For those with an interest in big ideas, these trading cards from Theory.org should fire up your neurotransmitters.

Between 2000-2001, a set of twelve trading cards was released monthly via David Gauntlett’s website Theory.org. This original set of cards featured theorists (and their concepts) from the world of social and cultural theory, gender and identity, and media studies. The first out of the pack was British social theorist Anthony Giddens who devised the theory of structuration and wrote the book on The Third Way. This was followed by theorist Judith Butler whose book Gender Trouble argued that “biological” sexes were just as much as a social construct as gender. Then came the great controversial French thinker Michel Foucault with his ideas about sexuality, gender and power structures. The deck included some interesting choices like artists Tracey Emin, Gilbert & George and concepts like Postmodernity and Psychoanalysis.

This official set of twelve trading cards was thought by some to lack a few key players and its release inspired various academics, students and alike to produce their own cards. These additions included Karl Marx, Carl Jung, Simone de Beauvoir, Edward Said, Germaine Greer, Walter Benjamin and Marcel Duchamp.

Described as “Creative knowledge you can put your pocket™” these cards can be used to play a game of trumps—in which players can match strengths, weaknesses and special skills. For example, Foucault’s special skill of happily rejecting old models and creating new ones, might not quite beat Duchamp’s ability to confuse the hell out of everyone.

The full set is below—but if you want to own a set of these super brainy trading cards (and who wouldn’t?) then deal yourself in by clicking here.
 

#1 Anthony Giddens—British social theorist.
 

#2 Judith Butler—American philosopher and gender theorist.
 

#3 Michel Foucault—French philosopher, theorist, philologist and literary critic.
 
More thinkers and some big ideas, after the jump…

 
Snippets of this classic debate between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault have been wafting about online for ages, but I think it’s only been posted in full relatively recently, and is well, well worth a thorough viewing…

Which is not to say that it’s a great debate exactly. Initially, indeed, it’s a veritable orgy of awkwardness, resembling something like the worst blind date of all time. The interlocutors come across as chalk and cheese, both philosophically and personally. And despite a fair showing of professional courtesy in what they say, their expressions (while the other is talking) tell another story : Chomsky tending to eye Foucault as if the latter is a louche and ludicrous fraud, and seeming to be constantly having to swallow a smirk, while Foucault, accordingly, gazes at Chomsky as if near stupefied by the intellectual credulity of this American super-ninny.

There is some more elevated fun to be had here, too, mind. Both thinkers offer very lucid formulations of their fundamental outlook, and these outlooks do seem peculiarly, pointedly inverse, so much so in fact that for some time they can’t even seem to engage with one another (as is tediously emphasized by the strange Dutch commentator figure, who introduces it and then twice inexplicably bobs up to be incredibly boring straight at the camera for three or four minutes—just warning you about that one).

Once they get into the topics of morality and politics, however, the discussion comes to life, and so much so that, by the end, Chomsky’s looking at Foucault in an entirely different fashion—namely, as if the latter might just be some kind of moral monster.

Best of all though, is the audience, which seems composed entirely of members of krautrock group Can in various, slight, shifting disguises.
 

 
Michel Foucault: Beyond Good and Evil, director David Stewart’s superb 1993 portrait of the social theorist of power in history manages to squeeze a lot of information into its short 42 minutes and provides a pretty adequate introduction to Foucault’s life and work.

Foucault’s acid trip at Zabriskie Point watching the sun set over Death Valley listening to Stockhausen (which the philosopher described as the greatest experience of his life) is recreated, as is a 1947 performance of Antonin Artaud’s Theatre Of Cruelty. Foucault’s drug use, his participation in the sadomasochistic San Francisco leather scene and death from AIDS in 1984 at the age of 57 are also covered.

In various languages, but there are English subtitles when it’s necessary.