HANDOUT ON FOUCAULT, "NIETZSCHE, GENEALOGY, HISTORY"

What's here

• Reading assignments for this session
  
• Key dates for Foucault
  
• Those pesky German words--ursprung? herkunft?
  
• Study questions on these readings
  
• What next?--suggestions about where to go from here
  

Assignment for next time

• Friedrich Nietzsche, Preface to The Genealogy of Morals (handout)

• Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," The Foucault Reader: 76-100.

Key dates for Foucault

1926 Foucault is born in Poitiers; his father is a surgeon.
1950 Foucault joins French Communist Party (PCF).
1951 Though not yet finished with his own degree, Foucault begins to do some teaching at the Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS); one of his students is Derrida.
1953 Foucault discovers Nietzsche, leaves PCF.
1955 Foucault takes a teaching position in Sweden.
1961 Foucault's first major work, Madness and Civilization
1963 Derrida gives a lecture on Madness and Civilization, in which he describes Foucault's reading of Descartes as a case of "structuralist totalitarianism." These remarks lead to a major falling-out between Derrida and Foucault. In 1971 Foucault responds by calling deconstruction a "minor pedagogy." The two men will not be reconciled until 1981.
1966 Foucault, Les Mots et les choses, translated into English as (get this) The Order of Things. This work becomes a best-seller in France, and it transforms Foucault into a celebrity.
1969 Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge
1970 Foucault earns a permanent appointment at the College de France, the most prestigious academic institution in France. At about this time, Foucault also becomes politicized and begins his participation in left-wing and ultra left-wing rallies and demonstrations. By the time of his death he will be as famous for his political work as he is for his scholarship.
1971 Foucault begins to do advocacy work with prisoners. His experiences with them will lead directly to his next major project, which is . . .
1975 Discipline and Punish. At this time, he takes first trip to California and has his first experiences with S/M and LSD. He will return to California in 1979, 1980, and 1983.
1976 Foucault, History of Sexuality, volume I
1978 Foucault visits Iran to report on Khomeini revolution and is surprisingly sympathetic to the revolutionaries.
1980 First cases of AIDS diagnosed in NY and San Francisco.
1984 Foucault, History of Sexuality, volumes 2 and 3. Foucault dies of AIDS--in the same hospital whose history he had analyzed in Madness and Civilization.

A note on those pesky German words

In the opening pages of "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," Foucault discusses Nietzsche's use of several German words, the most important of which are ursprung, herkunft, and entstehung. These words mean roughly the same thing, and all of them can be translated into English as "source" or "origin."

Foucault explains that Nietzsche usually uses these words interchangeably. But sometimes, Foucault adds, Nietzsche employs the words in rather different ways, creating important distinctions among them. The key distinction is between ursprung, which Nietzsche occasionally uses to refer to an ultimate or transcendent origin (like God or the Form of the Good), and herkunft and entstehung, which he uses to designate other, more immediate and contingent kinds of origins.

As you might guess, both Nietzsche and Foucault heap scorn upon those historians who go out searching for ursprung. They insist that the proper objects of historical or "genealogical" research are herkunft and entstehung. There's lots more to \ say about these words, and about the difference between ursprung and herkunft/entstehung, but let's save it for class. (I will say thanks, though, to Ed Kern for help with these words.)

Study questions and possible discussion topics

1. Both Nietzsche and Foucault make a point of referring to themselves as "genealogists." What do they mean by "genealogy," and how do they distinguish "genealogy" from more traditional or conventional forms of historical research?

HINT: In general, history is bad. It's linear, heading in a single direction and never wavering from its pre-set course. It's teleological, concerned with beginnnings and endings. It's comforting, usually reinforcing the bourgeois "myth of progress." And it's "metaphysical," confident of its ability to get at ultimate origins and truths.

Genealogy, by contrast, is good. It's not linear--it follows a kind of branching structure. It's not teleological--and indeed it considers the search for origins not just fruitless but laughable. It's not comforting--because it explicitly rejects the myth of progress. And it's trying real hard not to be "metaphysical," either. Instead of worrying about God or Truth or Human Nature (note the capital letters, please), the genealogist--as Foucault himself explains--"shortens [her] vision to those things nearest it--the body, the nervous system, nutrition, digestion, and energies" (89).

To get an even better sense of what Foucault has in mind, just look at his vocabulary: he's constantly returning to notions of icoherence, instability, discontinuity, constantly invoking ideas of the accidental and the haphazard. The conventional historian denies or ignores such things, in order to construct a tidy little story. The genealogist (my hero!) exposes and embraces them.

2. What do you make of Foucault's comments about the body? Why is the body of such great interest to him? Would the body seem to be a promising subject for historical research? (My guess is that the commonsense answer to that last question is no. Does thinking about commonsense attitudes towards the body and history help to explain why Foucault takes up this subject?)

3. In what ways does Foucault resemble Derrida? In what ways does he differ from Derrida? Would you be surprised to learn that Derrida was once Foucault's student? (He was.) Or that the two of them got into a fued that lasted almost twenty years? (They did.) In working on this question, think about Foucault's handling of the pesky German words. How is it like, and how is it different from, Derrida's treatment of the word pharmakon?

What next?

• Homepage for English 60A
  
• Syllabus for weeks four and five (Derrida and Foucault)
  
• Students' responses to these readings
  
• Links to internet resources dealing with Foucault