Genealogy (philosophy)
In
For example, tracking the lineages of a concept such as 'globalization' can be called a 'genealogy' to the extent that the concept is located in its changing constitutive setting.[1] This entails not just documenting its changing meaning (etymology) but the social basis of its changing meaning.
Nietzsche
Nietzsche criticized "the genealogists" in
Foucault
In the late twentieth century, Michel Foucault expanded the concept of genealogy into a counter-history of the position of the subject which traces the development of people and societies through history.[4] His genealogy of the subject accounts "for the constitution of knowledges, discourses, domains of objects, and so on, without having to make reference to a subject which is either transcendental in relation to the field of events or runs in its empty sameness throughout the course of history."[5]
As Foucault discussed in his essay "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History", Foucault's ideas of genealogy were greatly influenced by the work that Nietzsche had done on the development of morals through power. Foucault also describes genealogy as a particular investigation into those elements which "we tend to feel [are] without history".
As one of the important theories of Michel Foucault, genealogy deconstructs truth, arguing that truth is, more often than not, discovered by chance, backed up by the operation of
The practice of genealogy is also closely linked to what Foucault called the "archeological method:"
In short, it seems that from the empirical observability for us of an ensemble to its historical acceptability, to the very period of time in which it is actually observable, the analysis goes by way of the knowledge-power nexus, supporting it, recouping it at the point where it is accepted, moving toward what makes it acceptable, of course, not in general, but only where it is accepted. This is what can be characterized as recouping it in its positivity. Here, then, is a type of procedure, which, unconcerned with legitimizing and consequently excluding the fundamental point of view of the law, runs through the cycle of positivity by proceeding from the fact of acceptance to the system of acceptability analyzed through the knowledge-power interplay. Let us say that this is, approximately, the archaeological level [of analysis].[7]
See also
- History of ideas
- The Archaeology of Knowledge
- Geistesgeschichte
- Hermeneutics
- diachrony
References
- S2CID 18739651.
- S2CID 219190726.
- ISBN 978-0-8223-1878-1.
- ^ Michel Foucault Lectures At The College de France Society Must Be Defended 1975
- ISBN 978-1-56584-801-6.
- ISBN 978-0-8014-9204-4.
- ^ Foucault, Michel. "What is Critique?" in The Politics of Truth, Ed. Sylvère Lotringer. New York: Semiotext(e), 2007, pg. 61.