Keeping the Rabble in Line: Interviews with David Barsamian

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Common Courage Press, 1994 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 319 pages
Barsamian, the founder of Alternative Radio, and Chomsky, allegedly the most quoted author in the modern era, have forged a symbiotic relationship that manages to distill Chomsky's political philosophies and make them accessible. Barsamian's historically grounded, well-informed and probing questions prompt Chomsky to deconstruct concepts of class, media and economics. Chomsky deftly addresses domestic and foreign conundrums including health care, the recent crime bill and NAFTA. While these interviews span a two-year period and end early in 1994, they remain provocative and timely, with Chomsky's insights on Haiti, Northern Ireland and the Middle East proving especially resonant. Ultimately, Rabble serves as a Chomsky primer that is without condescension, and the question-and-answer format shows him at his most concise and adroit. His criticism exposes democracies as business-run societies that render the general population isolated from politics, persuasively suggesting that we are on the verge of a social breakdown. What sets this work apart from other reluctant messiahs who simply intellectualize suffering, is that Barsamian and Chomsky discuss avenues for activism-strengthening unions, following grassroots organizations or simply reading between the lines. Together they act as a lens, enabling the reader to see what has been there, hidden in plain sight. FROM Publisher's Weekly -- Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Contents

Introduction
3
They Dont Even Know That They Know
33
Race
61
Copyright

7 other sections not shown

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About the author (1994)

Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on December 7, 1928. Son of a Russian emigrant who was a Hebrew scholar, Chomsky was exposed at a young age to the study of language and principles of grammar. During the 1940s, he began developing socialist political leanings through his encounters with the New York Jewish intellectual community. Chomsky received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied linguistics, mathematics, and philosophy. He conducted much of his research at Harvard University. In 1955, he began teaching at MIT, eventually holding the Ferrari P. Ward Chair of Modern Language and Linguistics. Today Chomsky is highly regarded as both one of America's most prominent linguists and most notorious social critics and political activists. His academic reputation began with the publication of Syntactic Structures in 1957. Within a decade, he became known as an outspoken intellectual opponent of the Vietnam War. Chomsky has written many books on the links between language, human creativity, and intelligence, including Language and Mind (1967) and Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use (1985). He also has written dozens of political analyses, including Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), Chronicles of Dissent (1992), and The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many (1993).

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