Genealogical Method Skill

Master genealogical analysis: tracing the contingent historical emergence of concepts, practices, and institutions to reveal hidden power relations and challenge present assumptions.

Overview

What Is Genealogy?

NOT:

• History of ideas (how ideas develop logically)
• Origin stories (single founding moment)
• Teleological progress (development toward goal)

IS:

• History of the present (why we are as we are)
• Contingent emergence (could have been otherwise)
• Power analysis (whose interests served?)
• Destabilization (question what seems natural)