Genealogy refuses to take sovereignty, the state, and civil society as givens

Evidence

This immediately entails a choice of method -that one day I will finally try to come back to at greater length, but I would like to point out straightaway that choosing to talk about or to start from governmental practice is obviously and explicitly a way of not taking as a primary, original, and already given object, notions such as the sovereign, sovereignty, the people, subjects, the state, and civil society, that is to say, all those universals employed by sociological analysis, historical analysis, and political philosophy in order to account for real governmental practice. For my part, I would like to do exactly the opposite and, starting from this practice as it is given, but at the same time as it reflects on itself and is rationalized, show how certain things-state and society, sovereign and subjects, etcetera-were actually able to be formed, and the status of which should obviously be questioned. — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 128

Categorization

• DEFINE: Lays out the methodological inversion at the heart of Foucault’s project: the universals like state and sovereignty are treated as constructs to be explained, not starting points.
• XREF: connects to: Genealogy requires the removal of totalizing discourse’s tyranny — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 27; If power is omnipresent, genealogy’s critical standpoint becomes problematically internal to power — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 339; Genealogy works backward from present certainties to their contingencies — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 74 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Genealogy requires the removal of totalizing discourse’s tyranny #expands (0.85) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 27
• Nationalist refusal to question the state serves their crafted preferences #exemplifies (0.85) — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 229
• Genealogy works backward from present certainties to their contingencies #expands (0.80) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 74
• If power is omnipresent, genealogy’s critical standpoint becomes problematically internal to power #qualifies (0.75) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 339