Chomsky llive on the net tonight (1 Viewer)

[Shine]

Right - actually - that doesn't excuse someone like me - who has maybe recently experienced a little bit of change of consciousness and definately has no excuse for not acting. Ahem. Publicly announcing my intention to up the attendance at some meeting or other from 6 to 7. As soon as i get my babysitter back.

 

[oh shit]

If Derrida was still alive, yeah...

speakin of dead guys, there's a book on foucault in qub library i browsed one day, which includes a transcribed chapter of chomsky and foucault having a debate, taken from some french tv programme or somethin.

anyway foucault won, for me, if only for his unerring ability to rephrase and expand upon every question, and basically leave chomsky lookin like an old-fashioned modernist with an essentially unidimensional understanding of power. which he is, right?

or, in other words, blah blah blah read some chomsky man blah blah blah
he sounds really blah blah convincing blah blah whilst stating the obvious
blah blah when's his next bestseller blah blah blah in the shops anyway


etc

 

[Shine]

Is it this one? http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1971xxxx.htm. If so - oh dear - it's long. Will tackle it next em... sometime.. and be able to have a clue what you talking about!
I watched the documentary Derrida where he deconstructs the very format of the documentary in order to not explain anything at all which was always the point of never coming to the point of... waaaaarrrrgh!!
I was already on a major teary comedown.
Was an uncomfortable evening for me.

 

[oh shit]

that is it! thanks.

ps i'm mainly raggin on chomsky cos i like bein contrary.

 

[hugh]

That debate is really good. First half is very philosophical and mostly over my head but there's some interesting things there. Second part is about poltics and a bit more accessible I think.

I find Chomsky's arguments far more persuasive ... in fact after slagging him some time ago on this forum and saying I found his writings boring I now feel a strange urge to read some of his stuff again.

There is something weird about it though. The debate was on French telly and Foucault precedes his first question by saying he is going to answer in French since his English is not great. I had this idea that Chomsky only spoke one language so how the hell did he know what Foucault was saying? Transator? That must have been weird on telly ...

 

[Antrophe]

I was reading some where there recently (haven't a notion where..) some comments from Chomsky on his encounters with Foucault. Despite being on relatively amicable terms with each other, Chomsky described meeting Foucault as like meeting someone from another planet, who was totally absent of any morality. This absence of a morality, or base for arguments or political views made it rather hard to argue with him in his opinion. I just like the image of that big bald dome of Foucaults descending from a UFO...

 

[oh shit]

I find Chomsky's arguments far more persuasive ... in fact after slagging him some time ago on this forum and saying I found his writings boring I now feel a strange urge to read some of his stuff again.

well it's this part that really sums up why i preferred foucault's analysis:

contrary to what you think, you can't prevent me from believing that these notions of human nature, of justice, of the realisation of the essence of human beings, are all notions and concepts which have been formed within our civilisation, within our type of knowledge and our form of philosophy, and that as a result form part of our class system; and one can't, however regrettable it may be, put forward these notions to describe or justify a fight which should-and shall in principle--overthrow the very fundaments of our society. This is an extrapolation for which I can't find the historical justification.

i think this relates to what antrophe recounts:

foucault... was totally absent of any morality. This absence of a morality, or base for arguments or political views made it rather hard to argue with him in his opinion

Foucault was, in my limited understanding, a follower of Nietzsche; in that he refuted the concept of morality as something intrinsic. I think Foucault hints at this in the debate when he talks about how his project is not so much to critique social structures or propose superior ones - ie, where power resides or where it should reside in the name of a moral sense of justice - but rather to illuminate and understand how power, and by extension knowledge, operates.
For Foucault this was most obvious by taking a revisionist view of the history of knowledge.

In this sense Foucault does not necessarily live in a personal moral vaccuum, nor for example does he necessarily refute point-blank the existence of a mental disorder; i think instead he regards such considerations as irrelevant to the understanding of political struggle in that morality and justice are in themselves concepts which have always been employed in power struggles, and are therefore not to be trusted.

in my limited studies of law and politics i have so far found foucault's post-structuralist mode of analysis much more helpful than a more teleological structural analysis. but chomsky is pretty helpful too.

i like this part:

I'd even like to drop the word [proletariat], since it's so loaded with specific historical connotations, and think instead of the people who do the productive work of the society, manual and intellectual work. I think those people should be in a position to organise the conditions of their work, and to determine the ends of their work and the uses to which it's put; and, because of my concept of human nature, I really think of that as partially including everyone. Because I think that any human being who is not physically or mentally deformed-and here I again must disagree with Monsieur Foucault and express my belief that the concept of mental illness probably does have an absolute character, to some extent at least-is not only capable of, but is insistent upon doing productive, creative work, if given the opportunity to do so.
I've never seen a child who didn't want to build something out of blocks, or learn something new, or try the next task. And the only reason why adults aren't like that is, I suppose, that they have been sent to school and other oppressive institutions, which have driven that out of them.

i'm just not convinced that i agree with the ends he proposes, for the reasons foucault gives.

The debate was on French telly and Foucault precedes his first question by saying he is going to answer in French since his English is not great. I had this idea that Chomsky only spoke one language so how the hell did he know what Foucault was saying? Transator? That must have been weird on telly ...

on re-reading it i think it may in fact have been in a dutch closed environment - chomsky refers to the threat of american fascism even to 'holland' and one of the questions at the end comes from someone at the university of Utrecht. i'd say it was conducted in english with a translator for foucault's answers.

