The title of the seminar was 'genealogical method' and it began with a brief introduction to Michael Foucault, a French theorist and philosopher, and his works. Foucault studied a number of topics such as sexuality, power, knowledge and social control and he used these elements to define people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault
We then looked at the word 'methodology' and broke it down to define it. 'Method' means a way of going/ doing something and '-ology' is the knowledge of something. Therefore, the methodology of genealogy is a way of having knowledge and doing genealogy. A genealogist examines the pre-concieved and questions the phenomenon that 'we tend to feel is without history?'
From this, we thought about what may be seen as having 'no history'. It was a challenge as most concepts and objects, such as, chairs, goodness, badness, evil and madness have histories and therefore can have a genealogy. Nietzche wrote the book called 'beyond good and evil', which combines two concepts (good=white + evil= black = grey). Both good and evil have genealogies although together, they are without history.
After this, we questioned whether genealogies were subjective or objective and came to the conclusion that they are subjective as they present the study and is personal as it is the practise of history. Genealogy claims that there is no eternal truth as everything is contingent and will one day cease to exist. The idea of eternal truth claims that something is always going to be true. Foucault relates to this concept as he once said: 'the purpose of history, guided by genealogy, is not to discover the roots of our identity but commit itself to its dissipation' (dissipation: scattering or dispersing).
This section of the seminar originally confused me as I couldn't grasp the point of this information. However, after making sense of my notes, it is clear that the point was to understand genealogy so we could apply it when writing essays. I now understand that genealogies look at how something got to the place it is.
We then were asked 'how does every cartoon begin?', examples such as The Simpsons, Futerama, Bob's Burgers and South Park were given. They all begin with buildings and characters. This introduces the place the cartoon is set in and the characters that are involved and is called the 'establishing shot'. We can apply an 'establishing shot' to essays by introducing where we are, what the tone is and what will be looked at throughout the essay. Comparing the introduction to an essay to an 'establishing shot' makes it easier to comprehend and is a good analogy.
Next in the essay, we should talk about the conditions and contingencies (which means history) as well as what is happening. The Starwars opening was an example of this as it explains the conditions of the film to draw you in and help you understand what is going to happen. Another example of this is American Beauty, which has an establishing shot that explains the conditions of the film as well as the tone of the film. These are good ways to introduce an essay as well as using genealogy throughout the essay.
The seminar was not easy to understand as it contained a lot of different concepts and ideas that didn't always seem to link together. However, we were strongly advised to write a genealogy of ideas in our essays as we can work through each idea we have had in this structure as well as explaining how we arrived at our final idea.
