8.4 Genealogy

Genealogy is a method of historical analysis developed by Michel Foucault that asks a deceptively simple question: how did things come to be this way? Rather than tracing a neat origin story, genealogy digs into the messy, contingent, power-laden processes through which certain ideas, institutions, and practices became dominant while alternatives were sidelined. In IR, this method provides a powerful tool for denaturalizing concepts that mainstream theories treat as timeless or self-evident.

Foucault's genealogical approach

Genealogy examines how discourses, practices, and institutions emerge and transform over time. Unlike conventional history, which often tells a story of steady progress or logical development, genealogy looks for the accidents, power struggles, and exclusions that actually shaped the present. Foucault designed this method specifically to challenge taken-for-granted concepts by showing that they didn't have to turn out the way they did.

Three interconnected ideas drive the genealogical approach:

Power and knowledge

Foucault argues that power and knowledge are not separate forces but are deeply intertwined and mutually reinforcing. Power relations determine what counts as legitimate knowledge, and that knowledge in turn props up existing power structures.

• Those who hold power get to define what qualifies as "expert" or "scientific" knowledge.
• Knowledge that supports the status quo gets institutional backing (funding, publication, policy influence), while knowledge that challenges it gets dismissed.
• Genealogy traces how specific forms of knowledge became dominant through the exercise of power. Foucault identified particular mechanisms for this, including disciplinary power (controlling behavior through surveillance and norms) and biopower (managing populations through statistics, health policy, and regulation).

Discourse and truth

For Foucault, discourse is more than just language. It's the entire system of statements, practices, and institutions that produce and regulate what counts as knowledge and truth within a given domain.

• Genealogy investigates the historical conditions and power relations that allowed certain discourses to emerge and gain authority while others were excluded or silenced.
• Foucault rejects the idea of universal, objective truth. Instead, he argues that every society operates within a regime of truth: a set of procedures and criteria that determine what gets accepted as true.
• This doesn't mean "nothing is true." It means that truth claims are always situated within specific historical contexts and power arrangements.

Subjugated knowledges

One of genealogy's central goals is to recover subjugated knowledges: forms of understanding that have been disqualified, marginalized, or suppressed by dominant discourses.

• These include local, popular, and indigenous knowledges that don't fit the mold of Western scientific or expert knowledge.
• They also include historical knowledge that has been buried or written out of official narratives.
• By bringing these knowledges to light, genealogy destabilizes dominant narratives and creates space for alternative perspectives. Foucault called this the "insurrection of subjugated knowledges": a deliberate act of intellectual resistance.

Genealogy vs. archaeology

Foucault's own methodology evolved over time. His earlier archaeological method analyzed the rules and structures governing knowledge production within a particular historical period (what he called an episteme). Genealogy builds on this but shifts the emphasis toward power relations and historical change.

Continuity and discontinuity

Archaeology tends to map the underlying regularities within a given period. Genealogy, by contrast, zeroes in on the breaks and disruptions.

• Genealogy rejects the idea of linear historical progress. History is not a smooth upward trajectory but a series of contingent developments.
• Foucault uses the term epistemic breaks to describe moments when the fundamental framework for understanding the world shifts dramatically.
• These discontinuities matter because they reveal that the current order is not inevitable. It emerged from specific ruptures with what came before.

Historical contingency

This is one of genealogy's most important contributions: the insistence that things could have been otherwise.

• Rather than searching for timeless essences or necessary origins, genealogy traces the complex, often accidental processes through which certain practices became dominant.
• Foucault described his work as a "history of the present": using historical analysis not to explain the past for its own sake, but to show that the present arrangement of power and knowledge is contingent and therefore changeable.

Ruptures and transformations

Genealogy pays close attention to moments when the relationship between power, knowledge, and subjectivity gets fundamentally reconfigured.

• Major historical shifts (scientific revolutions, political upheavals, colonial encounters) don't just change policies. They reshape what people can think, say, and be.
• By tracing these transformations, genealogy denaturalizes the present. It shows that arrangements that seem necessary or inevitable are actually products of specific historical struggles.

Genealogy in international relations

Genealogical approaches challenge the ahistorical and universalizing tendencies of mainstream IR theory. Where realism and liberalism often treat their core concepts as reflecting permanent features of international life, genealogy asks: When did these ideas emerge? Whose interests did they serve? What alternatives did they displace?

Challenging traditional IR theories

• Genealogy problematizes the foundationalist assumptions of realism and liberalism, particularly their claims to produce objective, scientific knowledge about international politics.
• By situating IR theories within their historical and political contexts, genealogy reveals how they are complicit with dominant power structures and help reproduce particular forms of international order.
• Concepts like anarchy and balance of power, which realists treat as timeless features of the international system, turn out to be products of specific European historical experiences. Genealogy shows how these concepts were constructed and then universalized.

