It's Chomsky vs. Foucault! In a battle to the death!
Via Lenin's Tomb, here we have Foucault and Chomsky, takin' it to the streets! (Or to the really boring-looking European symposium, as the case may be. I think the kid in the audience they show must be a distant cousin of the guy who played the "Shermanator" in the American Pie movies.) I'm guessing this is the conversation mentioned in the introduciton to the Foucault Reader by Rabinow. One is struck immediately by how pedestrian the debate is. Then, we notice how Chomsky and Foucault are simply talking past each other but saying the same thing. (Perhaps the debate got a bit more heated, but here there seems to be no essential difference.) If you watch the videos and don't want to read the summary, skip to the end of this post.
Chomsky, being the universalist linguist, says that there is a human nature (there's that term again!) that we can grasp and then use to plan a society that maximizes the potential in that nature. At present, that nature is obstructed and stunted by the repressive aspects of the current society, which serve to benefit the sources of power in said society (government, business, what have you). But Chomsky, sockin' it straight to Foucault's bald domepiece, says despite that repression, we can glimpse aspects of what a true form of justice might look like in the current system.
Foucault, ever the contrarian, says that if what we have now is justice based on class, then justice in a classless society is impossible to envision. (Which means Foucault sounds more Marxist than Chomsky, very strange.) Foucault also says that while Chomsky looks at typical forms of repression, such as the formal, "political" structures and apparatuses, we also have to look at the educational systems and psychiatric medicine. So there's the "omnipresence of power" critique. Foucault, in a case of a Frenchman bitch-slappin' a Jew like it's the Dreyfus Affair, goes on to say that we can't form a conception of what a just society might look like, all we can do is critique power in its manifest and manifold forms.
[Here's where my bit starts.] What pisses me off about this aspect of Foucault's philosophy is that he is so obsessed with sounding unique and distinct from Marxism, traditional ideological critique, etc that he fails to see how similar he is. If an individual can detect and criticize the forms of power, no matter how numerous, then he or she necessarily possesses the ability to imagine and attempt to put into practice an alternative society. It doesn't matter that power is everywhere. Once it is possible to detect it (and Foucault thinks that he certainly has, so at least one person is capable) it is possible to change it. That ability in and of itself forms the basis of Chomsky's project of building a better society. (I should add that in this way Foucault is so incredibly similar to the members of the Frankfurt School that it hurts.) In other words, NEGATIVE CRITIQUE=BASIS FOR POSITIVE VISION. To me, it's simply a psychological fact.
I suppose that Foucault would counter that one can never get rid of power, only transfer its effects from one regime of truth to another. So no society could ever be power-free. Also, he could say that there is no one source of power, that the different power structures in society (school, church, hospital, social worker, scientist) don't serve a single interest. Ergo, there's no real locus of criticism, only small, scattered, localized battles. To which it is very easy to say: if we can't get rid of power, we can at least try to quantify its effects and decide upon a societal structure that minimizes the repressive consequences of power. (We should always remember that not all power is bad.) In other words, we can try to find out how to decide which regimes of truth are better, or at least less harmful, than others. And if Foucault would not hesitate to say that post-war welfare statist Germany is better than Nazi Germany, then he is on the path to deciding just that sort of hierarchy of regimes of truth. Second, if power does not always serve the same interests, then at least try to figure out which ones it largely or more often than not serves. Again, it's a matter of quantifying the effects.
Sorry to pour forth another long post, but watching the video just triggered in me all those criticisms I have of the Foucaultian project. Also, I don't necessarily agree with either Foucault or Chomsky, but Foucault's apparent blindness to their similarities and the seemingly obvious logical inconsistencies in his position warranted my comment. Maybe Foucault was just too wired on caffeine or something else to make sense, I mean look at that jittery motherfucker. That finger tastes good! Oh, and after the show Foucault went to a Dutch bath house and had himself whipped with leather straps, while Chomsky returned to the hotel and quietly wrote his 784th article against the Vietnam War.
