The Disunity in Genealogy: Foucault’s Anti-Nietzschean Reading of History

Contemporary critical scholarship takes Foucault’s genealogical work as a paradigm, and it is widely recognized that Foucault himself took Nietzsche as a methodological exemplar. Notably, Foucault’s landmark methodological text – ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’ – is framed as a faithful exposition of Nietzsche. Contrary to Foucault’s framing, however, this article argues that his account of genealogy is incompatible with and anathema to Nietzsche’s philosophy of history. Through a close reading of Foucault’s essay alongside Nietzsche’s second Unfashionable Observation , it seeks to demonstrate that Foucault’s account of genealogy is premised on an inadequately one-sided reading of Nietzsche’s more dialectical account of history and the ahistorical. Whereas Foucault presents an anti-metaphysical Nietzsche suspicious of teleological origins and ahistorical forms, Nietzsche’s essay in fact insists on the necessity of such figures as an antidote to historicism. Reading Nietzsche against Foucault, this article investigates the conceptual foundations of the contemporary genealogical method, suggesting that Nietzsche may present an alternative – rather than precursor – to the Foucauldian paradigm.