The American “You Probably Know”: On Chomsky, United States, and the Failed States

• Main Author: Arup K. CHATTERJEE
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universitatea "Stefan cel Mare" Suceava 2014-12-01
• Series: Annals of Philosophy, Social and Human Disciplines
• Subjects: Noam Chomsky; Daedalus; Failed States; Jacques Derrida; Homi Bhabha; US Geopolitics; Iraq; Afghanistan; Vietnam; American Empire Project
• Online Access: http://www.apshus.usv.ro/arhiva/2014II/005.%20pp.%2063-75.pdf

Alleged by his detractors “Cold War Geopolitics” was verily a formative ground of Chomsky’s analyses, nevertheless, his work is a recycling of a set historical methodology, which has yet to be fully understood. It is characteristically convenient to perceive Chomsky’s contribution to the American Empire Project as being in succession to the American legacy of dissension to and distanciation from political and cultural hegemony. It is ironic that such a stance of subversion of hegemonic laws and the natural universal exceptionalism of America comes from the chief positivist of linguistics. In other words, reading Chomsky will be more challenging once his oeuvre is classified under modern ‘integralist’ history, furthermore even as postcolonial theory. Neither has Noam Chomsky nor his activities in the recent American Empire Project enabled policy advisers to ascertain methods to democratically sustain a “political system made up of subcultures.” While both The American Empire Project and Chomsky seek to restore the Edenic veneer to America the latter’s discipline ranges to far beyond the borders of his nation. It is this fibre of individualism and universalism that makes him only more American. Several writings by Chomsky begin by reaffirm the idyllic and unprecedented American influence of the post-War era, and ending in the wake of changing world demography of political alignments the American Gestalt history reflects in the psychic anxiety of the American Empire Project of the expanding frontiers America is faced with as an outcome of its own political misdemeanour. Failed States and the Chomskyan American Empire Project domesticate U.S. politics, infusing its blood-ridden history into the (collective) political unconscious of the middle class urbanite’s brunch-settee ethic, with the refurbishment of American innocence in a natural teleology. It is the catalyst to ignite civil leisure with social revolution.