Chomsky, being the universalist linguist, says that there is a human nature (there's that term again!) that we can grasp and then use to plan a society that maximizes the potential in that nature. At present, that nature is obstructed and stunted by the repressive aspects of the current society, which serve to benefit the sources of power in said society (government, business, what have you). But Chomsky, sockin' it straight to Foucault's bald domepiece, says despite that repression, we can glimpse aspects of what a true form of justice might look like in the current system.
Foucault, ever the contrarian, says that if what we have now is justice based on class, then justice in a classless society is impossible to envision. (Which means Foucault sounds more Marxist than Chomsky, very strange.) Foucault also says that while Chomsky looks at typical forms of repression, such as the formal, "political" structures and apparatuses, we also have to look at the educational systems and psychiatric medicine. So there's the "omnipresence of power" critique. Foucault, in a case of a Frenchman bitch-slappin' a Jew like it's the Dreyfus Affair, goes on to say that we can't form a conception of what a just society might look like, all we can do is critique power in its manifest and manifold forms.
[Here's where my bit starts.] What pisses me off about this aspect of Foucault's philosophy is that he is so obsessed with sounding unique and distinct from Marxism, traditional ideological critique, etc that he fails to see how similar he is. If an individual can detect and criticize the forms of power, no matter how numerous, then he or she necessarily possesses the ability to imagine and attempt to put into practice an alternative society. It doesn't matter that power is everywhere. Once it is possible to detect it (and Foucault thinks that he certainly has, so at least one person is capable) it is possible to change it. That ability in and of itself forms the basis of Chomsky's project of building a better society. (I should add that in this way Foucault is so incredibly similar to the members of the Frankfurt School that it hurts.) In other words, NEGATIVE CRITIQUE=BASIS FOR POSITIVE VISION. To me, it's simply a psychological fact.
I suppose that Foucault would counter that one can never get rid of power, only transfer its effects from one regime of truth to another. So no society could ever be power-free. Also, he could say that there is no one source of power, that the different power structures in society (school, church, hospital, social worker, scientist) don't serve a single interest. Ergo, there's no real locus of criticism, only small, scattered, localized battles. To which it is very easy to say: if we can't get rid of power, we can at least try to quantify its effects and decide upon a societal structure that minimizes the repressive consequences of power. (We should always remember that not all power is bad.) In other words, we can try to find out how to decide which regimes of truth are better, or at least less harmful, than others. And if Foucault would not hesitate to say that post-war welfare statist Germany is better than Nazi Germany, then he is on the path to deciding just that sort of hierarchy of regimes of truth. Second, if power does not always serve the same interests, then at least try to figure out which ones it largely or more often than not serves. Again, it's a matter of quantifying the effects.
Sorry to pour forth another long post, but watching the video just triggered in me all those criticisms I have of the Foucaultian project. Also, I don't necessarily agree with either Foucault or Chomsky, but Foucault's apparent blindness to their similarities and the seemingly obvious logical inconsistencies in his position warranted my comment. Maybe Foucault was just too wired on caffeine or something else to make sense, I mean look at that jittery motherfucker. That finger tastes good! Oh, and after the show Foucault went to a Dutch bath house and had himself whipped with leather straps, while Chomsky returned to the hotel and quietly wrote his 784th article against the Vietnam War.
posted by to scranton at 12:34 AM
3 Comments:
It's unclear with these guys whether one should shout, "you're not so different" or "you couldn't be farther apart," two sentiments I think are evident by your own analysis. Does Foucault represent the antithesis of Chomsky's structuralist, Utopian (Sheriff is cringing, but let's face it...) model, or are they both, as you suggest, Marxists with a slightly different face. The questions you raise about Foucault are no doubt good ones. Personally, I prefer to read his historical works simply because these questions don't become quite as much of an issue. But even in those, we still have problems. As you once said yourself, "why can't he just admit that it's a good thing that a retard can't get jerked off without some kind of social consequence.
Give that credit to Sheriff, my man. Retards and handjobs are his parlance.
My mouth waters...
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