite figurative shape to what does not exist, Chomsky perpetuates the illusion that he has gained paternal, scientific, and logical mastery over the living maternal and khoral receptacle. But this illusion is also an intrusion, for khora can never be mastered or logically fixed. It will always evade such attempts to master it. And the knowledge that Chomsky gains over it will never be fixed or certain. This is why the metaphorical sand is ever shifting under his feet, as he himself acknowledges, when he states that, “We proceed with tentative proposals that seem reasonably firm, expecting the ground to shift as more is learned” (Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework 10). The ground that he stands upon is ever shifting because it is no ground at all: he stands





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upon the groundless ground of this khoral matrix. What Chomsky calls “matrix sentences” refers to nonexistent sentences that underlie actually articulated sentences. Chomsky says that “what is involved here is not an operation on sentences but rather on the abstract structures that underlie them and determine their semantic interpretation [my emphasis]” (Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar 62). Chomsky also claims that, “modern taxonomic phonemic representations are ‘more accurate’ ” than others (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 110). But this view presumes a concept of truth as an accurate representation or dead object in space rather than an event of an ever-shifting, temporal, and incalculable nature. For Chomsky, “perceptual models” that are not focused exclusively on questions of accuracy “cannot be taken seriously” (112–113). To reiterate then, Chomsky calls the metaphysical essence that he posits an occulted ghost and thereby imagines that he has escaped the most basic problem of metaphysical inquiry, which is to say the problem of being and nothingness. Chomsky insists that this ghostly occulted object is not a Platonic essence; but, if one posits that something is there, the question remains: Why is this thing there instead of not being there? One is left with a mysterious substance that Chomsky claims escapes classification as yet another variant of essentialist philosophy, merely because it is a phenomenon, not a thing-in-itself. Chomsky’s ghost is not real in an essentialist sense, but it remains a concealed trace of the real. Yet, if a divine being did not put the language ghost there, and the ghost is not the same as the external trace of the real, as Chomsky indeed insists, it is nonetheless there and also autonomous; hence, Chomsky’s ghost would seem to possess the attributes that are often assigned to supernatural beings. But Chomsky will never be able to prove that the language ghost is actually there: at most, a body of believers can only swear that it is there. This was Locke’s point. Chomsky’s ghost can only be conjured within a political setting, not verified with empirical evidence. This is the sense in which Chomskyan linguistic “science” is better construed as political conspiracy and quasi-religion. The Kantian view too presupposes a metaphysics of presence, for if human knowledge is activated here and now, this must mean that it is present. There is no getting out of this metaphysical problematic, not for Kant—not for any of us. If the external trace of the real exists in any empirical sense, then Kant’s trace of the real is also vulnerable to the criticism that it is an occulted entity, like Chomsky’s





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proposed mental substance. However, there is an important difference between the Chomskyan and Kantian trace: Kant’s occulted trace of the real is not merely a hypothesis. It can be experienced as a sensory stimulus, unlike the Chomskyan hypothesis of universal grammar that is merely posited to exist but is forever unavailable in any empirical sense. We do not know what the Kantian trace is; but the trace of the real in Kant’s system is empirical, whereas the occult structure that Chomsky calls universal grammar is a matter of permanent conjecture. The most important philosophers of the Enlightenment tradition, following Locke’s example, believed that the Cartesian hypothesis of innate ideas was finally untenable because, unlike the empirical trace, it could not be observed. Chomsky nonetheless insists that the ghostly trace that he calls universal grammar haunts the human mind as a result of a quasi-miraculous and evolutionary mutation. The human brain is a suitable host for the language ghost, but he claims that animal brains are not. Yet Chomsky is somewhat melancholy that he is driven to the conclusion that an occult entity haunts the human mind. He would have preferred it to be otherwise, but he is resigned to the depressing fact that there are mysteries that are beyond our puny ability to comprehend. Descartes discredited the Scholastic hypothesis of the thing’s quidditas, and while this sort of occult mystery was pushed to the margins of philosophical debate, the Newtonian theory of gravity presented newer enigmas that revealed the universe to be far more mysterious than Descartes and those whom he influenced understood. Chomsky asserts that, “the most far-reaching contribution of Cartesian philosophy to modern thought was its rejection of the Scholastic notion of substantial forms and real qualities, of all those ‘little images fluttering through the air’ to which Descartes referred with derision” (Language and Mind 7). In a gesture that would no doubt confound the Thomist theologian, Chomsky depicts Descartes as a Christian exorcist who rids the objective world of its occult qualities. It goes without saying that what Chomsky calls the “occult” would be construed by an actual priest as a matter of created essence, but this essence is described by Chomsky as a demonic entity in need of exorcism. Descartes is the quasi priest who performed this exorcism. Chomsky states, “With the exorcism of these occult qualities, the stage was set for the rise of a physics of matter in motion and a psychology that explored the properties of the mind [my emphasis]” (7). The word “occult” here means something quite different from how Chomsky





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will use it when he discusses Newtonian gravity. In Chomsky’s discussion of Scholastic quidditas, the term “occult” is pejorative and critical, not scientific. The Scholastic philosopher is enmeshed in hocus-pocus theology that is obviously absurd and anachronistic. But Chomsky also believes that there is a sense in which the rational scientist is compelled to rely upon occult hypotheses for their descriptive power. Like Newton before him, Chomsky is melancholy that this is so, but he insists that this other occulted ghost must be affirmed as a matter of rational science. Understandably, we may not be happy about this conclusion—in fact, Chomsky himself is quite depressed about it—but we must nonetheless accept it because it offers the best theory of the mind’s mysterious contents. McGilvray puts it this way, “[It is] tempting to adopt a policy of saying that what the best theory (by the relevant standards) says about the [language] organ is true, and that it describe and explain ‘how things are’ ” (“Introduction” 20). McGilvray places the phrase “how things are” in scare quotes to signal that we do not really know how things are. At best we can only present a theory of real things. For the Chomskyan linguist, the truth is whatever most accurately and most powerfully describes “how things are.” However, the thing in question is not what McGilvray calls the external signal, or what has been described here as the Kantian trace, but a hypothetical object that is lodged inside the head. Following Chomsky, McGilvray asserts that the temptation to succumb to a powerful theory of unconscious knowledge of this imaginary thing “should not be avoided” (20). This is the decisive moment for the Chomskyan theorist, the moment of irrational decision, and it is not insignificant that McGilvray describes this decision in the religious language of sin and temptation. Chomsky himself will succumb to this “temptation,” even if this choice lands him in an occulted theory of knowledge, not unlike the Scholastics and their allegedly bogus epistemology. There are then two sorts of occulted ghosts for Chomsky, the illegitimate ghost of the Scholastics that Descartes exorcized and the more powerful and “legitimate” ghost that Chomsky does not believe can ever be cast out of the small container of the human head. If this other ghost were to be exorcized from our brains, it would portend the metamorphosis of the human being into an animal state, like the golden ass of old. Chomsky asserts that the Newtonian theory of gravity effectively discredited the mechanical physics of Descartes. From the perspective of the Cartesians, Newtonian gravity would also appear to be an





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occulted and reviled entity since gravity cannot be explained by appealing to the ideas of our common sense. Common sense would lead us to believe that Newtonian gravity, like the Aristotlean concept of quidditas, is also an unnecessary occult hypothesis because this mysterious force cannot be directly observed. Yet, by appealing to this occult force, Newton was able to offer a scientific explanation of the physical universe that proved highly satisfying and efficacious. Chomsky suggests that the Newtonian theory of gravity and the Cartesian theory of innate ideas are analogous. Common sense may lead us to believe that Descartes’ res cogitans is an unacceptable occult hypothesis that is comparable to the Thomist notion of quidditas. But for Chomsky, the claim that innate ideas exist—which he recasts in terms of what he calls “generative grammar”—may also be construed as a legitimate scientific hypothesis, akin to the Newtonian hypothesis of gravity, and it should not be rejected as offering an occulted essentialism like that of the Scholastics. But in order to arrive at this “scientific” insight, we must ignore the promptings of our common sense and start thinking like the melancholy Newtonian physicist. Chomsky states, “The properties of human thought and human language emphasized by the Cartesians are real enough; they were then, as they are now, beyond the bounds of any well-understood kind of physical explanation. Neither physics nor biology nor psychology gives us any clue as to how to deal with these matters [my emphasis]” (Language and Mind 15). Chomsky means that they are real enough in order to construct a powerful theory of language acquisition, one that works. At the same time, they are not real enough to comprehend except as mysterious and occulted entities that haunt the human mind. These properties are weird spooks that are simply “there.” Chomsky describes Newton’s own dismay at the necessity of having to posit the equally mysterious theory of gravity, which seemed to reintroduce the occult qualities of the Scholastics, and which was immediately criticized by figures such as Leibniz and Christiaan Huygens on these grounds. Newton showed that “a purely materialistic or mechanical physics is impossible,” Chomsky states, and in doing so, even against his own desires, Newton “restored [nature’s] ultimate secrets to that obscurity in which they ever did and ever will remain” (Chomsky on Democracy and Education 78). Chomsky concludes, “The occult qualities of the Aristotelians were vacuous, Newton wrote, but [Newton’s] new principles, while unfortunately occult, nevertheless had substantive content





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[my emphasis]” (78). Generative grammar is not only a thing with “substantive content” which dwells within the human mind: it is an occulted thing or autonomous ghost. “Mind-body dualism is no longer tenable, because there is no notion of body,” Chomsky states (78–79). This does not mean that the body has disappeared, merely that no one any longer speaks of the body’s concealed essence, as was the case with the Scholastics. Chomsky states that, “We can speak intelligibly of physical phenomena (processes, etc.), as we speak of the real truth or the real world, but without supposing that there is some other truth or world” (78–79). Chomsky’s assertion that he has solved “the mindbody dualism” is misleading, to say the least, since he too maintains a rigorous distinction between competence and performance, or the language of the internal mind and the linguistic signal that is outside the human head. For Chomsky, Descartes’ occulted ghost is also a second substance, only Chomsky revises the term “substance” in this instance to mean a mere trace of the real, rather than a metaphysical essence. This trace remains a second substance, even if it is not an essence. Chomsky’s unfounded claim that he has somehow solved the problem of mind-body dualism ignores his own re-inscription of mind-body dualism. “It is common in recent years to ridicule Descartes’ ‘ghost in the machine’ and to speak of ‘Descartes’ error’ in postulating a second substance: mind, distinct from body,” Chomsky asserts. “It is true that Descartes was proven wrong, but not for those reasons. Newton exorcised the machine; he left the ghost intact. It was the first substance, extended matter, that dissolved into mysteries [my emphasis]” (78–79). But what Chomsky calls “the first substance” is also the second substance, while paradoxically remaining distinct from it. This means that the second substance is also an occult mystery, albeit a mystery that is considerably more mysterious than the first substance since it is a mere hypothesis. Unlike the Scholastic object that has been exorcized of its demonic quidditas, the mental thing for Chomsky is an “intact ghost” that has not undergone any ritual exorcism. In another place, Chomsky states, “it would be perfectly reasonable to study universal semantics even without any clear idea as to what its constituent elements might be. . . .” (Language and Mind 164). The occulted phenomenon is a thing-unto-itself but it is not a thing-in-itself. It is a living-dead ghost. It is living because it is autonomous, but dead because it is a reified object in space that is subject to scientific investigation. Chomsky’s occulted ghosts of the mind are “mental things” that operate





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on their own volition, and that have not been exorcized. Chomsky relies upon the religious discourse of exorcism to describe the quasi-religious act that Newton performed with respect to the ghost of the body (or “machine”), but he leaves “the ghost [of the mind] intact.” The question nonetheless remains: Why does Chomsky not undertake this other exorcism, or believe that is possible or desirable to exorcize the ghost that haunts the human mind? Whereas the body has been rid of its ghosts, the mind has not. It is still haunted. The ghost that has been left intact is the ghost that haunts the machine of the human body. But this ghost was once an empirical trace of the real that entered the body by the route of the senses. Later, the ghost assumed a life of its own within the human head. Like Charles Darwin, Chomsky calls thought “a secretion of the brain, more wonderful than gravity, a property of matter [my emphasis]” (Chomsky on Democracy and Education 80). The mind’s marvelous fluid is a substance that is akin to a pharmaceutical liquid, able to act as a mysterious agent that is independent of human intentionality. McGilvray compares it to a kind of virus that is genetically transmittable and that came into being at a single explosive instance, approximately 50 to 100,000 years ago. The language ghost did not come into being through natural selection in any strict Darwinian sense. Instead, it came to life all at once, of its own volition. “[I]t would be enough,” McGilvray states, “if a single mutation took place in a single member of the species homo, where that mutation . . . was genetically transmissible” (Cartesian Linguistics 119–120 n. 7). McGilvray does not tell us that this first man was named Adam, nor does he speculate that this singularly endowed human ancestor dwelt in any mythical garden, but he does spin a remarkable yarn about the occulted ghost that haunts the human head. McGilvray states, The introduction of language at a single step also makes sense of the fact that sometime between 50 and 100 thousand years ago, humans began to develop art and religion (a form of explanation after all), organize themselves into different forms of social system, observe the stars and seasons, develop agriculture, and so on. The great migration from Africa began about this time too. This all makes sense if it was during this period that language came to be introduced, a period that is very short in evolutionary time. (119–120 n. 7)



While all of this makes for fascinating storytelling, it does little to substantiate the often-repeated claims of Chomsky and his followers that they



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have conclusively solved the problem of mind-body dualism, and that they articulate a natural science of human language acquisition, rather than yet another philosophy of language. In fact, Chomsky’s own renditions of this evolutionary tale are more fantastic than that of McGilvray, although Chomsky attempts to diminish his readers’ skepticism through the use of irony. One version of this narrative appears in Chomsky’s linguistic monograph Deviation by Phrase (1999). Here Chomsky justifies recourse to what he calls an “evolutionary fable” on the grounds that it is sometimes necessary to “introduce mechanisms that would not be found in a ‘more perfect’ system. . . . If empirical evidence requires mechanisms that are ‘imperfections,’ they call for some independent account [by which he means a speculative narrative]: perhaps path-dependent evolutionary history. . . .” (1). It is worth noting here Chomsky’s reference to what he calls a “path-dependent history,” which alludes to the route of the empirical trace, as it entered the body as a sensory stimulus, or what Locke simply called an idea. This is the sense in which Chomsky’s own theory is empiricist and even “Skinnerian,” as McGilvray observes (Cartesian Linguistics 119–120 n. 7). However, Chomsky seeks to obviate the expected criticism that “some externalist concepts of ‘E-linguistics’ are being introduced” in his evolutionary theory. He states that such an argument is erroneous because “[t]hese are not entities with some ontological status. . . . [T]hese studies do not postulate weird entities apart from planets, comets, neurons, cats. . . . There is no ‘Platonism’ introduced, and no ‘E-linguistic’ notions: only biological entities and their properties” (Deviation by Phrase 34). In effect, Chomsky claims that these entities have no ontological status because he says they don’t. He refuses to accept that they are ontological objects, and so therefore they are not. “I would like to emphasize that there is nothing strange or occult in this move, any more than in the postulation of genes or electrons” (Problems of Knowledge and Freedom 32). For Chomsky, the occulted ghost is “the most complex object in the world” (Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework 5). But this does not mean that is it a mystery, only a rational problem, for “[t]here is nothing essentially mysterious about the concept of an abstract cognitive structure, created by an innate faculty of the mind, represented in some still unknown way in the brain . . .” (Reflections on Language 23). The “scientific” story that Chomsky tells about this complex but not mysterious object, the so-called “cosmic ray theory” is as follows:



To clarify the problem of design specifications, let us invent an evolutionary fable, keeping it highly simplified. Imagine some primate with the



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human mental architecture and sensorimotor apparatus in place, but no language organ. It had our modes of perceptual organization, our propositional attitudes (beliefs, desires, hopes, fears, . . . ) insofar as these are not mediated by language, perhaps a ‘language of thought’ . . . , but no way to express its thoughts by means of linguistic expressions, so that they remain largely inaccessible to it, and to others. Suppose some event reorganizes the brain in such a way as, in effect, to insert FL [the language faculty]. To be usable, the new organ has to meet certain ‘legibility conditions.’ Other systems of the mind/brain have to be able to access expressions generated by states of FL ((I-) languages) [internal languages], to “read” them and use them as “instructions” for thought and action. We can try to formulate clearly—and if possible answer—the question of how good a solution FL is to the legibility conditions, and these alone. That is essentially the topic of the minimalist program. (Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework 6–7)

In yet another version of this tale, which Chomsky also seeks to soften through the use of irony, he narrates the following evolutionary account: To tell a fairy tale about [universal grammar], it is almost as if there was some higher primate wandering around a long time ago and some random mutation took place, maybe after some strange cosmic ray shower, and it reorganized the brain, implanting a language organ in an otherwise primate brain. That is a story, not to be taken literally. But it may be closer to reality than many other fairy tales that are told about evolutionary processes, including language [my emphasis]. (The Architecture of Language 4) 5

