1.
Elders: Ladies and
gentlemen, welcome to the third debate of the International Philosophers'
Project. Tonight's debaters are Mr. Michel Foucault, of the College de France,
and Mr. Noam Chomsky, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Both philosophers
have points in common and points of difference. Perhaps the best way to compare
both philosophers would be to see them as tunnellers through a mountain working
at opposite sides of the same mountain with different tools, without even
knowing if they are working in each other's direction. But both are doing their
jobs with quite new ideas, digging as profoundly as possible with an equal
commitment in Philosophy as in Politics: enough reasons, it seems to me for us
to expect a fascinating debate about Philosophy and about Politics. I intend, therefore, not to lose any time and to start off
with a central, perennial question, The question of humannature. All studies of
man, from History to Linguistics and Psychology, are faced with the question of
whether, in the last instance, we are the product of all kinds of external
factors, or if, in spite of our differences, we have something we could call a
common humannature, by which we can recognise each other as humanbeings. So my
first question is to you, Mr. Chomsky, because you often employ the concept of humannature,
in which connection you even use terms like innateideas and innatestructures.
Which arguments can you derive from Linguistics to give such a central position
to this concept of humannature?
2.
Chomsky: Well, let me begin in
a slightly technical way. A person who is interested in studying Languages is
faced with a very definite empiricalproblem. He's faced with an organism, a
mature, let's say adult, speaker, who has somehow acquired an amazing range of
abilities, which enable him in particular to say what he means, to understand
what people say to him, to do this in a fashion that I think is proper to call
highly creative, that is, much of what a person says in his normal intercourse
with others is novel, much of what you hear is new, it doesn't bear any close
resemblance to anything in your experience; it's not random novel behaviour,
clearly, it's behaviour which is in some sense which is very hard to
characterise, appropriate to situations. And in fact it has many of the
characteristics of what I think might very well be called creativity. Now, the
person who has acquired this intricate and highly articulated and organised
collection of abilities-the collection of abilities that we call knowing a
language-has been exposed to a certain experience; he has been presented in the
course of his lifetime with a certain amount of data, of direct experience with
a language. We can investigate the data that's available to this person; having
done so, in principle, we're faced with a reasonably clear and well-delineated
scientific problem, namely that of accounting for the gap between the really
quite small quantity of data, small and rather degenerate in quality, that's
presented to the child, and the very highly articulated, highly systematic,
profoundly organised resulting Knowledge that he somehow derives from these
data. Furthermore, we notice that varying individuals with very varied
experience in a particular language nevertheless arrive at systems which are
very much congruent to one another. The systems that two speakers of English
arrive at on the basis of their very different experiences are congruent in the
sense that, over an overwhelming range, what one of them says, the other can
understand. Furthermore, even more remarkable, we notice that in a wide range
of languages, in fact all that have been studied seriously, there are remarkable
limitations on the kind of systems that emerge from the very different kinds of
experiences to which people are exposed. There is only one possible
explanation, which I have to give in a rather schematic fashion, for this
remarkable phenomenon, namely the assumption that the individual himself
contributes a good deal, an overwhelming part in fact, of the general schematic
structure and perhaps even of the specific content of the Knowledge that he
ultimately derives from this very scattered and limited experience. A person
who knows a language has acquired that Knowledge because he approached the
learning experience with a very explicit and detailed schematism that tells him
what kind of language it is that he is being exposed to. That is, to put it
rather loosely: the child must begin with the Knowledge, certainly not with the
Knowledge that he's hearing English or Dutch or French or something else, but
he does start with the Knowledge that he's hearing a humanLanguage of a very
narrow and explicit type, that permits a very small range of variation. And it
is because he begins with that highly organised and very restrictive
schematism, that he is able to make the huge leap from scattered and degenerate
data to highly organised Knowledge. And furthermore I should add that we can go
a certain distance, I think a rather long distance, towards presenting the
properties of this system of Knowledge, that I would call innateLanguage or
instinctiveKnowledge, that the child brings to Languagelearning; and also we
can go a long way towards describing the system that is mentally represented
when he has acquired this Knowledge. I would claim then that this instinctive Knowledge,
if you like, this schematism that makes it possible to derive complex and
intricate Knowledge on the basis of very partial data, is one fundamental
constituent of humannature. In this case I think a fundamental constituent
because of the role that Language plays, not merely in communication, but also
in expression of thought and interaction between persons; and I assume that in
other domains of human intelligence, in other domains of human cognition and
behaviour, something of the same sort must be true. Well, this collection, this
mass of schematisms, innate organising principles, which guides our social and
intellectual and individual behaviour, that's what I mean to refer to by the
concept of humannature.
3.
Elders: Well, Mr. Foucault,
when I think of your books like The History of Madness and Words and
Objects, I get the impression that you are working on a completely
different level and with a totally opposite aim and goal. When I think of the
word schematism in relation to humannature, I suppose you are trying to
elaborate several periods with several schematisms. What do you say to this?
4.
Foucault: Well, if you don't
mind I will answer in french, because my english is so poor that I would be
ashamed of answering in english. It is true that I mistrust the notion of humannature
a little, and for the following reason: I believe that, of the concepts or
notions which a Science can use, not all have the same degree of elaboration,
and that, in general, they have neither the same function nor the same type of
possible use in scientificdiscourse. Let's take the example of Biology. You
will find concepts with a classifyingfunction, concepts with a differentiatingfunction,
and concepts with an analyticalfunction: some of them enable us to characterise
objects, for example, that of tissue. Others to isolate elements, like that of
hereditaryfeature; others to fix relations, such as that of reflex. There are,
at the same time, elements which play a role in the discourse and in the
internal rules of the reasoning practice. But there also exist
"peripheral"notions, those by which scientificpractice designates
itself, differentiates itself in relation to other practices, delimits its
domain of objects, and designates what it considers to be the totality of its
future tasks. The notion of life played this role to some extent in Biology
during a certain period. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the
notion of life was hardly used in studying nature: one classified
naturalbeings, whether living or nonliving, in a vast hierarchical tableau
which went from minerals to man; the break between the minerals and the plants
or animals was relatively undecided; epistemologically, it was only important
to fix their positions, once and for all, in an indisputable way. At the end of
the eighteenth century, the description and analysis of these naturalbeings showed,
through the use of morehighly perfected instruments and the latest techniques,
an entire domain of objects, an entire field of relations and processes which
have enabled us to define the specificity of Biology in the Knowledge of Nature.
Can one say that research into life has finally constituted itself in
biologicalScience? Has the concept of life been responsible for the
organisation of biologicalKnowledge? I don't think so. It seems to me more
likely that the transformations of biologicalKnowledge at the end of the
eighteenth century, were demonstrated on one hand by a whole series of new
concepts for use in scientific discourse and on the other hand gave rise to a
notion like that of life which has enabled us to designate, to delimit and to
situate a certain type of scientificdiscourse, among other things. I would say
that the notion of life is not a scientificconcept; it has been an
epistemological indicator of which the classifying, delimiting and other functions
had an effect on scientificdiscussions, and not on what they were talking
about. Well, it seems to me that the notion of humannature
is of the same type. It was not by studying humannature that linguists
discovered the Laws of consonantmutation, or Freud the principles of the
analysisofdreams, or culturalanthropologists the structure of myths. In the History
of Knowledge, the notion of humannature seems to me mainly to have played the
role of an epistemological indicator to designate certain types of discourse in
relation to or in opposition to Theology or Biology or History. I would
find it difficult to see in this a scientific concept.
5.
Chomsky: Well, in the first
place, if we were able to specify in terms of, let's say, neural networks the
properties of humancognitivestructure that make it possible for the child to
acquire these complicated systems, then I, at least, would have no hesitation
in describing those properties as being a constituent element of humannature.
That is, there is something biologicallygiven,
unchangeable, a foundation for whatever it is that we do with our mentalcapacities
in this case. But I would like to pursue a little further the line of
development that you outlined, with which, in fact, I entirely agree, about the concept of life as an organising concept in the
biologicalSciences. It seems to me that one might speculate, a bit
further speculate in this case, since we're talking about the future, not the
past, and ask whether the concept of humannature, or of
innateorganisingmechanisms or of intrinsicmentalschematism or whatever we want
to call it, I don't see much difference between them, but let's call it humannature
for shorthand, might not provide for Biology the next peak to try to scale,
after having, at least in the minds of the biologists, though one might perhaps
question this, already answered to the satisfaction of some the question of
what life is. In other words, to be precise, is it possible to give a
biologicalexplanation or a physicalexplanation. Is it possible to characterise,
in terms of the physical concepts presently available to us, the ability of the
child to acquire complexsystems of Knowledge; and furthermore, critically,
having acquired such systems of Knowledge, to make use of this Knowledge in the
free and creative and remarkably varied ways in which he does? Can we explain
in biologicalterms, ultimately in physicalterms, these properties of both
acquiring Knowledge in the first place and making use of it in the second? I
really see no reason to believe that we can; that is, it's an article of faith
on the part of scientists that, since Science has explained many other things,
it will also explain this. In a sense, one might say that this is a variant of
the bodymindproblem. But, if we look back at the way in which Science has scaled
various peaks, and at the way in which the concept of life was finally acquired
by Science after having been beyond its vision for a long period, then I think
we notice at many points in History, and in fact the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries are particularly clear examples, that scientificadvances were
possible precisely because the domain of physicalScience was itself enlarged.
Classic cases are Newton'sgravitationalforces. To the Cartesians, action at a
distance was a mystical concept, and in fact, to Newton
himself, it was an occult quality, a mystical entity, which didn't belong
within Science. To the common sense of a later generation, action at a distance
has been incorporated within Science. What happened was that the notion of
body, the notion of the Physical had changed. To a Cartesian, a strictCartesian,
if such a person appeared today, it would appear that there is no explanation
for the behaviour of the heavenly bodies. Certainly, there is no explanation
for the phenomena that are explained in terms of electromagneticforce, let's
say. But, by the extension of physicalScience to
incorporate hitherto unavailable concepts, entirely new ideas, it became
possible to successively build more and more complicated structures that
incorporated a larger range of phenomena. For example, it's certainly
not true that the PhysicsoftheCartesians is able to explain, let's say, the
behaviour of elementary particles in Physics, just as it's unable to explain
the concepts of life. Similarly, I think, one might ask the question whether
physicalScience as known today, including Biology, incorporates within itself
the principles and the concepts that will enable it to give an account of
innatehumanintellectualcapacities and, even more profoundly, of the ability to
make use of those capacities under conditions of freedom in the way which
humans do. I see no particular reason to believe that Biology or Physics now
contain those concepts, and it may be that to scale the next peak, to make the
next step, they will have to focus on this organising concept, and may very
well have to broaden their scope in order to come to grips with it.
6.
Foucault: Yes.
7.
