The purpose of this laboratory is to give readers access to documents relating to Robert Barsky's Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent and also to his ongoing project on the life and work of Zellig Harris.
In light of the small amount of documentation which exists about Harris's life and work, Robert Barsky would welcome documentation in the form of written material or personal reflections on Harris and his work. As this site evolves, material relating to the new book, including draft chapters, will be posted on a regular basis. For the moment, you are invited to explore some documents relating to the milieus surrounding both Noam Chomsky and Zellig Harris, and also to read the chapter of Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent which deals with the intellectual and personal friendship between Harris and Chomsky.
I strongly encourage you to join the web based discussion group dedicated to Chomsky and Harris, hosted by The MIT Press
Subjects include:
- Chomsky and Harris Linguistics,
- Anarchism,
- Anarcho-syndicalism,
- anti-Bolshevik Marxism, and
- left-Zionism.
Contributers may pose topics for discussion or add to discussions already in progress. There has been some debate about the debt that Chomskian linguistics owes to Zellig Harris, and an examination of Harris's politics indicates that there may be as yet unexplored points of overlap there as well. To date various perspectives have been put forth, including Chomsky's, Mattick's (via excerpts from their publications), etc. Information on points of biography, intellectual history and influences, later works that have been influenced by Harris or Chomsky's work, and technical contributions which may illuminate the relationship between Harris' and Chomsky's linguistic programmes.Avukah
Research Laboratory
