One of the distinctive features of Foucault’s thought has been the refusal to separate power from knowledge. The mixing of the social sciences and social practices is seen as one of the greatest dangers that we are facing today (Introduction, p. 7). What Foucault calls the “genealogy of the modern subject” as Rabinow explains, is the attempt to “historically localize and analyze the discourses and practices to the subject, knowledge, and power” (ibid). In Foucault’s own words, genealogy is “a form of history which can account for the constitution of ‘knowledges’, discourses, domains, subjects etc. without making reference to a subject that is either transcendental in relation to the field of events or runs in its empty sameness throughout the course of history” (Truth and Method, p. 59). It is situated “within the articulation of the body and history” where its task “is to expose a body totally imprinted by history” (Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, p. 83).
But genealogy is not simple and easy. It is “gray, meticulous and patiently documentary” (p. 76). It is opposed to grand narratives, universals and black & white readings of history. It is opposed to metahistorical understandings of the world that seek singular origins and teleologies. As such, history is chaotic. Its stories are multiple along its “numberless beginnings” (Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, p. 81).
With this in mind, it is reasonable to state that any historical reading (in its conventional sense) is potentially dangerous. This is because history per se is not a story of what ‘truly happened’, but as Bernardo Attias explains, its “goal is to produce an effect -- a change, a mutation in present ways of conceiving things by explaining the past in new ways”.[1] We do not need to look too deeply in order to come up with countless examples of how modern states have used history – through its disciplinary technologies such as school – in order to objectify its subjects (i.e. the Foucaultian term for population control). Such uses of history have included readings of the Enlightenment (an example which Foucault analyzes when it comes to Kant’s understanding of this event as an “exit from immaturity”). Or more problematically, historical readings (or narratives) of the “Third World” (e.g. the Middle East). Historical readings of the Middle East (backward, feudal, promiscuous, undemocratic, patriarchal, superstitious, oppressive to women, unscientific, magical etc.) in the institutions of the social sciences have directly worked with political powers in enabling colonialism in one instance, and influencing other contemporary (domestic) social practices (e.g. wars, elections, job allocations) in another.
Metahistory has also been problematic in Feminist Studies. Certain segments of Feminist Studies have been plagued by histories of morality that frame these discourses (of morality) within a “linear development”. Words like liberty, freedom, democracy, equality are understood, in Foucaultian terms, as having kept a consistent “meaning” and that “desires” still point “in a single direction”, and that ideas have always retained their “logic” (p. 76). They have forgotten, or chosen to forget, that the “world of speech and desires has known invasions, struggles, plundering, disguises, ploys” (ibid). This is most subtly manifested in some of the discourses of native anthropologists of Islam. The desire for freedom (i.e. positive freedom), as understood in secular liberal discourse is essentialized and taken uncritically. There is no admission that such terms have undergone invasions and mutations
Consider the Arabic term “Islah” which has been translated as “reform” in the context of Islam. “Islah” is seen as an organic term for reforming “Islam”. In its traditional and Qur’anic context, islah refers to ‘going back’ in order to fix later corruptions that have tainted the religion (this is what I would call regressive). Yet the modern usage of the term (by natives and outsiders of the tradition alike) have meshed it with the modern liberal understanding of the word which denotes a fixing or repair (usually artificial) of an essential corruption. In other words, the modern discourse of islah is progressive in that it implicitly assumes that there is an aspect of the tradition that is inherently been flawed in the tradition (right from its inception) which needs modern, inorganic rectification. This includes, for example, the incorporation of protestant theories of reform (Shabestari) or a totalizing, positive-historical approach to Islam (Soroush, this method is similar to Mordachai Kaplan’s Reconstructionist Judaism).
All of the above modern discourses of islah are inherently metahistorical. The discourse of regressive islah has been framed within a context of resistance against liberal metanarratives of Islam. The latter, i.e. progressive islah, has been framed in a relation of power/domination and objectification of Islam. Both of course are potentially and at times dangerous. The former runs the risk of transcendentalizing and polarizing the discourse, an approach which has often been militarized. The latter exacerbates and continues colonial discourse into its contemporary realm of neo-colonialism. This discourse colonizes perceptions of reality and shapes the ‘objects’ in accordance with the dominant ways of knowing. This group is generally not militarized at the local level, but it reproduces relations of domination from sources that have historically been so. In this sense, it is acutely more dangerous.
Bibliography
Paul Rabinow (Editor), The Foucault Reader. New York: Vintage Books (2010).
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