The genealogical approach is one of detachment—once the genealogist detaches themselves then they are able to see that they were fed false information about their essence, and the ideas of “origin” that they were taught have dominate Europe for two thousand years

Foucault describes genealogy using one of Nietzsche’s well-known metaphors. Genealogy is “gray”, its task being to decipher the hieroglyphic script of humans’ past, a past that is neither black (i.e. totally unknown) nor white (i.e. transparent), but something in between (gray), that is, ambiguous and uncertain. Thus, a rigorous investigation is needed, if the meaning of the past is to be uncovered: “Genealogy, consequently, requires patience and a knowledge of details, and it depends on a vast accumulation of source material.” Due to its minuteness, genealogy may at first give us the impression that it deals with trivial, everyday things, rather than with important developments. However, genealogy acquires its character from recording “what we tend to feel is without history”, instances such as “sentiments, love, conscience, instincts”. Crucially, the writing of the human past by the genealogist is necessarily an interpretation, which itself is neither true nor false. For Foucault, the genealogist is an interpreter but not a hermeneutician. The genealogist as interpreter recognizes that the meaning he/she gives to history is doubtful (hence “gray”), “acknowledges its system of injustice”10 and the fact that his/her interpretation is subject to revision. The genealogist-interpreter has a sense of where he/she stands in history and does not ignore the fact that he/she is the product of historic and social circumstances; however, simultaneously he/she is able to distance him-/herself from his/her situation in order to examine things from afar. In doing so, the genealogist-interpreter ignores the actors’ own interpretation(s) of the meaning of their actions. Therefore, the genealogical approach is one of detachment. By contrast, the approach of the hermeneutician is one of engagement, as he/she attempts to grasp the significance of things from within them. As opposed to the interpreter-hermeneutician, the genealogist-interpreter “finds that the questions which are traditionally held to be the deepest and murkiest are truly and literally the most superficial”. Thus, “their meaning is to be discovered in surface practices, not in mysterious depths”. Accordingly, a genealogical interpretation is distinctly different from a hermeneutical approach. The claim that interpretation is not the uncovering of a hidden meaning has revolutionary implications for philosophy; or better, it is a direct attack against philosophy, as it traditionally has been understood. For Foucault’s genealogy undermines the belief in the existence of unchanging essences and truths. When he realized that there are no primordial verities in the world, Foucault shifted his emphasis from his early studies on madness to his work of the seventies and eighties. In his early work Foucault had pre-supposed an essence of madness, namely, an original truth. But in his genealogical writings Foucault engaged in a deconstructive exercise. Continuing Nietzsche’s tradition of “philosophizing with the hammer” Foucault sought to destroy all the metaphysical ideas that have dominated Western philosophy since Plato. Foucault was more conscious of genealogy as a method than Nietzsche was. Therefore, he set forth its objectives. To begin with, Foucault was more careful to define what genealogy as an history concerned with tracing origins meant. In examining Nietzsche’s genealogy, Foucault noted that Nietzsche used “Ursprung”, “Entstehung” and “Herkunft” interchangeably. Foucault argues that the problem of the term “Ursprung” is that it refers to “something that was already there” – viz. a deeper reality – before the search began. However, if the genealogist refuses to extend his faith in metaphysics, if he listens to history, he finds that there is “something altogether different” behind things: not a timeless and essential secret, but the secret that they have no essence or that their essence was fabricated in a piecemeal fashion from alien forms In other words, for Foucault, the idea of the “origin” is just a metaphysical truth that has dominated European thought for two thousand years. In Nietzschean terms, genealogy questions the “will to truth”: “…devotion to truth and the precision of scientific methods arose from the passion of scholars, their reciprocal hatred, their fanatical and ending discussions, and their spirit of competition – the personal conflicts that slowly forged the weapons of reason”. According to Foucault, “Herkunft” and “Entstehung” characterize the task of genealogy better. Herkunft is the equivalent of stock or descent; it is the ancient affiliation to a group, sustained by the bonds of blood, tradition, or social class. The analysis of Herkunft often involves a consideration of race or social type. But the traits it attempts to identify are not the exclusive generic characteristics of an individual, a sentiment, or an idea, which permit us to qualify them as “Greek” or “English”; rather, it seeks the subtle, singular, and subindividual marks that might possibly intersect in them to form a network that is difficult to unravel. Genealogy engages in deconstruction, for the analysis of “Herkunft” fragments what was considered unified; it does not merely challenge the linear conception of history but also identifies an underlying continuity, which is the product of “the accidents, the minute deviations – or conversely, the complete reversals – the errors, the false appraisals, and the faulty calculations that gave birth to those things that continue to exist and have value for us “As Foucault says, genealogy elaborates “a theory of discontinuous systematicities”. However, although these discontinuous series have their regularity, there are no links of mechanical causality or of ideal necessity between the elements that constitute them. Hence the significance of chance, accident or aléa.