Genealogy, or tracing the history of the present: From Nietzsche to Foucault

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how Foucault adopted and adapted Nietzsche's predilection for employing genealogies to explain existing society. A genealogy employs select examples from history to show how society became as it is. Foucault's genealogies go beyond Nietzsche's by amassing and including as much factual historical data on actual practices as was available, demonstrating how contemporary institutions and practices operate to form the individuals subject to that society, train them, and most importantly control them. Foucault searches beneath the surface diversity of existing concepts and institutions to identify the thread of real events, made up of the facts of history, which connects the European past to the present and future. I focus in detail on analyzing Foucault's most complete and successful genealogy, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison, as an example of the genealogical method at work, and explain its methodology and the conclusions about present-day society it enables us to reach.