This book offers a careful and measured response to Noam Chomsky's criticism against deconstructive theories of language. The author reveals the connections between Chomsky's linguistic theories and politics by demonstrating their shared philosophical basis.

"Chomsky makes very harsh assessments of the scholarship of people like Derrida, and Wise does a good job of showing that it is not simply that deconstructionist theorists 'write gibberish,' but that they hold views that challenge many of Chomsky's basic philosophical assumptions. This book places Chomsky in the history of Western philosophy and shows why the linguists influenced by Chomsky would do well to pay more attention to what is happening in critical theory today, outside the more narrowly defined field of generative theoretical linguistics." - Fallou Ngom, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the African Language Program, Boston University

Autorentext

CHRISTOPHER WISE Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Western Washington University, USA.

Inhalt
Introduction: The Politics of Unconscious Knowledge Cerebral Hermeneutics The Ungiven-Given Locke's Misreading of Descartes and Other Fairy Tales Identity Politics and The Pedagogy of Competence