Global Angles: Noam Chomsky gives Stayin' Alive a Shout Out

In my first book, Capital Moves, I intentionally sought to place US history in a global framework. When I began Stayin' Alive, in contrast, I began to think about the enduring significance of national identity and politics despite (and because) of globalization. A couple of recent happenings that have projected the issues I'm trying to raise in the book beyond the national borders of the U.S. have therefore been gratifying

In a recent lecture on "Arab Spring, American Winter," Noam Chomsky gave the book a nice shout out, comparing the flowering of democracy in the Middle East with the eclipse of democracy in the United States. The whole lecture is worthwhile, but his mention of the book is around 17:50.

Funny story on Noam and Stayin' Alive. During my book tour, I was staying at a cool bed and breakfast in Buffalo called the Elmwood Village Inn. When I checked in, they asked me when I was going to check out the following day because Noam Chomsky needed my room next. Hmm, says I, Noam Chomsky, eh? So, that night at the book signing after my lecture, I bought a copy of my own book from the cool independent book dealer staffing the auditorium (I hadn't brought any besides my
reading copy), and inscribed it to Chomsky for all of his inspriration. I had always wondered if he read it. Now I know. 

In related news, Michael Behrent, who studies French intellectual history, wrote an extended review of Stayin' Alive for the site La Vie des Idees. You can read it here in French or, for us pathetic Americanists, here in translation to English. It's a long and loving review, complete with a "Listening and Viewing Guide" for audiences not familiar with American pop.

I really enjoy getting reviews from people off the list of usual suspects, so I often investigate writers I don't know well. As a result, I learned something from Behrent that I often had a whiff of but never got to the bottom of: Foucault's relationship to neoliberalism. I urge folks interested in theory to read Behrent's article in Modern Intellectual History, "Liberalism without Humanism: Michel Foucault and the Free Market Creed, 1976-1979", in which he argues that Foucault endorsed the emerging neoliberal order. His argument is above my intellectual paygrade, but if he's right, it helps explain how the right won so big while anit-statist left-wing intellectuals were falling all over themselves to pave the way for the new world order.