The Concept of the Canon: Genealogy and its Contribution to Normative Arguments

This work is very much in progress, with emerging ideas that I hope to develop into a full paper. Nevertheless, it is not without a position: the aim is to show how genealogy can be absorbed into normative theory, by tracing a path to the idea of sequential genealogy. I begin with Nietzsche, specifically drawing on a quote which I feel accurately describes genealogy’s original premise: of being committed to the principle of the historical contingency of all truths, concepts, practices and beliefs. From this brief grounding, I emphasise Foucault’s main contribution to genealogy, as a project with the purpose of thinking “differently” (Foucault, 1990, p. 8) through the reflection that a denaturalizing method brings: therefore as anti-polemical. I support this through citing David Owen’s similar comments regarding genealogy. From this concept of the alternative, I look at Tyler Krupp and Mark Bevir’s assertion that although genealogy is an enemy of the given, universal ‘truth’, it need not be so towards a contingent one. In this then is room for genealogists, being those with the ‘different’ way of thinking, to communicate with normative theorists who provide the “regulative ideal” (Bevir, 1999, p. 126). Genealogy here finds a balance between “unmasking” (Hoy, 2008, p. 276) and simple reflection that does not lead to polemics: staying true to Foucault’s understanding of it. By utilising Krupp however, I maintain a place for genealogy in a world of acknowledged contingency. In this is a space of communication, effectively where ‘thinking differently’ and the acceptance of a contingent truth as “best account of the world currently on offer” (Bevir, 2008, p. 269) can combine: here genealogy can either contribute to normative theory by being a useful “toolbox” (Foucault, 1994, pp. 523-524) from which to pick and choose, or as “the better version to the “best account”. From the belief that genealogy can accept contingent claims and even become one, I then look at how this leads into David Hoy’s discussion of the “vindicatory genealogy” (Hoy, 2008, p. 276). I claim that in this vision of a genealogy which can vindicate a historically contingent idea, we can build a theory of genealogy which explicitly separates narration from reflection, where the former is simply a “technique of inquiry” (Bevir, 2008, p. 275) or method of denaturalisation, and the latter is the subsequent valuation of this; I call this sequential genealogy. To bolster this idea I come back to Nietzsche, pulling the concepts discussed thus far together to show how we can perceive of genealogy as two separate, sequential activities. As a result, I make two observations. First, that when we think of and use genealogy in this way, we begin our genealogical project from a methodological starting point. Secondly, that if this is so we are able to draw on normative criteria in a genealogy (to either critique or vindicate that which we have historicised in the reflection which follows said narration), without contradiction, for normative criteria we use can simply be understood as narratives that we have previously put a value on. I conclude with a tentative notion: of genealogy, when seen in this way, as a ‘show not tell way of doing normative theory’. Not forgetting the original premise of the abstract I submitted, I make a post-comment on the effect this may have on our political theory canon.