Problematizing sovereignty

Sovereignty is perhaps the concept most thoroughly examined through a genealogical lens.

• Genealogy questions the naturalness and inevitability of the modern state system. The sovereign territorial state is not a permanent feature of political life but a relatively recent invention.
• By tracing sovereignty's emergence as a political technology, genealogy reveals its entanglement with particular forms of power, including disciplinary power and governmentality (the techniques through which states manage and regulate their populations).
• Genealogical analyses also break down the sharp distinction between "domestic" and "international." The production of sovereign states and the production of international order are not separate processes; they constitute each other.

Rethinking power in global politics

Genealogy pushes IR beyond the narrow realist focus on military and economic capabilities.

• Foucault's concept of the micro-physics of power directs attention to how power operates through knowledge, discourse, and the formation of subjects, not just through coercion or material resources.
• Power is not only repressive (stopping people from doing things) but also productive (creating identities, norms, and categories that shape what is thinkable and possible).
• Genealogical analyses examine how specific forms of power circulate through international institutions and practices. For example, development discourse produces categories like "developed" and "underdeveloped" that structure global hierarchies. Human rights discourse, while emancipatory in many ways, also operates as a form of power that defines who counts as a legitimate subject.

Applications of genealogy

Genealogical approaches have been applied across a wide range of IR topics, consistently revealing the contingency and power dynamics behind concepts that are often treated as natural or self-evident.

Genealogy of war and peace

• Genealogical analyses trace the changing discourses and practices of war and peace, challenging the idea of a linear progression toward more peaceful international relations.
• Concepts like just war theory and total war didn't emerge from abstract moral reasoning alone. They were shaped by specific power relations, technologies, and political contexts.
• Genealogy also problematizes the binary opposition between war and peace. The pursuit of peace can itself be a form of power and domination. Liberal peace projects and humanitarian interventions, for instance, often impose particular political and economic models on societies in the name of ending conflict.

Genealogy of diplomacy

• Genealogy investigates how diplomatic practices and institutions emerged and transformed over time, rather than treating them as natural features of international life.
• The figure of the ambassador, the rituals of diplomatic protocol, and the distinction between public and private diplomacy all have specific histories shaped by power relations and contingent developments.
• Genealogical analyses show how diplomatic practices are not neutral tools for managing interstate relations but are intimately connected to the production of international hierarchy and order.

Genealogy of international law

• Genealogy challenges international law's claims to universality and neutrality by tracing its historical origins.
• A key genealogical insight is that international law has colonial and imperial roots. Many of its foundational doctrines were developed to justify European expansion and to regulate relations among European states while excluding or subordinating non-European peoples.
• Legal concepts like sovereignty and self-determination did not emerge from abstract principles of justice. They evolved through the interplay of power, knowledge, and subjectivity within the international legal system, and they continue to carry the marks of that history.

Critiques of genealogy

Genealogy has faced significant criticism from multiple directions. Understanding these critiques is important for evaluating the method's strengths and limitations.

Relativism and nihilism

• The most common objection is that genealogy's emphasis on the contingency and situatedness of truth leads to relativism. If all knowledge is shaped by power, how can we say anything is actually true?
• Critics charge that this promotes an "anything goes" attitude that is both intellectually irresponsible and politically disabling.
• Defenders respond that recognizing the historical contingency of knowledge does not mean abandoning truth altogether. It calls for a more reflexive and situated approach: being honest about where your claims come from and what power relations they might serve.

Lack of normative foundations

• If genealogy deconstructs the foundations of traditional moral and political philosophy, what basis does it have for its own critique? This is the normative deficit problem.
• Critics argue that by dismantling universalist claims, genealogy undermines the very possibility of political resistance and ethical judgment.
• Proponents counter that genealogy provides a different kind of critical leverage. By revealing the contingency and contestability of dominant norms, it opens space for alternative forms of subjectivity and resistance, even without grounding those alternatives in universal foundations.

Methodological challenges

• Genealogy faces practical difficulties in selecting and interpreting historical sources, defining relevant time periods, and validating its claims.
• Critics argue that genealogical analyses can be selective in their use of evidence, sometimes cherry-picking historical material that supports a predetermined conclusion.
• Defenders maintain that genealogy's goal is not to provide a definitive or exhaustive account of history. Its purpose is to problematize dominant narratives and open up new ways of thinking about the past and present. The question is whether a genealogical analysis is illuminating and well-supported, not whether it is the only possible reading of the evidence.