Video: Chomsky and Foucault
Cool link from Metafilter of a discussion between Chomsky and Foucault, aired, believe it or not, on Dutch t.v. I guess those poor folks don't get The Simpsons over there...
I'm not a big Chomsky fan, but he totally schools Foucault here. Foucault isn't actually a guy I can muster a noticeable amount of intellectual respect for, though.
The discussion here follows a well-known template, with a few variations. Chomsky briefly sketches his political vision (which, incidentally, I'm not sympathetic with...but no matter). Foucault responds, eventually getting around to saying, roughly:
MF: You say that under your proposed form of government we'd be able to better realize our true human nature...but because of social oppression/power somethingorother/blahblahblah, how can we be sure that this is really what human nature is like?
Now, pay attention, because these continental/PoMo/intellectual-left types make that move all the time.
Chomsky's response is exactly right: (roughly:)
NC: There's uncertainty everywhere. You can make the same objection against any project, including, say, direct action against the Vietnam war. But we just do here what we always must do: we take our best guess and act, always being ready to revise our opinions in light of new information.
Righto. The only alternative is complete paralysis.
Foucault then makes another move typical of folks on his side of the fence, claiming, roughly:
MF: Crucial concepts here like justice are products of class blah blah, and they won't exist after the revolution, in a classless society.
Chomsky then makes one of the right points:
NC: I disagree. I think these are absolutes, though I can't give you a complete account of them here. Botched up as it might be, I think our concept of justice is an approximation of the correct concept of justice, and, while it might be modified, it won't be completely abandoned.
Good. But he should also have noted that Foucault hasn't offered any real reason to think that there's an actual problem with our concept of justice. He merely offers generic skeptical/fallibilistic worries. Chomsky could have replied:
NC*: Well, if you're going to let that kind of worry trip you up, you might as well worry that there will never be a revolution, because our concept revolution is defective/socially conditioned/whatever, as are our concepts class, society, etc. Any of these concepts might contain confusions, but, then again, they might not. These concepts are the best we have, therefore we have some reason to think they approximate the ideal concepts. So we have better reason to think that the final versions of the concepts will be similar to them than that they won't.
Anway, then Foucault slips in a covert whine about not having enough time to respond, but he's nailed, and his response doesn't add anything.
Chomsky's way left of me, but he's the kind of guy you could have an intelligent and reasonable discussion with. My sense of Foucault is that he is not that type of guy, but, rather, basically a sophist...even if, perhaps, a well-meaning one. This discussion looks like it took place in the early '70's or so, and Chomsky looks like a kid...a kid who doesn't yet have the stridency of some of the later Chomsky.
Cool link from Metafilter of a discussion between Chomsky and Foucault, aired, believe it or not, on Dutch t.v. I guess those poor folks don't get The Simpsons over there...
I'm not a big Chomsky fan, but he totally schools Foucault here. Foucault isn't actually a guy I can muster a noticeable amount of intellectual respect for, though.
The discussion here follows a well-known template, with a few variations. Chomsky briefly sketches his political vision (which, incidentally, I'm not sympathetic with...but no matter). Foucault responds, eventually getting around to saying, roughly:
MF: You say that under your proposed form of government we'd be able to better realize our true human nature...but because of social oppression/power somethingorother/blahblahblah, how can we be sure that this is really what human nature is like?
Now, pay attention, because these continental/PoMo/intellectual-left types make that move all the time.
Chomsky's response is exactly right: (roughly:)
NC: There's uncertainty everywhere. You can make the same objection against any project, including, say, direct action against the Vietnam war. But we just do here what we always must do: we take our best guess and act, always being ready to revise our opinions in light of new information.
Righto. The only alternative is complete paralysis.
Foucault then makes another move typical of folks on his side of the fence, claiming, roughly:
MF: Crucial concepts here like justice are products of class blah blah, and they won't exist after the revolution, in a classless society.
Chomsky then makes one of the right points:
NC: I disagree. I think these are absolutes, though I can't give you a complete account of them here. Botched up as it might be, I think our concept of justice is an approximation of the correct concept of justice, and, while it might be modified, it won't be completely abandoned.
