Language And Politics by Noam Chomsky

Description

An enormous chronological collection of over 50 interviews conducted with Chomsky beginning with his from 1968 discussion of the US war on Vietnam and ending soon after the appearance of his best-selling book, 9-11, and the start of America’s “War On Terror.” Many of the pieces have never appeared in any other collection, some have never appeared in English, and more than one has been suppressed. The interviews add a personal dimension to the full breadth of Chomsky’s impressive written canon—equally covering his analysis in linguistics, philosophy, and politics. The discussions of the ideas and conclusions of Plato, Galileo, Descartes, Marx, Rocker, Freud, Skinner, and Keynes, among others, are balanced with insightful, principled critiques of the small cadre of international madmen who attempt to wrestle freedom and power away from us. This expanded edition contains 50 pages of brand new interviews. This updated, annotated, fully indexed new edition contains an extensive bibliography, as well as an introduction by editor Carlos Otero on the relationship between Chomsky’s language and politics.
“For those who know [Chomsky] only as media analyst and critic of foreign policy, this wide-ranging book offers glimpses of his studies on language, anarchist theory, and critiques of radical politics.”—NACLA
Carlos Otero, who also edited Chomsky’s Radical Priorities, teaches linguistics at the University of California at Los Angeles.

This collection is an impressive gathering of interviews collected from the early sixties to the present. In it, the Professor gives some of his best long-range insights on a number of topics, such as linguistics, philosophy, science, politics, the Middle East, the media, and education. This volume is not the place to start if you are new to Chomsky’s work, but it is an excellent supplement to his famous writings. As to the interviews themselves, they are mostly fascinating, Chomsky proves once again that he may be the most important intellectual of the latter half of the 20th century. My one complaint is that some of the interviews overlap, as he is asked to speak multiple times on a number of topics, he is asked what the conncection between his linguistic work and his political work is about twenty times for instance, as the title would suggest. Aside from that, this is an invaluable read.