Too often, I think, we forget that the theorists and critics that we read are real people in actuality (then again, we can talk about what it means to be "real", etc etc. I digress). One of my favorite bits of theoretical debate is what is known as the Chomsky-Foucault debate, where on Dutch television, Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault debated on what is human nature. As far as I understand it, this debate is well-known among scholars of Foucault and Chomsky, but I've never heard it mentioned in class (this one or my undergrad theory course).
This is only a brief excerpt of the full debate and perhaps the only widely available video of the debate.
One thing I find fascinating about this debate is that in the transcript, is that Foucault prefaces his entire argument and statements with "If you don't mind I will answer in French, because my English is so poor that I would be ashamed of answering in English." So his entire dialogue is in French while Chomsky replies in English. Yet, despite this difficulty in language, the two theorists seem to come to a mutual understanding somehow of what they are discussing.
The discourse that follows from this debate is well documented in The New Press' edition of "The Chomsky-Foucault Debate," as Chomsky and Foucault both wrote articles detailing the points on which they disagreed. Their discourse really continued past the televised debate and didn't end until Foucault's death.
I just wished to share this with the rest of my fellow theory classmates, in case you didn't know about it already. It's one of my favorite bits of theoretical discourse.
Happy Thanksgiving!
I read this debat a long... Ago. Back in the day. I must confess I probably understood less than a quarter of it. I lacked context, especially for Foucault. I remember thinking... What, exactly, are they disagreeing about? It seemed to me they agreed an awful lot. Not much of a debate.
ReplyDeleteSo, I went back and skimmed a transcript to respond to this post. I feel mostly the same. They are disagreeing... almost on spirit.
It is like the old wise but beaten monk proclaims the natur of men and men built stuffs as of pain and pain creating stuffs so that the nature of humanity, if you could pinpoint it, and you are silly to do so, is just yuck craptastic sadness. His solution is knowledge and critique and that is all. He cannot and will not offer further guidance because he sees it as folly.
Chomsky is the young guy then. He believes the institutions are the problem and that men could fix them. Either by throwing them out and starting over or fixing, that is a different debate. But, fundament to Chomsky is his linguistic theory of language as a structure of the mind and such a belief in a fundamental structure of people. And he cannot believe it is bad. He sees the badness, and proclaims it a result of bad institutions and systems corrupting a fundamentally good and creative human nature.
Foucault is like, naive one, listen up. People created the system, yo. It isnt like it came out of nowhere. So even if we take your point about human nature and language and then make this wild leap to goodness since the language seems good (another leap), then what about these political systems of racism, sexism, homophobia, general subjugation and punishment? That came from people too. So, we have a problem.
It seems like a debate between hopeful skepticism and skeptical hope.
I want to agree with Chomsky, but I find Foucault very persuasive. In fact, so, I can agree with the idea of language as a structure from the human mind, but I find it not more or less deterministic than the idea that language and systems are created by society itself. I think they play on each other. All this means is the task of critiquing it iIn any meaningful manner s astonishingly difficult and then what you do with it even more so.
I think, then, it requires the constant back and forth, in fact that the debate between these two men actually illustrates the proper start and movement of effective critique in its movement towards effective action.
The danger in Foucault is hopelessness, the danger in Chomsky is naïveté.
Oy, auto correct on the iPad. Apologies.
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