Chomsky disavows his evolutionary tale at the same moment that he utters it, yet he is aware that he cannot not tell this story, or at least some other version of it. His argument for this story’s necessity is similar to Nietzsche’s view that, “If arguments prove insufficient, the element of myth may be used to strengthen them. . . .” (The Birth of Tragedy 93). In fact, Chomsky’s recourse to it is reminiscent of what Nietzsche once called “the tragic perception”: “When the inquirer, having pushed to the circumference, realizes how logic curls about itself and bites its own tail, he is struck with a new kind of perception: a tragic perception, which requires to make it tolerable, the remedy of art” (95). Chomsky clearly seeks refuge in art, but his feeble attempts at irony, and his disclaimer that his evolutionary story is not to be taken literally, are not persuasive. Moreover, one wonders if Chomsky’s awareness that he cannot get out of storytelling is intended to create any particular mood in his reader, for instance quiet resignation to the human dilemma,





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which is closely akin to that of the rat in the behavioralist maze (New Horizons in the Study of Language 72)? However, Chomsky rejects the significance of hazy ontological notions such as moods: For example, when Quine evokes what he calls “the concept of stimulus meaning” which “varies widely with levels of attention, set, gullibility, mood, visual acuity, cortical lesions, etc.,” Chomsky states his view that, “the concept [of stimulus meaning] has little relevance to the study of meaning and reference” (Current Issues In Linguistic Theory 58). Quine introduces ontological questions that need not trouble the rational scientist of the mind/brain. Chomsky further ponders, “Given a decision to restrict evidence to ‘stimulus meaning,’ one no doubt could find irresolvable conflicts, but this would be an uninteresting consequence of an arbitrary decision [my emphasis]” (59). Similarly, Chomsky states, “The determination of what the speaker actually intended, of course, involves extra-grammatical considerations and other knowledge well beyond knowledge of language. Surely this is quite obvious, and there is hardly much point in discussing it in further detail” (Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar 29–30). But if determinations of a speaker’s intentions involve more than grammatical considerations, why does it follow that there is no point in discussing these considerations in one’s philosophy of language? On what grounds has Chomsky banished ontological considerations from his theory and/or narrative of this ghost’s existence? Furthermore, if ontological notions such as moods are irrelevant, why must one attend to them when telling one’s own story about this ghost’s origins? Chomsky’s narrative about the evolution of language is merely a fairy tale that one must not take too seriously. “We must be careful not to succumb to illusions about evolution and its adaptive miracles,” Chomsky states. “There is nothing in the theory of evolution that suggests we should be able to answer questions that we can pose, even in principle, even if they have answers. . . .” (New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind 72). When we hear this evolutionary fairy tale, we must be very careful not to believe it, for Chomsky does not tell it in order to enchant us. We must be careful not to allow an improper mood of enchantment steal upon us, which could undermine the scientific spirit of inquiry that is befitting for the brain scientist. But, if we are not supposed to be completely enchanted by the story that he tells us, what is the point of calling it a fairy tale? As McGilvray notes, Chomsky almost never uses irony in his linguistic writings, only in his political writings, because the rhetoric





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of irony is more appropriate in the realms of politics and storytelling (Chomsky 19). Yet, in this instance, Chomsky is compelled to rely upon irony in order to advance purely scientific objectives. Furthermore, what sense are we to make of Chomsky’s prior statements such as the following: “I [Chomsky] do not believe then that consideration of museum myths or indeterminacy sheds any light on the enterprise I have been discussing. . . .” (Rules and Representation 24)? Does he mean the “museum myths” of rival philosophers about language, or does he herein include his own “museum myth” of the ghost’s murky origins? If it is true that “museum myths” about language shed no light on the study of language, why does he burden his readers with his unnecessary and pointless fairy tales of language’s origin? Chomsky tells his fairy tale at a gathering of Indian academics at Delhi University in India in January 1996. An interlocutor who is present at the recounting of this narrative dubs this fairy tale “the cosmic ray theory” (The Architecture of Language, 61). But this description seems to make Chomsky ill at ease and causes him to assert that he offered “the fairy tale” to his Indian colleagues in order to “clarify some questions, but [the story is] not to be taken very seriously (like most others that are offered)” (61). He nonetheless defends the story because it may shed light on how “the basic principles got into the genetic program,” by which he means the occulted language ghost (62). Yet Chomsky asserts that we will probably never know the answer to this riddle, for “[s]uch questions go vastly beyond current understanding” (62). These “basic principles” are just there. They are what they are. Echoing Plato’s account of language’s origin in Timaeus, Chomsky states, “The language organ is inserted into a system of mind that has a certain architecture; it has interface relations with the system” (17). However, whereas Plato asserts that a creator god inserts the seed of language in the marrow of the head, Chomsky claims that the generative seed that he calls universal grammar “is inserted into a system of mind” by no one for no reason. Chomsky states, “Science offers no reason to ‘accept the common maxim that there is nothing in the intellect which was not first in the senses,’ or to question the denial of this maxim in rational philosophy” (Reflections on Language 11). Yet, even as he asserts the falsity of the empiricist maxim that “there is nothing in the intellect which was not first in the senses,” he himself claims the universal grammar arrived in the mind/brain via the ordinary route of the senses since he suggests that no one inserted the





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language seed, which entered the body like every other empirical trace before its mysterious mutation into an autonomous trace. In other words, Chomsky’s theory of language begins with the sensory experience of the empirical trace, which is an external impression. This trace entered into the brain from the human exterior. Prior to the trace’s entry into the human interior, the human brain was merely an animal brain, equipped with an animal understanding of the world. Then a mutation occurred that transformed this external trace into an occult fluid. This is the sense in which thought for Chomsky is essentially a liquid “secretion.” Chomsky suggests that man is a rational animal, or that man is an animal that possesses reason or language, in short logos. “There is no serious reason today to challenge the Cartesian view that the ability to use linguistic signs to express freely-formed thought marks the ‘true distinction between man and animal,’ or machine [my emphasis],” Chomsky asserts (New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind 3). He therefore offers a conventional definition of man as an animal endowed with language.6 Before universal grammar found its way into the human animal, it was first an empirical object in the world of beings. Even now, universal grammar remains an object in the sensory realm although it currently exists exclusively on the human interior, and it is the task of scientific researchers to locate this thing and subject it to rigorous analysis. Spoken language on the outside is a copy of this thing on the inside that got there before its inexplicable mutation. Although universal grammar once existed on the outside, there is now a gap between this new thing on the inside and the old thing on the outside. At the metaphorical level, this view presupposes the doctrine of the blank slate since Chomsky describes universal grammar as a mystic alphabet. The one necessarily implies the other. Universal grammar entered the mind like every other idea, as an image, trace, or apparition; only the miraculous trace came to life entirely on its own. No divine being planted the seed of reason in the bloody marrow of the human head. The seed came to life by itself. This event occurred in the animal’s brain, like a viral infection or chemical inflammation. There is no explanation for why this event occurred. It might not have occurred, and it is not clear why the fact of its occurrence is significant. We will never know how it occurred or why it occurred, and for Chomsky there is no point in asking unscientific questions of this nature. The fact remains that Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar presupposes that humans beings are indeed animals that are endowed





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with language, and the language of these animals is an enduring presence within the human interior. This enduring presence found its way into the human interior from the external realm where other living animals dwell. All of these presuppositions are metaphysical ones, despite Chomsky’s often repeated claims to the contrary.





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Ide n t i t y Pol i t ic s a n d t h e P e dag o g y of Com p e t e nc e

You can’t prevent me from believing that these notions of human nature, of justice, of the realization of the essence of human beings, are all notions and concepts which have been formed within our civilization, within our type of knowledge, and our form of philosophy. —Michel Foucault, The Chomsky–Foucault Debate Now, these questions are quite deeply rooted in at least the Western intellectual tradition. I’ ll keep to that because of my own limitations. —Noam Chomsky speaking to Indian academics at Delhi University in 1996.

In his book Who’s Afraid of Philosophy? (2002), Derrida asserts that, “there is no neutral or natural place in teaching” (69). He also states, “The [pedagogical] question is always posed by someone who, at a given moment, in a language, in a place, etc., represents a program and a strategy” (89). Derrida’s statement rearticulates Heidegger’s view that every question that can be asked by the teacher implies that “the questioner as such is also there within the question” (Pathmarks 82). The pedagogical views of Derrida and Heidegger sharply contrast with those of Chomsky, who wishes to occupy the extraterrestrial vantage point of the Martian scientist. I have argued here (and elsewhere)1 that the pedagogy of generic competencies may be linked to the denial of any forms of authority not validated by academic institutions themselves, which are unavoidably founded as political acts. The professor who is competent because he/she is authorized by the institution may reserve the exclusive right of representation. However, the competent professor often refuses to validate representation as a matter of delegation, if it threatens his/her power within the institution. In practical terms, this often means that diverse faculty members are excluded from positions of power, which would enable them


Ch a p t e r Fou r



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to represent their own constituencies, because they are not deemed sufficiently competent. This circular logic insures that minority faculty members may be denied the right to represent themselves within the institution. Against the pedagogy of competence, I have argued here that the university must begin to honor representation in the form of political delegation, not merely competent representation, which is a rationalist notion that is underwritten by the authoritarian claim to unconscious knowledge. This is not a matter of accommodating minority perspectives, but of insuring the social and political relevance of the institution. Because there is no neutral or natural place in teaching, as Derrida rightly insists, and because Chomsky’s pedagogical views have increasingly gained traction in humanities departments across the United States, it is reasonable to ask if Chomsky’s own life history and personal identity as a Euro-American Jewish man may have some bearing upon his pedagogical views and rationalist philosophy of language. Despite his Jewish heritage, Chomsky has virtually nothing to say about the literary, philosophical, and cultural traditions of Africa and the Middle East. For instance, Chomsky regularly attacks Locke for his hypothesis of the blank slate, as if Locke invented this ancient hypothesis rather than having learned it from reading Islamic philosophers. To pose the question of Chomsky’s personal investment in a pedagogy of competence is not to pursue a religious or essentialist line of inquiry, as if it were possible or desirable to know the secret facts of Chomsky’s private existence, but rather to pose the empirical question of what Antonio Gramsci once called the “infinity of traces” that history has deposited within us.2 As we have seen, Chomsky’s own philosophy of language can and must be situated within the history of Greek metaphysical thought and the European Enlightenment tradition. To point out that great European philosophers such as Rousseau, Hume, and Kant unfairly privileged the epistemological vantage point of white European men does not in any way diminish their historical importance. It merely underscores that they too were once historical beings in the world, and that they were therefore limited in their abilities and insight, as is true of all those who inhabit planet Earth. In other words, the greatest figures of the Enlightenment tradition sometimes evoked the abstract principles of reason to promote their own myopic, racist, and selfish agendas. Chomsky too is a historical being in the world, whose thought has obviously been influenced by historically European and Euro-American philosophical traditions. Like many other logocentric thinkers before





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him, Chomsky claims that he asserts a universally valid perspective, when in fact he articulates a particular cultural viewpoint that is commonplace among white European and Euro-American men. As Derrida once put it, “The white man takes his own mythology (Indo-European mythology), his logos—that is, the mythos of his idiom, for the universal form of that which is still his inescapable desire to call Reason” (“White Mythology” 10). Chomsky is therefore a Euro-American Jewish philosopher, who inherits many of the strengths and weaknesses of the Enlightenment philosophical tradition that originated in the European West. Derrida too inherits this same Western Enlightenment tradition, but he differs from Chomsky in many important respects, not least because he does not fail to criticize the excesses, blind spots, and shortcomings of the rationalist tradition that was inaugurated by Descartes. In fact, Derrida is a language philosopher who responds to the European philosophical tradition but within a framework of largely African and Middle Eastern concerns. Chomsky is often contemptuous of these concerns. In his various recorded responses to Derrida, Chomsky assumes the ref lexive posture of the scornful European when confronted with a cultural tradition that he cannot understand. In both instances, a historically colonialist dynamic is reacted. This dynamic takes its impetus from the European Enlightenment tradition from which Chomsky’s thought emerges. To deconstruct European humanism is not necessarily to militate for the irrational; however, to ref lexively reject the suggestion that the European humanist tradition may be in need of deconstruction is indeed to militate for an irrational rationalism. The deconstructive critic is interested in identifying what is often better construed as religious doctrine, one that is promulgated in the name of Nature. This task is performed so that the values of the Enlightenment tradition might be made less opaque and more accessible to all peoples of the world, not only white European men such as Rousseau, Kant, Hume, and Chomsky. Chomsky attempts to erect an impenetrable bulwark around European philosophy by calling his idiosyncratic articulation of it “rational science” while labeling all other cultural perspectives as “fraudulent gibberish.” This effort is destined to fail. As scholars from outside the West increasingly measure the contributions of Chomsky to the study of human language, his inhospitable remarks about Derrida will no doubt come to be situated alongside similar utterances made by figures like Hume, Kant,


identity politics, pedagogy of competence / 137



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and Hegel.3 In this light, it is worth noting that Sephardic Jews such as Derrida have darker phenotypes than Ashkenazi (or European) Jews such as Chomsky and are consequently more often the victims of racial discrimination in white cultural settings than their Ashkenazi kinsmen; that is, the historical experience of the body differs for the various members of these different Jewish groups. In Israel, Arabs Jews have often been the victims of racial discrimination from the earliest days of Zionism.4 Chomsky himself has long spoken out against this form of racism, whereas Derrida was relatively silent on this question. This is very much to Chomsky’s credit. Derrida did occasionally speak of his experience of having been discriminated against as a “black Arab Jew,” but he did not have much to say about this difficult and painful situation in Israel.5 Since the founding of Israel, cultural tensions have existed between European Jews, who were the architects of the Zionist movement, and Sephardic, Mizrahim, or Arab Jews, who embrace the cultural traditions of Africa and the Middle East.6 Those familiar with Derrida’s thought will know that he is ambivalent with respect to the liberal Enlightenment doctrine regarding the separation of religion and state.7 Derrida’s ambivalence about this principle may seem scandalous to some, but it is a feeling that is widely shared among the peoples of North Africa and the Middle East. The ambivalence that is often expressed regarding this liberal doctrine is not merely reactionary. In fact, it is grounded in ancient philosophical, theological, and legal traditions that are often neither better nor worse but merely different from those of the West. As we have seen here, Derrida’s ambivalence is also echoed in founding documents of the European Enlightenment such as Rousseau’s The Social Contract. 8 At the risk of oversimplifying an obviously complex question, I would maintain that very few who inhabit the historically Islamic regions of Africa and the Middle East are hostile to the constitutional republican principles of Western democracy, but the liberal separation of religion and state is a wholly different matter. This feeling is not specific to Muslim peoples, but is also shared by many Jews in Israel, which is a nation that should always be included whenever one refers to the theocratic nations of Africa and the Middle East.9 Whatever else one may say or feel about the Muslim fear of jahiliyya, which is widely viewed as an era of great suffering, it remains a common theme of the philosophical, religious, and legal literature of all civilizations that have been inf luenced by Islam.10 The fact that Derrida also shares this





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concern does not make him a reactionary figure, but merely a man who inherits cultural traditions that are not myopically European. Chomsky greatly differs from Derrida in that he has absolutely no ear for the Abrahamic cultural traditions of Africa and the Middle East. As a case in point, the very suggestion that his interventions as a political dissident authorize comparisons between political theorists such as himself and the Abrahamic prophets, reveals an abyssal misunderstanding of the religious traditions of Africa and the Middle East. It is well known that Muslims regard Muhammad as the Seal of the Prophets and believe any claims to prophetic status after the era of the Quran’s revelation to be outrageously arrogant and even blasphemous. This is why, for instance, the Baha’i have historically experienced so much persecution in Iran.11 The doctrinal point raised here is not marginal but well known by those who have even a passing familiarity with the Islamic religion. Although Jews, Christians, and Muslims certainly differ regarding the figures upon whom they confer prophetic status, all have great veneration for the historical figure of the prophet. The prophet is revered not because he once spoke out against the corrupt ideologies of the ruling elite, but because he was believed to reveal the divinely inspired word of God. More importantly, Chomsky’s misguided utterances conflating political dissidents and the biblical prophets of old comprise virtually the only allusions to the Abrahamic scriptural traditions one will find in his writings.12 In fact, Chomsky seems oblivious to the most basic beliefs of the Abrahamic traditions, including Judaism. It is not so much then that Chomsky has carefully examined and rejected the Abrahamic traditions in preference for rational atheism. It is rather that he does not even seem to know the most elementary tenets of these religions. This raises the obvious question of how it is that a man who ostensibly lacks even a rudimentary awareness of the religious traditions of Africa and the Middle East may venture to propose what forms of government are most suitable for the peoples of these regions.13 By way of contrast, Derrida attempts—albeit not always successfully—to rethink current political crises in Africa and the Middle East in a manner that is respectful of the cultural traditions of peoples of the region. In this regard, a particularly prominent Abrahamic theme in Derrida’s writings is his rearticulation of the empiricist doctrine of the trace, which is another way of talking about circumcision. As Derrida observes, in Hebrew the word for the name is milah, which simultaneously means both “name” and “cut” (“Circumfession” 88). Following Freud, Derrida links the





