3. Genealogy of geography
Foucault borrowed the term genealogy from Friedrich Nietzsche
(Genealogy of Morality ), with which he achieved a new
methodological step forward, and he marked genealogy as the history of
the locality. It is a kind of counterbalance to the Hegelian
interpretation of world history, which begins the chapter Geographical
Basis of World History with the aspiration to totalize historical
consciousness as a world-historical process.
These natural differences must, above all, be regarded as exceptional
possibilities from which the spirit springs; in this way, they represent
the geographical basis. But, of course, we do not care to get acquainted
with the soil as an external place. Still, we care about getting
acquainted with the natural type of locality, closely connected to the
kind and character of the people who originated on such soil. That
character is precisely how nations appear in world history and occupy a
position and a place in it. - Nature should neither be overestimated nor
underestimated; the mild Ionic sky has undoubtedly contributed much to
the grace of Homer’s poems, but it alone cannot produce Homer, nor does
it always produce them; poets did not appear under Turkish rule (Hegel,
2006: 96).
In an essay entitled Nietzsche, Genealogy, History , Foucault
demonstrates the power of what he sees as Nietzsche’s genealogical
method, a ”multidisciplinary technique for discovering contingent
historical trends that support contemporary discourse and practices of
power.” That is why he states that, unlike the Hegelian sun of world
history, ”genealogy is gray; it is petty and patiently documentary.
”Foucault (2012b: 90) simply emphasizes the difference between
archeology and genealogy: ”In two words: perhaps it could be said that
archeology would be a method inherent in the analysis of local
discursive practices, and genealogy a tactic that, based on the
described local discursive practices, into play introduces the
liberating knowledge that results from them. And to establish the
project as a whole. ”Therefore, for him, the goal of genealogy is to
understand the ”history of the present” independently of the known
historical narratives and political ideologies that represented the
past. Huxley (2009: 255) sees genealogy as ”a method for discovering
power exercises, which are involved in setting up certain regimes of
truth and valorizing subordinate knowledge.” Thus Foucault’s
methodological turn towards genealogy is expressed in the bookSupervise and Punish (1997), which became one of his most famous
books. He defines modernity as a disciplinary society shaped by new
forms of power. His interest in the genealogical history of the present
inspired Foucault to the next series, a trilogy of the history of
sexuality, which, despite its differences, ”consistently uses
Nietzsche’s deconstruction of the origins of the Western soul and
submissive regimes of truth, ethics, and identity.”
Dreyfus and Rabinow (1982: 119) emphasize that the genealogy of
knowledge consists of two different corpora: first, from other opinions
and theories that have not been established or widely recognized, and,
second, from local beliefs and understandings. It seeks to discover
these two kinds of knowledge and their struggle to pass them on to
others while not claiming to be more accurate than institutionalized
knowledge. It represents only the missing part of the puzzle, and it
works by isolating the main features of some current political
mechanisms and then following them to their historical roots. These
historical roots are available to us only thanks to these described
corpora of knowledge. That is why Foucault (2012b: 90) defines genealogy
as a kind of endeavor with the aim of ”breaking the yoke of historical
knowledge and becoming free” and becoming a cadre for ”opposing and
fighting against the coercion of unitary, formal and scientific
theoretical discourse.” That is why local knowledge contrary to the
”scientific hierarchy of cognition and the internal effects of power” is
essential to him.
Unlike the method of archeology, which is neither formalizing nor
interpretive, genealogy is an interpretive, analytical method which,
according to Pete (1998), is ”opposed to traditional historical methods
of research.” It does not seek to recognize a fixed essence or internal
laws. Still, it seeks ”discontinuities, avoiding in-depth searches and
recording the past to undermine the notion of a modern march of
progress.” As in the previous case, to better understand it, it is
necessary to clarify the essential concepts that arise from discursive
practices (power, knowledge, and body) and which essentially determine
genealogy as a method.
The genealogist finds hidden meanings, sublime truth, and depth of
consciousness, which are equally false: instead, the genealogical truth
is that things have no essence. In archeology, Foucault sought a space
in which we encounter objects and talk about them based on rules
regulated by the system. In genealogy, this field is considered a space
where social practices occur when subjects engage in a repetitive
domination game. History is not the progress of universal achievement,
but humanity is moving from one authority to another. Exploring the
order of knowledge, as the order of the new discursive practice of the
time, Foucault distances his genealogical approach to learning from the
history of science:
What distinguishes what we might call the history of science from the
genealogy of knowledge is that the history of science is essentially
placed on one axis, which is, in general, the axis of knowledge-truth,
or, in any case, the axis that goes from the structure of knowledge to
demands the truth. In contrast to the history of science, the genealogy
of knowledge is placed on another axis, the axis of discourse - power
or, if I may say so, the axis of discursive practice - confrontation
with power (Foucault, 1998: 217-218)
In History of Sexuality I , Foucault argues that modern ”bio-power
emerged in the seventeenth century as a coherent political technology,
when the stimulation of life, and the growth and care of the population,
became the main challenges of the state.” created modern human sciences,
which were still associated with bio-power technologies. Their goal was
to produce an obedient but productive body (bodies in advance) and, not
as a consequence, capitalism (Dreyfus and Rabinov, 1983). Foucault’s
(2012b: 83-112) 1976 lectures emphasize particular aspects of genealogy
interesting to geography. First, he favors autonomous, decentralized
theoretical production whose correctness does not depend on the approval
of established regimes of thought. Second, of subdued knowledge, he
means blocks of historical knowledge disguised as functionalist and
systematization theory, which usually disqualifies knowledge as
inadequate, naive, below the required level of science. Third, by
reviving the history of struggle and through that subdued knowledge,
Foucault thinks critical discourse can reveal a new essential power. In
this sense, genealogy deals with the detailed rediscovery of efforts,
reconstructions that would not be possible unless the tyranny of
globalizing discourse is eliminated. It is a methodological discourse
that Foucault believes in and which genealogy of power he should follow.
Based on this, we can try to deconstruct the imposed
political-geographical discourse on the civil war in Sarajevo.11This
civil war began with the murder of a Serb wedding party in Sarajevo in
1992 and ended with an international conference in Dayton (USA) in
1995., which starts from the ”fact“ that there were Serbs in
Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992-95. carried out an “ethnic
cleansing” of Muslims (Dahlman & Toal, 2005: 644)22The authors
mention the term ethnic cleansing on eighteen occasions, although many
facts were not known at that time (2005), not to mention impartial
historical studies and judgments of relevant courts.Which neglects
the number and structure of the population (before and after the war) as
a basic geographical fact. In doing so, they draw their conclusions
based on indicators for two smaller inland cities (Zvornik and Jajce)
and neglect the state capital, with the most significant demographic,
economic and political significance. This kind of interpretation of
geographical data is a typical example of a selective approach to facts,
which should deconstruct and recognize all discontinuities in these
statements, which means rejecting the imposed ”truths” and returning to
Foucault’s local knowledge. The best basis for beginning the
deconstruction of such approaches is to present the geographical facts
about the number and national structure of the population of Sarajevo
before and after the war.
Table 2: Ethnic structure of the population of Sarajevo 1991-2013.