4. Foucault‘s Genealogy
In order to understand this segment of the epistemology of Foucault’s
work, a brief philosophical-geographical review11In the
reference synthesis on geographical opinion, Hubbard et. Al.Thinking Geographically (2005), points to ways of thinking
within different philosophical traditions, and suggests that certain
theories and their quality depend significantly on: ontology,
epistemology, ideology and methodology. According to them, these four
components define the parameters of studying every philosophical
approach, including geography. is necessary. Philo (1991: 148) points
out that Foucault’s theory of power has the form of a spatial ontology
that arises from spatial scattering or ”by imagining a hypothetical
space or plane through which all relevant events and phenomena are
distributed”. The deliberate scattering of objects at this level and the
opposition of different categories of things ”mixing the tangible and
the intangible, the natural and the human, the collective and the
individual, the lasting and the time-limited”, is only part of a
strategy that from the beginning tries to challenge they are totalizing
historical research. ”
In the domain of the methodology of Foucault’s work, two phases can be
observed. The structuralist phase includes an earlier period that has
been treated by the archaeological method in the books: History of
Madness, Birth of a Clinic, Words and Things, and Archaeology of
Knowledge . According to Ritzer (2009: 350-351), during this period
Foucault created a theory that there are many centers of discipline
within the world in which ”an environment is more or less affected by
the expansion of a disciplinary society, which he calls the concept of a
prison archipelago.” The poststructuralist phase originated from an
interest in the genealogical history of the present and began with the
book Supervise and Punish, and ended with a trilogy on sexuality
(History of Sexuality, Self-Care, and The Use of Pleasure ). One
of the best interpreters of Foucault’s work is his American friend P.
Rabinow (1984: 7-11), who presents his work in terms of ”the
classification of practices, the practice of separation, and the
practice of self-subjectivation.”
To clarify Foucault’s ideology, J. Hacking (2005: 129) points to the
connections between power and knowledge through two short (bad) answers:
“knowledge provides an instrument that powerful people can use for
their own purposes; and, a new form of knowledge gives birth to a new
class of people or institutions, which can exercise a new kind of power.
” For him, these two claims are parallel to two opposing theses of
ideology: “the ruling class produces an ideology that suits its
interests; and a new ideology, with new values, creates a comfortable
position for the new ruling class. ” He notes that no one likes either
side of these simplified dichotomies, and he is one of many who wants a
new conception of the interplay of knowledge and power. But he is not
looking for a relationship between two givens, “power” and
“knowledge,” but is trying to rethink the subject in its entirety.
One can now analyze the epistemological framework of Foucault’s
research, which best reflects the notion of geoepistemology. In
etymological terms, it is a two-word coin, i.e. prefix geo (spaces /
geography) and episteme (epistemology / knowledge / discourses). Geo
comes from the scientific name (geography) and has a direct connection
with its basic subject of research, space. Foucault’s geoepistemology
has been the subject of criticism and geography. They were, for the most
part, strongly influenced by Kuhn’s teaching on paradigms22This
is more about R. J. Johnston and his book Geography and
Geographers , 1997., so they considered episteme arbitrary because of
the lack of clarity with which Foucault created them. One of the most
prominent contemporary French geographers, Claval (1981: 238), believes
that the insistence on the existence of Renaissance, classical and
modern episteme denies the possibility that other thought systems
existed during their periods and emphasizes that human sciences are in
modern episteme. found themselves in a new position, to be both
observers and observers. This was of special importance for the
development of natural sciences, linguistics and political
economy33In Words and Things , Foucault built a multiple
three-level epistemological model based on biology, linguistics, and
economics, best reflected in the metaphor from which the fundamental
life-work-language triad is born., which dealt with issues of life,
language and work. Johnston (1997: 24) argues that Foucault fails to
explain the processes that lead to the replacement of one episteme by
another and emphasizes that Foucault concentrates on the ways in which
certain societies create their own views of the world (he calls them a
kind of macro-paradigm). to periods of competition between such views.
Speaking about the challenges of modern science in the book What
is Philosophy? Deleuze and Guattari (1995: 21-76) point out the
importance of creating concepts in philosophy. Emphasizing the
complexity of that procedure, they note that in every created concept
there are ”parts and parts that came from other concepts … and just as
it is characteristic of a concept to make parts inseparable in itself”.