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empiricist concept of the trace, as articulated by figures such as Locke, Hume, and Hartley, with the African and Middle Eastern concept of the name, which is commonly bestowed in tribal cutting and scarification ceremonies. In Europe, the very idea of circumcision has been viewed as providing evidence of the barbarism of Jewish, Arab, and African peoples. Jews have historically been castigated and even persecuted for preserving this ancient cultural practice. However, this cultural custom remains the norm rather than the exception throughout Africa and the Middle East. The view that this practice is essential to the preservation of one’s cultural identity is not limited to the Abrahamic religions but is also affirmed in various contexts where one may be indifferent to the Religions of the Book.14 In contrast to Derrida, Chomsky flees from the problematic of the empirical trace. But if the doctrine of the trace is yet another word for the milah, as Freud, Lacan, Derrida, and many others have compellingly asserted, Chomsky’s reactionary denial of this doctrine is particularly striking when his nearly irrational aversion for it is situated in relation to his ignorance of the Abrahamic faiths. From a psychoanalytic perspective, Chomsky would seem to be a man in flight from his own circumcision. That is, Chomsky only affirms internal rules that are given by no one, not divine rules that are given by an absolute other, nor external rules that are given by actual human beings (for instance, by a knife-wielding mohel or the nyamakala of West Africa).15 One can argue then that Chomsky is a man who was so deeply traumatized by his own circumcision that he was compelled to develop a notion of the law existing only in what Descartes once called “the land of romance.”16 This conclusion may disturb some, but it is not one that will seem particularly controversial to African and Middle Eastern peoples who continue to affirm the importance of tribal cutting and scarification rites, nor will it seem so to the post-Freudian and/or Lacanian psychoanalytic theorist. While some may find this claim to be offensive, Chomsky’s repeated statements that he is unable to comprehend the writings of theorists such as Derrida, Kristeva, and Lacan also tend to verify this hypothesis since the vehemence of Chomsky’s remarks is arguably indicative of the emotional turmoil that psychoanalytic theories of language acquisition seem to provoke within him.17 Perhaps Chomsky cannot understand such theories because they remind him of a trauma that he wishes to forget? Although I have raised questions about Chomsky’s familiarity with the Abrahamic traditions, given his uninformed references to Middle





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Eastern prophets, it is certainly possible that Chomsky knows a great deal more about the Abrahamic faiths than his writings may suggest. In fact, even a brief glance at his personal biography would seem to suggest the implausibility of Chomsky’s ignorance regarding Judaism and even some aspects of Islam, given his familiarity with Hebrew and Arabic languages. For instance, in his loose collection of essays entitled The Logical Structures of Linguistic Theory (1975), Chomsky states that, at the time he first developed his linguistic views, he “had some informal acquaintance with historical linguistics and medieval Hebrew grammar, based on my father’s work in these fields. . . .” (25). The work in question is William Chomsky’s David Kimhi’s Hebrew Grammar (1952). Chomsky states that he had “read proofs [of this study] many years earlier” (The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory 50). Chomsky’s father was a wellknown scholar of Hebrew and also the author of an influential historical survey of the Hebrew language, entitled Hebrew: The Eternal Language (1957). This book is dedicated to William Chomsky’s children; hence, it is unlikely that Chomsky himself did not read this text. What is curious, in this connection, is the commonality of themes that are explored in both the writings of William Chomsky and in the writings of Derrida, whom Chomsky dismisses as a writer of incomprehensible “gibberish.” For instance, Derrida has tirelessly explored the question of the untranslatability of specific languages or the theme of the shibboleth in texts such as Acts of Religion (2002), Sovereignties in Question (2005), and many others. William Chomsky similarly makes a strong case for “the unique character of Judaism and its relation to the Jewish language” (Hebrew: The Eternal Language 2). He states that, “The richer and the more intense the historical experiences of a people, the greater is the number of such words in its language and the more emotionally charged they are. When translated into another language, they become devitalized and almost meaningless” (6). William Chomsky further observes, “Our Sages likened the day on which the Bible was translated into Greek to the day when the Golden Calf was made, ‘for the Torah does not lend itself to adequate translation’ ” (12). In contrast, Chomsky’s theory of language is predicated on the assumption that all languages are variants of a single transcendental one. Chomsky insists that translation is always already possible from a single hidden language, which he calls universal grammar, which takes precedence over the far less significant empirical trace that circulates in the actual world we inhabit; in contrast, William Chomsky insists that Judaism forever remains ‘sealed’ “to





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those who do not know Hebrew” (13). Chomsky’s father also remains within the framework of “structuralist” linguistic thought, and, as is true of Derrida, his orientation to language is strongly anti-Cartesian. His views do not only echo those of Derrida’s, they seem to offer a direct rebuke to Chomsky’s own linguistic theories, which is entirely possible considering that they were published in 1957, the same year that Syntactic Structures appeared, which has remained one of Chomsky’s most influential early texts. William Chomsky states, “We do not have thoughts, ideas, feelings and then put them into a verbal framework. We think in words, by means of words” (3). His views also seem to offer a calculated rejection of what Chomsky calls “Cartesian linguistics”: “[T]he Hebrew words ruah (spirit) and nefesh (soul) do not have the implications of a disembodiment, such as are indicated by the English equivalents,” William Chomsky states. “There is no dichotomy in the Hebrew mind between body and spirit or soul. One is not the antithesis of the other” (4). Elsewhere, William Chomsky observes that “the [Hebrew] word ruah . . . in the Greek translation connote[s] the un-Jewish concept of spirit-versus-body [my emphasis]” (10). When Derrida states that his concept of spirit is “anything but immaterial” he effectively echoes this view (“Marx & Sons” 267). “Spirit” for Derrida is the trace of the real, a notion of language that is more akin to the Hebraic concept of ruah than it is to the Greek concept of the logos (Of Spirit 101). In this connection, it is worth noting that William Chomsky repeatedly underscores the anti-Cartesian view with respect to animals. He states: Every living being has a ruah, even the beast possesses a ruah (Ecclesiastes 3:21). The same is true of the synonym nefesh, which is generally rendered by “soul.” But, nefesh too is the property of all living beings (Job 12:10), including the beast (Proverbs 12:10) . . . every living creature, man as well as animal, is designated as nefesh (Genesis 1:20, 21, 24, 12:5, 14:21, etc.). Both nefesh and ruah often signify strength and vigor, both in a material and a spiritual sense. Voracious dogs are said to possess a strong nefesh (Isaiah 56:11); and the horses of Egypt, the prophet warns, are weak: they are “flesh and no ruah.” (ibid., 31:3, 10)

Like William Chomsky, Derrida has vigorously attacked Cartesian concepts of the animal on the grounds that it lacks rational speech, or the generative faculty of the logos. In contrast, the assertion that an animal possesses “spirit” is for Chomsky unscientific conjecture that he dismisses as quasi-religious gibberish. Another convergent theme in the writings





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of William Chomsky and Derrida is their shared deconstruction of the word “religion,” which William Chomsky observes is “not to be found in Hebrew but is a Greek notion that Hellenizes Judaism (8–9). Derrida makes essentially the same argument about the Abrahamic religions in relation to the Hellenic concept of religion, although his remarks on this question are more extensively developed (Religion 34–38). William Chomsky and Derrida also offer commentaries on the theme of the profanation of the Name, which for Derrida is linked to questions of the khora, negative theology, and apophasis. William Chomsky also maintains that, “The Hebrew language . . . was created simultaneously with the world and was the language employed by God” (Hebrew: The Eternal Language 18). The notion that the world comes into being with an act of divine speech implicitly rejects the ontological divide between Being and becoming, which is characteristic of Greek metaphysical thought (Handelman The Slayers of Moses 3–4). This too is a prominent theme in the writings of Derrida. There are many other commonalities between the theoretical views of William Chomsky and those of Derrida, including a shared commitment to Zionism, which I cite here to underscore the implausibility of Chomsky’s repeated claims that Derrida’s writings are simply incomprehensible to him. While Chomsky clearly has reasons to reject Derrida’s views, it is unlikely that he does so because he finds them “incomprehensible.” It is also quite possible that Chomsky’s exaggerated criticisms of Derrida, Lacan, Kristeva, and other empiricist theorists of the trace may be related to his deep-seated rejection of his father’s religious views. Careful attention to the problematic of circumcision can unlock many of the theoretical complexities of empiricist and psychoanalytic views of language, provided that one is willing to squarely address this theme. The oral counterpart of the African and Middle Eastern concept of the inscribed trace, or “signature” in Derridean terms, is the spoken covenant, which must necessarily be uttered in the presence of the other. The traumatic cut that is marked into the flesh may be seen and felt, but the oral covenant can only be heard and its ultimate meaning is always already deferred. In The Social Contract, Rousseau speaks of the compact that one makes with the other as an empirical “covenant” that must be pronounced in a social gathering. Rousseau knew very well that there is no way to verify the existence of a law that is inscribed within the hidden recesses of the human interior.18 The vow is not a hidden spatial structure of the mind; it is an empirically existing trace of the real that





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exists outside the head. Derrida echoes Rousseau’s discussion of the “covenant” in The Social Contract when he speaks of the Joycean “Yes” that must be spoken aloud to the other (Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell 27). This is a fully audible utterance that issues from the human mouth and is not a locatable or hypostatized structure of the mind. This trace is empirically real and exists outside the human head. Derrida sometimes compares the orally uttered trace to the Hebraic concept of the word as ruah, or the autonomous spirit that circulates in the world of the senses (Of Spirit 101). The ancient concept of the word as ruah is virtually interchangeable with historically related concepts of the word, such as the Egyptian heka, the Mande nyama, the Soininke naxamala, and many other African and Middle Eastern concepts of the word.19 All of these concepts of the word differ from the post-Platonic conception of the word as Logos, an ideal that is highly esteemed in the West. Whereas the Platonic concept of the word as Logos plays a decisive role in the history of Greco-Roman and Christian thought, as well as Islamic theology, older African and Middle Eastern concepts of the word persist even today, especially in Northwest Africa. Derrida articulates his critique of logocentrism as a “white man’s mythology” from within this specific cultural setting; that is, the deconstruction of logocentric thought systems does not occur within a cultural vacuum; it echoes ancient Egypto-African notions of the word white Europeans have long demonized as “gibberish” and “mumbo jumbo.” For instance, in Mungo Park’s narrative of his travels in West Africa, he once dismissed African religious beliefs as so much “mumbo jumbo” (Travels in the Interior Districts 39–40). This hitherto unknown Mande word passed into the English language as a concise means of encapsulating African religious beliefs, which European explorers also thought were occult gibberish. But, even the pre-Socratic concept of the word as pharmakon, which Gorgias once described as a powerful medicine that seduced Helen and therefore set off the Trojan War, also echoes this older notion of the word that emanates from the African continent.20 Whereas Derrida offers a vibrant theory of language that is both empirically sound and conversant with ancient Egypto-African conceptions of the word, but also in dialogue with Western metaphysics, Chomsky militates for a reactionary and quasi-scientific theory of language that is myopically Eurocentric. Moreover, Chomsky is oblivious to the metaphysical and occult assumptions within his own philosophy of language. Like the ancient Greeks, Chomsky is an eye-man, a visionary philosopher of





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language who privileges objective forms that are seen by the mind’s eye. However, Chomsky has less to say about the word that may be heard with the mind’s ear, or the word that is not an optical illusion. According to Mosaic law, one is forbidden to make any re-presentation of a sign that bears a likeness to any actual object that one could behold with the eyes.21 The injunction against the visually apprehended image is also an enduring feature of the cultural heritage of the peoples of North Africa and the Middle East. Derrida inherits this sensibility, as is evident in his criticisms of Heidegger, whom he argues exaggerates the significance of the visual in his various readings of spirit and khora. Derrida highlights the theme of blindness, as well as the importance of the word that cannot be seen with the eyes but is instead a matter of aspirated breath (or spiritus from the Latin word for “wind”).22 Chomsky, on the other hand, compares the inscriptions within the “mind-brain” that he calls universal grammar to actual physical objects that exist in space, as if they were three-dimensional letter blocks from a movable-type printing press (see On Nature and Language 45–46). This is a remarkably Protestant metaphor, one that dramatically inflates the value of inscribed texts like printed books, especially translations of the Gospels.23 Chomsky’s notion of universal grammar reinforces the cultural value of the typographically reproduced book that exists on the human exterior, which he claims can provide the world with accurate re-presentations of the mystic letterpress that is embedded within the human interior. As a result, the “Truth” for Chomsky and Protestant Christians such as Mungo Park ends up looking a lot like visually inscribed letters on a flat sheet of paper, which replicate indwelling but also absent words. By way of contrast, the oral-aural vow must be spoken from the mouth in a gathering of others. It is a promise that one makes because the ghost cannot be seen. As Derrida suggests, “One will never be able to prove that it happened, only swear that it did [Derrida’s emphasis]” (Veils 84). Chomsky’s preferred metaphor to describe universal grammar resonates with European Protestant views of language, but scarcely makes sense in predominately oral-aural cultural settings. In a society where speaking the truthful word means that one swears to uphold one’s vows, the notion that the truthful word should be imagined as an inscribed representation upon a flat sheet of paper is not compelling. In fact, Chomsky’s colorful descriptions of universal grammar should be situated within the history of the European Protestant Reformation, the rise of the printing press, and the explosion of a certain form of industrial literacy,





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events that are historical rather than natural. This history is very different from the history of literacy in Africa and the Middle East, where the first printing press did not arrive until the Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1799. Even today, typographic literacy in this setting remains a marginally significant cultural medium for the communication of ideas. I am not saying, however, that these are regions where the majority of inhabitants were illiterate, but that the ancient cultures of Africa and the Middle East did not succumb to the illusion that typographic forms of literacy are a good that precedes human dialogue. Here the Derridean notion of the reiterated promise that is heard with the mind’s ear, and not seen with the mind’s eye, may seem far more “natural.” The deconstructive notion that truth is a reiterable utterance that is spoken in the presence of others is a view that resonates widely in Africa and the Middle East. In this context, the Chomskyan metaphor of interior alphabetic inscriptions may seem oddly unappealing. It remains to be said that the typographic metaphor of truth can also be found in the texts of countless European travelers to these regions, such as Park, Alexander Gordon Laing, Rene Caillié, Dixon Denham, Heinrich Barth, and many others. Moreover, the notion that the external world is comparable to a printed book that is claimed to be an accurate replica of an alphabetic typeset within the mind can be found not only in the travelogues of racist travelers, but also in the writings of European philosophers such as Rene Descartes.24 In fact, it is one of the most common tropes of the Enlightenment tradition. The poetic notion that the external world is akin to Nature’s Book is also linked to Deism and can be found in texts such as the American Declaration of Independence. However, the suggestion that both the mind and world are most like printed books, and that the one is a replica of the other, can only occur within a cultural setting where print media predominates. If one has never seen, much less read, a typographically reproduced book, the suggestion that the world is most like a printed book will seem bizarre. The metaphor may be persuasive in a European setting, but not in places like Northwest Africa. In her detailed study of Mande oral cultural traditions, Barbara Hoffmann states her view that, in Mande society, “there is no standard grammar or pronunciation that underlies all others as a Chomskyan-style deep-structure, no monolithic ‘competence’ to which the analyst can make appeal” (Griots At War 19). I would go even further than Hoffmann and assert that the reason Chomsky calls Derrida’s views “gibberish” is that he responds to a cultural perspective he simply





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cannot understand. He dismisses Derrida’s views in the same way that Europeans throughout history have dismissed the religious and philosophical beliefs of the peoples of Africa and the Middle East. In English departments in the United States, the typographic bias that is so strong in Chomsky reinforces many of the arbitrary values and cultural prejudices that are embedded within such programs. What is primarily valued is the typographically and visually reproduced text, in some cases more so than a particular national tradition. In a more general sense, I refer here to words that appear on flat surfaces and may be seen with the eyes. Above all, the national language department in the United States values silently inscribed characters that are seen, and has little regard for the spoken word that is heard. As a case in point, a course in rhetoric in English departments in the United States usually focuses on how to construct arguments as written texts, but the truism that the rhetor is a speaker is often elided. This dynamic has led to the creation of disciplinary divisions within the humanities wherein the speaking arts are exclusively taught in communications programs, but the English major seldom reflects upon the word as a spoken phenomenon, except in a course where linguistics is taught as a matter of rational science or “biolinguistics.” What is called English becomes exclusively a matter of visually inscribed texts. The Chomskyan paradigm reinforces the hegemony of a particular type of medium, which also reinforces many of the traditionally Protestant, Christian, and European biases that have historically shaped what gets taught in such departments, not to mention who ends up teaching in such programs. Chomsky himself states that, “the best rhetoric is the least rhetoric” even as he insists upon the validity of his own views about language on the basis of their “explanatory power” (Chomsky on Democracy and Education 376). As a result of attitudes such as Chomsky’s, peoples from predominately oralaural cultures find it difficult to be taken seriously, or even be understood, within the context of the national language department. Many cultural traditions that might be taught in such departments come to be viewed as backward and illiterate. This is why Derrida in contrast to Chomsky will suggest that in national language departments today, a crime is being perpetuated against what he calls “the living maternal,” by which he means the mother tongue (Ear of the Other 21). This is certainly true in English departments in the United States. However, even Platonism is born in the oral-aural setting of respectful discussion, debate, and disputation. This is why it is not an exaggeration to assert