Elders: Perhaps I may try to
ask one more specific question leading out of both your answers, because I'm
afraid otherwise the debate will become too technical. I have the impression
that one of the main differences between you both has its origin in a
difference in approach. You, Mr. Foucault, are
especially interested in the way Science or scientists function in a certain
period, whereas Mr. Chomsky is more interested in the socalled whatquestions:
why we possess Language, not just how Language functions, but what's the reason
for our having Language. We can try to elucidate this in a more general
way. You, Mr. Foucault, are delimiting eighteenthcenturyRationalism, whereas
you, Mr. Chomsky, are combining eighteenthcenturyRationalism with notions like
freedom and creativity. Perhaps we could illustrate this in a more general way
with examples from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
8.
Chomsky: Well, first I should
say that I approach classicalRationalism not really as a historian of Science
or a historian of Philosophy, but from the rather different point of view of
someone who has a certain range of scientific notions and is interested in
seeing how, at an earlier stage, people may have been groping towards these
notions, possibly without even realising what they were groping towards. So one might say that I'm looking at History not as an
antiquarian, who is interested in finding out and giving a preciselyaccurate
account of what the thinking of the seventeenth century was. I don't mean to
demean that activity, it's just not mine. But rather from the point of view of,
let's say, an artlover, who wants to look at the seventeenth century to find in
it things that are of particularvalue, and that obtain part of their value in
part because of the perspective with which he approaches them. And I
think that, without objecting to the other approach, my approach is legitimate,
that is, I think it is perfectly possible to go back to earlier stages of
scientific thinking on the basis of our present understanding, and to perceive
how great thinkers were, within the limitations of their time, groping towards
concepts and ideas and insights that they themselves could not be clearly aware
of. For example, I think that anyone can do this about his own thought. Without
trying to compare oneself to the great thinkers of the past, anyone can.
9.
Elders: Why not?
10. Chomsky: look at.
11. Elders: Why not?
12. Chomsky: All right [laughs], anyone can consider what he now knows
and can ask what he knew twenty years ago, and can see that in some unclear
fashion he was striving towards something which he can only now understand if
he is fortunate. Similarly, I think it's possible to look at the past, without
distorting your view, and it is in these terms that I want to look at the
seventeenth century. Now, when I look back at the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, what strikes me particularly is the way in which, for example,
Descartes and his followers were led to postulate mind as a thinkingsubstance
independent of the body. If you look at their reasons for postulating this second
substance, mind, thinkingentity, they were that Descartes was able to convince
himself, rightly or wrongly, it doesn't matter at the moment, that events in
the physicalworld and even much of the behavioural and psychological world, for
example a good deal of sensation, were explicable in terms of what he
considered to be Physics, wrongly as we now believe, that is, in terms of
things bumping into each other and turning and moving and so on. He thought
that, in those terms, in terms of the
mechanical principle, he could explain a certain domain of phenomena, and then
he observed that there was a range of phenomena that he argued could not be
explained in those terms. And he, therefore, postulated a creative principle to
account for that domain of phenomena, the principle of mind with its own
properties. And then later followers, many who didn't regard themselves as
Cartesians, for example, many who regarded themselves as strongly antirationalistic,
developed the concept of creation within a system of rule. I won't bother with
the details, but my own research into the subject led me ultimately to Wilhelm von
Humboldt, who certainly didn't consider himself a
Cartesian, but nevertheless in a rather different framework and within a
different historical period and with different insight, in a remarkable and
ingenious way, which, I think, is of lasting importance, also developed the
concept of internalised form, fundamentally the concept of free creation within
a system of rule in an effort to come to grips with some of the same
difficulties and problems that the Cartesians faced in their terms. Now I
believe, and here I would differ from a lot of my colleagues, that the move of
Descartes to the postulation of a secondsubstance was a veryscientific move; it
was not a metaphysical or an antiscientific move. In fact, in many ways, it was
very much like Newton's intellectual move when he postulated action at a
distance. He was moving into the domain of the occult, if you like. He was moving into the domain of something that went beyond
wellestablishedScience, and was trying to integrate it with wellestablishedScience
by developing a theory in which these notions could be properlyclarifiedandexplained.
Now, Descartes, I think, made a similar intellectualmove in postulating a
secondsubstance. Of course, he failed where Newton succeeded; that is, he was
unable to lay the groundwork for a mathematicaltheory of mind, as achieved by
Newton and his followers, which laid the groundwork for a mathematicaltheory of
physicalentities that incorporated such occult notions as action at a distance,
and later electromagneticforces, and so on. But then that poses for us, I
think, the task of carrying on and developing this, if you like, mathematical
theory of mind; by that, I simply mean a precisely articulated, clearly
formulated, abstract theory which will have empirical consequences, which will
let us know whether the theory is right or wrong, or on the wrong track or the
right track, and, at the same time, will have the properties of mathematicalScience,
that is, the properties of rigour and precision and a structure that makes it
possible for us to deduce conclusions from assumptions and so on. Now it's from
that point of view that I try to look back at the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries and to pick out points, which I think are really there, even though I
certainly recognise, and in fact would want to insist, that the individuals in
question may not have seen it this way.
13. Elders: Mr. Foucault, I suppose you will have a severe
criticism of this?
14. Foucault: No, there are just one or two little historical points. I
cannot object to the account which you have given in your historical analysis
of their reasons and of their modality. But there is one thing one could
nevertheless add. When you speak of creativity as conceived by Descartes, I wonder
if you don't transpose to Descartes an idea which is to be found among his
successors or even certain of his contemporaries. According to Descartes, the
mind was not so very creative. It saw, it perceived, it was illuminated by the
evidence. Moreover, the problem which Descartes never resolved nor entirely
mastered, was that of understanding how one could pass from one of these
clearanddistinctideas, one of these intuitions, to another, and what status
should be given to the evidence of the passage between them. I can't see
exactly either the creation in the moment where the mind grasped the truth for
Descartes, or even the real creation in the passage from one truth to another. On
the contrary, you can find, I think, at the same time, in Pascal and Leibniz,
something which is much closer to what you are looking for, in other words in
Pascal and in the whole Augustinianstream of Christianthought, you find this
idea of a mind in profundity; of a mind folded back in the intimacy of itself
which is touched by a sort of unconsciousness, and which can develop its
potentialities by the deepening of the self. And that is why the grammar of
Port Royal, to which you refer, is, I think, much more Augustinian than
Cartesian. And, furthermore, you will
find in Leibniz something which you will certainly like: the idea that, in the
profundity of the mind is incorporated, a whole web of logicalrelations which
constitutes, in a certain sense, the rational unconscious of the consciousness,
the not yet clarified and visible form of the reason itself, which the monad or
the individual develops little by little, and with which he understands the
whole world. That's where I would make a verysmall criticism.
15. Elders: Mr. Chomsky, one moment please. I don't think it's a question
of making a historical criticism, but of formulating yourownopinions on these
quite fundamentalconcepts.
16. Foucault: But one's fundamental opinions can be demonstrated in
precise analyses such as these.
17. Elders: Yes, all right. But I remember some passages in your History
of Madness, which give a description of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries in terms of repression, suppression, and exclusion, while, for Mr.
Chomsky, this period is full of creativity and individuality. Why do we have at
that period, for the first time, closed psychiatric or insane asylums? I think
this is a veryfundamental question.
18. Foucault: On creativity, yes! But I don't know, perhaps Mr. Chomsky
would like to speak about it.
19. Elders: No, no, no, please go on. Continue.
20. Foucault: No, I would like to say this: in the historicalstudies
that I have been able to make, or have tried to make, I have, without any doubt,
given very little room to what you might call the creativity of individuals, to
their capacity for creation, to their aptitude for inventing by themselves, for
originating concepts, theories or scientific truths by themselves. But I
believe that my problem is different to that of Mr. Chomsky. Mr. Chomsky has been fighting against linguisticBehaviourism,
which attributed almost nothing to the creativity of thespeakingsubject.
Thespeakingsubject was a kind of surface on which information came together
little by little, which he afterwards combined. In the field of the History
of Science, or, more generally, the History
of Thought, the problem was completely different. The History of Knowledge has
tried for a long time to obey two claims. One is the claim
of attribution, Each discovery should not only be situated and dated, but should
also be attributed to someone. It should have an inventor and someone
responsible for it. General or collective phenomena on the other hand, those
which by definition can't be attributed, are normally devalued. They are still
traditionally described through words like tradition, mentality, modes, and one
lets them play the negative role of a brake in relation to the originality of
the inventor. In brief, this has to do with the principle of the sovereignty of
the subject applied to the History of Knowledge. The other claim is that which no longer allows us to save the subject,
but the truth, so that it won't be compromised by History, it is necessary not
that the truth constitutes itself in History, but only that it reveals itself
in it, hidden to men's eyes,
provisionally inaccessible, sitting in the shadows, it will wait to be
unveiled. The History of truth would be essentially its delay, its fall
or the disappearance of the obstacles which have impeded it until now from
coming to light. The historical dimension of Knowledge is always negative in
relation to the truth. It isn't difficult to see how these two claims were
adjusted, one to the other: the phenomena of collective order, the
commonthought, the prejudices of the myths of a period, constituted the
obstacles which the subject of Knowledge had to surmount or to outlive in order
to have access finally to the truth; he had to be in an ["]eccentric["]position
in order to ["]discover["]. At one level, this seems to be invoking a
certain Romanticism about the History of Science: the solitude of the man of
truth, the originality which reopened itself onto the original through History
and despite it. I think that, more fundamentally, it's a matter of
superimposing the theory of Knowledge and the subject of Knowledge on the History
of Knowledge. And what if understanding the relation of
the subject to the truth were just an effect of Knowledge? What if understanding
were a complex, multiple, nonindividualformation, not subjected to the subject,
which produced effects of truth? One should then put forward positively
this entire dimension which the History of Science has negativised. Analyse the
productive capacity of Knowledge as a collective practice; and consequently
replace individuals and their Knowledge in the development of a Knowledge which,
at a given moment, functions according to certain rules which one can register
and describe. You will say to me that all the
Marxist historians of Science have been doing this for a long time. But, when
one sees how they work with these facts and especially what use they make of the
notions of consciousness, of Ideology as opposed to Science, one realises that
they are, for the main part, more or less detached from the theory of Knowledge.
