Foucault opens with reference to the increasing "vulnerability" of "institutions, practices, discourses" etc. which we find the seeming purpose of philosophy in the modern era. The destruction of Western episteme. Derridas last week turned this fragmenting modern perspective on language itself, something so fundamental that we literally cannot comprehend what it means to be without it. If language through which, as the structuralists suggest, we construct our world, is fragmented and incapable of expressing truth and meaning, and we have like good little post-structuralists overcome our desire for the transcendental signified, than what is left? I believe Focucault uses this lecture to answer that question.
And what he finds is the fragmented post-modern society. The "attempts to think in terms of a totality" have fragmented and fallen apart, philosophical totalities, religious totalities, economic totalities, even the "linguistic totality" of structuralism. In the gaps have risen his "subjugated knowledges of both types" (Paulo Freire, anyone?) as minorities and cultures outside the Euro-American cultural dominance are gaining greater voice and power in a decentralized world.
The second half of the essay is devoted to describing these new knowledges/powers. Instead of being globalizing philosophies like Capitalism, Marxism, structuralism, and even deconstructionism etc. they are localized knowledges/powers focused on specific groups of people rather than on humanity as a whole. I believe the genealogies term used is particularly indicative of the ethnic/cultural "isms" and splits that we see throughout current world society (if such an oxymoron can be tolerated).
genealogy is history and science is teaching us that we can't run away from genetics and hence history.
ReplyDeletethe vogueness of scientific explanations of history corresponds to the political fragmentation of traditional western power structures, the church and the crown.
the recent surge in world literature is new blood.
we'll see what happens.