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that those like Chomsky who do not understand dialectics simply do not understand philosophy.25 One reason why this ideology must be contested is that it has facilitated the exclusion of peoples from nonEuropean cultures within the university. Because Chomsky privileges the epistemological vantage point of the Martian scientist, he never asks the question of who asks the question. He does not ask such a question, for to do so inevitably threatens the Eurocentric ideology of competent perception. Chomsky’s notion of competence reinforces authoritative claims of institutionally housed academics, who are deemed competent to represent the truth, first, because the institution itself decrees that they are competent and, second, because of their intuitive (or “unconscious”) knowledge of the truth. They are not competent because of the empirical traces of the real that history has embedded within them, but rather due to their ability to see the truth with the mind’s eye, or, in Chomsky’s paraphrase of Descartes, “[W]e know what it is that we see not ‘from what the eye sees’ but from the scrutiny of the mind alone’ ” (Cartesian Linguistics 145). Yet, in this ocular paradigm, the “mind’—or what Chomsky calls the “mind/brain”—is certainly not an enfolded ear or vaginal receptacle, but a hidden and phallic Cyclops eye, which is for Chomsky the irreducible locus of all human consciousness. In Derrida’s view, by way of contrast, the logocentric theory of purely intuitive competence is a “white man’s mythology,” a fabulous story that is told by certain kinds of white men, who imagine they are biologically endowed with the power to testify. In an essay entitled “Khora,” which is a close reading of Plato’s Timaeus, Derrida demonstrates how Plato’s real problem is not that human beings are endowed with unconscious knowledge of universal grammar, but that all human knowledge necessarily depends upon storytelling, including Chomsky’s rational and evolutionary linguistics. Derrida calls philosophers a “sorry lot of poets who dim the ancient fables,” because he is cognizant of the fact that logocentric truth claims such as those made by Chomsky are predicated upon the false assumption that those who advance them were present at the event of truth’s disclosure (“White Mythology” 10). But how do we really know if this fabled event ever occurred? As is well known, Plato articulated the three-fold distinction that has historically defined Western metaphysics in his famous dialogue Timaeus.26 However, it is extremely doubtful that Chomsky has ever read this dialogue, since he rejects out of hand the ancient philosophical theme of nothingness.27





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In “Khora,” Derrida calls Platonism—which he differentiates from the actual thought and writings of Plato—“one of the effects of the text signed by Plato, for a long time, and for necessary reasons, the dominant effect, but this effect is always turned back against the text” (120).28 Like Chomsky, the competent professor in U.S. academe is heir to Platonism without having bothered to read Plato. Neither wishes to be reminded that he or she is a mere storyteller, for to acknowledge this existential limitation might undermine his/her claim to have been witness to the event of truth’s disclosure. Because the institution reflexively backs up this metaphysical truth claim, the student who is seated before the competent professor has few options other than to humbly submit to his or her institutional authority. As Nietzsche suggests in Thus Spake Zarathustra, the obedient student is in this way transformed into an enormous ear, a submissive auditor who may only transcribe the words of the radiant phallic authority, behind whom the fictional entity of the sovereign state always looms (48–51).29 To have recourse to telling stories is not necessarily a failing; it is a matter of necessity, or ananke¯ . It is necessity itself that forces us to tell stories, or an absence that is felt so acutely that it brings sensible form into being. But, stories are necessarily told over the abyss of nothingness, the khoral receptacle. In Derrida’s reading, the “logic” of the khora is neither logocentric nor mythological, “neither sensible nor intelligible” (On the Name 96). Derrida asserts that, “the discourse on the khora, as it is presented [in Plato’s Timaeus], does not proceed from the natural or legitimate logos, but rather from a hybrid, bastard, or even corrupted reasoning” (On the Name 96). That is, Derrida wishes to assert that the logic of the khora eludes figuration altogether, or that even telling stories about khora is deeply problematic, for to tell a story about what simply does not exist inevitably gives palpable form to what is not.30 Derrida may or may not offer a disguised spiritualist theology, as Foucault once asserted (Archaeology of Knowledge 27). I leave this question for the reader to decide. My point here is simply that we are all compelled by necessity to tell stories, including Mr. Chomsky. The story that Chomsky tells is a scientific story about the evolutionary mutation of an occulted substance in the human mind. But Chomsky does not want to acknowledge the groundless ground of the khoral receptacle, for to talk about khora might jeopardize the scientific credentials of the storyteller, or so he seems to imagine. In other words, Chomsky is a storyteller who does not want to admit that he is a mere storyteller, or who





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does not wish to take seriously the necessity of telling stories. This is why it is fair to assert that Chomsky is a nihilist: The nihilist has nothing to say about nothing, or the nihilist prefers to deny that—in the absence of first principles—it is always already necessary to tell stories. Chomsky is a phallologocentric storyteller or white mythologist, who does not want to admit that he tells stories for the pleasure of certain kinds of white people. I do not claim here that only white European people have been enthralled by the quasi-scientific story that Chomsky tells, merely that his story about the occulted trace is born within a particular cultural setting. This was Foucault’s main point in his response to Chomsky during their famous debate: “[Chomsky’s] notions of human nature, of justice, of the realization of the essence of human beings, are all notions and concepts that have been formed within our civilization,” Foucault observed, “within our type of knowledge, and our form of philosophy. . . . [my emphasis]” (The Chomsky–Foucault Debate 56–57). But there are many other fabulous stories about human language that are also worth telling and knowing. Some of these stories do not come from what Foucault calls “our civilization.” Chomsky is an Ashkenazi (or Euro-American) Jewish philosopher, whose thought is deeply rationalist, Cartesian, and Eurocentric. Yet, if one carefully reflects upon the pertinent question of Chomsky’s historical and cultural identity as a Euro-American Jewish man and contrasts it with that of Derrida, it is clear that Derrida is a man with a very different personal history and cultural heritage. Modern European civilization has hardly encouraged rites of tribal scarification, oath swearing, conjuration, and other signifying practices that are reflexively dismissed as barbaric. This is especially the case among white Europeans such as Chomsky with a strong typographic bias, one that has dominated Europe for centuries after the invention of the printing press.31 Obviously, the white mythologist does not like to be told that he is a white mythologist, for the story that the white mythologist prefers to tell depicts him as the disinterested man of reason and science, not a storyteller. This storyteller does not like to be reminded that he is a mere storyteller and possibly a liar. The European heir of the Enlightenment is understandably suspicious and ill at ease when terminology, figures, themes, and concepts that are drawn from the Abrahamic religious traditions are employed in ostensibly secular political contexts. Derrida sought to show that it is impossible to draw rigorous lines of demarcation in our concepts, even hallowed concepts such as man and animal, upon which our political





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systems often depend. In various texts, Derrida demonstrates that the line separating logos from mythos, much like the line separating man from beast, is extremely difficult to maintain, once subjected to deconstructive analysis. This does not mean that the political and the religious should not be disassociated from one another, merely that one should not take for granted that one knows what “the political” and “the religious” are. The desire to maintain that these concepts have absolutely nothing to do with one another is usually underwritten by a specific political agenda, often nationalist. This was Derrida’s rejoinder to Heidegger’s famous argument that “a Christian philosophy is a square circle” (Heidegger Nietzsche Volume Four 88). In Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, Derrida situated Heidegger’s exclusion of the Hebraic concept of spirit (ruah) in the historical context of the rise of the Nazi party to power, and Heidegger’s complicity with events culminating in the Jewish Holocaust. Although he performed many careful etymological investigations throughout his career, Heidegger failed to investigate the European concept of spirit, which shows that European philosophy is indebted to a concept of spirit that is certainly not European, but Hebraic (if not Egypto-African). Yet, even as Heidegger deliberately excluded certain types of stories and concepts from his philosophical writings (that is, Abrahamic ones), he was certainly aware that the concept of the logos always already depends upon mythos, which is the essence of what Nietzsche called “the tragic perception” (The Birth of Tragedy 95). Another way to say this is that, when it comes to the problem of the khoral receptacle, one can only tell stories about her/ it; one must have recourse to mythos/poetics. In contrast to Heidegger and Chomsky, Derrida does not shrink from employing “contaminated” concepts that are drawn from the Abrahamic traditions, or the Religions of the Book. As a case in point, Derrida coins the term “messianicity” from the ancient Abrahamic word “messiah,” although he differentiates historical messianisms of the Religions of the Book from what he calls “the universal concept of messianicity.” However, Derrida knows very well that the “universal” concept that he calls “messianicity” originates within a specific cultural setting that is Middle Eastern or Abrahamic, and certainly not Greek. Whereas Heidegger evokes the more general concept of the Zusage, by which he means giving credit to the other, or believing in the the truthful word of the other, Derrida evokes the impure Abrahamic term “messianicity” and does not flee from this term’s Abrahamic and religious origins, merely because it was first articulated





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by the non-European peoples of the Middle East. Furthermore, he encourages his readers to consider what is truly at work whenever certain terms, concepts, and histories are excluded merely because they are drawn from the religious traditions of Africa and the Middle East, rather than the ostensibly scientific discourse of Europe. No doubt Chomsky would find Derrida’s use of Abrahamic concepts and terminology to be unscientific and irrational, if not abhorrent. Yet Chomsky himself does not refrain from making regular reference to Old Testament prophets in his own writings, as when he compares biblical prophets such as Abraham to political dissidents like himself. For instance, Chomsky seems to especially appreciate the prophet Amos: Go back to the oldest recorded texts and see what happens to people who didn’t march in the parade . . . like Socrates. Or take the intellectuals described in the Bible (where they’re called “prophets”) . . . [As opposed to the false prophets] there were people like Amos, who incidentally insisted that he was not a prophet or the son of one, just a poor shepherd. True prophets like Amos—“dissident intellectuals,” in modern terminology— offered both elevated moral lessons, which the people in power weren’t fond of, and geopolitical analyses that usually turned out to be pretty accurate. . . . (The Common Good 148)

Hence, both Derrida and Chomsky adopt a biblical rhetoric about the Abrahamic prophets, despite Chomsky’s assertion that “the best rhetoric is the least rhetoric” (Chomsky on Democracy and Education 376). For Chomsky, the Abrahamic prophet is an ethically competent intellectual, who speaks the truth that is biologically hardwired into his or her brain. Ethics are an indwelling and autonomously functioning object that is comparable to other bodily organs such as the liver. Chomsky’s self-proclaimed status as a modern-day prophet is coterminous with his demagogic posture as the man who asserts a rational thesis, which is finally a matter of pure intuition. In Heidegger and Derrida, by way of contrast, the mechanical and aggressive assertion of the thesis, which is linked to the Cartesian notion of ratio, is inextricable from the problematic of the circulation of spirit, or the aggressive assertion of a truth claim annulling the piety of questioning. Heidegger and Derrida both affirm the piety of questioning, although Derrida speaks of “messianicity,” or the preoriginary pledge, rather than the more general Heideggerian notion of the Zusage or “factum.” For the deconstructive theorist, evil spirit circulates in a discursive sense when the arrogant presumption of





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knowledge is assumed by the one who reflexively asserts the thesis, the intuitive claim to certain knowledge (the cogito ergo sum in Descartes). In Descartes and Chomsky, mere belief in the sense that is affirmed by Derrida is stigmatized as premature opinion, whereas for the deconstructive theorist the hasty assertion of the thesis is associated with the will to power, or the will to triumph over one’s adversary. For Descartes and Chomsky, the truth that Heidegger calls Zusage and that Derrida calls “messianicity” would be mere religious opinion, for it implies hastily giving credit to the other, or a premature granting of credit to the other, which both differentiate from intuitive competence. To give credit to the other is criticized by Descartes as a matter of mere opinion: “[For Descartes] error is first of all a belief, or rather, an opinion: consisting in acquiescing, in saying yes, in opining too early. . . . [Derrida’s emphasis]” (Memoirs of the Blind 13); that is, Descartes differentiates mere opinion—or belief—from rational competence in an intuitive sense. Descartes and Chomsky alike do not believe that they are asserting a mere opinion, but a certain truth. I am not saying, however, that Derrida is able to completely refrain from aggressively asserting rational theses, but rather that he strove to attain this goal in his own thinking and teaching. For Derrida, the prophet is not the man who asserts an ethical thesis that is a re-presentation of an organic structure of the mind, but the one who lays down his weapons in order to welcome the other in a gesture of hospitality. This is the essence of the Abrahamic. Abraham was the man who refrained from bludgeoning the other with his thesis. In Kant, too, hospitality is the basis of cosmopolitan right because we must all inhabit this planet together: hence, it is our fundamental right to be welcomed by the other without fear of harm. In contrast to the Chomskyan notion of the prophet as an ethically competent intellectual, the prophet for Derrida is the man who certainly does not know, but who nonetheless gives credit to the other as a matter of faith. As Abraham ascends the mountain to kill his son, he cannot possibly know that the terrible act he is about to commit is ethically correct. In fact, Abraham would be the last person on earth to assert his ethical competence. The problem of the prophet precisely lies in his lack of knowledge that his actions are justified. Yet he acts in spite of his lack of ethical competence. A similar dynamic is at work when Abraham graciously allows three strangers into his tent at Mamre and welcomes them into his home with a feast. Both the host and his guests lay down their weapons on the floor of the desert in a gathering that is fraught





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with peril. Abraham nonetheless gives credit to his visitors, who are angels in disguise, and therefore receives a blessing from them. But the meaning of this story cannot be understood unless it is contrasted with what happens to the same three visitors as they journey onward to visit Abraham’s nephew Lot, in the town of Sodom. Terrible events befall the townspeople of Sodom who violate the ancient laws of hospitality. What links both tales is the imperative to welcome the other, and the question of the trust, belief, or credit that is a necessary precondition of any “ethical” relation to the other. When Derrida evokes the concept of messianicity, he wishes to emphasize this term in its traditional Judaic sense, more so than in its historical meaning in either Christianity or Islam; that is, messianicity is for Derrida an irreducible structure of expectation. It is more about anticipation than arrival. The point about Abraham’s three visitors is that Abraham certainly did not know who they were. Yet this same dynamic is secretly at work in all human relationships with the other: We never know who the other is, for their essence—if there is such a thing—is forever concealed from us. This is why Derrida insists that every other human being is “every bit other” (The Gift of Death 82–83). We cannot have certain knowledge of the other’s true essence. It is forever concealed from us, and we cannot even assert that it is there. The relation to the other is always based in the fact of difference, or the fact that we cannot ever know who the other is but can only give credit to the other in the absence of our certainty. The claim that universal grammar exists is a rational thesis, an assertion of intuitive certainty. Yet, as Chomsky himself acknowledges, if there is such a thing as universal grammar, it will always escape empirical investigation. The Chomskyan pedagogy of competence is based in a transcendental truth claim to certain knowledge, whereas a deconstructive pedagogy is based in the more cautious notion that one is never in possession of certain knowledge; one can only give credit to the other. This giving credit to the other is a matter of blind faith, not intuitive knowledge. In contrast, intuitive or unconscious competence claims certain sight. Derrida also emphasized that one must allow the other to the opportunity to refuse to respond to one’s invitation. Although the student must be left in his/her otherness, the invitation that the teacher issues to the student must be sincere; that is, the teacher must truly desire that the student respond to the invitation. Otherwise, the invitation is not an invitation at all. Respecting the otherness of the other does not mean