 

[oh shit]

ps nietzschean ideas of the social production of morality are seriously questioned by zygmunt bauman.. instead he argues for a social production of immorality which is occasionally challenged by individuals within immoral societies. these isolated people must be drawing on some internal sense of justice.

the foundation for this is those few people who risked death by refusing to take part in or ignore the nazi holocaust - it's a couple of chapters in 'modernity and the holocaust' (1989).

this would support chomsky's argument. i also would agree with chomsky that any centralised, hierarchical structure creates the conditions for individuals to act selfishly and against others and therefore decentralised small democratic organisations are the most favourable forms of human organisation..

pps i may be talking out my hole here.

 

[mazzyianne]

contrary to what you think, you can't prevent me from believing that these notions of human nature, of justice, of the realisation of the essence of human beings, are all notions and concepts which have been formed within our civilisation, within our type of knowledge and our form of philosophy, and that as a result form part of our class system; and one can't, however regrettable it may be, put forward these notions to describe or justify a fight which should-and shall in principle--overthrow the very fundaments of our society. This is an extrapolation for which I can't find the historical justification.

That sums up why I can't handle foucault. It just all seems so...
abstract?
I dunno. It comes across as a cop out to me. While chomsky is going 'get out there and do something', Foucault is going 'but it's all just a concept, lets sit around and think about that...'
ARGH!

 

[oh shit]

he's saying that you can't justify a revolution using the values and principles of the system you're trying to replace.

it may seem like a cop out but what he argued in favour of was a greater understanding of where power is located and how it is operated and dispersed throughout society, rather than a devotion to a revolution against the state.

without this understanding, (as camus argued), revolutions throughout history have usually resulted in equal if not greater levels of oppression by elements of the revolutionary movement than the systems they replaced.

beyond his basic politics, his work on the histories of madness, sexuality, penality, and the concept of governmentality is, at the least, a valuable perspective on how power and repression operate... like the chair of the debate said, he has a different approach to the same basic problems chomsky looks at.

when you were wondering why people aren't more motivated after reading or hearing noam chomsky, i think foucault might offer some answers.

 

[Shine]

OK - i haven't got around to reading the interview yet and i've just drank a bottle of wine. But. I once read an article by an anarchist advocating some sort of post-anarchism embracing ideas of Nietzsche and Foucault's... He said that said Nietzsche had very little time for those he called "anarchist dogs". There's a concept called ressentiment that he (FNietz) saw in all democratic political movement - the hatred of the powerless for the powerful - this he saw as a completely negative eh.. thing. Right - so ressentiment is slave morality: "The master has power, the master is bad, (therefore i am good)". But it is reactive. The slave's morality doesn't exist except in opposition - in fact it needs the pre-existance of the master in order to set itsself up as moral.
This makes a bit of sense - and is possibly part of what fouccault is drawing on in his Chomsky interview? (that i haven't read soz)
Anywya, as i recall, the article went on to ... talk about anarchist belief in natural law - well to put a hippy dippy spin on it anarchists believe in a natual system of laws and morality. That you know what is right. You don't have to be told by a system of state-imposed laws... (Why can't we trust ourselves on this? Why does there have to be so much talk of societal norms and blah blah.. the basics are there surely - innately? - this week i willl be mostly - still - reading Mutual Aid by Peter Kropotkin - sorry - is this the essentialist stuff?). There is a dialectic (sorry weeler!) in anarchist politics between state and society...HTe state was imposed (not agreed upon in any whatchamaycallit - Hobbsean social contracty). It's (state's)opponents may fall into the trap of the expressing the politics of ressentiment. Basically all negative and no positive.. man. And the trap is something like saying "fight the power" and getting bitter or personal or angry, because power relations will always exist. Hang on now.... here's the article... http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=03/07/10/1520239&mode=nested&tid=9 and here's a quotey:

While anarchists see power as emanating from the State, Foucault sees the State as emanating from power. The State, in other words, is merely an effect of power relations that have crystallized into relations of domination.

So you can't "fight the power" because your existance in the world makes you implicit in its power relations. But you can resist domination.. Hmm - not sure i like what fouccault says: "without hope of ever being free of it" hmmm...

Just skimmed the article again - and if u not into reading the whole thing the last 6 paragraphs are definately worth a goo. This bit...

Perhaps anarchism could become a new 'heroic' philosophy, which is no longer reactive but, rather, creates values. For instance, the ethic of mutual care and assistance propounded by Kropotkin could perhaps be utilized in the construction of new forms of collective action and identities. Kropotkin looked at the development of collective groups based on cooperation -- trade unions, associations of all kinds, friendly societies and clubs, etc.[63] As we have seen, he believed this to be the unfolding of an essential natural principle. However, perhaps one could develop this collectivist impulse without circumscribing it in essentialist ideas about human nature. Collective action does not need a principle of human essence to justify it. Rather it is the contingency of identity -- its openness to difference, to singularity, to individuality and collectivity -- that is itself ethical. So the anarchist ethics of mutual aid may be taken from its essentialist foundations and applied to a non-essentialist, constitutively open idea of collective political identity.
......
all the way down to
..............
Post-anarchism may be seen, then, as a series of politico-ethical strategies against domination, without essentialist guarantees and Manichean structures that condition and restrict classical anarchism. It would affirm the contingency of values and identities, including its own, and affirm, rather than deny, will to power. It would be, in other words, an anarchism without ressentiment.

I dunnno - whatcha think. Seriously? (Will def read other thingy soon..)

Also if anyone is reading carefully and knows anything about nietzsche - i would like to know if he really did think that what yer man says in the article - that our concept of morality stems from "the vengeful will to power of the powerless against the powerful - the revolt of the slave against the master". That seems pretty incredible to me. I'm pretty sure there is an innate morality. Something like empathy that means we will do unto others as we would have them do unto us? As long as we can identify with them. So as i see it alienation is a big problem. Realising our oneness a big goal. This has not much to do with the thread anymore does it sorry. Chomsky Chomskific Chomster.
Holy crap it's 2am. Damn thumped. Damnnmmm.....