Chomsky on Lyotard & Bordieu

Doubtless there is a power structure in every speech situation; again, that is a truism that only an intellectual could find surprising and seek to dress up in appropriate polysyllables. As honest people, our effort should be to unmask it and diminish it, as far as we can, and to do so in association with others, whom we can help and who can help us in this necessary libratory task. Will it ever end? I presume not. As for Lyotard and the post-modern age, I await some indication that there is something here beyond trivialities or self-serving nonsense. I can perceive certain grains of truth hidden in the vast structure of verbiage, but those are simple indeed. Again, maybe I'm missing something, perhaps a lot. If so, I apologize for my simple-mindedness. Maybe I'm missing a gene. I seem to be able to understand other difficult things, but virtually nothing here. Furthermore, in other difficult areas (say, quantum physics), friends and colleagues can explain to me what I want to know (as do serious "popularizations" ) at a level that I can understand, and I know how to go on if I want to understand more (and have sometimes done so). In these [postmodernist] areas, no one can explain anything to me, and I have no idea how to proceed. It could be that some entirely new form of human intelligence has arisen, beyond those known before, and those who lack the appropriate genes (evidently, me) just can't see it. Perhaps. As I said, I'm open-minded. If there is another explanation, I'd like to hear it. (31 Mar. 1995)