In defence of Sociology...

[nino_savatte]

I did sociology A-level and thought it was pretty interesting subject and like someone else said it influeneced me more politically than my politics A-level. I asked one of my lectuerers if she had read any Chomsky she replied that she had read a little but found it difficult to understand. They let here teach then again she did teach the "research methods" portion of the course.

She doesn't sound like much of a sociology lecturer then. Unless she was reading his stuff on universal grammar.

 

[In Bloom]

I did sociology A-level and thought it was pretty interesting subject and like someone else said it influeneced me more politically than my politics A-level. I asked one of my lectuerers if she had read any Chomsky she replied that she had read a little but found it difficult to understand. They let here teach then again she did teach the "research methods" portion of the course.

Christ! Even I can understand Chomsky, its hardly rocket science (though his linguistic stuff is probably another matter altogether, I've never read any).

 

[Barking_Mad]

Despite you perception, when I did Open University study many students found Chomsky unintelligible. (This was in relation to his works on governments using the media to manipulate the masses).
The course forums on the OU computer conferencing system were inundated with students having problems with Chomsky.
I was most certainly not alone.
I would also comment some of the so called street wise people on U75 who ridicule me are totally stupid.

Chomsky hard to read? Ok, this explains so much about your reasoning.

 

[Barking_Mad]

To be honest I always think those who slate sociology/psychology/philosophy as whole subjects (and not just their methodologies) are a little scared of looking inward into themselves.

On the button Miss Sparrow, I was just about to tpye more or less the same thing. If you cant understand yourself to some degree, you can't honestly expect to understand others.

 

[tobyjug]

Chomsky hard to read? Ok, this explains so much about your reasoning.

I had no problem reading Chomsky, being able to understand what the fuck he was on about was quite another. (I am most certainly not a rarity in that respect)

 

[In Bloom]

I had no problem reading Chomsky, being able to understand what the fuck he was on about was quite another. (I am most certainly not a rarity in that respect)

What, exactly, did you have a problem with? I really don't see what's so hard to understand.

 

[Echo Beach]

Is it the linguistic stuff you're talking about Toby, or his political/IR analyses?

 

[nino_savatte]

I find Chomsky's books light reading compared to the likes of De Certeau or even some Foucault (I'm thinking of The Order of Things here).

 

[tobyjug]

What, exactly, did you have a problem with? I really don't see what's so hard to understand.

His use of esoteric language what what baffled most of the people on an OU course where some of Chomsky's thoughts on the government using the media to control the masses formed part of the study material. There was also some his musings on liguistics as well.

 

[nino_savatte]

I don't think I've ever encountered any "esoteric" language in any of Chomsky's political works. It all reads rather well.

 

[tobyjug]

I don't think I've ever encountered any "esoteric" language in any of Chomsky's political works. It all reads rather well.

I have to ask what you are used to reading and what is your occupation.
The people on the OU course having the serious difficulties with Chomsky, and the social science study material part of the course were all technologists or engineers.
He might as well have been writing in Mandarin Chinese for most of us.

 

[Japey]

Chomsky's style is too intellectual to ever become a hugely popular writer, but it's not that difficult to understand. What I find "annoying" about his style is that he finds it "difficult" to complete a sentence without putting "something" in "quotation marks".

 

[tobyjug]

Chomsky's style is too intellectual .

That is probably why Pol Pot bumped off all the intellectuals. Not that I condone it, but I can understand why.

 

[Japey]

ermm, I think I've just been misquoted.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I find Chomsky's books light reading compared to the likes of De Certeau or even some Foucault (I'm thinking of The Order of Things here).

"Discipline & Punish" gave me a bit of a headache, I have to admit, but once I worked out the basic premises I was fine.

 

[nino_savatte]

"Discipline & Punish" gave me a bit of a headache, I have to admit, but once I worked out the basic premises I was fine.

He does go on a bit, doesn't he? At the beginning of The Order of Things he goes on for ages and ages about nothing in particular. I agree, once you've established the basic premises the rest is easy.

 

[Echo Beach]

He does go on a bit, doesn't he? At the beginning of The Order of Things he goes on for ages and ages about nothing in particular. I agree, once you've established the basic premises the rest is easy.

Try Althusser, or (shudder), Derrida and Deleuze ...

 

[ViolentPanda]

Try Althusser, or (shudder), Derrida and Deleuze ...

I have, and that nudnik Felix Guattari. Now there's someone to make you take up chewing wasps...

 

[nino_savatte]

Try Althusser, or (shudder), Derrida and Deleuze ...

I've already read Althusser's Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses in Lenin, Philosophy and Other Essays. I didn't find it that difficult. Derrida on the other hand......

 

[Spion]

I have to ask what you are used to reading and what is your occupation.
The people on the OU course having the serious difficulties with Chomsky, and the social science study material part of the course were all technologists or engineers.
He might as well have been writing in Mandarin Chinese for most of us.

I expect social scientists would have difficulty with the esoteric language of engineering texts. Things have their own technical language and you have to learn a bit to get into it.

 

[phildwyer]

Try Althusser, or (shudder), Derrida and Deleuze ...

There's an important difference though. Derrida, in his early work anyway, is difficult because he *has* to be. You can't really expect to understand him without a working knowledge of the whole canon of Western philosophy, because that's what he's talking about. But Althusser, Deleuze, and many others, are difficult because they're trying to disguise the fact that they don't know what they're talking about. Among the postmodernists, I've always admired Foucault's style the most--a model of clarity, at least in French--but I think his conclusions are crap.

