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Foucault and the Problem of Genealogy

Department of History, The Johns Hopkins University, 3400 North Charles St., Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA

This essay explores the implications of Foucault's use of genealogy as the basis of his philosophical investment in history. It contrasts Foucault's reliance on genealogy as a solvent of historical continuity and linearity, and his view of genealogy as aleatory, contingent, potentially disruptive and delegitimising, with medieval concepts of lineage and genealogical legiti mation and interrogates, on this basis, the utility of Foucault's postmodern theories for the analysis of medieval genealogical phenomena. It suggests that the concepts derived from a Foucauldian analysis of genealogy are not applicable to premodern societies, given that Foucalt's very notion of genea logy stipulates local genesis and definite contexts in which period-specific modalities of knowledge, power, thought, epistemologies and technologies are put into play in the societies analysed.

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