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that one is secretly indifferent to the other. It does not mean that one does not care about the other. One sincerely issues the invitation, but if it is truly an invitation the other must always retain the right to refuse the call. The deconstructive teacher then would be the teacher who lacks certainty but nonetheless issues a sincere invitation. The deconstructive teacher would be the hospitable teacher, the teacher who invites her students to learn but does not seek to convert them to the truth that she believes she possesses. She does issue a sincere invitation, for she truly wants her students to come. She knows that she is not the same as her students. There is no coercion or evangelical impulse at work in a pedagogy of alterity, which is reciprocal. The teacher is a host who welcomes the other, but she does not come bearing the weapon of the logos. The teacher is the vulnerable host who issues a call; yet she freely acknowledges that she lacks in competence and is no natural or neutral authority. What Derrida calls “the right to incompetence” is also the right to blindness (Who’s Afraid of Philosophy? 61–62). The welcome that is extended to the other is boundless because one never knows who the other may be. In the title of his book, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida (1997), Caputo emphasizes the theme of tears in Derrida’s writings, or what Derrida also calls “the art of blinking” (Eyes of the University 132). For Derrida, a competent pedagogy is a “sclerophthalmic,” unblinking, or “scarred-eyed” pedagogy. Rather than seeing the other in a compassionate way, the competent professor transforms the other into an object to dominate. A pedagogy of competency is one in which the teacher does not see the student seeing him/her in return. In contrast, a pedagogy of alterity is well aware that there is something that is far more important than correct perception, or unblinking and hard-eyed vision. When one sees the other with tears in one’s eyes, one is not able to see the other clearly. One’s vision is clouded, and that is precisely the point. This does not mean that giving credit to the other is not fraught with dangers. if I trust that the other will not harm me, it is always possible that he or she may. Vulnerability and danger are built into the pedagogical situation, both for the teacher and the student. Derrida will sometimes speak of what he calls “hostipitality,” a new word that he coins from combining the words “hospitality” and “hostility” (Acts of Religion 358). One is always vulnerable when one takes the chance of welcoming the other, for there is always the possibility of the outbreak of hostility. The autoimmune nature of language guarantees that this will always be the case. In The Politics of Friendship (1997),





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Derrida describes “hostipitality” as the basic situation that is built into any relation to the other. The condition of an “ethical” relation between teacher and student is not that they are secretly identical but that they are irreducibly different. In spite of these differences, responsibility and trust must be built into their relationship. Yet, a deconstructive pedagogy is responsible because it affirms the need to respond to the other without seeking to convert the other into a distorted and weaker image of oneself. In contrast, a pedagogy of competence does not worry about the irreducible difference of the student, nor the need to respond to the student on the basis of that difference; it rather seeks to ascertain that the student correctly perceives the truth the teacher imagines he or she possesses. The competent professor is the man who knows he is right because he carries an imbedded truth within him. He needs merely to issue authoritative edicts to the other. He is the man who sees with the generative faculty, or the mind’s eye. He is certain in his hypothetical knowledge and does not teach mere opinions. Certain knowledge is superior to mere opinion for all those who imagine they know the truth that is concealed within the breast of the other. The competent teacher possesses conscious knowledge of what lies hidden in the mind/brain of the student. He is able to make present the truth that is hidden from the student, so that the student will see this truth in the way he sees it. For this teacher imagines he was present at the event of truth’s disclosure. This teacher is able to lead his students to the place where this event occurred in order that they too may fix their eyes upon the radiant form he has already seen. The pedagogy of competence is an evangelical dogma of conversion. It seeks to convert the student into yet another competent authority, who is able to testify that he too was present at the event of truth’s disclosure. The competent teacher is the man who corrects the faulty vision of his weak and blurry-eyed students, who are endowed with mere opinions. A luminous glow emanates from the radiant body of this professor (Derrida Who’s Afraid of Philosophy? 90). For the rational scientist of the invisible contents of the human mind/ brain, the concerns I have raised here may be dismissed as pedagogical dogma. In his criticisms of empiricist language theorists, Chomsky asserts that, “By arbitrarily limiting themselves to surface structure and to formally marked relations, [empiricist theorists such as Saussure, Foucault, and Derrida] have simply excluded from linguistics, by fiat, just those aspects of grammatical structure that can lead to an account and explanation of semantic interpretation” (Topics in the Theory of





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Generative Grammar 30). Chomsky implies that empiricist theorists succumb to dogmatic motivations, or that they make arbitrary and unscientific determinations, and are close-minded to more “progressive” views of language, namely his own rationalist theory of generative grammar. For Chomsky, the biolinguist should study language “without dogmatism” (Language and Learning 178). The only problem with this view is that Chomsky presumes that his own rationalist views about language are not themselves dogmatic—which is to say, articulated—and that everyone else’s views about human language are indeed dogmatic. With the exception of those who follow his lead, Chomsky is the only language theorist who has succeeded in articulating a theory of pure science. This is why he states, in response to the criticisms of philosophers such as Hilary Putnam, that he does not seek to defend the innate hypothesis, only the “open-minded hypothesis.” “As a general principle, I am committed only to the ‘open-minded hypothesis,’ ” Chomsky asserts, “with no regard to the genetically determined initial state for language learning. . . .” (Language and Learning 310–311). In the formal context of a symposium held in 1975, Putnam responds to Chomsky as follows: “After twenty years of vigorously espousing this point of view in print and in conversation, it is a little unfair of Chomsky to say that he is only advocating the ‘open-mindedness hypothesis’ with respect to our genetic makeup. Who could be against open-mindedness? [my emphasis]” (33). As Putman wryly observes, Chomsky’s argument that he only defends “open-mindedness” is disingenuous, considering the fact Chomsky has vigorously made a case for the innate hypothesis since the mid 1950s. Putnam’s response to Chomsky is delivered in a spirit of friendship, but it reveals an obvious weakness in Chomsky’s defense of the hypothesis of innate ideas. Chomsky implies that all other theorists who do not accept his views are close-minded, merely because they don’t accept his views. Empiricist theories of language, we are told, offer “traditional religious dogma disguised in the name of science” (Language and Learning 271). But Chomsky’s own views are supposedly not dogmatic; they are not a disguised form of religion but plain “open-mindedness,” which he presents to his readers in a naked spirit of innocence. In the same breath, he argues that his readers should accept his views because of their descriptive power. When Putnam points out the tautological nature of his theory, Chomsky acknowledges his philosophy of language is tautological, but he replies, “What is important is not just to see that something is a ‘tautology,’ but also





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to see its import [my emphasis]” (Language and Learning 262). His own tautology is defensible because of its “explanatory adequacy,” he asserts, an argument that can be used to justify virtually anything (Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework 4). In effect, Chomsky asserts that the ends justify the means. He acknowledges that his own views are tautological, but by this he means “obvious,” or a matter of absolutely certain truth, not mere theoretical conjecture. Whenever possible, he evades acknowledging that his views are merely theoretical, for instance, when he asserts that his minimalist theory of language is not a theory but a “program” of research (5). Yet Chomsky claims that, “any specific bit of evidence must be interpreted within a fixed framework of assumptions, themselves subject to question [my emphasis]” (Studies in Semantics in Generative Grammar 13). But, if this is so, it must be as true for a “program” of research as it is for an actually articulated theory of language. In both cases, “a fixed framework of assumptions” is required. In an exchange between Chomsky and Seymour Papert, during the so-called Piaget–Chomsky Debate, Chomsky expresses some frustration with his empiricist colleagues because they assert that his inductive theory is flawed, simply because it is not deductive. His view is accurate, for the empiricist view indeed assumes that inductive theories of language are secretly empiricist, even if those who assert them refuse to face this fact. Yet Chomsky vigorously defends his views, claiming that he offers “the only theory in existence to explain a certain category of facts [my emphasis]” (Language and Learning 273). In response to Chomsky’s exaggerated claims, Papert remarks, “as inconceivable as it might seem to you, it doesn’t seem to me [that your theory is] the only theory that exists” (273). However, Chomsky misconstrues Papert’s rejoinder, implying that Papert criticizes him merely on the grounds that his theoretical claims to truth are intuitive rather than inductive. Yet, Papert does not simply assert that Chomsky’s approach to the study of language is without value because it is deductive. Papert’s point is rather that there are a multitude of other theories of human language that are worthy of respect. Chomsky states in response to Papert: “It [my theory of language] is not ‘certainly’ true; these are all hypotheses. I will repeat again that they are conjectures, scientific hypotheses, and if you want to know my feeling, I’m sure that they are false. I cannot believe that any detailed hypothesis that I can propose today, or that anybody else can propose, is likely to be true” (273–274). Chomsky’s deafness to Papert’s point is striking. He simply cannot imagine that alternative theories of language could explain the





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same phenomena that are explored in his own theory of language. He offers “the only theory in existence to explain a certain category of facts [my emphasis]” (273). Yet Papert observes that his theory is just another theory. This was also Locke’s point in his famous critique of Descartes: Whenever we discuss the question of innate ideas, we traffic in mere theories, not certain knowledge. In contrast, Chomsky wants to assert that his theory is not even a theory; it is a “program.” As a matter of fact, it is the correct program, although it is somehow not dogmatic. Chomsky also claims that empiricist theorists are dogmatists, who promote human oppression and fascism (Language and Learning 270–271); or, to put it in McGilvray’s terms, Chomsky fights to eradicate empiricism because it is akin to a “disease” (Chomsky 28). Papert irritates Chomsky because he suggests that things might not be quite so simple. Chomsky is intolerant of all theories other than his own and insists upon the unique correctness of his own theory. When pushed hard, however, Chomsky acknowledges that his own theory of language may be erroneous. In fact, Chomsky goes further than this and states that his theory of lanaguage is certainly “false.” But, this gesture is a mere word play—wrongly described by Piattelli-Palmarini as a form of intellectual “modesty”—for it turns out that Chomsky is “right” once again, but this time he is right because he is obviously wrong (Language and Learning 274). Chomksy’s wrongness offers even greater evidence of his secret rightness. Even when Chomsky is wrong he ends up being right, for his mistakes offer yet more proof of his open-mindedness. Locke’s critique of the Cartesian innate idea returns with a vengeance at this point, for there are indeed “a million and one dogmas” that one may similarly assert, if “explanatory force” is the only legitimate measure of their legitimacy. In contrast, Papert acknowledges that all human theories about language are finally dogmatic, including the dogmatic theory of Chomsky—and this argument is irrefutable. Chomsky suggests that his own theory of linguistic competence is not dogmatic or metaphysical. His theory of human language is not ideologically contaminated, but is a form of science that is akin to chemistry. But the ground of competence for this claim is the authorizing institution itself, which is secretly groundless, whereas everything that takes place outside the institution may be ignored by the biolinguist. Yet the university was once inaugurated as a political act. An institution by definition is an inauguration—or an event in time—that real human beings once decided was worthy of enacting. Chomsky naturalizes the





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relation between classroom and nation-state, because of his untenable claims to scientific veracity, enabling the appropriation of his linguistic research by the nation-state, which happily ignores his political views. In contrast, Derrida observes, “never before has so-called basic scientific research [within the university] been so deeply committed to [military] ends. . . . The very essence of the military, the limits of military technology and even the limits of the accountability of its programs are no longer definable” (Eyes of the University 143). This is so not only with respect to the teaching of competencies in disciplines such as English, but also in the discipline of linguistics. This does not necessarily mean that language faculty should eschew the teaching of dogmatic competencies, or that deconstructive pedagogies in contrast to rationalist ones militate for a form of irrationalism. For instance, Derrida states, “I am not afraid of the word ‘competence’ . . . [for] competence can be a weapon of resistance— for example, against all sorts of human rights violations, abuses of police power, and injustice” (Who’s Afraid of Philosophy? 183). Yet the political necessity of teaching competencies within the university should not blind those who teach there to basic questions of their responsibility to render a reason for reason: “Nowhere, within the university as such, is anyone wondering from where the call (Anspruch) of reason is voiced,” Derrida states, “nowhere is anyone inquiring into the origin of that demand for grounds, for reason that is to be provided, rendered, delivered” (Eyes of the University 140). Kant too argued that the modern university should be a place where free and open inquiry might prevail, unencumbered by the utilitarian demands of the state. While this ideal remains valid even today, language faculty must not succumb to the mystifying illusion that they teach value-free competencies that are purely scientific. By mandating the teaching of generic competences within state and federal institutions, the faculty member’s right to incompetence is jeopardized, and with it, the autonomy and integrity of the university. As Kant rightly notes, “the philosophy faculty can never lay aside its arms in the face of the danger that threatens the truth entrusted to its protection. . . .” (The Conflict of the Faculties 55). My argument here is that Chomsky and those who follow his example have abdicated their responsibility to “think the abyss” (Eyes of the University 150). Consequently, Chomsky is unable to defend the university’s historical right—in fact, its historical duty—to be irresponsible to the irresponsible demands of the state. The competent professor imagines that he gains in political power by asserting a generic pedagogy of competence. Sadly, as the competent professor gains in this hollow form





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of power, his own humanity is diminished. In effect, he turns himself into a utilitarian instrument of the state. For the state that demands he teach measurable competencies does not require him to give reasons why he must produce and assess competencies in the first place. It does not require the competent faculty member to inquire into the groundless grounds of his claims to rational competence; it only demands that he produce competent students who will obediently serve the state without questioning the state’s authority. The fact that Chomsky himself is a courageous and honorable critic of the military state changes nothing in this case, for his stinging criticisms of the nation-state remain the criticisms of the private citizen. As a linguist, Chomsky is reduced to silence when the state appropriates his research to its own ends.





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Introduction: The Politics of Unconscious Knowledge 1. The term “deconstruction” is by now well known. Important texts that discuss its usage include Heidegger’s original articulation of it as “destruction” [“Destruktion”] (Pathmarks 315), Derrida’s Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs (104) and Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice (15), as well as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s “Translator’s Preface” to Of Grammatology (24) and The Postcolonial Critic (104). One of the most accessible and helpful articulations of this term may be found in John Caputo’s Deconstruction In a Nutshell (32–44). The most concise definition of deconstruction is “affirmation,” which is one that I find compelling. See Derrida’s Writing and Difference (292). 2. See Peter Collier and David Horowitz’s The Anti Chomsky Reader (2004), which is a hodgepodge of shoddy scholarship and hyperbolic rhetorical claims, purporting “to explore the dark corners” of Chomsky’s mind. Also see Chomsky’s remarks on the highly personal nature of the attacks on him by Dershowitz (Chronicles of Dissent 347–348). 3. This is the term that Chomsky prefers to the more sensible and formerly employed term “rational” linguistics. Chomsky asserts that language is a “biological organ . . . [that is] roughly analogous to the visual system” (The Architecture of Language 1–3). See Chomsky’s Beyond Explanatory Adequacy, where he describes what he calls “biolinguistics” or the “biolinguistic approach” (1). Also, see McGilvray’s discussion of the Chomskyan term “biolinguistics” which has by now displaced the older term “rational” linguistics for obvious rhetorical reasons, not scientific ones (“Introduction” 4). 4. For comparable responses to Chomsky, see William Lycan’s and Jeffery Poland’s interesting essays recently published in Louis M. Anthony and Norbert Hornstein’s Chomsky and His Critics (2003). Lycan rightly states that “we should resist Chomsky’s suggestion that ‘the domain of the “physical” is nothing other than what we come more or less to understand, and hope to assimilate to the core natural sciences in some way,’ for that characterization is entirely epistemic, couched in terms of propositional attitudes and whatever ‘physical’ was supposed to mean


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exactly, it has always been an ontological term rather than an epistemic one” (15). Lycan continues, “It is clear that there are metaphysical conceptions of mind that, even for Chomksy, are too non- or anti-physical on any permissible reading of ‘physical.’ He holds, after all, that human thought and action are properties of organized matter, which doctrine taken in any sense of ‘matter’ has some substantive metaphysical implications” (16). Lycan further notes the absence of any consideration of questions of temporality in Chomsky (23–24). Jeffrey Poland similarly states, “Chomsky simply closes the door on the idea that philosophy has any special contribution to make to scientific inquiry into nature” (33). An important point that Poland makes is that “the main thrust of [Chomsky’s] argument [is that] physicalist theses lack definite content, have no truth value, and are not empirical hypotheses. What remains are the ‘spirit of physicalism’ (which Chomsky admirably exemplifies), a modest role in inquiry for physicalist principles, and at least the hope of their having human significance (e.g., by contributing to the construction of a system which exhibits physicalist unity” (44). Poland does not articulate the broader implications of what he calls “the spirit of physicalism” that Chomsky exemplifies, although this is obviously a question of some importance. In fact, for Heidegger, the very fate of the West may hinge upon it (Introduction to Metaphysics 83). Chomsky has certainly not proven his case that “physicalist” theses lack content, nor has he closed the door on the idea that philosophy has no special contribution to make to our understanding of human language. Instead he has taken yet another philosophical and/or “physicalist” stance, indeed a highly “spirited” one. Poland goes on to state that, “although there is a call for a system exhibiting physicalist unification, there is no guarantee that such a system will be constructed [Poland’s emphasis]” (45). It is precisely the question of the call that is obliterated in Chomsky’s system. Chomsky responds to Lycan’s and Poland’s respective critiques by reiterating his already well-known hypotheses and asserting that he does not “see the relevance” of their views (“Replies” 259). 5. When pressed to clarify if he believes that he is finally a scientist or a philosopher, Chomsky states that he “take[s] no stand” on the question, which he rejects as “too vague” (Reflections on Language 224). In effect, Chomsky decides not to decide about his status as a philosopher, or he makes an ontological decision to reject the very question, even as he reduces philosophical inquiry to what he calls “the metaphysical thesis [my emphasis]” (Rules and Representations 19). 6. It is always possible for the question to degenerate into the thesis of the question, or a homiletic of the question. Arguably, this is what happens in Derrida’s own essay “Marx & Sons,” published in Michael Sprinker’s Ghostly Demarcations (1999), when he invokes an unpersuasive teacherly rhetoric. See my essays, “Deconstruction and Zionism” and “The Figure of Jerusalem,” in Derrida, Africa, and the Middle East.