In any case, what I am anxious about is substituting transformations of the
understanding for the History of the discoveries of Knowledge. Therefore, I
have, in appearance at least, a completely different attitude to Mr. Chomsky
apropos creativity, because, for me, it is a matter of
effacing the dilemma of the knowingsubject, while, for him, it is a matter of
allowing the dilemma of the speakingsubject to reappear. But, if he has made it
reappear, if he has described it, it is because he can do so. The linguists
have for a long time now analysed Language as a system with a collectivevalue. The understanding as a collectivetotality of rules, allowing
such and such a Knowledge to be produced in a certain period, has hardly been
studied until now. Nevertheless, it presents some fairly positive
characteristics to the observer. Take, for example, Medicine at the end of the
eighteenth century: read twenty medicalworks, it doesn't matter which, of the
years1770to1780, then twenty others from the years1820to1830, and I would say,
quite at random, that, in fortyorfiftyyears, everything had changed. What one
talked about, the way one talked about it, not just the remedies, of course,
not just the maladies and their classifications, but the outlook itself. Who
was responsible for that? Who was the author of it? It is artificial, I think,
to say Bichat, or even to expand a little and to say the first anatomical
clinicians. It's a matter of a collective and complex transformation of medical
understanding in its practice and its rules. And this transformation is far
from a negative phenomenon: it is the suppression of a negativity, the
effacement of an obstacle, the disappearance of prejudices, the abandonment of
old myths, the retreat of irrational beliefs, and access finally freed to
experience and to reason; it represents the application
of an entirely new grille, with its choices and exclusions; a new play with its
own rules, decisions and limitations, with its own innerLogic, its parameters
and its ["]blind alleys["], all of which lead to the modification of
the point of origin. And it is, in this functioning, that the
understanding itself exists. So, if one studies the History of Knowledge, one
sees that there are two broad directions of analysis. According to one, one has
to show how, under what conditions and for what reasons, the understanding modifies
itself in its formativerules, without passing through an originalinventor discovering
the ["]truth["]; and, according to the other, one has to show how the
working of the rules of an understanding can produce, in an individual, new and
unpublishedKnowledge. Here my aim rejoins, with imperfect methods and in a
quite inferior mode, Mr. Chomsky's project. Accounting for the fact that, with
a few rules or definite elements, unknowntotalities, never even produced, can
be brought to light by individuals. To resolve this problem, Mr. Chomsky has to
reintroduce the dilemma of the subject in thefieldofgrammaticalanalysis. To
resolve an analogous problem in the field of History with which I am involved,
one has to do the opposite, in a way: to introduce the point of view of
understanding, of its rules, of its systems, of its transformations of
totalities in the game of individual Knowledge. Here and there, the problem of creativity
cannot be resolved in the same way, or rather, it can't be formulated in the
same terms, given the state of disciplines inside which it is put.
21. Chomsky: I think, in part, we're slightly talking at ["]crosspurposes["],
because of a different use of the term, creativity. In fact, I should say that
my use of the term creativity is a little bit idiosyncratic, and therefore the
onus falls on me in this case, not on you. But, when I
speak of creativity, I'm not attributing to the concept the notion of value
that is normal when we speak of creativity. That
is, when you speak of scientificcreativity, you're speaking, properly, of the
achievements of a ["]Newton["]. But in the context in which I have
been speaking about creativity, it's a normalhumanact. I'm speaking of the kind
of creativity that any child demonstrates when he's able to come to grips with
a new situation: to describe it properly, react to it properly, tell [some]one
something about it, think about it in a new fashion for him, and so on. I think it's appropriate to call those acts creative, but, of
course, without thinking of those acts as being the acts of a ["]Newton["].
In fact, it may very well be true that creativity in theArts or theSciences,
that which goes beyond the normal, may really involve properties of, well, I
would also say of humannature, which may not exist fully developed in the mass
of mankind, and may not constitute part of the normal creativity of everydaylife.
Now, my belief is that Science can look forward to the problem of normal
creativity as a topic that it can perhaps incorporate within itself. But I
don't believe, and I suspect you will agree, that Science can look forward, at
least in the reasonable future, to coming to grips with true creativity, the
achievements of the greatartist and the greatscientist. It has no hope of
accommodating these unique phenomena within its grasp. It's
the lower levels of creativity that I've been speaking of. Now, as far as what you say about the History of Science
is concerned, I think that's correct, and illuminating, and particularly relevant, in fact, to the
kinds of enterprise that I see lying before us in Psychology, and Linguistics,
and the Philosophy of the mind. That is, I think there are certain
topics that have been repressed or put aside during the scientificadvances of
the past few centuries. For example, this concern with lowlevelcreativity that
I'm referring to was really present in Descartes also. For example, when he
speaks of the difference between a parrot, who can mimic what is said, and a
human, who can say new things that are appropriate to the situation, and, when
he specifies that as being the distinctive property that designates the limits
of Physics and carries us into the Science of the mind, to use modernterms, I
think he really is referring to the kind of creativity that I have in mind. And
I quite agree with your comments about the other sources of such notions. Well,
these concepts, even, in fact, the whole notion of the organisationofsentencestructure,
were put aside during the period of great advances that followed from SirWilliamJones and others and the development of comparativePhilology as a whole. But
now, I think, we can go beyond that period when it was necessary to forget and
to pretend that these phenomena did not exist and to turn to something else. In
this period of comparativePhilology and also, in my view, structuralLinguistics,
and much of behaviouralPsychology, and in fact much of what grows out of the
empiricist tradition in the study of mind and behaviour, it is possible to put
aside those limitations and bring into our consideration just those topics that
animated a good deal of the thinking and speculation of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, and to incorporate them within a much broader and I think
deeper Science of man that will give a fuller role, though it is certainly not
expected to give a complete understanding to such notions as innovation and
creativity and freedom and the production of new entities, new elements of
thought and behaviour within some system of rule and schematism. Those are
concepts that I think we can come to grips with.
22. Elders: Well, may I, first of all, ask you not to make your answers
so lengthy? [Foucault laughs.] When you discuss
creativity and freedom, I think that one of the misunderstandings, if any
misunderstandings have arisen, has to do with the fact that Mr. Chomsky is
starting from a limited number of rules with infinite possibilities of
application, whereas you, Mr. Foucault, are stressing the inevitability of the grille
of our historical and psychological determinisms, which also applies to the way
in which we discover new ideas. Perhaps we can sort this out, not by
analysing the scientificprocess, but just by analysing our own thought process.
When you discover a new fundamentalidea, Mr. Foucault, do you believe, that, as
far as your own personal creativity is concerned, something is happening that
makes you feel that you are being liberated, that something new has been
developed? Perhaps afterwards you discover that it was not so new. But do you
yourself believe that, within your own personality, creativity, and freedom are
working together or not?
23. Foucault: Oh, you know, I don't believe that the problem of personalexperience
is so very important.
24. Elders: Why not?
25. Foucault: In a question like this. No, I
believe that there is, in reality, quite a strong similarity between what Mr.
Chomsky said and what I tried to show, in other words, there exist, in fact, only
possiblecreations, possibleinnovations. One can only, in terms of Language
or of Knowledge, produce something new by putting into play a certain number of
rules which will define the acceptability or the grammaticality of these
statements, or which will define, in the case of Knowledge, the scientific
character of the statements. Thus, we can roughly say that linguists before Mr.
Chomsky mainly insisted on the rules of construction of statements and less on
the innovation represented by every new statement, or the hearing of a new
statement. And in the History of Science or in the History
of Thought, we placed more emphasis on individual creation, and we had kept
aside and ["]left in the shadows["] these communalgeneralrules, which
obscurely manifest themselves through every scientificdiscovery, every
scientificinvention, and even every philosophicalinnovation. And to that
degree, when I no doubt wrongly believe that I am saying something new, I am
nevertheless conscious of the fact that in my statement there are rules at
work, not only linguisticrules, but also epistemologicalrules, and those rules
characterise contemporaryKnowledge.
26. Chomsky: Well, perhaps I can try to react to those comments within
my own framework in a way which will maybe shed some light on this. Let's think
again of a humanchild, who has, in his mind, some schematism that determines
the kind of language he can learn. Okay. And then, given experience, he very
quickly knows the language, of which this experience is a part, or in which it
is included. Now this is a normalact; that is, it's an act of
normalintelligence, [averageintelligence] but it's a highlycreative act. If a
Martian were to look at this process of acquiring this vast and complicated and
intricate system of Knowledge on the basis of this ridiculouslysmall quantityofdata,
he would think of it as an immense act of inventionandcreation. In fact, a
Martian would, I think, consider it as much of an achievement as the invention
of, let's say, any aspect of a physicaltheory on the basis of the data that was
presented to the physicist. However, if this
hypotheticalMartian were then to observe that every normalhumanchild
immediately carries out this creative act and they all do it in the same way
and without any difficulty, whereas it takes centuries of genius to slowly
carry out the creative act of going from evidence to a scientifictheory, then
this Martian would, if he were rational, conclude that the structure of the Knowledge
that is acquired in the case of Language is basically internal to the humanmind,
whereas the structure of Physics is not, in so direct a way, internal to the
human mind. Our minds are not constructed so
that, when we look at the phenomena of the world theoreticalPhysics comes
forth, and we write it down and produce it. That's not the way our minds
are constructed. Nevertheless, I think there is a possible point of connection
and it might be useful to elaborate it, that is, how is
it that we are able to construct any kind of scientifictheory at all?
How is it that, given a small amount of data, it's possible for various
scientists, for various geniuses even, over a long period of time, to arrive at
some kind of a theory, at least in some cases, that is more or less profound
and moreorless empirically adequate? This is a remarkable fact. And, in fact,
if it were not the case that these scientists, including the geniuses, were
beginning with a very narrow limitation on the class of possible scientifictheories,
if they didn't have built into their minds somehow an obviously unconscious
specification of what is a possible scientifictheory, then this
inductive["]leap["] would certainly be quite impossible, just as if
each child did not have built into his mind the concept of humanLanguage in a
very restricted way, then the inductive leap from data to Knowledge of aLanguage
would be impossible. So even though the process of, let's say, deriving knowledge
ofPhysics from data is far more complex, far more difficult for an organism
such as ours[HomoSapiens], far more ["]drawn out["] in time,
requiring intervention of genius, andsoonandsoforth, nevertheless, in a certain
sense, the achievement of discovering physicalScience or Biology or whatever
you like, is based on something rather similar to the achievement of the normalchild
in discovering the structure of his language: that is, it must be achieved on
the basis of an initial limitation, an initial restriction on the class of
possible theories. If you didn't begin by knowing
that only certain things are possible theories, then no induction would be
possible at all. You could go from data anywhere, in any direction. And
the fact that Science converges and progresses itself shows us that such
initial limitations and structures exist. If we really want to develop a theory
of scientificcreation, or, for that matter, artisticcreation, I think we have to focus attention precisely on that setofconditions
that, on the one hand, delimits and restricts the scope of our possibleKnowledge,
while, at the same time, permitting the inductive["]leap["] to
complicatedsystems of Knowledge on the basis of a small amount of data.
That, it seems to me, would be the way to progress towards a theory of
scientificcreativity, or, in fact, towards any question of Epistemology.
