4.1 What is genealogy?
Foucault borrowed the concept of genealogy from Friedrich Nietzsche
(Genealogy of Morality), with which he achieved a new methodological
step forward, and he marked genealogy as a history of locality, which
can be simplified in relation to archeology:
”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 local discursive practices
described in this way, introduces the liberated knowledge that results
from them.” And in order to establish the project as a whole. ” Foucault
(2012: 90)
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. It is a kind of
counterbalance to the Hegelian interpretation of world history (Hegel,
2006), which strives to totalize the historicist consciousness as a
world-historical process. The importance of geography in this process is
best seen through the chapter Geographical basis of world
history , in which Hegel points out the importance of the intertwining
of the natural basis with cultural content:
”These natural differences must, above all, be considered special
possibilities from which the spirit arises; in this way they represent
the geographical basis. We do not care to get acquainted with the soil
as an external place, but we care about getting acquainted with the
natural type of locality, with the type that is closely connected with
the type and character of the people who originated on such soil. That
character is, precisely the way in which nations appear in world history
and which occupy a position and a place in it. - Nature should neither
be overestimated nor underestimated; the gentle Ionic sky certainly
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 (1995),
Foucault clearly 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
power practices.” That is why he states that, unlike the Hegelian sun of
world history, “genealogy is gray; it is petty and patiently
documentary. ” Huxley (2009: 255) sees genealogy as “a method for
discovering power exercises, which are involved in setting up certain
regimes of truth and valorization of subordinate knowledge”, and
Woodward et al. (2009: 396) see genealogy in two ways, as a
post-structuralist approach to historical analysis, but also as a
historian ”who replaces origin, linearity and truth with multitude,
dispersion and power / knowledge”. Gregory (2011: 315) connects
genealogy with ”spatial history” which should shed light on historical
geography and which examines ”today’s context of war-torn geographies”,
which are detected within the present space which has a colonial past
and on which ”various spatial practices have been applied”. “.
This Foucault’s methodological turn from archeology to genealogy is
expressed in the book Supervise and Punish (1975), which became one of
his most famous books, and in which 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 (1983: 119) emphasize that the genealogy
of knowledge consists of two different corpora: first, from different
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 truer than institutionalized
knowledge. It represents only the missing part of the puzzle, and it
works by isolating the main parts 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 (1984b: 76) defines genealogy as ”the
unity of erudite knowledge and local memory that enables us to establish
historical knowledge about the existing struggle and to use that
knowledge tactically today.”
Unlike the method of archeology, which is neither formalizing nor
interpretive, genealogy is an interpretive analytical method which,
according to Peet (1998), is ”opposed to traditional historical research
methods.” It does not seek to recognize a fixed essence or internal
laws, but seeks ”discontinuities, avoiding in-depth searches and
recording the past in order to undermine the notion of a modern march of
progress.” As in the previous case, in order to better understand it, it
is necessary to start from the clarification of essential concepts that
arise from discursive practices (power, knowledge and body) and which
essentially determine genealogy as a method. That is why the genealogist
/ geographer 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 the rules
regulated by the system. In genealogy, this field is considered to be
the space in which social practices take place, when subjects engage in
a repetitive game of domination. History is not the progress of a
universal achievement, but humanity is moving from one domination to
another. Exploring the order of knowledge, as the order of the new
discursive practice of the time, Foucault distances his genealogical
approach to knowledge 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).
Peet (1998: 204) emphasizes that two of Foucault’s (2012: 83-112)
lectures from 1976 have aspects of genealogy that may be interesting for
geography, in which he favors an autonomous, decentralized theoretical
production whose correctness does not depend on the approval of
established regimes. Hence, local critics continue on the path of
”return to knowledge” or rebellion of subjugated knowledge, by which 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. By reviving the
history of struggle, and through that subdued knowledge, Foucault thinks
that critical discourse can reveal a new essential power. In this sense,
genealogy deals with painstaking, rediscovering struggles,
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.