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”.