27. Elders: Well, I think if we take this point of the initial
limitation with all its creative possibilities, I have the impression that, for
Mr. Chomsky, rules and freedom are not opposed to each other, but more or less
imply each other. Whereas I get the impression that it is just the reverse for
you, Mr. Foucault. What are your reasons for putting it the opposite way, for
this really is a very fundamental point in the debate, and I hope we can
elaborate it. To formulate the same problem in other terms: Can you think of universalKnowledge without any form of
repression? [Important question.]
28. Foucault: Well, in what Mr. Chomsky has just said there is something
which seems to me to create a little difficulty, perhaps I understood it badly.
I believe that you have been talking about a limited number of possibilities in
the order of a scientifictheory. That is true if you
limit yourself to a fairly short period of time whatever it may be. But if you
consider a longer period, it seems to me that what is striking is the
proliferation of possibilities by divergences. For a long time, the idea
has existed that the Sciences, Knowledge, followed a certain line of progress,
obeying the principle of growth, and the principle of the convergence of all
these kinds of Knowledge. And yet, when one sees how the european
understanding, which turned out to be a worldwide and universal understanding
in a historical and geographical sense, developed, can one say that there has
been growth? I, myself, would say that it has been much more a matter of
transformation. Take, as an example, animal and plant classifications. How
often have they not been rewritten since theMiddleAges according to completely
different rules: by symbolism, by NaturalHistory, by comparativeAnatomy, by
theTheoryOfEvolution. Each time this rewriting makes the Knowledge completely
different in its functions, in its economy, in its internal relations. You have
there a principle of divergence, much more than one of growth. I would much
rather say that there are many different ways of making possible simultaneously
a few types of Knowledge. There is, therefore, from a certain point of view,
always an excess of data in relation to possible systems in a given period,
which causes them to be experienced within their boundaries, even in their
deficiency, which means that one fails to realise their creativity; and from another point of view, that of the historian, there is
an excess, a proliferation of systems for a small amount of data, from which
originates the widespread idea that it is the discovery of new facts which
determines movement in the History of Science.
29. Chomsky: Here, perhaps again, let me try to synthesise a bit. I
agree with your conception of scientificprogress; that is, I don't think that
scientificprogress is simply a matter of the accumulated addition of newKnowledge
and the absorption of newtheories, and so on. Rather I think that it has this
sort of ["]jagged pattern["] that you describe, forgetting certain
problems and ["]leaping["] to new theories. .
30. Foucault: And transforming the same Knowledge.
31. Chomsky: Right. But I think that one can perhaps hazard an
explanation for that. Oversimplifying grossly, I really don't mean what I'm
going to say now literally, one might suppose that the following general lines
of an explanation are accurate: it is as if, as human beings of a particular
biologicallygivenorganisation, we have in our heads, to start with, a certain
set of possible intellectual structures, possible Sciences, okay? Now, in the
lucky event that some aspect of reality happens to have the character of one of
these structures in our mind, then we have a Science: that is to say that,
fortunately, the structure of our mind and the structure of some aspect of
reality coincide sufficiently so that we develop an intelligibleScience. It is precisely this initial limitation in our minds to a
certain kind of possibleScience which provides the tremendous richness and
creativity of scientificKnowledge. It is
important to stress, and this has to do with your point about limitation and
freedom, that were it not for these limitations, we would not have the creative
act of going from a little bit of Knowledge, a little bit of experience, to a
rich and highly articulated and complicated array of Knowledge. Because,
if anything could be possible, then nothing would be possible. But it is
precisely because of this property of our minds, which in detail we don't
understand, but which, I think, in a general way, we can begin to perceive,
which presents us with certain possible intelligiblestructures, and which in
the course of History and insight and experience begin to come into focus or ["]fall
out["] of focus and so on; it is precisely because of this property of our
minds that the progress of Science, I think, has this erratic and ["]jagged["]
character that you describe. That doesn't mean that everything is ultimately
going to fall within the domain of Science. Personally
I believe that many of the things we would like to understand, and maybe the
things we would most like to understand, such as the nature of man, or the
nature of a decentsociety, or lots of other things, might really fall outside
the scope of possiblehumanScience.
32. Elders: Well, I think that we are confronted again with the question
of the innerrelation between limitation and freedom. Do you agree, Mr.
Foucault, with the statement about the combination of limitation, fundamental
limitation? .
33. Foucault: It is not a matter of combination. Only creativity is possible in putting into play of a system of rules. It
is not a mixture of order and freedom. Where perhaps I don't completely agree
with Mr. Chomsky, is when he places the principle of these regularities, in a
way, in the interior of the mind or of humannature. If it is a matter of
whether these rules are effectively put to work by the humanmind, all right;
all right, too, if it is a question of whether the historian and the linguist
can think it in their turn; it is all right also to say that these rules should
allow us to realise what is said or thought by these individuals. But to say that these regularities are connected, as conditions
of existence, to the humanmind or itsnature, is difficult for me to accept:
it seems to me that one must, before reaching that point, and in any case, I am
talking only about the understanding, replace it in the field of other humanpractices,
such as Economics, Technology, Politics, Sociology, which can serve them as
conditions of formation, of models, of place, of apparition, etc. I would like
to know whether one cannot discover the system of regularity, of constraint,
which makes Science possible, somewhere else, even outside the human mind, in
social forms, in the relations of production, in the classstruggles, etc. For
example, the fact that, at a certain time, madness became an object for
scientificstudy, and an object of Knowledge in theWest, seems to me to be
linked to a particular economic and social situation. Perhaps
the point of difference between Mr. Chomsky and myself is that, when he speaks
of Science, he probably thinks of the formalorganisation of Knowledge, whereas
I am speaking of Knowledge itself, that is to say, I think of the content of
variousKnowledges which is dispersed into a particular society, permeates
through that society, and asserts itself as the foundation for Education, for
theories, for practices, etc.
34. Elders: But what does this theory of Knowledge mean for your theme
of the death of man, or the end of the period of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries?
35. Foucault: But this doesn't have any relation to what we are talking
about.
36. Elders: I don't know, because I was trying to apply what you have
said to your anthropologicalnotion. You have already refused to speak about
your own creativity and freedom, haven't you? Well, I'm wondering what are the
psychological reasons for this.
37. Foucault: Well, you can wonder about it, but I can't help that.
38. Elders: Ah, well.
39. Foucault: I am not wondering about it.
40. Elders: But what are the objectivereasons, in relation to your conception
of understanding, of Knowledge, of Science, for refusing to answer these
["]personalquestions["]? When there is a problem for you to answer,
what are your reasons for making a problem out of a personal question?
41. Foucault: No, I'm not making a problem out of a personal question, I
make of a personal question an absence of a problem. Let me take a very simple
example, which I will not analyse, but which is this: How was it possible that
men began, at the end of the eighteenth century, for the first time in the History
of Western thought and of Western Knowledge, to open up the corpses of people
in order to know what was the source, the origin, the anatomical needle, of the
particular malady which was responsible for their deaths? The idea seems simple
enough. Well, four or five thousand years of medicine in theWest were needed
before we had the idea of looking for the cause of the malady in the lesion of
a corpse. [Foucault concentrates on influence obscure and opressive of
socialinstitutions.] If you tried to explain this by the personality of Bichat, I believe that would be without interest. If, on the contrary, you
tried to establish the place of disease and of death in society at the end of
the eighteenth century, and what interest industrialsociety effectively had in
quadrupling the entire population in order to expand and develop itself, as a
result of which medicalsurveys of society were made, bighospitals were opened,
etc. If you try to find out how medicalKnowledge became institutionalised in
that period, how its relations with other kinds of Knowledge were ordered,
well, then you could see how the relationship between [among] disease,
the hospitalised, illperson, the corpse, and pathologicalAnatomy were made
possible. Here is, I believe, a form of analysis which I don't say is new, but
which in any case has been much too neglected; and personal events have almost
nothing to do with it.
42. Elders: Yes, but nevertheless it would have been very interesting
for us to know a little bit more about your arguments to refute this. Could
you, Mr. Chomsky, and as far as I'm concerned, it's my last question about this
philosophical part of the debate. Give your ideas about, for example, the way
theSocialSciences are working? I'm thinking here especially about your severe
attacks on Behaviourism. And perhaps you could even explain a little the way
Mr. Foucault is now working in a more or less behaviouristic way.
43. Chomsky: I would like to depart from your injunction very briefly,
just to make one comment about what Mr. Foucault just said. I think that
illustrates very nicely the way in which we're digging into the mountain from
opposite directions, to use your original image. That is, I think that an act of scientificcreation depends on two
facts: one, some intrinsicproperty of the mind, another, some set of social and
intellectual conditions that exist. And it is not a question, as I see it, of
which of these we should study. Rather we will understand scientificdiscovery,
and similarly any other kind of discovery, when we know what these factors are
and can therefore explain how they interact in a particular fashion. My
particular interest, in this connection at least, is with the intrinsiccapacities
of the mind; yours, as you say, is in the particular arrangement of social and
economic and other conditions.
44. Foucault: But I don't believe that difference is connected to our
characters, because, at this moment, it would make Mr. Elders right, and he
must not be right.
45. Chomsky: No, I agree, and.
46. Foucault: It's connected to the state of Knowledge,
of knowing, in which we are working. TheLinguistics with which you have been
familiar, and which you have succeeded in transforming, excluded the importance
of the creativesubject, of the creative speakingsubject, while the History of Science
such as it existed when people of my generation were starting to work, on the
contrary, exalted individual creativity.
47. Chomsky: Yes.
48. Foucault: and put aside these collective
rules.
49. Chomsky: Yes, yes.
50. Questioner: Ah.
51. Elders: Yes, please go on.
52. Questioner: It goes a bit back in your discussion, but what I should
like to know, Mr. Chomsky, is this: you suppose a basic system of what must be
in a way elementary limitations that are present in what you call humannature,
to what extent do you think these are subject to historical change? Do you
think, for instance, that they have changed substantially since, let's say, the
seventeenth century? In that case, you could perhaps connect this with the
ideas of Mr. Foucault?
53. Chomsky: Well, I think that, as a matter
of biological and anthropological fact, the nature of humanintelligence
certainly has not changed in any substantial way, at least since the
seventeenth century, or probably since CroMagnonman. That is, I think that the fundamental properties of ourintelligence,
those that are within the domain of what we are discussing tonight, are
certainly very ancient, and that, if you took a man from fivethousand or
maybe twentythousandyears ago, and placed him as a child within today's
society, he would learn what everyone else learns, and he would be a genius or
a fool or something else, but he wouldn't be fundamentally different. But, of
course, the level of acquiredKnowledge changes, socialconditions change, those
conditions that permit a person to think freely and break through the bonds of,
let's say, superstitious constraint. And as those conditions change, a given
human intelligence will progress to new forms of creation. In fact, this
relates very closely to the last question that Mr. Elders put, if I can perhaps
say a word about that. Take BehaviouralScience, and think of it in these
contexts. It seems to me that the fundamental property
of Behaviourism, which is in a way suggested by the odd term, BehaviouralScience,
is that it is a negation of the possibility of developing a scientifictheory, that
is, what defines Behaviourism is the very curious and selfdestructive assumption
that you are not permitted to create an interesting theory. [The same is true
in Psychoanalysis.] If Physics, for example,
had made the assumption that you have to keep to phenomena and their
arrangement and such things, we would be doing BabylonianAstronomy today.
