Genealogy, power and knowledge

pp. 417-460

in: Robert Nola, Rescuing reason, Berlin, Springer, 2003

Abstract

For Foucault archaeology is largely a descriptive enterprise, using the apparatus of his meta-theory of discourses; what is to be described are the various discourses found in human thought and practice, along with all their ruptures, breaks, discontinuities, and the like. In contrast genealogy is an explanatory enterprise in which, according to Foucault, what does most of the explaining is power; what is to be explained are how various discourses are adopted and maintained, and why they are changed and then abandoned. Also to be explained are the various kinds of knowledge, including what Foucault calls connaissance and savoir.