>On Dec 7, 2006, at 2:53 PM, bitch wrote:
>
>> Which is to say, Chomsky characterizes Foucault as suggesting that
>>what he's about is criticizing the content of of the concept of
>>human nature C offered. But foucault is not. He is denying that
>>there is a human nature at all.
>
>According to that piece on Chomsky's political philosophy by I can
>remember who in NLR about 10 years ago, Noam believes that we're all
>hardwired for freedom, and it's only external distortions (e.g., a
>bad state) that inhibit us from realizing this inner essence.
>
>Doug
yah. my mentor's son studied with c and my mentor, who'd written a big critique of cybernetics theory which is connected in important ways to the kinds of work C does, grilled C over it one night. he was particularly troubled by C's argument that he could bracket his academic work from his politics -- that it somehow had nothing to do with politics, the you couldn't draw this connections between c's claims about language and the mind with his politics.
my mentor was deeply interested in all this b/c, as a frankfurt school type and refugee from Nazi Germany, he saw huge problems with the kind of scientisim C puruses in his academic work and the way it operates as part of the systems of oppression Foucault was pointing at. he wanted to know how C could reconcile the two.
so, of course, foucault who has criticized the repressive hypothesis of the freudo-marxists was talking about something radically different than C. C only happens to hold a more mechanistic or souped up version of the repressive hypothesis.
but when was this debate? the war was still on, right? I remember coming across a book containing the debate and plopping my ass on the library floor to read it. I can't remember reading about the circumstances that lead to the debate. they merely picked chomsky b/c he was an intellectual heavyweight in the anti-war movement and not, possibly, because he'd actually read foucault. Which might have been hard to do then as I seem to remember Gayle Rubin saying she only got access to Foucault's stuff by 78, even the she'd actually met him in Paris while sharing the same library to do their respective research. At the time, he just mentioned that he was doing historical research on, IIRC, man boy love.
"You know how it is, come for the animal porn, stay for the cultural analysis." -- Michael Berube
Bitch | Lab http://blog.pulpculture.org