Fortunately, physicists never made this ridiculous, extraneous assumption,
which has its own historical reasons and had to do with all sorts of curious
facts about the historical context in which Behaviourism evolved. But looking at it purely intellectually, Behaviourism is the
arbitrary insistence that one must not create a scientifictheory of humanbehaviour,
rather one must deal directly with phenomena and their interrelation, and no
more. Something which is totally impossible in any other domain, and I assume
impossible in the domain of humanintelligence or humanbehaviour as well. So, in
this sense, I don't think that Behaviourism is a Science. Here is a case
in point of just the kind of thing that you mentioned and that Mr. Foucault is
discussing, Under certain historical circumstances, for example, those in which
experimentalPsychology developed, it was, for some reason which I won't go
into, interesting and maybe important to impose some very strange limitations
on the kind of scientifictheoryconstruction that was permitted, and those verystrange
limitations are known as Behaviourism. Well, it has long since run its course,
I think. Whatever value it may have had in 1880,
it has no function today except constraining and limiting scientificinquiry and
should therefore simply be dispensed with, in the same way one would dispense
with a physicist who said: you're not allowed to
develop a generalphysicaltheory, you're only allowed to plot the motions of the
planets and make up more epicycles, andsoonandsoforth. One forgets about
that and puts it aside. Similarly one should put aside the very curious
restrictions that define Behaviourism. Restrictions which are, as I said
before, very much suggested by the term, BehaviouralScience, itself. We can
agree, perhaps, that behaviour, in some broad sense, constitutes the data for
the Science of man. But to define a Science by its data would be to define
Physics as the theory of meterreadings. And, if a
physicist were to say, Yes, I'm involved in ["]meterreadingScience["],
we could be pretty sure that he was not going to get very far. They
might talk about meterreadings and correlations between them and such things,
but they wouldn't ever create physicaltheory. And so the term itself is
symptomatic of the disease in this case. We should understand the historical
context in which these curious limitations developed, and having understood
them, I believe, discard them and proceed in theScience of man as we would in
any other domain, that is, by discarding entirely Behaviourism
and, in fact, in my view, the entireEmpiricisttradition from which it evolved.
54. Questioner: So you are not willing to link your theory about innatelimitations,
with Mr. Foucault's theory of the grille. There might be a certain
connection. You see, Mr. Foucault says that an upsurge
of creativity in a certain direction automatically removes Knowledge in another
direction, by a system of grilles. Well, if you had a changing system of
limitations, this might be connected.
55. Chomsky: Well, the reason for what he describes, I think, is
different. Again, I'm oversimplifying. We have more possibleSciences available
intellectually. When we try out those intellectual constructions in a changing
world of fact, we will not find cumulative growth. What we will find are
strange["]leaps["]. Here is a domain of phenomena, a certain Science
applies very nicely. Now, slightly broaden the range of phenomena, then anotherScience,
which is very different, happens to apply very beautifully, perhaps leaving out
some of these other phenomena. Okay, that's scientificprogress and that leads
to the omission or forgetting of certain domains. But I think the reason for
this is precisely this set of principles, which unfortunately, we don't know,
which makes the whole discussion rather abstract, which defines for us what is
a possible intellectualstructure, a possible["]deepScience["], if you
like.
56. Elders: Well, let's move over now to the second part of the
discussion, to Politics. First of all, I would like to ask Mr. Foucault why he
is so interested in Politics, because he told me that in fact he likes Politics
much more than Philosophy.
57. Foucault: I've never concerned myself, in any case, with Philosophy.
[He was a historian, not a scientist or a philosopher.] But that is not a
problem. Your question is, Why am I so interested in Politics? But if I were to
answer you very simply, I would say this: why shouldn't I be interested? That
is to say, what blindness, what deafness, what density of Ideology would have
to weigh me down to prevent me from being interested in what is probably the most crucial subject to our existence, that is to say,
the society in which we live, the economic relations within which it functions,
and the system of power which defines the regular forms, and the regular
permissions and prohibitions of our conduct. The essence of our life consists,
after all, of the political functioning of the society in which we find
ourselves. So I can't answer the question of why I should be interested;
I could only answer it by asking why shouldn't I be interested?
58. Elders: You are obliged to be interested, isn't that so?
59. Foucault: Yes, at least, there isn't anything odd here which is
worth question or answer. Not to be interested in Politics, that's what
constitutes a problem. So instead of asking me, you
should ask someone who is not interested in Politics and then your question
would be wellfounded, and you would have the right to say, Why, damn it, are
you not interested? [They laugh and the audience laughs.]
60. Elders: Well, yes, perhaps. Mr. Chomsky, we are all very interested
to know your political objectives, especially in relation to your wellknown
AnarchoSyndicalism or, as you formulated it, libertarianSocialism. What are the
most important goals of your libertarianSocialism?
61. Chomsky: I'll overcome the urge to answer the earlier very
interesting question that you asked me and turn to this one. Let me begin by
referring to something that we have already discussed, that is, if it is correct,
as I believe it is, that a fundamental element of humannature is the need for
creative work, for creative inquiry, for free creation without the arbitrary
limiting effect of coercive institutions. Then, of course, it will follow that a decent society should maximise the possibilities for this
fundamental humancharacteristic to be realised. That means trying to overcome
the elements of repression and oppression and destruction and coercion that
exist in any existing society, ours for example, as a historical residue. Now,
any form of coercion or repression, any form of autocraticcontrol of some
domain of existence, let's say, privateownership of capital or Statecontrol of
some aspects of humanlife, any such autocraticrestriction on some area of humanendeavour,
can be justified, if at all, only in terms of the
need for subsistence [noun, the action or fact of maintaining or supporting
oneself at a minimum level], or the need for survival, or the need for defence
against some horrible fate, or something of that sort. It cannot be justified intrinsically. Rather it must be
overcome and eliminated. And I think that, at least in the
technologicallyadvancedsocieties of theWest we are now certainly in a position
where meaninglessdrudgery [noun, hard, menial, or dull work] can very largely
be eliminated, and to the marginal extent that it's necessary, can be shared
among the population, where centralised autocraticcontrol of, in the first
place, economicinstitutions, by which I mean either privateCapitalism, or StateTotalitarianism,
or the various mixedforms of StateCapitalism that exist here and there, has
become a destructive vestige of History. They are all vestiges that have to be
overthrown, eliminated in favour of direct participation in the form of
workers's councils or other freeassociations that individuals will constitute
themselves for the purpose of their socialexistence and their productivelabour.
Now, a federated, decentralised system of freeassociations,
incorporating economic as well as other socialinstitutions, would be
what I refer to as AnarchoSyndicalism and it seems to me that this
is the appropriate form of socialorganisation for an
advancedtechnologicalsociety, in which humanbeings do not have to be forced
into the position of tools, of cogs in the machine. There is no longer
any social necessity for humanbeings to be treated as mechanicalelements in the
productiveprocess; that can be overcome and we must overcome it by a society of
freedom and freeassociation, in which the creativeurge that I consider
intrinsic to humannature, will in fact be able to realise itself in whatever
way it will. And again, like Mr. Foucault, I don't see how any human being can
fail to be interested in this question.
62. Elders: Do you believe, Mr. Foucault, that we can call our societies
in any way democratic, after listening to this statement from Mr. Chomsky?
63. Foucault: No, I don't have the least belief that one could consider
our society democratic. [Laughs.] If one understands,
byDemocracy, the effective exercise of power by a population which is
neither divided nor hierarchically ordered in classes, it is quite clear that
we are very far from Democracy. It is only too clear that we are living under a
regime of a dictatorship of class, of a power of class which imposes itself by
violence even when the instruments of this violence are institutional and
constitutional. And to that degree, there isn't any question of Democracy for
us. Well. When you asked me why I was interested in Politics, I refused
to answer because it seemed evident to me, but perhaps your question was, How
am I interested in it? And had you asked me that question, and, in a certain
sense, I could say you have, I would say to you that I am much less advanced in
my way. I go much less far than Mr. Chomsky, that is to say, I admit to not
being able to define, nor for even stronger reasons to propose, an ideal social
model for the functioning of our societyscientificortechnological. On the other
hand, one of the tasks that seems immediate and urgent to me, over and above
anything else, is this: that we should indicate and show up, even where they
are hidden, all the relationships of politicalpower which actually control the
socialbody and oppress or repress it. What I want to say is this: it is the
custom, at least in europeansociety, to consider that power is localised in the
hands of theGovernment and that it is exercised through a certain number of
particular institutions, such as the administration, the police, the army, and
the apparatus of theState. One knows that all these institutions are made to
elaborate and to transmit a certain number of decisions, in the name of the
nation or of theState, to have them applied and to punish those who don't obey.
But I believe that politicalpower also exercises itself
through the mediation of a certain number of institutions which look as if they
have nothing in common with the politicalpower, and as if they are independent
of it, while they are not. One knows this in relation to the family, and one knows
that the university and in a general way, allschoolsystems, which appear simply
to disseminate Knowledge, are made to maintain a certain socialclass in power,
and to exclude the instruments of power of another socialclass. Institutions of
Knowledge, of foresight and care, such as Medicine, also help to support the
politicalpower. It's also obvious, even to the point of scandal, in certain cases,
related to Psychiatry. It seems to me that
the real politicaltask in a society, such as ours, is to criticise the workings
of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent, to criticise
and attack them in such a manner that the politicalviolence which has always
exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight
against them. This critique and this fight seem essential to me for
different reasons: firstly, because politicalpower goes much deeper than one
suspects; there are centres and invisible, littleknown points of support, its true resistance, its true solidity is perhaps where
one doesn't expect it. Probably it's insufficient to say that behind the
Governments, behind the apparatus of theState, there is the dominant class. One
must locate the point of activity, the places and forms in which its domination
is exercised. And, because this domination is not simply the expression in
political terms of economicexploitation, it is its instrument and, to a large
extent, the condition which makes it possible; the suppression of the one is
achieved through the exhaustive discernment of the other. Well, if one fails to
recognise these points of support of classpower, one risks allowing them to
continue to exist; and to see this classpower reconstitute itself even after an
apparent revolutionary process.
64. Chomsky: I would certainly agree with that, not only in theory but
also in action. That is, there are two intellectualtasks: one, and the one that
I was discussing, is to try to create the vision of a futureJustsociety, that
is, to create, if you like, a humanistic social theory that is based, if
possible, on some firm and humane concept of the humanessenceorhumannature.
