Genealogies of violence only serve to reinscribe the violence they seek to critique

How may we then understand the suspicion to anything common, shared, and universal that genealogy is closely linked to and that we find in IR scholarship informed by genealogy? To be able to assume a critical distance from genealogy as a form of critique, it is important to realize that the genealogical ontology of violence is but one option, no more and no less grounded than ontologies which refuse violence as foundational. In this penultimate section, I unravel the Nietzschean backdrop to Foucault’s genealogy and briefly contrast the genealogical ontology of violence with one which refuses violence as foundational by turning to the work of John Milbank. Paul Ricoeur (1970) once referred to Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud as the “masters of suspicion.” Instead of taking surface phenomena such as discourse, culture, or subjective experience at face value, the “masters of suspicion” sought an underlying phenomenon which would in turn situate and explain this discourse, culture, or experience. For Marx, the ideas, values, and culture of a society would of course ultimately be “conditioned” by the economic base, and at the end of the day shown to be working toward perpetuating the interests of a particular class. For Freud, various types of behavioral neurosis could be explained by reference to an underlying repressed unconscious, which the psychoanalyst would help “bring to the surface,” and make the patient aware of, in the process of psychoanalysis. Nietzsche, however, became for Foucault in his genealogical phase, as Milbank (2006) puts it, “the only true master of suspicion” (2006: 278). Nietzsche’s suspicion, which Foucault takes over and expands on, lies in that all truth claims can be unmasked and exposed as nothing but manifestations of underlying wills to power. Foucault rejects the metaphoric of surface/depth, since the clash of wills to power goes on in the everyday activities of life. There is no deep structure “beyond” or “behind” this clash. However, in another sense, there is still a surface/depth binary at work, which harks back to Foucault’s Nietzschean understanding of a primordial clash in the “non-place” of emergence of forces. As Foucault puts it in a Zarathustra-like pronouncement, commenting on his affinities with the other French neo-Nietzscheans Deleuze, Lyotard, and Guattari, “I would say that we try to bring to light what has remained until now the most hidden, the most occulted, the most deeply invested experience in the history of our culture—power relations.” The “hidden truth” which Foucault (2003 [1973]) wants to “bring to light” is precisely that power relations “permeate the whole fabric of our existence” (2003 [1973]: 17). The genealogist thus cultivates a particular interpretive disposition to the world, well summed up by Dreyfus and Rabinow (1983): [h]aving destroyed ideal significations and original truths, [the genealogist] looks for the play of wills. Subjection, domination, and combat are found everywhere he looks. Whenever he hears [they hear] talk of meaning and value, of virtue and goodness, he looks [they look] for strategies of domination. (1983: 109) “The political question,” as Foucault (2003 [1973]) puts it, before asserting “the importance of Nietzsche,” is not about “error, illusion, alienated consciousness, or ideology; it is truth itself” (2003 [1973]: 75). But a number of problems with this view of politics as conflict always tending to violence and domination as foundational to the human condition immediately present themselves. When all gestures to what is common have been exposed as expressions of partial wills to power, and when the ethos of baseless suspicion has been unleashed and revealed all ideals, values, laws, and norms, as partial and biased, does that mean that human life has become more truthful, as arriving at the realization of the “reality” of this ontologized state of primordial clashes? On Foucault’s own ontology, “Nietzsche’s hypothesis” would itself have to be unmasked as yet another contender among many to capture the final truth about the human condition, and shown to mask a partial will to power (Milbank, 2006: 282; Oksala, 2012: 27). If one deploys the genealogical suspicion onto the genealogical disposition itself, it is revealed as but one option among others. Reading the genealogical ethos as expressing a distinctive (anti)theological core, one may, with Milbank (2006), ask whether the Nietzschean suspicion that Foucault takes over “is the final and truly non-metaphysical mode of secular reason, or else itself embodies an ontology of power and conflict which is simply another mythos” (2006: 2). One may also follow Milbank in his suggestion that secular discourse of which he reads post-Nietzschean genealogy as a radical exponent of emerged out of an active rejection of some of Christianity’s core teachings. Foucault (2003 [1975–1976]) articulates this rejection when he refers to genealogy as the very opposite of those traditional analyses that try to find beneath the apparent or superficial confusion, beneath the visible brutality and passions, a basic rationality which is both permanent and related, by its very essence, to the just and the