Chomsky and Foucault

Though every computer scientist knows Chomsky and I happened to write something about Foucault in another log entry, I never knew about their conversations documented in "The Chomsky-Foucault debate on human nature".

The discussion is not much of a debate, but the positions are clear enough. Foucault is suspicious of any notion of "human" or "nature", especially "human nature" and tends to see discourse and power behind these concepts. Chomsky, on the other hand, thinks that we as human beings are essentially capable of "fair play". Information about our surroundings, and about actions of other people, enable democratic control (of institutions). Chomsky laments that governments and corporations knowingly distort and hide information to keep control in their own hands. Elsewhere he has stated that post-structuralists (like Foucault) actually take part of this information hiding, by being unclear.

True enough, Foucault can be pretty obscure. But there is something in his writings to compensate it: think about Foucault's perspective of business discourse, academic discourse or even "common sense" discourse like journalism or blogs. Normally, we take these discourses for granted, but Foucault sees bare (though complicated) power structures. What this really means: what we call "experience" or "practice" is only half the story - behind it one finds discoursive constructions. But are these discoursive constructions too abstract? Do they mean anything to us as political and moral beings?