That's one task. Another task is to understand veryclearly
the nature of power and oppression and terror and destruction in our own
society. And that certainly includes the institutions you mentioned, as
well as the central institutions of any industrialsociety, namely the
economic,commercialandfinancialinstitutions and in particular, in the coming
period, the great multinationalcorporations,
which are not very far from us physically tonight. [i.e. Philips at Eindhoven] Those
are the basic institutions of oppression and coercion
and autocraticrule that appear to be neutral despite everything. They say, Well,
after all, we're subject to Democracy of Marketplace, and that must be
understood precisely in terms of their autocratic power, including the
particular form of autocratic control that comes from the domination of market
forces in an inegalitarian society. Surely we must understand these facts, and
not only understand them but combat them. And in fact, as far as one's own
political involvements are concerned, in which one spends the majority of one's
energy and effort, it seems to me that they must certainly be in that area. I
don't want to get personal about it, but my own certainly are in that area, and
I assume everyone's are. Still, I think it would be a great shame to put aside
entirely the somewhat more abstract and philosophical, if you like, task of
trying to draw the connections between a concept of humannature that gives full
scope to freedom, and dignity, and creativity, and other fundamentalhumancharacteristics,
and to relate that to some notion of socialstructure in which those properties
could be realised and in which meaningful humanlife could take place. And, in
fact, if we are thinking of socialtransformation or socialrevolution, though it
would be absurd, of course, to try to sketch out in detail the goal that we are
hoping to reach, still we should know something about where we think we are
going, and such a theory may tell it to us.
65. Foucault: Yes, but then isn't there a danger here? If you say that a
certain humannature exists, that this humannature has not been given in actual
society the rights and the possibilities which allow it to realise itself. That's
really what you have said, I believe. And if one admits
that, doesn't one risk defining this humannature which is at the same time
ideal and real, and has been hidden and repressed until now, in terms borrowed
from our society, from our civilisation, from our culture? I will take
an example by greatly simplifying it. TheSocialism of a certain period, at the
end of the nineteenth century, and the beginning of the twentieth century,
admitted that, in effect, in capitalistsocieties, man hadn't realised the full
potential for his development and selfrealisation, that humannature was
effectively alienated in the capitalistsystem. And it dreamed of an ultimately
liberated humannature. What model did it use to conceive, project, and
eventually realise that humannature? It was, in fact, the bourgeoismodel. It
considered that an alienated society was a society which, for example, gave
pride of place to the benefit of all, to a sexuality of a bourgeois type, to a
family of a bourgeois type, to an Æsthetic of a bourgeois type. And it is
moreover very true that this has happened in theSovietUnion and in the popularDemocracies.
A kind of society has been reconstituted which has been transposed from the
bourgeois society of the nineteenth century. The universalisation of the model
of the bourgeois has been the utopia which has animated the constitution
ofSovietsociety. The result is that you too realised, I
think, that it is difficult to say exactly what humannature is. Isn't
there a risk that we will be led into error? MaoTseTung spoke of bourgeois humannature
and proletarian humannature, and he considers that they are not the same thing.
66. Chomsky: Well, you see, I think, in the intellectualdomain of politicalaction,
that is, the domain of trying to construct a vision of a Just and free society
on the basis of some notion of humannature. In that domain, we face the very
same problem that we face in immediate politicalaction, namely, that of being
impelled to do something, because the problems are so great, and yet knowing
that whatever we do is on the basis of a very partial understanding of the
social realities, and the human realities in this case. For example, to be
quite concrete, a lot of my own activity really has to do with theVietnamWar,
and good deal of my own energy goes into civildisobedience. Well, civildisobedience in theUnitedStates is an action
undertaken in the face of great, considerable uncertainties about its effects. For example, it threatens
the socialorder in ways which might, one might argue, bring about Fascism, and
that would be a very bad for America, for Vietnam, for Holland, and for
everyone else. You know, if a
great Leviathan like the United States were really to become fascist, a lot of
problems would result. So that is one danger in undertaking this
concrete act. On the other hand, there is a great
danger in not undertaking it, namely, if you don't undertake it, the society of
IndoChina will be torn to shreds by Americanpower. And in the face of
these uncertainties, one has to choose a course of action. Well, similarly in
the intellectual domain, one is faced with the uncertainties that you correctly
pose. Our concept of humannature is certainly limited.
It's partial, socially conditioned, constrained by our own characterdefects and
the limitations of the intellectualculture in which we exist. Yet, at
the same time, it is of critical importance that we know what impossible goals
we're trying to achieve, if we hope to achieve some of the possible goals. And
that means that we have to be bold enough to speculate and create socialtheories
on the basis of partial Knowledge, while remaining very open to the strong
possibility, and, in fact, overwhelming probability,
that, at least, in some respects we're very far off the mark.
67. Elders: Well, perhaps it would be interesting to delve a little
deeper into this problem of strategy. I suppose that what you call civildisobedience
is probably the same as what we call extraparliamentaryaction?
68. Chomsky: No, I think it goes beyond that. Extraparliamentaryaction would
include, let's say, a masslegaldemonstration, but civildisobedience is narrower
than all extraparliamentaryaction, in that it means direct defiance of what is
alleged, incorrectly in my view, by theState to be Law.
69. Elders: So, for example, in the case of Holland, we had something
like a population census. One was obliged to answer questions on official
forms. You would call it civildisobedience if one refused to fill in the forms?
70. Chomsky: Right. I would be a little bit careful about that, because,
going back to a very important point that Mr. Foucault made, one does not necessarily allow theState to define what is
legal. Now, theState has the power to
enforce a certain concept of what is legal, but power doesn't imply Justice or
even Correctness, so that theState may define something as civildisobedience
and may be wrong in doing so. For example, in theUnitedStates, theState
defines it as civildisobedience to, let's say, derail an ammunitiontrain
[a train which contains ammunition] that's going toVietnam, and theState is wrong in defining that as civildisobedience,
because it's legal and proper and should be done. It's proper to carry out
actions that will prevent the criminalacts of theState, just as it is proper to
violate a trafficordinance in order to prevent a murder. If I had stopped my
car in front of a traffic light which was red, and then I drove through the
redtrafficlight to prevent somebody from, let's say, ["]machinegunning["]
a group of people, of course that's not an illegal act, it's an appropriate and
proper action. No sane judge would convict you for such an action. Similarly, a
good deal of what theStateauthorities define as civildisobedience is not really
civildisobedience. In fact, it's legal, obligatory behaviour in violation of
the commands of theState, which may or may not be legal commands. So one has to be rather careful about calling things illegal,
I think.
71. Foucault: Yes, but I would like to ask you a question. When, in theUnitedStates, you commit an illegal act, do you
justify it in terms of Justice or of a superiorlegality, or do you justify it
by the necessity of the classstruggle, which is, at the present time, essential for the proletariat in their
struggle against the rulingclass?
72. Chomsky: Well, here I would like to take the point of view which is
taken by the USSupremeCourt and probably other courts in such circumstances,
that is, to try to settle the issue on the narrowest possible grounds. I would
think that ultimately it would make very good sense, in many cases, to act
against the legalinstitutions of a given society, if, in so doing, you're
striking at the sources of power and oppression in that society. However, to a
very large extent, existing Law represents certain humanvalues, which are
decent humanvalues, and existing Law, correctly interpreted, permits much of
what theState commands you not to do. And I think it's important to exploit the
fact. It's important to exploit the areas of Law which are properly formulated
and then perhaps to act directly against those areas of Law which simply ratify
some system of power.
73. Foucault: But, but, I, I.
74. Chomsky: Let me get.
75. Foucault: My question, my question was this, When you commit a
clearly illegal act.
76. Chomsky: Which I regard as illegal, not just theState.
77. Foucault: No, no, well, theState's.
78. Chomsky: That theState regards as illegal.
79. Foucault: That theState considers as illegal.
80. Chomsky: Yeah.
81. Foucault: Are you committing this act in
virtue of an idealJustice, or because the classstruggle makes it useful and
necessary? Do you refer to idealJustice, that's my problem.
82. Chomsky: Again, very often, when I do something which theState
regards as illegal, I regard it as legal : that is, I regard theState as
criminal. But, in some instances, that's not true. Let me be quite concrete
about it and move from the area of classwar to imperialistwar, where the
situation is somewhat clearer and easier. Take InternationalLaw, a veryweak
instrument as we know, but nevertheless one that incorporates some veryinteresting
principles. Well, InternationalLaw is, in many respects, the instrument of the
powerful. It is a creation of States and their representatives. In developing the
presently existing body of InternationalLaw, there was no participation by mass
movements of peasants. The structure of international Law reflects that fact;
that is, international Law permits much too wide a range of forceful
intervention in support of existing power structures that define themselves as
states against the interests of masses of people who happen to be organised in
opposition to states. Now, that's a fundamental defect of InternationalLaw and
I think one is justified in opposing that aspect of InternationalLaw as having
no validity, as having no more validity than the divineright of kings. It's
simply an instrument of the powerful to retain their power. But, in fact, InternationalLaw
is not solely of that kind. And in fact there are interesting elements of
InternationalLaw, for example, embedded in the NurembergPrinciples and
theUnitedNationsCharter, which permit, in fact, I believe, require the citizen
to act against his own State in ways which theState will falsely regard as
criminal. Nevertheless, he's acting legally, because InternationalLaw also
happens to prohibit the threat or use of force in internationalaffairs, except
under some very narrow circumstances, of which, for example, the war in Vietnam
is not one. This means that in the particular case of the Vietnam War, which interests
me most, theAmericanState is acting in a criminal capacity. And the people have
the right to stop criminals from committing murder. Just because the criminal happens to call your action illegal when
you try to stop him, it doesn't mean it is illegal. A perfectlyclear
case of that is the present case of thePentagonPapers
in the UnitedStates, which, I suppose, you know about. Reduced to its
essentials and forgetting Legalisms, what is happening is that theState is trying to prosecute people for exposing its
crimes. That's what it ["]amounts["] to. Now, obviously that's
absurd, and one must pay no attention whatsoever to that distortion of any
reasonable judicialprocess. Furthermore, I think that the existing system of Law
even explains why it is absurd. But if it didn't, we would then have to oppose
that system of Law.
83. Foucault: So it is in the name of a purerJustice that you criticise
the functioning of Justice? There is an important question for us here. It is true that in all socialstruggles, there is a question
of Justice. To put it more precisely, the fight against classJustice,
against itsInustice, is always part of the social struggle, To dismiss the
judges, to change the tribunals, to amnesty the condemned, to open the prisons,
has always been part of social transformations as soon as they become slightly
violent. At the present time in France, the function of Justice and the police
is the target of many attacks from those whom we call the gauchistes. But, if Justice
is at stake in a struggle, then it is as an instrument of power, it is not in
the hope that finally one day, in this or another society, people will be
rewarded according to their merits, or punished according to their faults.