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7. In Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger asks, “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing? That is the question. Presumably it is no arbitrary question. ‘Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?’—this is obviously the first of all questions” (1). 8. In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes distinguishes between three types of ideas: “Among my ideas, some appear to me to be innate, some to be adventitious, and others invented to have been invented by me” (26). In the original French text, the term “adventitious” includes the descriptive phrase “foreign to me and coming from the outside” (26). Chomsky’s virtually-innate idea is also “foreign” and “coming from the outside” in two different senses: First, it must be activated upon the occasion of experience, and second, it was originally an ordinary idea in Locke’s sense of the term (i.e., a trace of the real) before it mutated into an autonomous idea that haunts the mind. At least, this is what Chomsky asserts in what he himself describes as an “evolutionary fairy tale” (The Architecture of Language 4). 9. For instance, in a 1998 publication, Chomsky states, “I am assuming here the basic framework of Chomsky (1955–6), though of course there have been radical changes since” (Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework 3). 10. Chomsky acknowledges that what he calls, “the realist position” is taken for granted in his early works (The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory 37). Hilary Putnam in his “John Locke Lectures, 1976” aptly referred to the Machiavellian dimension of Chomsky’s views as “Chomskian realism,” and this term is later reiterated by Chomsky himself (Rules and Representations 18). Chomsky comments as follows, “Putnam regards explanation as ‘interest-relative’; [for] the best explanation depends on our interests and purposes, and will vary as these do. There is no absolute ‘best explanation.” (Rules and Representations 18). Putnam obviously hits the nail on the head, yet Chomsky blithely dismisses Putnam’s critique on the grounds that Putnam “is offering a substantive metaphysical thesis” or “a strong version of a bifurcation thesis [my emphasis]” (19). Or, later in the same book, Chomsky will state that Putnam takes “illegitimate recourse to a bifurcation thesis” (258). By “bifurcation thesis” Chomsky means that Putnam’s argument is a metaphysical one, whereas his own theory of language is not. 11. Echoing a common Chomskyan theme, Neil Smith writes, “We do not doubt that rats are intellectually incapable of dealing with notions like prime numbers, and we should not doubt that our genetically determined make-up has resulted in an organism which is similarly incapable of understanding some domains” (“Foreword” ix). Chomsky and his followers seem to take an almost infantile delight in comparing human beings to befuddled rats, possibly for the shock value of the comparison. 12. In Being and Time (1927), Heidegger describes “care” as fundamental modality of Dasein [or Being-There]: “since ‘Care’ first shaped this creature [man or the human being], she shall possess it as long as it lives” (242).


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13.

14.

15.

16.

Heidegger states that, “the world as world is disclosed first and foremost by anxiety, as a mode of state-of-mind” (232). It is worth comparing Chomsky’s views in this case with Heidegger’s, who in The Principle of Reason (1991), states, “Contemporary humanity constantly hears the fundamental principle of reason inasmuch as it becomes increasingly slavish to this principle. But supposing that this slavishness is not the only or the genuine manner of hearing, then we must yet once more ask the question: do we hear the demand [or “call”] of the principle of reason?” (124). Derrida explicates Heidegger’s views on the principle of reason in an essay entitled “The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyes of Its Pupils,” Eyes of the University, differentiating competence from “rendering reason” in the form of giving an account of reason to the other. Heidegger and Derrida both explore the principle of reason with respect to the question of responsibility and/or responding to the other: “[T]he principle of reason also holds that reason must be rendered,” Derrida states. “But what does ‘render’ mean with respect to reason? Could reason be something that gives rise to exchange, circulation, borrowing, debt, donation, restitution? But in that case, who would be responsible for that debt or duty, and to whom?” (Eyes of the University 136). In contrast, Chomsky is oblivious to this dimension of the principle of reason, as he maintains a merely representational—and therefore irresponsible—concept of rationality. Heidegger discusses the phenomenological concept of the vapor at length in his Introduction to Metaphysics (38, 42, 62–63). His reading is posed in response to Nietzsche’s rejection of the Kantian doctrine of the thingin-itself as “not in the least worth striving for.” Also, see Heidegger’s Nietzsche, Volume One (69–70). See Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals (157), Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics (128), Derrida’s The Animal That Therefore I Am (70–71), and Caputo’s Deconstruction In a Nutshell 76–77. The best available commentary on Meno is still Jacob Klein’s A Commentary on Plato’s Meno (1965). In this study, Klein illustrates how questions of knowledge are inextricably bound up with matters of temporality. Klein states that, “Plato’s goal is knowledge (episteme). Should this goal be attained that which was formerly opined (doxaston) and merely remembered will stand firmly and stably on its ground: it will be something ‘known’ (episteton). The known by itself will be removed from the vicissitudes of time” (248). Klein further comments, “We shall know the clear truth (to saphes) . . . when, and only when, we shall have attempted to find what excellence all by itself is before searching out the way it might accrue to men. It is doubtful whether Meno understands the simplicity and the immensity of the task set before him [my emphasis]” (256). Chomsky often cites Humboldt although he tends to ignore the phenomenological hermeneutic tradition that was inaugurated by Humboldt in


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Germany, including the contributions of important language philosophers such as Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, Edmund Husserl, Roman Ingarden, Martin Heidegger, Rudolf Bultmann, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jurgen Habermas, and Fredric Jameson. It is unlikely that Chomsky’s exclusion of these language theorists is incidental, but due to the obvious challenges that they pose for his own philosophy of language. However, in the case of the phenomenological hermeneutic tradition, Chomsky does not unambiguously label these thinkers as “frauds” and “charlatans” as he does in the case of notable French poststructuralists, although he does assert that the word “hermeneutics” is incomprehensible to him (Understanding Power 230). 17. In Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures, one will find the following acknowledgement: “This work was supported in part by the U.S.A. Army (Signal Corps), the Air Force (Office of Scientific Research, Air Research and Development Command), and the Navy (Office of Naval Research); and in part by the National Science Foundation and the Eastman Kodak Corporation” (SS 7). In Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, one similarly finds the acknowledgment that this book was “supported by U.S. Army Signal Corps, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Office of Naval Research” (7). Also, in Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar, one finds the following acknowledgment: “This work was supported in part by the U.S. Air Force [ESD Contract AF19(628)2487] and the National Institutes of Health (Grant MH-12290–01” (11). In Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, one finds the acknowledgment that the research presented “is made possible . . . by the JOINT SERVICES ELECTRONIC PROGRAMS (U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Air Force) under Contract No. DA 36–039-AMC 03200(E); additional support was received from U.S. Air Force (Electronic Systems Division under Contract AF19(628)-2487), the National Science Foundation (Grant GP-2495), the National Institutes of Health (Grant MH-04737–04) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NsG-496)” (iv). 18. For further discussion of this question, see my chapter “Realism Without Realism,” in Derrida, Africa, and the Middle East. Also, see Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political (1976) and Derrida’s The Politics of Friendship (1997). 19. Chomsky’s response to his early critics on this account is revealing. He greets such criticisms with hyperbolic denial, asserting that his critics “fail” to understand him and that their arguments are “without force”, but Chomsky seldom offers any new argument to counter their criticisms. For instance, in his response to Reichling, Chomsky states, “Quite a few commentators have assumed that recent work in generative grammar is somehow an outgrowth of an interest in the use of computers for one purpose or another, or that it has some other engineering motivations. . . . [each of which Chomsky leaves unspecified in


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the preface to yet another book that is funded by the U.S. military]. This view is incomprehensible to me, and it is, in any event, entirely false [my emphasis]” (Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar 9). Chomsky seems to assume that if he states vehemently enough that the views of his critics are “entirely false” or “absolutely mistaken” that he need not consider their actual arguments. His response to Reichling is typically hyperbolic in its disavowal of the not unreasonable concerns raised. Chomsky complains of his “complete lack of comprehension of the goals, concerns, and specific content of the work he was discussing [my emphasis]” (9). Chomsky will not address Riechling’s criticisms, for in his view, they “do not merit comment” (9). Chomsky’s criticisms of Riechling are comparable to his more recent statements that he will not bother to offer any criticism of deconstructive views, which also do not merit his time and attention. 20. In fairness to Chomsky, it should be noted that he does sometimes acknowledge that it is not his intent to undermine humanistic paradigms of language and literary study. For instance, Chomsky states, “Some might argue, perhaps along Vicoesque lines, that we can do still better in the ‘human sciences’ by pursuing a different path. I do not mean to disparage such possibilities. It is not unlikely, for example, that literature will forever give far deeper insight into what is sometimes called ‘the full human person’ than any mode of scientific inquiry can hope to do. But I am interested here in a different question” (Rules and Representations 9). Statements like these perpetuate the false notion that Chomsky is not himself writing “literature” or philosophy but quasiobjective scientific analyses of human language. When Chomsky states that it is finally “explanatory power” that matters in any valid theory of language, he is already pursuing a “Vicoesque” path in spite of his desire to foster the illusion that he is performing research that is strictly “scientific.” For instance, in the same book in which Chomsky claims that he is performing hard science, he states, “An inquiry into universal grammar in the sense of the term I am adopting here falls within what [David] Hume called ‘moral philosophy,’ that is ‘the science of human nature,’ which is concerned with ‘the secret springs and principles, by which the human mind is actuated in its operations,’ and most importantly, those ‘parts of [our] knowledge that are derived ‘from the original hand of nature’ (Rules and Representations 30). Even as Chomsky claims that he is performing research in “moral philosophy,” he will state that the properties of human language “are primarily a problem for biology and the brain sciences” (The Minimalist Program 2). For instance, Chomsky will assert that, “psychology is [a] part of human biology” (Reflections on Language 38). 21. These two examples are taken from later works that reiterate the unchanging foundations of Chomsky’s mechanistic paradigm of human language.


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1. The high esteem with which Chomsky is held sometimes leads his admirers into quandaries, as when James McGilvray states in the space of a couple of pages: “It is hardly surprising that Chomsky has changed his linguistic theories, sometimes in major ways. . . .” (Chomsky 11); and then, only two pages later, McGilvray states, “Unlike one of his heroes, Bertrand Russell, Chomsky has never undertaken a radical change of course in his science, politics, or his philosophical framework [my emphasis]” (13). 2. One noteworthy example of the exaggerated nature of Chomsky’s revolutionary claims is as follows: “The study of language, for thousands of years, has assumed that you at least have to make use of sound-meaning relations to discover the properties of a language.” All research assumes that. But this assumption is just what we are now questioning” (The Architecture of Language 20). Chomsky fails to consider that philosophers such as Aristotle have understood the sense of touch to be the master sense, whereas the other four senses have generally been construed as variants upon touching. But, if this is so, how can it be true that “for thousands of years” language philosophers have neglected relations between touch and meaning? To invoke sound-meaning relations in Aristotle is already to invoke touch-meaning relations. 3. See Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics (38) and Nietzsche, Volume One (64–65). 4. According to Chomsky, decisions and/or judgments are made as a result of “multiple modular systems interfacing with one another” (Cartesian Linguistics 43). He attempts to argue on scientific grounds that it will most likely be “forever out of our reach” to know how decisions are made (43–44). What Derrida calls “the ordeal of undecidability” or “Hamlet’s dilemma” is herein transformed into a truism unworthy of further comment. 5. John Searle remarks that Chomsky’s “most sympathetic commentators have been so dazzled by the results in syntax that they have not noted how much of the theory runs counter to quite ordinary, plausible, and common-sense assumptions about human language” (“Chomsky’s Revolution in Linguistics” 19). Searle finds Chomsky’s views of language to be idiosyncratic in the extreme. “Indeed,” Searle states, “Chomsky sometimes writes as if sentences were only incidentally used to talk with” [New York Review of Books, vol. XVIII, no. 12, June 29, 1972: 16–24] (23). 6. It is worth noting, in this connection, the Nietzschean critique of energeia as a material force or power, rather than a merely absent structure concealed within the body (Heidegger Nietzsche, Volume One 64). Derrida similarly observes that what he calls spirit is “anything but immaterial” (“Marx & Sons” 267). These respective views of energeia sharply contrast with Chomsky’s transcendentalist views.


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7. In his book-length study of Chomsky entitled The State of the Art [The Hague/Paris: Mouton, 1968], Charles F. Hockett makes a similar observation, appreciatively citing Leonard Bloomsfield’s view that, “ ‘The use of numbers is characteristic of speech-activity at its best. Who would want to live in a world of pure mathematics? Mathematics is merely the best that language can do.” (118). 8. See Carl Schmitt’s Concept of the Political (49). Also see George Schwab’s “Enemy or Foe: A Conflict of Modern Politics” (199). 9. McGinn observes, “Either ‘cognize’ means ‘know,’ in which case it is no improvement on the original strong claim; or it does not mean ‘know,’ in which case it cannot be glossed over as ‘tacit knowledge’ (unless ‘tacit’ is intended as a private adjective!)” (“Book Review: Rules and Representations” [Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 77, No. 5, May 1981: 288–298]: 290). Stephen P. Stich similarly asks, “having agreed that a linguistic theory is a theory about certain predispositions of the child, what does it add to say the child knows the theory? As far as I can see, the answer is: nothing. The added assumption of implicit knowledge explains nothing left unexplained by the theory sans assumption” (“What Every Speaker Knows” [Philosophical Review, vol. 80, no. 4, Whole Number 436, October 1971: 476–496]: 486). 10. Searle argues that Descartes himself never suggested that there was any such thing as an “unconscious knowledge.” Searle makes the following observation: “Descartes did indeed claim that we have innate ideas, such as the idea of a triangle or the idea of perfection or the idea of God. But I know of no passage in Descartes to suggest that he thought the syntax of natural languages was innate. Quite the contrary, Descartes appears to have thought that language was arbitrary; he thought that we arbitrarily attach words to our ideas. Concepts for Descartes are innate, whereas language is arbitrary and acquired. Furthermore, Descartes does not allow for the possibility of an unconscious knowledge, a notion that is crucial to Chomsky’s system [Searle’s emphasis]” (20). Chomsky does not engage Searle’s criticisms but simply states that his views are false (Rules and Representations 266).

2 The Ungiven-Given 1. The article in question was so obviously offensive and unfair that I wondered if it was really written by Chomsky. Also, as it had circulated on the Internet, it seemed possible to me that it might have been a hoax. Hence, I wrote an e-mail to Chomsky asking him to verify that he was indeed the author of this text. He confirmed that it was in an e-mail to me dated February 25, 2009. 2. McGilvray actually uses the initials “RR” in reference to what he calls a “Rational Romantic” approach to linguistics. I am modifying his terminology to “RI” (or “Rational Internalist”); however, it goes without saying


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that a “Rational Internalist” is also a “Rational Romantic,” or a language theorist who dwells in “the land of romance,” as Derrida puts it in his essay on Cartesian pedagogy, entitled “If There Is Cause to Translate II.” Although Derrida comments in this essay upon the writings of Descartes, his observations are certainly applicable to the Chomskyan notion of a “conscious knowledge” of language. Derrida states, “Descartes finishes by proposing what I will call a possible impossible language, the possibility of an impossible language: ‘I [Descartes] maintain that this language is possible. . . . But I do not ever hope to see it in use. That would require great changes in the order of things—the whole world would need to become nothing but an earthly paradise, which is worth proposing only in the land of romance [Derrida’s emphasis].” (Eyes of the University 32). Like Descartes’ “possible impossible” language, Chomsky’s notion of universal grammar is also a romantic one although without ceasing to be rational. 3. Chomsky’s review of Skinner’s book, Verbal Behavior, which first appeared in 1959, has gained a quasi-legendary status among Chomskyan linguists as the one text that conclusively demonstrated the implausibly of behaviorism. I am suggesting here that Chomsky and his supporters beat the dead horse of Skinnerian behaviorism in order to dodge critical debate with contemporary theorists of language like Derrida and Foucault. Chomsky’s review, entitled “A Review of B.F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior,” can be found in Leon A. Jakobvits and Murray S. Miron’s Readings in the Psychology of Language (1967). 4. Derrida has responded to attacks such as Chomsky’s in the following terms: “We can easily see on which side obscurantism and nihilism are lurking when on occasion great professors or the representatives of prestigious institutions lose all sense of proportion and control; on such occasions they forget the principles that they claim to defend in their work and suddenly begin to heap insults, to say whatever comes into their heads on texts that they obviously have never opened or that they have encountered through a mediocre journalism that in other circumstances they would pretend to scorn” (Eyes of the University 147). 5. In his turn, Derrida has stated that, “It is not a criticism of [Chomsky’s] works to wish for a more fully developed political thought within them, especially with regard to the history, structure, and ‘logic’ of the concept of sovereignty” (Rogues 102). The following chapter takes its point of departure from Derrida’s remarks regarding the lack of a “fully developed political thought [in Chomsky] with regard to the concept of sovereignty.” In contrast to Chomsky’s argument that ethics are an inaccessible organ in the brain, Derrida shows how whatever it is that comes to be excluded by reason, or by the exercise of sovereignty, will haunt the structure that excludes it. This means that, for Derrida, Chomsky is not sufficiently cognizant of the illogical logic that is secretly at work in all sovereign claims. When Derrida states that Chomsky lacks a theory of sovereignty, he therefore suggests that Chomsky is unaware of how unreasonable reason itself can be.


