Branding Chomsky: the double circulation of a reference across the Atlantic Ocean and across the political spectrum

This text analyses why, even though the American intellectual Noam Chomsky defends a radical-left political position, he remains an important reference for a part of the French radical right. This example tests some of the arguments presented by Pierre Bourdieu in an October 1989 conference on the social conditions of the international circulation of ideas. The central argument that texts and ideas circulate without their production context is fully expressed in Chomsky’s framework, in several ways. Moreover, this circulation relies on a small number of actors, including a Belgian physicist who shares certain points of view with Noam Chomsky, but who is deeply rooted in the French radical right: Jean Bricmont.