The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature PDF
Preview The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature
PHILOSOPHY $14.95 U.S. FC OH UO CM A “[Chomsky is] arguably the most US the K L TY important intellectual alive.” C H O MSK Y- —THE NEW YORK TIMES t h “Foucault . . . leaves no reader e F O U C AU LT untouched or unchanged.” C H —EDWARD SAID O M d ebate IN1971, AT THE HEIGHT OF THE VIETNAM WAR AND AT A TIME OF S great political and social instability, two of the world’s leading intellectuals, Noam Chomsky and K Michel Foucault, were invited by Dutch philosopher Fons Elders to debate an age-old question: is there such a thing as “innate” human nature independent of our experiences and external influences? Y ON HUMAN NATURE The resulting dialogue is one of the most original, provocative, and spontaneous exchanges - to have occurred between contemporary philosophers, and above all serves as a concise intro- F duction to their basic theories. What begins as a philosophical argument rooted in linguistics and O the theory of knowledge soon evolves into a broader discussion encompassing a wide range of U topics from science, history, and behaviorism to creativity, freedom, and the struggle for justice in the realm of politics. In addition to the debate itself, this volume features a new foreword by C Columbia University philosophy professor John Rajchman and includes substantial additional A texts by Chomsky and Foucault. U NOAM CHOMSKYis Professor of Linguistics MICHEL FOUCAULT (1926–1984) held a L at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology chair in the History of Systems of Thought at T and a world-renowned political thinker and the Collège de France. The New Press has activist. He is the author of numerous books, published three major volumes of his wdork as including On Language and Understanding well as a collection, The Essential Foucault.e Power (both available from The New Press). b a t e www.thenewpress.com NOAM CHOMSKY AND MICHEL FOUCAULT FOREWORD BY JOHN RAJCHMAN Cover design by Pollen, New York - THE CHOMSKY FOUCAULT DEBATE The Chomsky-Foucault Debate ON HUMAN NATURE Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault Compilation © 2006 by The New Press Foreword © 2006 by John Rajchman “Human Nature: Justice vs. Power”originally appeared in Reflexive Water: The Basic Concerns ofMankind,published by Souvenir Press in 1974. Reprinted by permission ofSouvenir Press Ltd. “Politics”and “A Philosophy ofLanguage”appear as Chapters 1 and 3, respectively, in Part I ofOn Language,published by The New Press in 1998. “Truth and Power,”“Omnes et Singulatim,”and “Confronting Governments” appear in Power: Essential Works ofFoucault, 1954–1984, published by The New Press in 2001. Permission to reprint “Omnes et Singulatim”courtesy ofthe University of Utah Press and the Trustees ofthe Tanner Lectures on Human Values. All rights reserved. No part ofthis book may be reproduced, in any form, without written permission from the publisher. Requests for permission to reproduce selections from this book should be mailed to: Permissions Department, The New Press, 38 Greene Street, New York, NY 10013. Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2006 Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York ISBN-13 978-1-59558-134-1 (pbk) ISBN-10 1-59558-134-0 (pbk) CIP data available The New Press was established in 1990 as a not-for-profit alternative to the large, commercial publishing houses currently dominating the book publishing industry. The New Press operates in the public interest rather than for private gain, and is committed to publishing, in innovative ways, works ofeducational, cultural, and community value that are often deemed insufficiently profitable. www.thenewpress.com Composition by dix! This book was set inBell MT Regular Printed in the United States ofAmerica 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 Contents Foreword by John Rajchman vii 1.Human Nature: Justice vs. Power (1971) 1 A Debate Between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault 2.Politics (1976) 68 Noam Chomsky 3.A Philosophy ofLanguage (1976) 117 Noam Chomsky 4.Truth and Power (1976) 140 Michel Foucault 5.“Omnes et Singulatim”: Toward a Critique ofPolitical Reason (1978) 172 Michel Foucault 6.Confronting Governments: Human Rights (1984) 211 Michel Foucault Foreword The initial exchange took place in Holland in November of 1971. Noam Chomsky spoke in English, Michel Foucault in French, with the results broadcast on Dutch television. It was part ofa series ofdebates in which the Dutch thinker Fons El- ders invited pairs of philosophers from different, sometimes opposing, strains in twentieth-century thought to confront one another on television.1Yet neither Chomsky nor Foucault was in fact a philosopher in the narrow academic sense; each had developed a highly original approach to the study of lan- guage and had subsequently gone on to assume the role of a political or public intellectual. 