Good. But he should also have noted that Foucault hasn't offered any real reason to think that there's an actual problem with our concept of justice. He merely offers generic skeptical/fallibilistic worries. Chomsky could have replied:
NC*: Well, if you're going to let that kind of worry trip you up, you might as well worry that there will never be a revolution, because our concept revolution is defective/socially conditioned/whatever, as are our concepts class, society, etc. Any of these concepts might contain confusions, but, then again, they might not. These concepts are the best we have, therefore we have some reason to think they approximate the ideal concepts. So we have better reason to think that the final versions of the concepts will be similar to them than that they won't.
Anway, then Foucault slips in a covert whine about not having enough time to respond, but he's nailed, and his response doesn't add anything.
Chomsky's way left of me, but he's the kind of guy you could have an intelligent and reasonable discussion with. My sense of Foucault is that he is not that type of guy, but, rather, basically a sophist...even if, perhaps, a well-meaning one. This discussion looks like it took place in the early '70's or so, and Chomsky looks like a kid...a kid who doesn't yet have the stridency of some of the later Chomsky.
posted by Winston Smith at
8:22 PM
4 Comments:
Well, I AM a Chomsky fan, and one of the things that always amuses me about the complaints about academic leftism is how much Foucoultian po-mo gobbledygook getst lumped in with the sort of stuff that Chomsky does. That debate is a great reminder of the difference between ACTUAL leftism: grounded in enlightenment ideas and commited to an activist agenda for promoting social justice, and the vapid, disempowering, meaningless hairsplitting of post-modern "theory", which is more about getting tenure for mediocre intellects who couldn't write a comprehensible sentence if their life depeneded on it. To say that po-mo theory has poisoned academia is absolutely true: it undermines the entire project of truth-seeking, which is supposed to be the point of academic inquiry. But po-mo is not identical to, and is in fact many ways antithetical to, "the left."
Agreed re: the evils of PoMo...though I wouldn't call them "hair-splitters." They have many vices, but that ain't one of 'em...hair-splitting, after all, requires precision...
I also don't think they're antithetical to the left. They're antithetical to anything like a plausible leftism, but they're a huge part of the left...which means that a huge part of the left is implausible, but that can be said of the right as well. Seems to me like this would be like someone on the right saying "fundamentalist christians are antithetical to the right." Every side's got its cross to bear...
Anway, Chomsky's a smart and respectable guy. I tend to disagree with him, but I listen to him, and often think that his position is a live option--one that I could theoretically see myself adopting at some point.
I would dispute your claim that post-modernists make up a "huge" part of the left: I suspect that your view is distorted by the proponderance of faux-leftist post modernists in acadmia. Outside of the academic bubble, post-modernism doesn't seem to me to be embraced by that many leftists. Even hard-left anarchists and Marxists tend to believe that things like objective values exist. Hell, that's what motivates them to protest and organize in the first place. It's only the college, where intellectual wankery matters more than trying to get anything done, that po-mo is taken seriously. Even identity politics liberals outside of universities tend to appeal to universal and objective values in making their arguments.
The thing I appreciate most about Chomsky is that he is dogged in his insistence that the ethical standards and definitions that U.S. government and media elites use should be applied universally, not subjectively. In a landscape of political rhetoric in which ahistorical virtue-mongering is the standard M.O., that point is always worth making.
Yeah, I was actually just about to make the same point--that my experience is skewed by being in academia. There, the overlap between PoMo and the left is huge.
Now, I'm not including standard-issue liberals here when I talk about the left...I'm just talking about the leftier-than-liberals crowd.
Anyway, if it's any consolation, the left will still be around long after PoMo is forgotten. On the other hand, many of the mistakes of PoMo are common in the non-PoMo left. E.g. moral relativism. Although many leftists (like Chomsky) eschew relativism, it's almost always a major force on the left. Relativism seems to be to the left what the divine command theory is to the right...a powerful, persistent (even if sometimes minority) view.
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