"Witnessing such a sorry state of affairs is by no means a monotonous, monochromatic activity. It involves what Foucault once called “a relentless erudition,” scouring alternative sources, exhuming buried documents, reviving forgotten (or abandoned) histories. It involves a sense of the dramatic and of the insurgent, making a great deal of one's rare opportunities to speak. There is something profoundly unsettling about an intellectual such as Chomsky who has neither an office to protect nor territory to consolidate and guard. There is no dodging the inescapable reality that such representations by intellectuals will neither make them friends in high places nor win them official honors. It is a lonely condition, yes, but it is always a better one than a gregarious tolerance for the way things are."
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Academics from the United StatesHistorians from the United StatesJews from the United StatesLinguists from the United StatesSocial anarchists
Original Language: English
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Sources
Edward Said, Foreword to Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians, Updated Edition (1999)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky
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Noam Chomsky
philosopher, linguist, political writer
1928 · United States
US-amerikanischer Sprachwissenschaftler und Autor
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