1971 is not a bad date for the transition from language- analysis to politics in their work. The events of1968 were still fresh, providing a new climate ofdebate, introducing new divi- sions, and new actors, on an international (or, as it is now said, “transnational”) scale, beyond any particular political or eco- nomic regime—in Prague as well as Berkeley, Paris, Mexico City, and Asia. Onto the intellectual divisions in the Elders debates, another dimension was thus superimposed. How should intellectuals affected by these events in different places talk with one another? What were the models for the new kinds viii FOREWORD of questions and new ways of posing them emerging from the political movements in so many places? Were older, more or less Marxist models sufficient, or should one draw from other Enlightenment traditions, or from the particular transforma- tions taking place—for example, civil disobedience or partici- patory democracy? Moving back and forth in two languages for a Dutch television audience at this peculiar moment, passing from questions oflanguage and creativity to power and politics, the exchange thus offered a space for a conversation across in- tellectual and political geographies. The dispute over “human nature” seemed to crystallize the differences in approach—at once linguistic, philosophical, and political—in the work of Chomsky and Foucault and in their respective countries. In what ways had the study oflanguage or ofdiscourse pre- pared each man for his new political role? What, in other words, is the relation between linguistics and politics or the role of power in the analysis of discourse? In some sense, that was a crux ofthe debate, with each man trying to translate the basic question in his own terms. Is it a matter oflinguistic universals and their relation to human justice and decency, as Chomsky ar- gued; or is it, as Foucault maintained, a case ofhistorical and ma- terial restrictions on what is said and in their relations with the exercise ofpower? After some polite attempts to find common ground, a divergence broke out on this score, which, as usual in such exchanges, was ultimately left unresolved. As the decade wore on both men would continue to examine the relation be- tween linguistics and politics, language and power, as they in- creasingly assumed the role ofpolitical intellectuals. Their later reflections serve to amplify the positions in the initial exchange as well as the divergences and links between them. In particular, FOREWORD ix reproduced in this volume following the debate are attempts each made in 1976 to clarify and elaborate their views (Chapters 2–4). Also included is a lecture given by Foucault at Stanford University in 1978 (Chapter 5), as well as a brief statement (Chapter 6), which originally appeared in the French newspaper Libérationin 1984, shortly before Foucault’s death. These later texts can be read as a kind ofaftermath and continuation ofthe 1971 debate at a time when both men already sensed a reaction against or “falling off”ofthe earlier possibilities, but also their elaboration in new lines. They deepen the earlier exchange, complicating its terms and reception. As in that earlier debate, these additional chapters retain the informal nature in which each man, moving from his area of expertise or research, ad- dresses a larger public, through interview or lecture, thus re- flecting his own passage from academic study to public political activity. The interviews with Chomsky on politics and language (Chapters 2 and 3) prolong the peculiar mix of English and French in the 1971 debate. Conducted in 1976, they were orig- inally published in France in a volume titled Dialogues avec Mitsou Ronat.2Ronat, a noted French linguist, asked questions in French; Chomsky responded in English, and the tape-recorded results were then translated into French. In the English- language edition, published in 1979 as Language and Responsi- bilityand reissued more recently together with an earlier work by Chomsky as On Language,Chomsky introduced “a number of stylistic and sometimes substantive changes” such that the text, in his words, “while preserving the basic structure ofthe original, is not simply a translation ofthe French translation of my remarks, but is rather an elaboration and in some cases
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