Chomsky and Ai Wei Wei

Discussion of Two Activist Stars

Coke: Our next presentation: how about a comparison of classical and post-classical?

Rumi: Can you be a little more specific?

Coke: Well, classical is Aristotelian narrative, a story has a beginning, middle and end. Chronological linearity. Post classical is avant garde, fragmented, flashbacks. Discontinuous expository.

Rumi: So who do we take as examples?

Coke: American Noam Chomsky, the classical activist, compared with Chinese Ai Wei Wei, the post-classical activist. Chomsky proceeds point by point. He transitions between. Ai Wei Wei is impressionistically post modern. His scenes are jump cuts.

Rumi: So you propose analyzing films about Chomsky and Ai Wei?

Coke: Watching documentaries might be easier than reading essays.

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Voice-over

There might be two false assumptions leading to false analogies here.

(1) Rational argument does not necessarily share a narrative trajectory with a story. An essay does not always have the same structure as a vignette. The discussants will need to argue that essays also can follow classical and post-classical argument.

(2) Films, augmented by visual footage, have a different structure to an essay.

FaceBook + Google = 1984 False analogy?

f.b + g = 1984

A darkened room, whispering…

Julia: It’s getting like 1984.

Winston: What is?

Julia: FaceBook collecting all your private data and putting it online.

Winston: False analogy. You volunteer your private information to FaceBook. Orwell’s Big Brother was watching you.

Julia: Well how about Google then? It watches where you go and collects that information without asking.

Winston: False analogy again. Orwell’s Big Brother used the data to control the citizens. Google sells your information.

Julia: It still feels like 1984 with all the spying going on.

Winston: I will say this though. FaceBook and Google add up to something like 1984. It’s a partial analogy.

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Voice-over

An analogy compares A with B and finds that they share features.

A false analogy is one where A and B may superficially share features but underneath there is little relevance or only a few shared features.

Hillary Clinton commented at the UN on the recent civil unrest in Syria, that to compare Syria to Libya was a “false analogy.”

Valid analogies may range from strong through partial to weak. Winston’s reasoning that two false analogies add up to a partial analogy is intriguing. It has an instinctive validity.

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