6 PM, 16 February, 2010 | 4th floor, College Hall
In 1971 Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky sat down in a dark lecture hall somewhere in Holland and talked for an hour about human nature, justice, the Vietnam War and proletarian revolutions. The recording of this debate was subsequently lost to the dark chasms of the Dutch national archives and disappeared forever, save for a few excerpts on YouTube and a published transcript.
But no more! The Philomathean Society and the Department of History proudly presents the full Foucault vs Chomsky debate, with commentary and discussion led by professor Warren Breckman, and delicious dinner provided by Allegro’s. Come join us to witness the battle of wits of the 20th century.
Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific community as one of the fathers of modern linguistics. Since the 1960s, he has become known more widely as a political dissident, an anarchist, and a libertarian socialist intellectual. Chomsky is often viewed as a notable figure in contemporary philosophy.
Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, sociologist, and historian. He held a chair at the Collège de France and also taught at the University at Buffalo and the University of California, Berkeley. Foucault is best known for his critical studies of social institutions, most notably psychiatry, medicine, the human sciences, and the prison system, as well as for his work on the history of human sexuality. His work on power, and the relationships among power, knowledge, and discourse has been widely discussed.
Warren Breckman is associate professor of modern European intellectual and cultural history at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Karl Marx, the Young Hegelians, and the Origins of Radical Social Theory: Dethroning the Self and European Romanticism: A Brief History with Documents. He is currently working on a book titled Adventures of the Symbolic: French Postmarxism and Democratic Theory, to be published by Columbia University Press.
Allegro’s is a fantastic pizza joint on the corners of 40th and Spruce that serves delicious meals at affordable prices.
