th CHOMSKY- FOUCAULT clebate ON HUMAN NATURE NOAM CHOMSKY ano MICHEL FOUCAULT FOREWORD BY JOHN RAJCHMAN “[Chomsky is] arguably the most important intellectual alive.” 1s wew vore res “Foucault. .. leaves no reader untouched or unchanged.” -menmena 5410 IN 1971, AT THE HEIGHT OF THE VIETNAM WAR AND AT A TIME OF es poliical 2r Social insaby, wo of te wri leatng lees, Noam Cory i ‘Mick Foucault writs by uch philosopher Fons ero dette an age-clé esto tne ‘sue a hing fate” hans ae ndopesiet ol aur experiences devel infer ae? ‘The esutingeiatague is ae ot maser, rvecathe, ad spontaneous chara th to ave occured heween cntempeay plosepiers and above al eres. a cance nbe ‘chon eas tana. What begins a philosophical argument oven inguin ‘he thor of rawiedg son evs it 2 broader lscusson encompassing a wie ‘apis tromsiene, istry, and bers to resin, reeom, at te tug fis ine rear of peice. santo the cata ie volume fetes anew fared Cumbia University leapt professor John Rachman ard icles sebtamtlad ‘antsy Chon and Fvcaut NOAM GHOWSKY ic ististe Professor MICHEL FOUCAULT <1926-1968) hui mers at the Massachusts taste et chal inte Hstary of Systm f Though Techaology ana werdvenowned political the College de France. Tha New Prue fx hiner and acti He is me autor of pushed tree major volumes his Work ‘urerous books, inclusng Language and wos a colecton, Tmo Essent Force ‘Uncestanling Power (ot aval oa Te New Pres.THE CHOMSKY-FOUCAULT DEBATEThe Chomsky-Foucault Debate ON HUMAN NATURE Noam Chomsky and Michel FoucaultCompltin © 2006 y The Nee Pass Tore © 2 by Ja ah amon Netra Per ovgnaly appeared ‘ehesie Wier Th Concer of Mento Fos hr ei) Palsy Son Pra ot Ray perme “Pati” and A Piso of Language ape x Chapters and rspectivegin Part Lf Ox Langage pushy The New Pres 0 1908 “Truth and Power “Omneret Singaltin” a "Conronting Gvernent? pean Pr: Enea Werks Pacen rae bie The New Prenen 20 Parison rept“ Ont Sigal conrtey oe Universo ‘ah Pesan the Troster oe Taner Lactures on Haan Vls Allright reserve Nopartf hi bak may be ero ay frm, “thou niten prison ron te pbs Requests fr perminsiontorepoce elsions fo this eck seni to Perms Deartnn The New Pros Piha in th Unie Seats by The New Press New Yah 0 ‘Distrittby WW Nereon& Company oe Now York ISBN-1s ore 255651919) TSHN-10 sass ro¥0 (ph) ‘taste ‘The New Prone wanaathedin 100 aa nor prof leretve ‘0 thelage commercial pulang howe curntiy enn the ook jabshangmuseryThe New Pest operes ne cinerea han or pte ain and ore pun. Ininsovativwaym woe dna cataral an comamy “be hat artes domed inset ota Company dic! Thistak wat BMT gar Prine he Unite Sate f America Contents Foreword by John Rajchman Human Nature: Justice vs, Power (1971) A Debate Between Noam Chomsky dnd Michel Foucault Potties (1976) Noam Chomsky A Philosophy of Language(1976) ‘Noam Chomsky’ ‘Truth and Power (1976) Michel Fouenule “Ones et Singulatin’ Toward x Critique ‘of Political Reason (1978) Michel Foucsule ‘Confronting Governments: Human Rights (1981) Michel Fouceule v0 m an‘of questions and new ways of posing them emerging from the political movements in so many places? Were older, more or Tess Marxist models sufficient, or should one draw from other Enlightenment traditions, oF from the particular transforma tions taking place—for example, evil disobedience or partici patory democracy? Moving back and forthin two languages for 4 Dutch television audience at this peculiar moment, passing from questions of language and creativity to power and polities, 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 poliieal—in the work of | (Chomsky and Foucault and in their respective countries, In what ay’ had the study of language or of discourse pre= pared each man forhis new political rol? 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 ‘rus of the debate with each man trying to translate the basic “question in his owen terms. sta mater of linguistic universals and their relation tohuman justice anddecenes as Chomsky r= _gued:orisit,as Foucaultmsintsined, case ofhistorial and ma- terial restrictions on whatis suid and in their relations with the ‘exercise of power? AMter some polite attempts to find common ‘ground a divergence broke out on this score, which, as usa in such exchanges, was ultimately left unresolved, As the decade wore on both men would contin to examine the relation be= ‘seen linguistics and polities, language and power, as they n= «creasingly assumed theroleof political intellectuals Thei ater reflections serve to amplify the positionsin the intial exchange aswell as thedivergencesand links between them, In particular, reproduced in this volume following the debate are attempts each made in 1976 to clarify and elaborate their views (Chapters {2-4}, Also included isa lecture given by Foueaule at Stanford University in 1978 (Chapter 5), as well as brief statement (Chapter 0), which originally appearedin the French newspaper Likerationin 19, shortly before Foucault's death. These later texts can be real asa kindof aftermath and continuation ofthe 1971 debate at atime wen both men already sensed reaction against or “falling of” ofthe earlier possibilities, but also theie elaboration in new lines. They deepen the earlier exchange, complicating its terms and reception. Asin that