Rather than thinking of the socialstruggle in terms of Justice, one has to
emphasise Justice in terms of the socialstruggle.
84. Chomsky: Yeah, but surely you believe that your role in the war is a
Justrole, that you are fighting a Justwar, to bring in a concept from another
domain. And that, I think, is important. If you
thought that you were fighting an Unjust war, you couldn't follow that line of
reasoning. I would like to slightly reformulate what you said. It seems
to me that the difference isn't between legality and idealJustice; it's rather
between legality and betterJustice. I would agree that
we are certainly in no position to create a system of idealJustice, just as we
are in no position to create an idealsociety in our minds. We don't know
enough, and we're too limited, and too biased, and all sorts of other things.
But we are in a position, and we must act as sensitive and responsible humanbeings
in that position to imagine and move towards the creation of a bettersociety
and also a bettersystemofJustice. Now this better system will certainly have
its defects. But, if one compares the better system
with the existing system, without being confused into thinking that our better
system is the ideal system, we can then argue, I think, as follows: The concept
of legality and the concept of Justice are not identical; they're not entirely
distinct either. Insofar as legality incorporates Justice in this sense of
better Justice, referring to a better society, then we should follow and obey
the Law, and force theState to obey theLaw and force the great corporations to
obey theLaw, and force the police to obey theLaw, if we have the power to do
so. Of course, in those areas where the legalsystem happens to represent not
betterJustice, but rather the techniques of oppression that have been codified
in a particular autocraticsystem, well, then a reasonable humanbeing should
disregard and oppose them, at least in principle. He may not, for some
reason, do it in fact.
85. Foucault: But I would merely like to reply to your first sentence,
in which you said that if you didn't consider the war you make against the
police to be just, you wouldn't make it. I would like to reply to you in terms
of Spinoza and say that the proletariat doesn't wage war against the ruling
class because it considers such a war to be Just. The proletariat makes war
with the rulingclass because, for the first time in History, it wants to take
power. And, because it will overthrow the power of the ruling class, it
considers such a war to be Just.
86. Chomsky: Yeah, I don't agree.
87. Foucault: One makes war to win, not because
it is Just.
88. Chomsky: I don't, personally, agree with that. For example, if I could convince myself that attainment of
power by the proletariat would lead to a terroristpoliceState, in which freedom
and dignity and decent humanrelations would be destroyed, then I wouldn't want
the proletariat to take power. In fact, the
only reason for wanting any such thing, I believe, is because one thinks,
rightly or wrongly, that some fundamental humanvalues will be achieved by that
transfer of power.
89. Foucault: When the proletariat takes power,
it may be quite possible that the proletariat will exert towards the classes
over which it has just triumphed, a violent, dictatorial and even bloody power.
I can't see what objection one could make to this.
But, if you ask me what would be the case if the proletariat exerted bloody,
tyrannical and Unjust power towards itself, then I would say that this could
only occur if the proletariat hadn't really taken power, but that a class
outside the proletariat, a group of people inside the proletariat, a
bureaucracy, or petitbourgeois elements had taken power.
90. Chomsky: Well, I'm not at all satisfied with that theory of
revolution for a lot of reasons, historical and others. But, even if one were
to accept it for the sake of argument, still that theory maintains that it is
proper for the proletariat to take power and exercise it in a violent and
bloody and Unjust fashion, because it is claimed, and in my opinion falsely,
that that will lead to a more Just society, in which theState will wither away,
in which the proletariat will be a universal class and so on and so forth. If
it weren't for that future justification, the concept of a violent and bloody
dictatorship of the proletariat would certainly be Unjust. Now, this is another
issue, but I'm very sceptical about the idea of a
violent and bloody dictatorship of the proletariat, especially when expressed
by selfappointedrepresentatives of a vanguardparty, who[m], we have
enough historical experience to know and might have predicted in advance, will
simply be the new rulers over this society.
91. Foucault: Yes, but I haven't been talking about the power of the
proletariat, which, in itself, would be an Unjustpower. You are right in saying
that this would obviously be too easy. I would like to
say that the power of the proletariat could, in a certain period, imply
violence and a prolonged war against a socialclass over which its triumph or
victory was not yet totally assured.
92. Chomsky: Well, look, I'm not saying there is an absolute. For
example, I am not a committed pacifist. I would not hold that it is, under all
imaginable circumstances, wrong to use violence, even though use of violence is,
in some sense, Unjust. I believe that one has to estimate relative Justices. But the use of violence and the creation of some degree of Injustice
can only be justified on the basis of the claim and the assessment, which
always ought to be undertaken veryveryseriously and with a good deal of
scepticism that this violence is being exercised because a more Justresult
is going to be achieved. If it does not have such a grounding, it is really
totally Immoral, in my opinion.
93. Foucault: I don't think that, as far as the aim which the proletariat
proposes for itself in leading a classstruggle is concerned, it would be sufficient to say that it is, in itself, a
greaterJustice. What the proletariat will achieve by expelling the class
which is, at present, in power and by taking over power itself, is precisely
the suppression of the power of class in general.
94. Chomsky: Okay, but that's the further justification.
95. Foucault: That is the justification, but one doesn't speak in terms
of Justice but in terms of power.
96. Chomsky: But it is in terms ofJustice. It is because the end that will
be achieved is claimed as a Justone. No Leninist, or whatever you like, would
dare to say, We, the proletariat, have a right to take power, and then throw
everyone else into crematoria. If that were the consequence of the proletariat
taking power, of course it would not be appropriate. The
idea is, and for the reasons I mentioned I'm sceptical about it, that a period
of violentdictatorship, or perhaps violentandbloodydictatorship, is justified
because it will mean the submergence and termination of classoppression, a
proper end to achieve in humanlife. It is because of that final qualification
that the whole enterprise might be justified. Whether it is or not is another
issue.
97. Foucault: If you like, I will be a little bit Nietzsche-an about
this, in other words, it seems to me that the idea of Justice
in itself is an idea which, in effect, has been invented and put to work in
different types of societies as an instrument of a certain political and
economic power or as a weapon against that power. But it seems to me that, in
any case, the notion of Justice itself functions within a society of classes as
a claim made by the oppressed class and as justification for it.
98. Chomsky: I don't agree with that.
99. Foucault: And in a classless society, I am not sure that we would
still use this notion of Justice.
100.
Chomsky: Well, here I really
disagree. I think there is some sort of an absolute basis, If you press me too
hard I'll be in trouble, because I can't sketch it out, ultimately residing in
fundamental humanqualities, in terms of which a real notion of Justice is
grounded. I think it's too hasty to characterise our
existing systems of Justice as merely systems of class oppression. I don't
think that they are that. I think that they embody systems of classoppression
and elements of other kinds of oppression, but they also embody a kind of
groping towards the true humanly, valuable concepts of Justice and decency and
love and kindness and sympathy, which I think are real. And I think that
in any future society, which will, of course, never be the perfect society,
we'll have such concepts again, which we hope, will come closer to
incorporating a defence of fundamental humanneeds, including such needs as
those for solidarity and sympathy and whatever, but will probably still reflect,
in some manner, the inequities and the elements of oppression of the existing
society. However, I think what you're describing only
holds for a very different kind of situation. For example, let's take a
case of [inter]nationalconflict. Here are two societies, each trying to destroy
the other. No question of Justice arises. The only question that arises is, Which
side are you on? Are you going to defend your own society and destroy the other?
I mean, in a certain sense, abstracting away from a lot of historical problems,
that's what faced the soldiers who were massacring each other in the trenches
in theFirstWorldWar. They were fighting for ["]nothing["].
They were fighting for the right to destroy each other. And, in that kind of
circumstance, no questions of Justice arise. And, of course. there were
rationalpeople, most of them in jail, like KarlLiebknecht, for example, who pointed that out and were in jail because they
did so, or BertrandRussell, to take another example on the other side. There were people who understood that there was no point to
that mutual massacre in terms of any sort of Justice and that they ought to
just ["]call it off["]. [stop it.] Now those people were
regarded as madmen, or lunatics, or criminals, or whatever, but, of course,
they were the only sane people around. And, in such a circumstance, the kind
that you describe, where there is no question of Justice, just the question of
who's going to win a struggle to the death, then I think the proper human
reaction is, ["]Call it off["], [Stop it.], don't win either
way, try to stop it. And, of course, if you say that, you'll immediately
be thrown in jail, or killed, or something of that sort, the fate of a lot of
rationalpeople. But I don't think that's the typical situation in humanaffairs,
and I don't think that's the situation in the case of classconflict or socialrevolution.
There I think that one can and must give an argument. If you can't give an
argument, you should extract yourself from the struggle. Give an argument that
the socialrevolution that you're trying to achieve is in the ends of Justice,
is in the ends of realising fundamental humanneeds, not merely in the ends of
putting some other group into power, because they want it.
101.
Foucault: Well, do I have time
to answer? [Deviation.]
102.
Elders: Yes.
103.
Foucault: How much?
104.
Elders:
Two minutes.
105.
Foucault:
I would say that is Unjust.
106.
Chomsky:
Absolutely.
107.
Foucault: No, but I don't want
to answer in so little time. I would simply say this, that finally this problem
of humannature, when put simply in theoreticalterms, hasn't led to an argument
between us, ultimately we understand each other very well on these theoretical
problems. On the other hand, when we discussed the problem of humannature and
politicalproblems, then differences arose between us. And,
contrary to what you think, you can't prevent me from believing that these
notions of humannature, of Justice, of the realisation of the essence of humanbeings,
all that, 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 classsystem. 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's
the point.
108.
Chomsky: It's clear.
109.
Elders: Mr. Foucault, if you
were obliged to describe our actual society in pathological terms, which of its
kinds of madness would most impress you?
110.
Foucault: In our contemporary
society?
111.
Elders: Yes.
112.
Foucault: If I were to say,
with which malady contemporary society is most afflicted?
113.
Elders: Yes.
114.
Foucault: The definition of disease and of the insane, and the
classification of the insane has been made in such a way as to exclude, from
our society, a certain number of people. If our society characterised
itself as insane, it would exclude itself. It pretends to do so for reasons of
internalreform. Nobody is more conservative than
those people who tell you that the modernworld is afflicted by nervousanxiety
or schizophrenia. [I discovered that it
is true from experience.] It is, in fact, a cunning way of excluding certain
people or certain patterns of behaviour. So I don't think that one can,
except as a metaphor or a game, validly say that our society is schizophrenic
or paranoid, unless one gives these words a nonPsychiatricmeaning. But, if you
were to push me to an extreme, I would say that our society has been afflicted
by a disease, a verycurious, a veryparadoxical disease, for which we haven't yet
found a name, and this mentaldisease has a verycurious symptom, which is that
the symptom itself brought the mentaldisease into being. There you have it. [Violà.]
