The Epistemic Ruptures In History-a Foucauldian Approach To Genealogy

In Foucault’s works The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Order of Things,he started to imply the connection between discourse practice and elements such as body,violent,power and control.In order to realize the recurrence of the historical process,he restated the history of madness,the history of sexuality,and analyzed how knowledge connected with power the Power/Knowledge system reversed the corrupted rationalism which have taken the dominant place since the age of Plato.According to Foucault,history did not develop in a linear order.Instead,he paid more attention to the marginal things that have been neglected in the history and the epistemic raptures between words and things.He turned to dig into the body,chaos,declinations and the undeveloped existences,by which,he tried to unveil the real face of history and marked the uniqueness of these events.Genealogy reflected Foucault’s viewpoints of history and the subject.Foucault opposed to the traditional historical narrative.He wanted to reveal the relative “truth” of history by eliminating external elements.Foucault developed Genealogy proposed by Nietzsche into his Power/Knowledge system as a method to analyze historical events.Foucault’s Genealogy is methodology that guides scholars to discuss and analyze the discursive history.Additionally,in his works,such as Discipline and Punish and Madness and Civilization,Foucault applied Genealogy to analyze specific discourses,stated his ideas by discussing the three axis of Genealogy – power,subject and truth.On the basis of the notion “the death of God” proposed by Nietzsche,Foucault had put forward “the death of Man” which had led the society into a different one.This essay discusses Foucault’s ideas which are distinctive compared to other prevalent methodologies that used to analyze the process of history,and tries to reconsider our present society from a different perspective.We need to contemplate on the control and confinement the society has put on people.