Knowing social relations as historically formed already modifies them

Evidence

But these relations, as we have said, are not simple. Some are necessary, others are voluntary. Further, to be conscious of them, to whatever degree of profundity (that is, to know, in varying degrees, how to modify them) already modifies them. Even the necessary relations, in so far as they are known to be necessary, take on a different aspect and importance. In this sense, knowledge is power. But the problem is complex in another way as well. It is not enough to know the ensemble of relations as they exist at any given time as a given system. They must be known genetically, in the movement of their formation. For each individual is the synthesis not only of existing relations, but of the history of these relations. He is a precis of all the past. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1260

Categorization

• DEFINE: Cores Gramsci’s ‘genetic’ knowledge method: relations must be studied in the movement of their formation, not as a static system — a foundational critical-theory tool.
• XREF: Prefigures the historicizing imperative later Islamophobia scholarship inherits: describing a category genealogically rather than as fixed essence. — connects to: Social category definitions both reflect context and actively remake social relations — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 79