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6. In Ear of the Other, Derrida states his view in opposition to Heidegger on this question (115–116). 7. Fanon states, “It so happens that when the native hears a speech about Western culture he pulls out his knife—or at least he makes sure it is within reach. The violence with which the supremacy of white values is affirmed and the aggressiveness which has permeated the victory of these values over the ways of life and of thought of the native mean that, in revenge, the native laughs in mockery when Western values are mentioned in front of him . . . . [T]he colonized masses mock at these very values, insult them, and vomit them up” (The Wretched of the Earth 43). 8. See, for instance, Derrida’s comments on Heidegger’s notion of justice, or “jointedness” (from the Greek word dike), in Deconstruction in a Nutshell (17) and Specters of Marx (23–28). 9. See Derrida’s discussion of Hobbes on this question in The Beast and the Sovereign 27–28). 10. In his reading of Nietzsche on the topic of vengeance, Heidegger asks, “How can [humanity] take the earth as earth into its protection, so long as it degrades the earthly, so long as the spirit of revenge determines its reflection? If it is a matter of rescuing the earth as earth, then the spirit of revenge will have to vanish beforehand. Thus for Zarathustra redemption from revenge is the bridge to the highest hope” (Nietzsche, Volume Two 225).

3 Locke’s “Misreading” of Descartes and Other Fairy Tales 1. To Locke’s observation, Fraser comments, “But is the conditional necessity which constrains an educated man to accept the law of gravitation of the same sort as the absolute intellectual necessity which constrains an educated man to accept the abstract principle of non-contradiction or of causality” (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 55 n. 4). Fraser’s comment is probably the source for Chomsky’s repeated remark that his own innate hypothesis is somehow akin to the Newtonian theory of gravity; that is, Chomsky suggests that his own innate hypothesis, like Newtonian gravity, is a “conditional necessity” rather than “an absolute necessity.” As a matter of fact, because Chomsky’s doctrine of the occulted object depicts this weird spook as an actual substance, it is more akin to the doctrine of non-contradiction, than it is to Newton’s theory of gravity, for the former asserts that something that is is not nothing at all. The same can be said for what Fraser calls “the slumbering potentialities of man’s spiritual being,” which is an articulated ontology with obvious philosophical consequences. Locke states about the principle of non-contradiction: “it will be some years after, perhaps, before the same child will assent to this [articulated] proposition, ‘That it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be.” (57). The same can obviously be said for the hypothesis of universal grammar.


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2. My reading here reiterates Heidegger’s view that the concept of essence always already implies nothingness, and that Descartes was certainly aware of this fact. As stated previously, Heidegger targets post-Cartesian thinkers for deconstructive analysis more so than Descartes himself, who was certainly aware of his debt to Scholasticism and Aristotle. 3. Lycan cites Chomsky to this effect from an unpublished manuscript: “Ontological questions are generally beside the point, hardly more than a form of harassment” (Lycan “Chomsky on The Mind-Body Problem” 11). Also, in New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind, Chomsky similarly asserts that, “to raise [metaphysical questions] “is pointless, scarcely more than a form of harassment of emerging disciplines” (77). 4. In Language and Learning, Chomsky mentions in passing that the doctrine of the blank slate dates as far back as Aristotle (75). However, I am aware of no references in his writings to Plato’s doctrine of the khora, or to medieval Islamic philosophers who were influenced by Aristotle, or even to Maimonides. 5. In The Architecture of Language (2000), Chomsky adds the following gloss on the evolutionary theory of language’s origins: “Let me go back to that fairy tale which I mentioned at the outset about the origin of language. Let us imagine a higher primate wandering around. It lacks the language organ but it has something like our brain and other organs, including sensorimotor systems sufficiently close to ours, and also a conceptual-intentional system sufficiently close to ours so that it can think about the world more or less the way we do insofar as that is possible without language. But it doesn’t have language and cannot articulate such thoughts—even to itself. Suppose some random event causes a language faculty to be installed in that primate and this language faculty is capable of providing an infinity of expressions that can be accessed by the already existing performance systems. . . . So the sensorimotor system and the conceptual-intentional system have to be able to access, to ‘read’ the expressions; otherwise the systems wouldn’t even know it is there. In fact, it is conceivable, it is an empirical possibility, though extremely unlikely, that higher primates, say gorillas, or whatever, actually have something like a human language faculty but they just have no access to it. So, too bad, the legibility conditions are not satisfied. Conceivably, what changed in humans is that the language faculty came to meet the legibility conditions” (18). 6. Chomsky reinforces the Aristotelian notion of man as rational animal in a metaphysical sense and that animals are mere machines. For instance, he states that, “There is no serious reason today to challenge the Cartesian view that the ability to use linguistic signs to express freely-formed thoughts marks ‘the true distinction between man and animal’ or machine, whether by ‘machine’ we mean the automata that captured the imagination of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, or those that are providing a stimulus to thought and imagination today”


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(New Horizons 3). I have refrained from discussing in great detail the consequences of Chomsky’s views for animals, not because of the insignificance of this theme but because of its enormity; that is, to adequately address the ethical problems inherent in Chomsky’s concept of the animal is a topic for another book-length study. Derrida’s important book The Animal That Therefore I Am (2008) powerfully rebukes Cartesian and neo-Cartesian notions of the animal. In passing, I note the abyssal ignorance of Chomsky with respect to phenomenological hermeneutic inquiry into the concept of man as “rational animal” and the disastrous implications for animals of the hasty Cartesian concept of the human (see Derrida’s The Animal That Therefore I Am 70–71). For instance, Chomsky states, “To say that ‘language is not innate’ is to say that there is no difference between my granddaughter, a rock, and a rabbit” (The Architecture of Language 50). Heidegger has exhaustively explored the very distinctions made by Chomsky in his lectures from 1929–1930, later published as The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (1995), where he describes man as “world-forming,” the animal as “poor-in-world,” and the stone is “without-world.” In other words, one hardly needs a concept of innate language to make theoretical distinctions between human beings, animals, and rocks. Heidegger’s distinction is explored in some detail by Giorgio Agamben in The Open: Man and Animal (2004) and briefly in Derrida’s “I don’t know why we are doing this” from The Animal That Therefore I Am (141–160).

4 Identity Politics and the Pedagogy of Competence 1. See my essay “The Double Gesture” in Derrida, Africa, and the Middle East (107–128). For a concise and accessible overview of Derrida’s views regarding the university, see John Caputo’s chapter “The Right to Philosophy” in his Deconstruction in a Nutshell (New York: Fordham University Press, 1997): 49–70. The most important texts by Derrida on this question may be found in his two volumes, Who’s Afraid of Philosophy: The Right to Philosophy 1 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002) and Eyes of the University: The Right to Philosophy 2 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004). Also, see Derrida’s The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1988). 2. In his often cited “Introduction” to Orientalism, Edward W. Said affirms Antonio Gramsci’s notion of the historical trace from Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. In opposition to Chomsky, who urges his students to strive to obtain the unbiased perspective of the Martian scientist, Said insisted that those who teach must begin by acknowledging their own “personal investment” in whatever it is they are teaching. This is why my own study of Chomsky begins with a frank acknowledgment of the fact that this book is a response to my own situation as a professor in the United States.


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3.

4. 5.

6.

In this sense, every course that is taught in the humanities—including linguistic courses—is always already taught from a perspective that is historical, personal, and human. To cite Gramsci, “The starting point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and ‘knowing thyself ’ as a product of the historical process to date, which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory” (Prison Notebooks 324). For Chomsky, by way of contrast, the starting point is an imaginary and extraterrestrial vantage point that is not available to any of us. Chomsky asserts, “Let’s imagine an observer looking at us without any preconceptions [my emphasis]” (Chomsky on Democracy and Education 62). But, the fact that we must imagine this perspective necessarily implies that our imaginations have already been saturated with empircal traces of the real. The deductive method that is championed by Chomsky is already inductive, as he implicitly acknowledges when he encourages his students to use their imagination in order to arrive at a truly scientific understanding of language. Kant, for instance, asserted that, “The Negroes of Africa have by nature no feeling that arises above the trifling. Mr. Hume challenges anyone to cite a single instance in which a Negro has shown talents. . . . The blacks are very vain but in the Negro’s way, and so talkative that they must be driven apart from each other with thrashings” (“The Differences Between the Races” 638). See Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky’s Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (44–54). See my chapters, “Arab-Jew” and “Deconstruction and Zionism” in Derrida, Africa, and the Middle East (2009). Also, see my essay, “Derrida and the Palestinian Question,” in Arena Journal, no. 20 (2002/03): 167–185. In many respects, Chomsky’s approach to political problems and religious fundamentalism in the state of Israel and the Occupied Territories is far more exemplary than Derrida’s. As I argue in Derrida, Africa, and the Middle East, Derrida’s evasive and often disappointing approach to such matters should not deter his critics from appreciating the obviously valuable dimensions of his work. To cite an alternative view, in a scathing critique of Derrida’s approach to the Palestinian question and Derrida’s ambivalent relation to Europe, John Docker even calls Derrida the “historical betrayer” of Edward Said and criticizes Derrida for his “desire to be housed within Europe’s continuing claims to universal superiority” (“The Question of Europe: Said and Derrida” 282). While Docker’s assessment is too harsh, in my view, there is no doubt that Derrida’s political views with regard to the Middle East are often disappointing. Also, see Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s article-length response to Specters of Marx, entitled “Ghostwriting” in Diacritics, vol. 25, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 65–84. The most important theorist on this question is Ella Shohat. See Shohat’s now classic essay, “Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its


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7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

12.

Jewish Victims,” (Social Text, 19/20, Fall 1988). Also see her more recent book, Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), and her essay “Diasporic Thinking, Between Babel and Babylon” in Christopher Wise and Paul James’s Being Arab: Arabism and the Politics of Recognition (Fitzroy, Australia: Arena Books, 2009). For instance, Derrida states, “I think the concept of secularization is a religious concept, it belongs to a tradition of religious culture. . . . Even the concept in which one defines the nation state, the modern nation state, the modern democracy, they are still tied to the idea of sovereignty which is a theological heritage, a religious heritage. . . . [W]e cannot simply be certain that our secularized concepts are simply secularized, and not sacred, so there is a sacredness . . . should we get rid of every sacredness? That’s another problem, I’m not sure. . . .” (Deconstruction Engaged 116–117). Derrida reiterates Rousseau’s concept of the religious in Specters of Marx, when he defines the religious as “not just one ideological phenomenon or phantomatic production among others . . . [but that which] gives to the production of the ghost or of the ideological phantasm its originary form or its paradigm of reference, its first ‘analogy.” (166). The single best text on this question is Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky’s Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (London: Pluto Press, 1999). Shahak and Mezvinksy state, “Jewish fundamentalism is not only capable of influencing conventional Israeli policies but could also substantially affect Israel’s nuclear policies” (5–6). Fatima Mernissi offers an accessible and informative discussion of the problematic of jahiliyya in her book, Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 1992). The Baha’i in Iran have historically undergone persecution due to their violation of the orthodox Islamic doctrine that Muhammad was the last prophet, or the “Seal of the Prophets.” See Michael M. J. Fischer and Mehdi Abedi’s discussion of the Baha’i of Iran in their chapter, “Social Change and the Mirrors of Tradition: Baha’is of Yazd,” Debating Muslims: Cultural Dialogues in Postmodernity and Tradition (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990): 222–250. Chomsky repeatedly asserts that he may accurately be construed as akin to the Old Testament prophets, who were true dissidents, as opposed to intellectuals like Derrida, whom he reviles as mere priests. For instance, see On Nature and Language (162–163), Chomsky on Democracy and Education (320), and Chomsky on Miseducation (18). However, there are many other places where this self-aggrandizing analogy is drawn; in fact, it is one of the most enduring themes of Chomsky’s political thought. Chomsky does sometimes address linguistic matters that are relevant to the Hebrew language, especially Modern Hebrew; however, his interest in Hebrew is strictly “scientific” and linguistic. It goes without saying that Chomsky would not share


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13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

the concerns of figures like Gershom Scholem regarding the possible dangers of Hebrew’s resurrection as a modern language. By way of contrast, Derrida is inspired by Scholem’s views on Modern Hebrew to reflect upon the autoimmune and even inhuman dimensions of language. See Derrida’s essay “The Eyes of Language: The Abyss and the Volcano” in Gil Anidjar’s Acts of Religion (New York: Routledge, 2002): 191–227. Most recently, Chomsky has proposed a “no-state” solution to many of the crises of the Middle East, which he blames upon the imposition of a Eurocentric nationalism in the region. See, for instance, his interesting dialogue with Gilbert Achcar on this topic in Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy (Boulder, CO and London: Paradigm Publishers, 2007): 128–129. I do not necessarily disagree with Chomsky’s view, in this regard. I merely suggest that no solution to regional crises in the Middle East will succeed that is not attentive to regional concepts and terminology that Chomsky would dismiss as naively religious. No doubt Chomsky would recoil from the suggestion that his own logocentric views about language are essentially religious. I discuss the likelihood that Abrahamic notions of the covenant and circumcision predate the religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in my chapter “Deconstruction and the African Trace,” in Derrida, Africa, and the Middle East (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009):167–188. The nyamakala are members of a social caste throughout Sahel West Africa that include basket-weavers, hunters, blacksmiths, griots, and others, who are said to be endowed with nyama (“spirit” or occult power). See my essay “Nyama and Heka: African Concepts of the Word,” Comparative Literature Studies 43 (2006): 19–38. See Derrida’s essay on the Cartesian “land of romance,” entitled “If There Is A Cause to Translate II: Descartes’ Romances, or The Economy of Words” in Eyes of The University (20–42). Here, Derrida shows “how the land of romance [in Descartes] suddenly becomes the land of the ‘true science.” (41). In his informative reading of Descartes’ linguistic views, which could quite easily be imagined as offering a concise summary of Derrida’s thoughts of Chomsky’s romantic rationalist notion of universal grammar, Derrida asserts that, “the roman, the land of romance [described by Descartes], would be the language of paradise before the fall: the myth of a pure language in illo tempore, purely natural or purely artificial. And these would amount to the same thing” (42). Applied to the linguistic theories of Chomsky, Derrida’s verdict on the hypothesis of universal grammar seems a foregone conclusion: Chomsky’s hypothesis harkens to an Edenic Realm, a romantic no-place from which humanity is forever banished. In a particularly offensive statement, Chomsky states, “I knew Lacan personally and I never understood a word he was talking about. . . . In fact,


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18.

19. 20. 21.

22. 23.