115.
Elders: Great. Well, I think we
can immediately start the discussion.
116.
Questioner: Mr.Chomsky, I would
like to ask you one question. In your discussion you used the term proletariat;
what do you mean by proletariat in a highlydeveloped technologicalsociety? I
think this is a Marxist notion, which doesn't represent the exact sociological state
of affairs.
117.
Chomsky: Yes, I think you are
right, and that is one of the reasons why I kept hedging on that issue and
saying I'm very sceptical about the whole idea, because
I think the notion of a proletariat, if we want to use it, has to be given a
new interpretation fitting to our present social conditions. Really, I'd even like to drop the word, since it's so
loaded with specifichistorical 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 humannature, I really think of that as partially
[partly] including everyone. Because I think that any humanbeing who is not physically
or mentally deformed, and here I again must disagree
with Mr. Foucault and express my belief that the concept of mentalillness
probably does have an absolutecharacter, to some extent, at least, and is not
only capable of, but is insistent upon doing productivecreativework 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["]. Now, if that's the case, then the proletariat, or
whatever you want to call it, can really be universal, that is, it can be all
those humanbeings who are impelled by what I believe to be the fundamental
humanneed to be yourself, which means to be creative, to be exploratory, to be
inquisitive.
118.
Questioner: May I interrupt?
119.
Chomsky: to do useful things,
you know.
120.
Questioner: If you use such a
category, which has another meaning in Marxist.
121.
Chomsky: That's why I say maybe
we ought to drop the concept.
122.
Questioner: Wouldn't you do
better to use another term? In this situation, I would like to ask another
question : which groups, do you think, will make the revolution?
123.
Chomsky: Yes, that's a
different question.
124.
Questioner: It's an irony of History
that, at this moment, young intellectuals, coming from the middle and upper
classes, call themselves proletarians and say we must join the proletarians.
But I don't see any classconscious proletarians. And that's the great dilemma.
125.
Chomsky: Okay. Now I think
you're asking a concrete and specific question, and a very reasonable one. It
is not true, in our given society, that all people are doing useful, productive
work, or selfsatisfying work, obviously that's very far from true, or that, if
they were to do the kind of work they're doing under conditions of freedom, it
would thereby become productive and satisfying. Rather there are a very large
number of people who are involved in other kinds of work. For example, the
people who are involved in the management of exploitation, or the people who
are involved in the creation of artificial consumption, or the people who are
involved in the creation of mechanisms of destruction and oppression, or the
people who are simply not given any place in a stagnating industrialEconomy.
Lots of people are excluded from the possibility of productive labour. And I
think that the revolution, if you like, should be in the name of all human
beings; but it will have to be conducted by certain categories of human beings,
and those will be, I think, the human beings who really are involved in the
productive work of society. Now what this is will differ, depending upon the
society. In our society, it includes, I think, intellectual workers; it
includes a spectrum of people that runs from manuallabourers to skilledworkers,
to engineers, to scientists, to a very large class of professionals, to many
people in the socalled serviceoccupations, which really do constitute the
overwhelming mass of the population, at least in theUnitedStates, and I suppose
probably here too, and will become the mass of the population in the future. And
so I think that the studentrevolutionaries, if you like, have a point, a partial
[part] point : that is to say, it's a very important
thing, in a modernadvancedindustrialsociety, how the trained intelligentsia
identifies itself. It's very important to ask whether they are going to
identify themselves as socialmanagers, whether they are going to be
technocrats, or servants of either theState or privatepower, or, alternatively,
whether they are going to identify themselves as part of the workforce, who happen
to be doing intellectuallabour. If the latter, then they can and should
play a decent role in a progressive socialrevolution. If the former, then
they're part of the class of oppressors.
126.
Questioner: Thank you.
127.
Elders: Yes, go on please.
128.
Questioner: I was struck, Mr.
Chomsky, by what you said about the intellectual necessity of creating new
models of society. One of the problems we have in doing this with student
groups in Utrecht is that we are looking for consistency of values. One of the
values you more or less mentioned is the necessity of decentralisation of
power. People [who are] ["]on the spot["] should participate in
decisionmaking. That's the value of decentralisation and participation. But, on the other hand, we're living in a society that makes
it more and more necessary, or seems to make it more and more necessary, that
decisions are made on a worldwidescale. And, in order to have, for example, a
more equaldistribution of welfare, etc., it might be necessary to have more
centralisation. These problems should be solved on a higher level. Well, that's
one of the inconsistencies we found in creating your models of society, and we
should like to hear some of your ideas on it. I've one small additional
question, or rather a remark to make to you, that is, how can you, with your
verycourageous attitude towards thewarinVietnam, survive in an institution like
MIT, which is known here as one of the great war contractors and intellectual
makers of this war?
129.
Chomsky: Well, let me answer
the second question first, hoping that I don't forget the first one. Oh, no, I'll
try the first question first, and then remind me if I forget the second. In general, I am in favour of decentralisation. I wouldn't want to make it an absolute principle, but
the reason I would be in favour of it, even though there certainly is, I think,
a wide margin of speculation here, is because I would imagine that, in general,
a system of centralised power will operate very efficiently in the interest of
the most powerful elements within it. Now a system of decentralised
power and free association will of course face the problem, the specific
problem that you mention, of inequity. One region is richer than the other,
etc. But my own guess is that we're safer in trusting to what I hope are the
fundamental humanemotions of sympathy and the search for Justice, which may
arise within a system of free association. I think we're safer in hoping for
progress on the basis of those humaninstincts than on the basis of the
institutions of centralisedpower, which, I believe, will almost inevitably act
in the interest of their most powerful components. Now that's a little abstract
and too general, and I wouldn't want to claim that it's a rule for all
occasions, but I think it's a principle that's
effective in a lot of occasions. So, for example, I think that as
democraticsocialistlibertarian, UnitedStates
would be more likely to give substantial aid to EastPakistanirefugees than a
system of centralisedpower which is basically operating in the interest of
multinational corporations. And, you know, I think the same is true in a lot of
other cases. But it seems to me that that principle, at least, deserves some
thought. As to the idea, which was perhaps lurking in
your question anyway, it's an idea that's often expressed, that there is some
technical imperative, some property of advancedtechnologicalsociety that
requires centralisedpower and decisionmaking, and a lot of people say that,
from RobertMcNamara on
down. As far as I can see, it's perfectnonsense, I've never seen any
argument in favour of it. It seems to me that moderntechnology, like the
technology of dataprocessing, or communication, and so on, has precisely the
opposite implications. It implies that relevantinformation and relevantunderstanding
can be brought to everyone quickly. It doesn't have to
be concentrated in the hands of a small group of managers who control all knowledge,
all information and all decisionmaking. So Technology,
I think, can be liberating, it has the property of being possibly liberating,
it's converted, like everything else, like the system of Justice, into an
instrument of oppression because of the fact that power is badly distributed.
I don't think there is anything in modernTechnology or moderntechnologicalsociety
that leads away from decentralisation of power, quite the contrary. About the
second point, there are two aspects to that. One is the question how MIT
tolerates me, and the other question is how I tolerate MIT. [Laughter.] Well,
as to how MIT tolerates me, here again, I think, one shouldn't be overly
schematic. It's true that MIT is a majorinstitution of warresearch. But it's
also true that it embodies very important libertarian values, which are, I
think, quite deeply embedded in Americansociety, fortunately for the world.
They're not deeply embedded enough to save theVietnamese, but they are deeply
embedded enough to prevent far worse disasters. And here, I think, one has to
qualify a bit. There is imperial terror and aggression, there is exploitation,
there is racism, lots of things like that. But there is also a real concern,
coexisting with it, for individual rights of a sort which, for example, are
embodied in theBillOfRights, which is by no means simply an expression of classoppression.
It is also an expression of the necessity to defend the individual againstStatepower.
Now these things coexist. It's not that simple, it's not just all bad or all
good. And it's the particular balance in which they coexist that makes an
institute that produces weapons of war be willing to tolerate, in fact, in many
ways even encourage, a person who is involved in civildisobedience against the
war. Now, as to how I [NoamChomsky] tolerate[s]
MIT, that raises another question. There are people who argue, and I
have never understood the logic of this, that a radical ought to dissociate
himself from oppressive institutions. The logic of that argument is that Karl
Marx shouldn't have studied in theBritishMuseum which,
if anything, was the symbol of themostviciousImperialism in the world,
the place where all the treasures an empire had gathered from the rape of the
colonies, were brought together. But I think KarlMarx
was quite right in studying in theBritishMuseum. He was right in using the resources
and, in fact, the liberalvalues of the civilisation that he was trying to
overcome, against it. And I think the same applies in this case.
130.
Questioner: But aren't you
afraid that your presence at MIT gives them a cleanconscience?
131.
Chomsky: I don't see how,
really. I mean, I think my presence at MIT serves marginally to help, I don't
know how much, to increase studentactivism against a lot of the things that MIT
as an institution does. At least I hope that's what
it does. [Of course he does.]
132.
Elders: Is there another
question?
133.
Questioner: I would like to get
back to the question of centralisation. You said that Technology does not
contradict decentralisation. But the problem is, can Technology
criticise itself, its influences, and so forth? Don't you think that it might
be necessary to have a centralorganisation that could criticise the influence
of Technology on the wholeuniverse? And I don't see how that could be
incorporated in a smalltechnologicalinstitution.
134.
Chomsky: Well, I have nothing
against the interaction of federated freeassociations; and in that sense
centralisation, interaction, communication, argument, debate, can take place,
and so on and so forth, and criticism, if you like. What I am talking about is
the centralisation of power.
135.
Questioner: But, of course,
power is needed, for instance to forbid some technological institutions from
doing work that will only benefit the corporation.
136.
Chomsky: Yeah, but what I'm
arguing is this, If we have the choice between trusting
in centralisedpower to make the rightdecision in that matter or and trusting
in freeassociations of libertariancommunities to make that decision, I would
rather trust the latter. And the reason is that I think that they can serve to
maximise decent humaninstincts, whereas a system of centralised power will tend,
in a general way, to maximise one of the worst of humaninstincts, namely the
instinct of rapaciousness, of destructiveness, of accumulating power to oneself
and destroying others. It's a kind of instinct which does arise and functions
in certain historicalcircumstances, and I think we want to create the kind of
society where it is likely to be repressed and replaced by other and
morehealthy instincts.
137.
Questioner: I hope you are
right.
138.
Elders: Well, ladies and
gentlemen, I think this must be the end of the debate. Mr. Chomsky, Mr.
Foucault, I thank you very much for your ["]farreaching["] discussion
over the philosophical and theoretical, as well as the political questions of
the debate, both for myself and also on behalf of the audience, here and at
home.
