“The scientific community needs to defend itself against political interference, no matter how cleverly it is concealed. If science is to come first, we don’t have a choice as to whether to become politically active. If you’re inactive, you’re colluding in someone else’s politics.”
“I prefer to think of Chomsky as the conscience of America. Once you view him in that light, the mysteries begin to clear.”
“We’re all supposed to keep political activism locked up in a separate box, insulated by a firewall from science. Mindless activism on the one hand; tongue-tied science on the other – that’s been the tragic result.”
“The brain-equals-digital-computer theory marginalises anthropology. Computers don’t have a sense of humour, don’t understand irony or metaphor, don’t try to cheat or lie, don’t have sex, don’t pursue political agendas.”
“The thread connecting Khlebnikov via Jakobson to Lévi-Strauss and Chomsky was a certain conception of freedom — a yearning for necessity imposed not externally but from within.”
“Q: So a school of linguistics originating among Russian revolutionary anarchists ends up being sponsored by the US military-industrial establishment?
A: Yes. And to understand that trajectory is to decode a good chunk of the twentieth century.”
