History as Genealogy: An Exploration of Foucault's Approach to History

Summary

Anyone familiar with contemporary French culture could not fail to notice that, in the field of ideas, history and the philosophy of history occupy in France a more central place than in England or North America. The work and concerns—including the methodological concerns—of historians like Marc Bloch, Fernand Braudel and the Annalistes, Georges Lefebvre, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Michel de Certeau, Jacques Le Goff and Francois Furet, are known, discussed and taken on board by most French intellectuals and academics.

One reason for this, I think, is the strong trace left on French thought by Hegelian philosophy and its major progeny, Marxism, two philosophies that stem from a sustained reflection on history. In contrast, in the English-speaking world, where Empiricism and its variants have held sway for so long, historical reflection has tended to be at best an afterthought, no doubt because the starting point of Empiricism is the biological individual rather than the social individual.

Undoubtedly, however, the clearest and most interesting example of this French concern with history is the work of Michel Foucault. Whatever else it may appear to be, Foucault's work is primarily a recurrent dialogue with history, and hardly any ‘philosophy’ Foucault has put forward—on the nature of power, discourse, truth or sexuality—has been produced independently of detailed historical considerations.

Yet, as many will know, Foucault's declared approach to writing history is anything but Hegelian or Marxist.