THE UNCANNY EFECT OF TELLING GENEALOGIES

Torsten Menge (University of Arkansas), tmenge@uark.edu

Goals
• Argue that telling genealogies can have an uncanny effect
• Explain why this is a normative effect, i.e. it gives us reasons to act
• Illustrate these claims by looking at Michel Foucault’s genealogies

Two (Flawed) Readings of Foucault’s Genealogies

1. Foucault’s genealogies are negative evaluations of our current practices 

(e.g. Fraser, Taylor, Habermas)
2. Foucault’s genealogies only provide factual input for normative reflection 

(e.g. Colin Koopman: “The point of Foucault’s genealogies was to show that [certain
practices] are problematic in that they demand our serious attention.“ 2013, p. 90)

The Point of Telling a Genealogy

“I would like to say something about the function of any diagnosis concerning what today is. It
does not consist in a simple characterization of what we are but, instead - by following lines of
fragility in the present - in managing to grasp why and how that which is might no longer be
that which is. In this sense, any description must always be made in accordance with these
kinds of virtual fracture which open up the space of freedom understood as a space of
concrete freedom, that is, of possible transformation.” (Foucault 1988, p. 36)
a. How can genealogies help us understand “what we are"?
b. How does understanding what we are help us “grasp why and how that which is
might no longer be that which is”?
c. How does this open up a “space of […] possible transformation”?

Telling Genealogies Engenders Uncanniness

When we navigate the world in our everyday activities, we are recognizing and negotiating the
force of normative claims. But this is not always transparent to us: Absorbed in our everyday
dealings, the world is familiar to us and thus does not appear to make demands on us. Only
when our everyday coping is interrupted, we come to see that our world is normatively
contoured.
When we recognize the normative structure of the world, we have to take a stand on the
legitimacy of the norms that structure it. This demand shows up in the face of the uncanny –
when our comfortable dealings with the everyday world are disrupted. Uncanniness makes it
impossible for me to continue to unreflectively follow the found norms structuring my world.

Telling Genealogies Calls for Transformation

If norms have force in virtue of our recognition of their authority, genealogies cannot tell me the
truth about who I am or can be.The effect of telling a genealogical is practical: It calls on us to
transform the space in which we act.
But how can the telling of a genealogy give us reason to act (e.g. to resists and transform
current practices) if it does not make any evaluative, moral claims?
“Foucault calls in no uncertain terms for resistance to domination. But why? Why is
struggle preferable to submission? Why ought domination to be resisted? Only with the
introduction of normative notions of some kind could Foucault begin to answer such
questions.” (Fraser 1989, 29)
Telling a genealogy gives us reason to transform our practices because transformation is an
appropriate response to uncanniness.
“Another thing to distrust is the tendency to relate the question of homosexuality to the
problem of “Who am I?”and “What is the secret of my desire?” (...) The problem is not to
discover in oneself the truth of one’s sex, but, rather, to use one’s sexuality henceforth to
arrive at a multiplicity of relationships. (…) Therefore, we have to work at becoming
homosexuals and not be obstinate in recognizing that we are.” (Foucault, “Friendship
As a Way of Life,” 135-136)
In this age the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to
custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make
eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that
people should be eccentric. (Mill, “On Liberty”, 140).