Wow. Glad to find that someone has edited this debate and embedded it in an article in this way. There is little available footage of Foucault, with English subtitles at any rate, and the sheer force of this mans intellect combined with the increasing relevance of his ideas makes me wonder if we have yet to see the dawn of their impact in the world. He was long the trendy hero of intellectuals, whereas we can now see that he belongs not in the armchair, but in the kitchen of human dealings and ideas, for want of a better metaphor. Chomsky and Foucault address here the questions that were circulating in their era, culminating in the revolution of 68, but that are by no means specific to the end of the 60s. In fact, the existential nature of the preoccupations is only now coming to maturity. As astrologers would put it - the Pluto/Uranus conjunction of the 60s sowed the seeds of what is now set to come to fruition under the square (90 deg. angle). The main difference being that under the conjunction, the problems were identified and defined - mainly as being external, structural and political limitations on the human soul - whereas now we are coming into consciousness of the fact that the limitations are illusory to a great extent, and that, as Foucault postulates, our adherence to the idea of a set definition of what it means to be human is actually the source of the problem. We are in fact limitless in our capacity to step outside of the paradigms we have created, and where we are failing to do this, our genes are already some way off down the path, waiting for us to catch up. :) openculture/2013/03/noam_chomsky_michel_foucault_debate_human_nature_power_in_1971.html
Posted on: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 09:29:08 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015