earlier debate, these additonal chapters retain the informal nature in whieh ‘ach man, moving from his area of expertise o research, ad dresses a larger pubic, through interview or lecture, thus re fectng his own passage from academic study to public political activity ‘The interviews with Chomsky on polities and language (Chapters 2 and 3) prolong the peculiar mix of English and French in the 1971 debate. Condicted in 1076, they were oig- inally published in France in a volume tiled Dialogues ove Misou Ronot* Ronat, a noted French linguist, asked questions in Frenchy Chomsky responded in English, andthe tape-recorded results were then translated into French, In the Englsh= language edition, published in 1979 a8 Language ond Responsi- bility and 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 basi structure ofthe original, snot simply a translation ofthe French translation of| my remarks, but is rather an elaboration and in some catesmodification ofthe French versin."* The result gives what the translator working with Chomsky believed to be “the clearest exposition yetof Chomshy’sbasic conception in linguistics and related issues...."* Interestingly, in the second dialogue (Chapter 3}, Chomsky explicitly recalls his 1971 debate with Foucault, after delaring,"l donot lieve that Marist philos= ‘only, of whatever tendency, has made substantial contribu tion tothe kind of questions we have been discussing”* Inthe intervening years the isu of polities and language had been ‘much discussed, and Mitsot Ronat was keen to pose questions to Chomsky about these developments—about the sty of to taltarian language by Jean-Pierre Faye, for example, oF about the analysis of non-standard English by William Labow. In ‘each ease Chomsky defends his program of “innate” universal eferring to Labon's study of black English, he says. 1 do rot sein what way che study of ghetto dialects difers from the study of the dialects of university-trained speakers, from purely linguistic point of view" He does, however, admit chat “no individual speaks a well-defined language,” such thatthe national or “natural” languages stdid by linguists are a hoe :mogenizing abstraction, an idealization, alehough nevertheless the condition of “rational” study of language. This i a point ‘with which Gilles Deleuze took issue at the time, suggesting that blace English, unlike that of academics, involves another "minor" polities in language-wse, which in turn entails a“prage matic” clement, ireducible to the competenee-performance Aiseinetion in Chomshy's “rational” abstraction, How do such ideas bear on the disagreement with Foucault eoncerning language in the earlier Dutch debate? There the discussion had focused on the question of creativity” Chomsky was impressed by the potentially infinite sentences any child learns to generat in the “natural” language to which he or she is exposed, He argued that the actual verbal evidence at the hil’s disposal in acquiring such “normal creativity" cannot be inferred simply from verbal clues the child encounters as Skin= ner falsely presumed. One needs rather to postulate a innate ‘capacity, akin to the question of "innate ideas” in Descartes By contrast, Foucaule was impressed by the fact that, of the many utterances "normal creativity” allows for.only avery few aresc- tually uttered (spoken or written) and those that are fall into discernable patterns of a time and place. Foucault was inter= ested in lee choses dite He imagined there were rues or “regu lavities”in what is said at a given time and place, and that these rules govern not just the kinds of things that are talked about, but also the roles and positions of those talking about them. He argue that such historical regularities in weterance cannot be explained by innate structures inthe minds or brains of lan sguage-learners or indeed by any innate predeterminaton. Nei ther innate nor learned, they instead condition and constrain the actual use oF exercise of our minds across series of prac tices st once material and institutional. ln particular, they can be shown to govern the ways in which we tll about language itself and the ways ii so delimited as to become a "rational object of sty in different periods —as, for example, with the {urn from a focus on historical language groups to language structures” The question of “ideas” in elasical philosophy thus needs to be posed in another way, and Foucault offers Chomsky the observation that while the mind in Descartes is notin fact ereatve but is eather “laminated by eidenes,” in Leibniz one finds a picture of the mind “folded back” so as todevelop potentials or “virtualities” by unfolding itself in the world, with which the theme of creativity” might better be a= sociated. Today, there no more exist accepted rules for such “anonymous” regularities in things sad than there is anything. like «generative grammar’ for any natural language, not even English; but the differing views over the concept of “creativity” nevertheless remain philosophically suggestive. In Foucault's ‘ase it Teads to a particular problem: how then do new ways of talking arise? What are the presuppositions and the politis of such non-normal creativity in our forms of discourse? How did ths disagreement