good. (2003 [1975–1976]: 269) However, in classical Thomist Christianity, difference does not have to be suppressed, reduced, or subsumed in any kind of dialectical movement. Thus, in contrast to Foucault’s genealogy, “[p]eace no longer depends upon the reduction to the self-identical, but is the sociality of harmonious difference. Violence, by contrast, is always a secondary willed intrusion upon this possible infinite order” (Milbank, 2006: 6). Once one realizes that the ontology of violence is no more than one possible mythos, one can put forward “an alternative mythos, equally unfounded, but nonetheless embodying an ‘ontology of peace’, which conceives differences as analogically related, rather than equivocally at variance” (Milbank, 2006: 279). On the one hand, the reading that Milbank proposes affirms what we find in genealogy, namely “the reduction of substance to transition.” On the other hand, such a reading “questions the transcendental reading of transition as conflict” (Milbank, 2006: 298). So while Milbank retains a differential ontology, he questions whether the elements would have to relate to one another arbitrarily and violently. Milbank puts the crux of the issue thus, The question of the possibility of living together in mutual agreement, and the question of whether there can be a charitable act, […] turn out to be conjointly the question of whether there can be an “analogy” or a “common measure” between differences which does not reduce differences to mere instances of a common essence or genus. In other words a likeness that only maintains itself through the differences, and not despite nor in addition to them. (Milbank, 2006: 290) The point is not necessarily that IR scholarship should embrace Milbank’s alternative vision, but rather to make clear that the genealogical rendition is but one option, no more and no less grounded than ontologies which refuse violence as foundational. Conclusion This article has examined genealogy as a form of critique in IR. The first part of the article demonstrated that Foucault’s genealogy was an important component in the work of the first generation of post-structuralist IR as well as in contemporary scholarship informed by frameworks of governmentality and biopolitics. It was shown that when genealogy is understood as critique, violence risks being inscribed as foundational to global political life. However, despite the fact that it is virtually impossible to understand the meaning of “critical” in this work without a grasp of genealogy, the assumptions of genealogy have been insufficiently engaged. To rectify this, the second part of the article critically examined the philosophical underpinnings of genealogy. Through a close reading of three core texts where Foucault grapples with genealogy, it was shown that genealogy relies on an ontology of forces, which are postulated as arbitrarily and violently related. Genealogy therefore tends to inscribe violence as foundational to social relations. It was further noted that genealogically informed critique brings a peculiar form of suspicion to all that is presented as common, shared, and universal. This suspicion was traced back to Nietzsche and characterized as “baseless,” which again reflects a set of particular ontological commitments idiosyncratic to genealogy. These commitments, which inscribe violence as foundational, were finally contrasted to an ontology which follows the genealogical understanding of emergent forces, but refuses the assumption of them as arbitrarily and violently related. Finally, what are the implications for empirical Foucauldian work for the argument I have pursued in the article? In empirical work informed by governmentality and biopolitics, IR scholars often examine the encounter between Western and non-Western countries. The problem to which I ultimately want to draw attention is not that such scholarship is often critical of military intervention undertaken by Western powers. On the contrary, it is important to bring out and critically scrutinize the paternalistic and indeed hierarchical renditions that no doubt are common in, for instance, the liberal peace project (e.g. Richmond, 2011). The problem is rather that the genealogical ethos risks turning into a global interpretive disposition, with which all global interactions by whatever means are made a priori suspect. Instead of seeking to engage in a careful empirical consideration of the merits of forms of intervention in each case, the generalized genealogical suspicion disables [shuts down] any other understanding of global political life than a ceaseless unfolding drama of clashing wills to dominate and conquer. Since the liberal project is exposed as just a particular will to power, it must inscribe a relation of violent hierarchy to non-Western localities, as opposed to an understanding of similar and harmoniously overlapping subjectivities already existing in those places. On such a pre-methodological genealogical disposition, intervention becomes suspicious in whatever form it may take. Whether it is in the form of peacekeeping troops or rule of law advisors assisting local actors in security sector reform, any involvement can only be read as a manifestation of “the West’s” ongoing will to colonize and impose its will on others.