Foucault in Nietzsche, Genealogy, History - Essay Example

According to Foucault history should not be a seamless attempt at identifying the natural origin of events. Peoples, cultures, but rather needs to consider how this idea of the "essence" has been fabricated. Not only how it has been fabricated, but why people feel the need for some kind of essence is an essential part of history for Foucault. Thus the "genealogy" that appears in the title of Foucault's book should concern itself with the details, co-incidences and sheer accidents that underlie the beginnings of knowledge, values, and cultures rather than a search for a non-existent origin.

In this manner, Foucault appears to support Nietzsche's argument that traditional history sees itself as a tracing of development towards some kind of culmination; that it sees itself as believing in an eternal truth - whether it be of events, people, ideas, or religion. Nietzsche and Foucault subscribe to the same view, suggests that what Foucault calls "effective history" can only be reached by seeing events as divergent, discordant and essentially in conflict. As Foucault puts it, it should involve the "shattering of the unity of man's being", as everything that has been considered to be immutable and immortal must in fact be placed within history.

Thus they become mutable and mortal. Foucault, as is o Foucault, as is often the case within his work, focuses on the human body as a locus for this kind of history. Thus "the body is molded by a great many distinct regimes; it is broken down by the rhythms of work, rest and holidays; it is poisoned by food or values, through eating habits or moral laws; it constructs resistances" (87). Thus a history of the body, which Foucault attempts in other works, would involve identifying these "distinct regimes" that shape the body, often conflicting with one another and thus creating stress upon the human being.

Foucault argues that effective history should move to form the distant, remote vantage point of traditional history towards a closeness. It needs to look at the details of life, identifying their contradictions, rather than at the universal processes and themes that may actually camouflage the reality of events. This closeness should not involve an emotional connection with the subject, but rather "an alienated view". Overall, Foucault argues that the role of historians as is commonly perceived and practiced leads to a false view of history rather than the contrar7y.

Thus the attempt to gain absolute and comprehensive knowledge of history, through reducing events to their simplest elements in order to "explain" them actually avoids the true complexity of history. The traditional type of historian is in fact centered on himself and thus paints the world through his particular biases and opinions, rather than seeing the innate complexity and conflicts that occur within history. Foucault argues that it is necessary to revolt against his type of history if the true nature of it is to be understood, and if it is to really inform the present and the future.

To conclude, Foucault essentially dissects the nature of History as it is normally performed within the academic world, suggesting that that attempt to find universal truths in fact masks the actual reality of the world.