I have a rather strong feeling that he was playing jokes, that he was trying to see how crazy he could be and still get people to take him seriously” (The Architecture of Language 47). Chomsky further claims that Lacan was “a conscious charlatan, and was simply playing games with the Paris intellectual community to see how much absurdity he could produce and still be taken seriously. I mean that quite literally. I knew him” (77). Chomsky’s claim to know the secret intentions of the other is characteristic: he is a competent authority when it comes to the private thoughts of Lacan. It is worth asking, however, if there is not some other logic at work in these abusive descriptions of Lacan? In The Social Contract, Rousseau asks, “Yet, what in the last analysis is law? If we simply try to define it in terms of metaphysical ideas, we shall go on talking without reaching any understanding; and when we have said what a natural law is, we still shall not know what the law of the state is” (81). In effect, Rousseau suggests that the quest to define an interior notion of law for pragmatic purposes is futile; this is the sense in which Rousseau is a “realist” in his political philosophy. Chomsky typically ignores this aspect of Rousseau’s political thought. For more on this question, see my essay, “Nyama and Heka: African Concepts of the Word.” For instance, in his “Encomium to Helen,” Gorgias exonerates Helen because she was enchanted by the magical power of words, which he compares to a drug that stupefied her. In orthodox Christian doctrine, the second commandment of the Mosaic tablets is omitted as pertaining to the “old” law, which the new law is said to supersede. The second commandment is later restored by some Protestant Christians during the period of the Reformation. Derrida’s most important text, in this regard, is probably Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). It is remarkable that nearly all historical attempts to disseminate Arabic translations of the Gospels in Sahelian West Africa, which has enjoyed alphabetic literacy for at least a thousand years, have so dramatically failed. As I have argued in my essay “Writing Timbuktu: Park’s Hat/ Laing’s Hand,” the European fetish of the typographically reproduced book has failed to gain many converts in the Sahelian context (175– 200). While it was Mungo Park who first argued that a cheap printed version of the Gospels would win many converts to Protestantism, efforts to do so were widely viewed as having failed, even some fifty years after Park’s travelogue appeared. For instance, James Richardson noted in 1850 his disappointment with the Sahelian reception of the Gospels in typographic form: “I showed him [a West African man] the Arabic New Testament. He read a few sentences, and then laid the book aside. I offered it to him, but he refused to accept the inestimable present. He represents the feelings of all the Muslims of these


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countries. They have not even any curiosity to know the contents of the Gospel, much less the inclination to study or appreciate them. They remain in a state of immovable, absolute indifference. Even the beautiful manner in which the Arabic letters are printed scarcely excites their surprise” (Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa, vol. II: 21–22). I am suggesting here that Chomsky, like Park, Richardson, James Grey Jackson, Alexander Gordon Laing, Felix Dubois, and numerous other white Europeans, is oblivious to his own typographic biases. In John Beverley’s phrase, Chomsky succumbs to the “ideology of the literary” (Against Literature 1–2), or the delusion that the external universe may be comprehended as if it were a printed book that is replicated in the human interior. His overestimation of typography leads him to privilege this metaphor above all others as a means of describing universal grammar. 24. In Discourse on Method, Descartes famously states, “[A]fter spending several years studying thus in the book of the world and seeking to gain experience, I resolved one day to study also myself. . . .” (34). The suggestion that the universe is comparable to a printed book is a defining metaphor of the Enlightenment tradition, especially among Deists. This prominent theme of imperialist travel literature is perhaps best encapsulated in James Grey Jackson’s statement that, “The Universe is a kind of book, of which one has only read the first page, when one has only seen one’s own country” (An Account of Timbuktoo and Housa 1). 25. Chomsky repeatedly asserts that he cannot comprehend the uncontroversial term dialectics. I am suggesting here that this claim is a thinly veiled rhetorical strategy to distract attention from the dialectical nature of his own epistemology, despite Chomsky’s frequent disavowals. See, for instance, Chomsky’s Understanding Power (228–229) and Language and Problems of Knowledge (189–190). 26. The three-fold metaphysical distinction made by Plato in Timaeus is as follows: First, Plato describes the realm of Being, or the supersensible realm of eternal forms; second, he describes the realm of becoming, or the sensible realm of appearing; and, third, he describes the mysterious realm of the khoral receptacle, or the realm non-being. But, as Heidegger observes in his Introduction to Metaphysics, truth remains for Plato a matter of disclosure, or unconcealment, despite the fact that it is Plato who is chiefly responsible for the banishment of eternal forms to the realm of the supersensible (182). In this context, Heidegger’s point is significant for it shows that—in spite of Chomsky’s spurious references to what he calls “Plato’s Problem”—truth retains the character of an event-in-time, even for Plato. Hence, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida share a common critique of Platonism, which they differentiate from the actual writings of Plato himself. Similarly, Heidegger critiques the superficial reception of Descartes by those whom he inspires, while observing that Descartes himself remained


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27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

a metaphysician, who was indebted to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas (Being and Time 46). The “Law of Non-Contradiction” is as follows, “It is impossible for the same thing at the same time both to be-in and not to be-in the same thing in the same respect.” In his Metaphysics, Aristotle comments that, “No one can believe that the same thing both is and is-not. . . . It is impossible to believe that the same thing both is and is not at the same time. For if one were to fall into such an error, it would amount to the simultaneous holding of opposite beliefs with regard to that object. And that is why this principle is the ultimate root of all demonstration—it is its very nature to be the principle of all other axioms.” The Law of Non-Contradiction is usually credited to Parmenides, although Aristotle formalizes this founding principle of metaphysics. Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida also share in the view that one of the most significant problems in contemporary philosophical debate is the superficial manner in which the writings of figures like Plato, Aristotle, and others are approached. To cite Caputo in this regard, “a deconstructive reading is exceedingly close, fine-grained, meticulous, scholarly, and, above all, ‘responsible.” (Deconstruction in a Nutshell 77). In this sense, Chomsky’s hasty reading of Plato is anything but “deconstructive.” Derrida comments as follows, “Dream this umbilicus: [the state] has you by the ear. It is an ear, however, that dictates to you what you are writing at this moment when you write in the mode of what is called ‘taking notes.’ . . . This writing links you, like a leash in the form of an umbilical cord, to the paternal belly of the State. . . . How an umbilical cord can create a link to this cold monster that is a dead father or the State—this is what is uncanny” (Ear of the Other 35–36). In opposition to Heidegger who maintains belief in the intact kernel of some forgotten language, Derrida asserts that, “The ananke is that there is no intact kernel and there never has been. That’s what one wants to forget, and to forget that one has forgotten it” (The Ear of the Other 115). In response to Heidegger’s alleged conservatism, Derrida maintains, “if it is not a question of returning in the direction of the Greek language, it is at least necessary to presuppose something absolutely forgotten and always dissimulated in advance behind the Greek language—an archmother tongue, a grandmother tongue, a granny of the Greek language that would be absolutely virginal: an untouchable virgin granny” (114). I offer no comment here on the validity or invalidity of Derrida’s critique of Heidegger. I merely wish to draw attention to how Heidegger too fell prey to figurative storytelling about the khoral receptacle, at least in Derrida’s reading. To cite Walter J. Ong, with the rise of alphabetic letterpress print, “[w] ords are made out of units (types) which pre-exist as units before the words which they will constitute. Print suggests that words are things


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far more than [chirographic] writing” (Orality and Literacy 118). In this light, Chomsky may be construed as the language theorist who has interiorized the ideology of typographic literacy. This is so, for what Chomsky calls the “inner mental machinery” of universal grammar is described as mystic alphabetic letterpress print (On Nature and Language 45–46).


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Abedi, Mehdi, 176n Abraham and the Abrahamic, 61, 139–140, 150–154, 177n Achcar, Gilbert, 177n Achebe, Chinua, 81 Adamic Linguistics, 33, 41–42, 120 Adorno, Theodor W., 21 Adventitious Idea, 6, 12, 109–112, 165n Aesthetics, 28–29, 44 African Studies, 4 Agamben, Giorgio, 174n Aletheia, 24–25 American New Criticism, 37 Anarchy, 74–75, 87 Anaximander, 23, 85, 88–89 Anidjar, Gil, 177n Animals and language, 4, 18, 132–133, 173n Anthony, Louis M., 163n Anxiety, 9–10, 165n Aristotle, 23, 24, 40, 43, 49, 79, 118–119, 120, 169n, 173n, 180n Armillary sphere, 26–27 Ashkenazi Jews, 4, 136–137, 150 Augustine, 22 Barnes, Jonathan, 27, 52, 53, 58 Barth, Heinrich, 146 Beethoven, Wilhelm von, 21 Belief, 9, 11, 28, 58–60, 95–96 Beverley, John, 179n Bifurcation Thesis, 5, 112, 165n

Blank Slate, 11–12, 24–25, 117–119, 136 Bloomfield, Leonard, 170n Bodin, Jean, 97, 98 Boecke, Philip August, 23 Bultmann, Rudolph, 167n Caillie, Rene, 146 Calvin, Jean, 95–96 Cambridge School, 37 Caputo, John, 76, 77, 86, 155, 163n, 166n, 174n, 180n Categorical Imperative, 71–73, 102 Chomsky, William, 141–143 Circumcision, 61, 139–140, 177n Cogito ergo sum, 12 Collier, Peter, 163n Competency Assessment, 2–4, 13, 14–15, 16, 135–136, 156–157, 160–161, 166n Cosmic ray theory, 109, 127–129, 165n, 173n Cosmopolitan right, 104, 153 Dangerous supplement, 83–84 Darwin, Charles, 127 Decisionism, 9, 17–18, 53–54, 56–57, 76, 88, 169n Deconstruction, 163n Deism, 146 De Maistre, Joseph Marie, 71 Denham, Dixon, 146 Denham, Kristen, 16–17


I n de x


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Derrida, Jacques, 1, 4–5, 10, 11, 24, 30, 46, 51, 52, 59–60, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 73, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 94, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104, 107, 121, 135, 137, 138–139, 140, 142, 143, 145, 147, 151, 153–155, 160, 163n, 166n, 169n, 171n, 172n, 174n, 176n, 177n, 178n, 179n, 180n Dershowitz, Alan, 2, 163n Descartes, Rene, 7, 9, 11, 12, 18, 22, 30, 33, 34, 45, 68, 71, 75, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85, 107, 108–118, 123, 125, 146, 148, 153, 159, 165n, 170n, 171n, 173n, 177n, 179n Dialectics, 22, 26–27, 31, 65, 71 Différance, 24–25, 52, 90, 117 Dike, 85, 88, 90 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 23, 167n Docker, John, 175n Dubois, Felix, 179n Dummet, Michael, 52, 53 Einstein, Albert, 21 Elder, Fons, 63–64, 65, 69 Ethics, 28–29, 51–52, 70, 75–76, 81, 83–85, 88–89 Fanon, Frantz, 80–81, 172n Fischer, Michael, 176n Fodor, Jerry, 27 Forgetting of Being, 79 Foucault, Michel, 1, 63–64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 71, 73, 85–88, 135, 149– 150, 156, 171n Fraser, Alexander Campbell, 12, 109, 111, 112, 172n Freud, Sigmund, 21, 140 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 14, 23, 41, 44, 45, 52, 65, 71, 73, 74, 167n

Gardner, Howard, 21 Genius, 28 Goering, Herman, 22 Goethe, Johann von, 41 Gorgias, 144, 178n Gramsci, Antonio, 136, 174n Habermas, Jurgen, 167n Hartley, David, 65, 140 Hegel, Georg, 138 Heidegger, Martin, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 23, 24, 25, 26, 30, 41, 44, 45, 46, 51, 56, 57, 59, 65, 74, 75, 77, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 102, 115, 135, 151, 153, 163n, 164n, 165n, 166n, 167n, 169n, 172n, 173n, 174n, 179n, 180n Heraclitus, 11, 23 Hiring Practices, 18–19 Hobbes, Thomas, 54, 94, 97, 98, 99 Hockett, Charles, 53, 170n Hoffman, Barbara, 146 Hornstein, Norbert, 163n Horowitz, David, 2, 163n Hostipitality, 155–156 Huarte, Jean, 24 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 14, 23, 33, 41, 44, 67, 166n Hume, David, 65, 81, 114, 116, 136, 140, 168n, 174n Husserl, Edmund, 23, 45, 63, 65, 167n Huygens, Christiaan, 125 Ibn Sina, 118 Ibn Tufail, 118 Indoctrination, 14 Ingarden, Roman, 167n Innate hypothesis, 6 Innate ideas, 6, 12, 103, 107–108, 112 Inner form, 23, 41 Irony, 129–130 Islam, 138–139 Israel (Nation of), 5, 138


194 / index


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Jackson, James Grey, 179n Jahiliyya, 138, 176n Jakobvits, Leon A., 171n James, Paul, 176n Jameson, Fredric, 41, 167n Jewish Diaspora, 4 Joyce, James, 144 Kant, Immanuel, 7–8, 14, 22, 28, 30–31, 32–33, 35, 40, 48, 49, 53, 56, 65, 67, 70–73, 93, 94, 97, 99, 103, 104, 105, 107, 113–116, 122–123, 136, 153, 160, 174n Khora, 11–12, 52, 90, 117–118, 120–122, 145, 149–150 Kierkegaard, Soren, 61, 84, 85 Kissinger, Henry, 54 Klein, Jacob, 166n Kristeva, Julia, 1, 63, 64, 66, 140, 143 Lacan, Jacques, 63, 64, 73, 140, 143, 177n Laing, Alexander Gordon, 146, 179n Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste, 119 La Mettrie, Julien Offray, 26 Language Acquisition, 7, 28, 32–33, 47–49, 52 Law of Non-Contradiction, 180n Leiber, Justin, 21 Leibniz, Gottfried, 26, 33, 111, 125 Levinas, Immanuel, 85, 86, 89–90 Lobeck, Anne, 16–17 Locke, John, 6–7, 12, 65, 81, 102–103, 107–119, 136, 140, 159, 165n, 172n Logos, 23–24, 26–27, 37, 43, 83–84, 120, 132, 137, 142, 144, 149, 151 Lycan, William, 163n, 173n Machiavelli, Niccolo, 54, 95 Maimonides, 173n Martian Science, 4–5, 10, 18, 46, 103–104, 135, 148

McGilvray, James, 31, 32, 44, 64, 65, 67, 69, 70, 82, 125, 127–128, 130, 159, 163n, 169n, 170n McGinn, Colin, 53, 170n Mernissi, Fatima, 176n Messianicity, 60, 151–153 Mezvinksy, Norton, 175n, 176n Mind-brain, 13, 15, 26, 29, 48, 64, 120, 130, 145 Miron, Murray S., 171n Mood, 129–130 Morganthau, Hans, 54 Muhammad, Prophet, 95–96, 139, 176n Mumbo jumbo & gibberish, 144 Naming, 42–43 Nativism, 30–31, 64 Newton, Isaac, 123–126, 172n Nietzsche, Friedrich, 1, 11, 28, 47, 55, 56, 59, 77, 85, 102, 103, 129, 149, 166n, 169n, 172n, 179n, 180n Nyama, 144, 177n Nyamakala, 140, 177n Ong, Walter J., 180n Palestinian-Israeli conflict, 1, 54, 175n, 177n Papert, Seymour, 158–159 Park, Mungo, 144–145, 178n, 179n Parmenides, 23, 40, 180n Paul, 61, 95 Phallologocentricism, 83–84 Pharmakon, 24, 144 Phenomenological hermeneutics, 14, 22–23, 44, 62, 67, 166n Piaget, Jean, 21, 24, 67 Piattelli-Palmarini, Massimo, 21, 159 Pineal gland, 35


index / 195


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Plato, 11, 22, 23–24, 26–27, 32, 34, 37, 40, 43, 52, 90, 117–120, 148–149, 166n, 173n, 179n, 180n Plato’s Problem, 11, 52, 179n Poland, Jeffery, 163n Popkin, Richard, 56 Postcolonial Studies, 1, 80–82 Protestantism, 144–146, 178n, 179n Putnam, Hillary, 5, 157, 165n Question of the Question, 5, 59 Quine, W.V., 53 Racism, 68, 75, 80–81, 137, 174n Rats in a maze, 9, 76, 165n Realism, 53–54, 79, 88 Reichling, Anton, 18 Rhetoric, 15, 147 Richards, I.A., 18, 37, 47 Richardson, James, 178n, 179n Robinson, Ian, 18, 37–39 Rogue states, 98–101 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 86, 92–100, 136, 138, 143–144, 176n, 178n Ruah, 142, 144, 151 Rumsfeld, Donald, 58 Said, Edward W., 1, 81, 174n, 175n Sartre, Jean-Paul, 41 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 22, 33, 42, 65, 67, 156 Schielermacher, Friedrich, 23, 167n Schlegel, A.W., 24 Schmitt, Carl, 54, 167n, 170n Scholasticism, 79, 108, 115–116, 123, 125–126, 173n Scholem, Gershom, 177n Schwab, George, 170n Searle, John, 52, 169n, 170n Sephardic Jews, 4–5, 138, 175n September 11, 2001, 1 Shahak, Israel, 175n, 176n

Shakespeare, William, 21 Sharon, Ariel, 55 Shohat, Ella, 175n Skinner, B.F., 66, 80, 119, 171n Smith, Neil, 165n Socrates, 21, 24, 40 Solomon, King, 95–96 Sovereignty, 18, 70–71, 88, 92, 94, 97–100, 171n, 176n Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 77, 78, 81, 82, 86, 175n Stent, Gunter, 22 Stich, Stephen, 53, 170n Structural linguistics, 22 Syllepsis, 36 Technology, 59 Thing-in-itself, 40, 56 Thomism, 53, 54, 79, 125 Transubstantiation, 35 Unconscious Knowledge, 9, 11, 16, 28, 52, 57–58, 60–61, 112, 170n Ungiven-given, 13, 44–45, 61–62, 73, 87 United Nations, 105 Universal Grammar, 9, 11, 13, 21, 28, 32, 36–38, 46, 49–50, 52, 90, 97, 118–119, 180n U.S. Foreign Policy, 1–2, 16, 20, 76, 97, 104 U.S.-Iraq War, 1, 3, 18 Vapor, 11, 28, 110 Violence, 59, 73, 86, 88, 94, 102, 172n Wise, Christopher, 176n


196 / index

Zionism, 138, 143 Zodiac, 27 Zusage, 59–60, 96, 151–153


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