Watch Out For the Flying Folding Chairs, It’s The Noam Chomsky Show!

The word “philoso­pher” tends to con­jure up the arche­typ­al image of an ascetic fig­ure stand­ing above the fol­lies of every­day life, absorbed in thought. Per­haps that’s why so many peo­ple have found it fas­ci­nat­ing to hear of the dis­agree­ments between Noam Chom­sky and Slavoj Žižek.

Sev­er­al weeks ago we post­ed an excerpt from an inter­view in which Chom­sky accus­es Žižek, along with Jacques Lacan and Jacques Der­ri­da, of emp­ty “pos­tur­ing.” Yes­ter­day we post­ed Žižek’s response to Chom­sky: “I don’t think I know a guy who was so often empir­i­cal­ly wrong.” Some of the respons­es have been amus­ing. “The gloves are off!” wrote one read­er on Twit­ter. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” said anoth­er.

Of course, we should bear in mind that the two celebri­ty intel­lec­tu­als are not real­ly at each oth­er’s throats. Chom­sky gave his brief assess­ment of Žižek and the oth­ers in response to a ques­tion dur­ing a long inter­view back in Decem­ber. Žižek’s remarks were a small part of a two-hour pan­el dis­cus­sion on var­i­ous top­ics. It’s hard to imag­ine either man seething over what the oth­er has said.

Still, the bois­ter­ous­ness of many of the respons­es remind­ed us of the stu­dio audi­ence in this 2009 sketch (above) from The Chaser’s War on Every­thing, an Aus­tralian com­e­dy show. The sketch is a par­o­dy of The Jer­ry Springer Show and the oth­er tabloid TV talk shows that mul­ti­plied like weeds in the 1990s. It’s extreme­ly sil­ly, but good for a laugh.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Slams Žižek and Lacan: Emp­ty ‘Pos­tur­ing’

Slavoj Žižek Responds to Noam Chom­sky: ‘I Don’t Know a Guy Who Was So Often Empir­i­cal­ly Wrong’

Noam Chom­sky Calls Post­mod­ern Cri­tiques of Sci­ence Over-Inflat­ed “Poly­syl­lab­ic Tru­isms”

Clash of the Titans: Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er on Dutch TV, 1971