figure into the problem of the relation of language-study to polities in the ewo thinkers? Chomsky begins his dialogue with Mitsow Ronat on this topic by declaring that the specialized knowledge he possesses as linguist “has no immediate bearing on social and political i= sues" nor should it. Ta other words, no special expertise is needed anyone can engage in political analysis if open-minded and willing to establish the facts with the available informi= tion. All that is needed is “Cartesian common sense, whichis quite evenly distributed The possible link between univer= sals of language and international justice ian abstruse matter, hich doosn't seem to affect this democratic presupposition of critical thought. This commonsensieal approach in eur matches with Chomsky’s optimistic view of technology in disseminating information, which he advanced in the earlier debate with Foucault, and which, according to bim, “implies that relevant information and relevant understanding at be brought to everyone quicky”” Universal linguistics gives us ‘each a “normal creativity” that we are free to exercise through ‘common-sensical study, conveyed to everyone quickly through advanced media. That Chomsky became better known in France for his plitieal writings than for his work in inguistcs seems consistent with this view of the relation between lin gusts and polities, Foucault followed a rather different path in the 1970s, He ‘sw 1968 not simply asa criss in the university but also asa crisis in knowledge and in particular the knowledge of aca ‘demi specialists in relation tothe new questions thrown up by’ such events. One needed new image of the intellectual and new ways of talking about and seeing things, centered on ques tions of truth and power. His interviews in [aly with Fontana and Pasquino (Chapter #), conducted in 1976, are not simply an attempt to recast the new struggles in terms of truth and potter, but, asin a related interview in Francs," to introduce a Alistnetion between "specific" and “universal” inelletuals—a tradition of Voltaire, Zola, and Sartre, appealing to higher val ues as moral conscience for society and another one exempli- fied by. Robert Oppenheimer, concerned as he was with the consequences of the knowledge he helped to develop It was Just this type of “specific” activity chat Foucault himselt bad ‘ried to put into practice, starting with the formation of G (Le Groupe dTyjirmaton sur les Prison) in February of 1071 (prior to his debate with Chomsky) as a new kind of collective ‘that was rather diferent from the Maoist groups atthe time or from university departmentalization." GIP collected informa tion about prison conditions in France, not simply in an inves tigative or journalistic manner to present in the medi, but ax prt of a deeper analysis or “diagnosis”—as part ofa larger at- ‘tempt to create new ways of thinking about and viewing the ‘operations of prisons, which Foucault would further develop and presentin 1975 in his book Discipline and Punish Kt was not simple case of information tha was obvious toanyone or eatily conveyed through the media: it was closer ¢o attempts fol Towing 1988, by Marcel Ophls and Jean-Lue Godard (notably inhi 1976 television program Six fos deux) to challenge the media presentation of history and events, exposing exclusions and introducing, other questions’ For Foucault, the basic problem was Tessa shift from Marxist “theology” to Cartesian common-sense as much as the invention of “Tabrication” of a nev sort of link between politics and truth and speaking the- truth, for which one needed to develop the model as well asthe practice One needed to break with the “sel-evidence” that, ‘governs our habits and practice of taking about and secing things—as, for example, with the “sel-evidence” that our pris- fons serve fo “reform” oF simply to enforce laws, The aim of Foucault's “analyses of discourse,” more than making informa tion publily available, was an attempt to interrupt an “prob lematize” things taken for granted in our baits of thinking, and so to suggest other posibiltes, to be developed in public lscussions—other ways of conceiving of and amplifying quese tions posed to “politic at usual” and the expertise that sup- ports it, thus opening it up to experimentation. (There is a ‘hole aspect of vil disobedience, discussed in the debate with Chomsky, not only with Martin Luther King Jr. but also with Gandhi, that may be understood in this way—the peculiar force of "speaking the uh” in “problematizing” what is taken for granted in law or justice, releasing possibilities chat ex- tended beyond the ivi rights movement itself) In 1976, while Chomsky was carrying on his dialogues with ‘Mitsou Ronat in France, Foucault, fr his part, was working ‘onanew set of concerns, which he would ater present in Amer= iain is Fectures at Stanford (Chapter 8). The recent public tion in English of is 1975-76 lecture-course atthe College de France, “Socity Must be Defended.” gives @ good idea of these concerns." Tn these Ieetures, Foucault was interested in ques tions of security and populations welfare and warfare, in the [sind of politcal rationality” suppesed by our governments and the kind of expert and expertise on which they “selE