CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Smokrovic, Ana |
|---|---|
| Title | Foucault and Chomsky on Human Nature, Power and Anarchism |
| Summary | This thesis discusses the question of human nature as essential in shaping politics. In order to situate the debate between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, two lines of claims regarding human nature within the framework of modern political philosophy are presented. In one line which stresses the existence of human nature the focus is on contractualism such as Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, non-contractualism such as Carl Schmitt, and finally, Peter Kropotkin’s anarchism; in this line Noam Chomsky is situated. In the second line, which argues against the existence of human nature, attention is given to Sartre’s existentialism and Marxism, and in this tradition Foucault is situated. After outlining the debate, questions raised in the debate are analysed in much wider scope of Foucault’s and Chomsky’s works in order to detect possible points of convergences. Power and its modus operandi with the critique of a socio-political system which claims to be democratic but is based on hierarchy; class domination and violence; analysis of population regulation by rules and media; the notion of resistance; critique of theoretical knowledge represented as neutral and truthful; together with the critique of elitist intellectualism, are possible points of convergence in the work of Chomsky and Foucault within the Left political framework. |
| Supervisor | Loutfi, Anna |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/smokrovic_ana.pdf |
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