Doing Cultural Theory by David Walton

Author:David Walton [Walton, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, Cultural & Social, Language Arts & Disciplines, Communication Studies, Popular Culture
ISBN: 9781446292396
Google: KpY7CgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 13808576
Publisher: SAGE
Published: 2012-03-26T02:31:09+00:00

Genealogy: a further note on practice

As far as practising the writing of history is concerned you may find some of these ideas troubling. For example, when reading about the Holocaust or other brutal assaults on human dignity, you may be more inclined to accept the kinds of conventions that Foucault is at pains to challenge. You may want to acknowledge that there are ‘truths’ about the barbaric treatment of peoples and that there is some coherence or a set of objective facts to back up the condemnation of the perpetrators of repression and torture. Yet the genealogical approach would not attempt to establish truths, origins or objective facts. Rather, it would tend to intervene to challenge accounts which attempt to construct a sense of an objective, seamless history with clearly defined origins all leading towards an inevitable conclusion. Like practising deconstruction, it is worth considering that the approach has far-reaching implications which may challenge the very bases of our thinking in ways that we might find uncomfortable. This abandoning of historical certainties is very much in keeping with postmodern views of history (see Further Reading); however, this style of reading has not entirely undermined the possibilities of understanding the past, it just problematizes the writing of it.

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