 

[articul8]

There's an important difference though. Derrida, in his early work anyway, is difficult because he *has* to be. You can't really expect to understand him without a working knowledge of the whole canon of Western philosophy, because that's what he's talking about. But Althusser, Deleuze, and many others, are difficult because they're trying to disguise the fact that they don't know what they're talking about. .

Isn't Deleuze's subject equally philosophically demanding - in the encounter it stages with Hume, Spinoza, Kant, Bergson, Nietzsche etc.? What makes the difficulty of his writing any less necessary than Derrida?

Don''t disagree in general about certain postmodernists - just think you're being a bit unfair to Deleuze. Now if you had said Baudrilliard...

 

[phildwyer]

Isn't Deleuze's subject equally philosophically demanding - in the encounter it stages with Hume, Spinoza, Kant, Bergson, Nietzsche etc.? What makes the difficulty of his writing any less necessary than Derrida?

Don''t disagree in general about certain postmodernists - just think you're being a bit unfair to Deleuze. Now if you had said Baudrilliard...

Well actually I've got a lot of time for early Baudrillard, in his Situationist phase--Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign is a classic, and highly relevant denunciation of the pomo condition. I admit that I don't like Deleuze because I think all psychoanalysis is bullshit, going back to Freud. I know that Deleuze sees himself as re-writing or correcting Freud, but he still engages with him as a serious thinker, and his work is still a response to Freud, which makes it crap of necessity in my view.

 

[Jonezy]

Could you please explain what's so crap about Freud and psychoanalysis?

Cheers

 

[Masseuse]

Yeah.... all psychoanalysis? Every school of it? Even the attempt to examine the individual psyche? Surely you have to engage with it on some level to come to the conclusion that it is crap?

While Freud is a problematic figure it is as unhelpful to dismiss him entirely as it is to unquestioningly accept his ideas.

Baudrillard is cool as fuck.

 

[phildwyer]

Could you please explain what's so crap about Freud and psychoanalysis?

Cheers

Therapeutically, the fact that it doesn't work. Theoretically, its merely a secularization of mythology, which was deemed necessary in the naively scientist nineteenth century, but is obsolete in postmodernity, when we understand that mythology is all we ever have anyway. Freud himself rightly said "the poets were here before me," which leads one to retort "why did you bother then, Siggi?"

 

[articul8]

Well actually I've got a lot of time for early Baudrillard, in his Situationist phase--Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign is a classic, and highly relevant denunciation of the pomo condition. I admit that I don't like Deleuze because I think all psychoanalysis is bullshit, going back to Freud. I know that Deleuze sees himself as re-writing or correcting Freud, but he still engages with him as a serious thinker, and his work is still a response to Freud, which makes it crap of necessity in my view.

On Baudrilliard - at best he is a sub-standard retread of Debord - at worst a vacuous windbag whose work is rarely taken seriously now.

As for Deleuze - I find your reasoning bizarre - at least in his early career Deleuze was (wrongly IMO) a vehement critic of Freudian psychoanalysis.

Freud did for psychology what Copernicus did for astonomy, or Kant for philosophy. He IS a major thinker on any reckoning. OK, his major insights were anticipated by Schopenhauer. And he habourded notions of 'science' which his own findings were continually subverting.

But many pomo theorists eg Lacan and Lyotard (and even some of Derrida) would be unthinkable without Freud.

 

[merlin wood]

Some of the best British sociology was written in the 1960's, I reckon. Read especially T.B.Bottomore's 'Sociology' and 'Elites in Society', great stuff!

 

[Poi E]

Studying sociology at degree level proved to me my previous suspicions were correct. Sociologists should be the first to be shot come the revolution.
Such an inexact badly presented subject which uses esoteric language to cover up bad research and conclusions ought to be banned.
It has caused far more harm than good throughout my lifetime.

That covers economics well, with its reductionist fiscal dogma disguised as a discrete and a-political "science".

 

[phildwyer]

On Baudrilliard - at best he is a sub-standard retread of Debord - at worst a vacuous windbag whose work is rarely taken seriously now.

As for Deleuze - I find your reasoning bizarre - at least in his early career Deleuze was (wrongly IMO) a vehement critic of Freudian psychoanalysis.

Freud did for psychology what Copernicus did for astonomy, or Kant for philosophy. He IS a major thinker on any reckoning. OK, his major insights were anticipated by Schopenhauer. And he habourded notions of 'science' which his own findings were continually subverting.

But many pomo theorists eg Lacan and Lyotard (and even some of Derrida) would be unthinkable without Freud.

Its true that Baudrillard merely builds on Debord--but Debord obviously wasn't going to do it himself, so someone had to. Its also true that his later stuff is rubbish. Its not true, unfortunately, that he's no longer taken seriously.

As for Deleuze, yes he thinks he's criticizing Freud, but why bother engaging Freud at all? I mean, it would be like devoting your career to criticizing the political thought of Tony Blair or something. The interest of Freud is sociological: how could so many people believe such crap for so long?

The answer is that Freud provides a secularized religion, for a naively scientist world that had (temporarily) decided that religion wasn't "true" or some such notion. Yes, Lacan and Lyotard would be unthinkable without Freud, and a bloody good thing too.