Sunday, July 14, 2002		Books

Undermining established truths
Shelley Walia

Powers and Prospects: Reflections on Human Nature and the Social Order
by Noam Chomsky. Pluto Press, London. Pages xii+244. £13.99.

AT the outset of Powers and Prospects, Chomsky emphasises, ‘These are hardly happy times for most of the world, apart from a privileged few in narrowing sectors. But it should also be a time of hope and even optimism.’ He demonstrates his detailed and comprehensive analysis of language and thought and its bearing on the writer’s intellectual responsibility towards the issue of overwhelming globalisation of market economy and the infringement of human rights.

The undermining of established truths comes at a time of intense intellectual crisis facilitating the examination of entrenched securities of meaning, truth, reference and intention as well as certain aspects of human nature and power. Contestation and radical doubt about the sincerity of political programmers, the working of free market economy and the notions of freedom and human rights, all stand questioned under such a political concern.

The problematic nature of all centred discourse is therefore examined in detail with reference to the current issues, particularly those of East Timor at the end of the book: ‘Quite apart from the critical importance of their struggle, the remarkable courage of the Timorese people, and the growing number of Indonesians who are supporting them and are demanding justice and freedom in their own country, should be an inspiration to all of those who recognise the urgent need to reverse the efforts to undermine fundamental human rights and functioning democracy that have taken such an ugly and ominous form in the past few years, and to move on to construct a social order in which a decent human being would want to live.’

The disruption brought about by Chomsky’s analysis is the main intention of his political philosophy that is probably the single most significant contribution from an intellectual to the final freedom and independence that East Timor enjoys today.

However, the paradox in Chomsky’s claim of not being a theorist and the assertion of his anti-postmodernist stand with the view that he deeply believes in human nature and the vision of future hope for mankind, is a new way of looking at his philosophy and its bearings on radical thinking. The knowledge of reality, the foundation of truth and error, the notion of misreading—which is the condition of all discourse—lead us towards understanding what the text tells us about that which we can and we cannot know.

I view Chomsky as a writer and a political activist who decentres the structures of power by showing that the growth of power is discontinuous and that the dismantling of hegemonic practices leads to the recuperation of lost or hidden manifestations of power and knowledge.

My interest in this book is generated from the working of the state machinery which shows that no dominant political order is likely to continue to exist long if it does not intensively take over the space of subjectivity itself.

Power succeeds by swaying us to crave and collude with it. All forms of production of any political or social order consist of an entire range of institutions, from church and family to culture and politics, which inculcate certain codes and disciplines within the dominated classes or subjects. It is in this way that political power plays a part in the formation of subjectivities.

The book is an interesting and provocative study which is rigorously and persuasively argued, and for which the evidence is marshalled from diverse fields such as discourse analysis, cultural studies, and literary and political theory.

Superpowers such as Britain or the USA often desire not simply to war with radical ideas but to expunge them completely from memory. Theory is therefore necessary for keeping these energies vigorous. I see Chomsky’s philosophical understanding of human nature, combined with critical perspectives on the politics of the state, as offering reasoned and consistent ground for a combative hopefulness in a civil society. I would argue that the understanding of this vision of the good society is essential for responding to the nature of Chomsky’s critique of state power and its subterranean agenda.

Chomsky’s influence on the contemporary critical and socio-cultural debates is significant in offering a theory of language, politics and cultural production. Political and sociological writings under his influence have a continuing relevance at a time of widespread retreat from Marxist positions among those on the postmodern left. The theory of cultural production and critique when applied to cultural criticism brings out the relevant issues of social and political domination and the subversion that takes place continuously to resist any fixed notions of cultural behaviour.

The defence of democratic culture is central to the understanding of this project of responding to imperial/fascist histories. Chomsky’s theoretical concerns deal with positions of ideology and aesthetics within a historical context. Such a view of history requires from Chomsky’s perspective a good deal of rethinking in the light of the unprecedented historical developments unsettling the world during the last century, which becomes important for the understanding of cultural change in terms of colonialism and the notion of a single linear narrative of any natural trajectory of history.

The book will be of interest to students of cultural, political and historical studies as well as literature.