Thoughts on Genealogy, Normativity, and Nonideal theory

The following notes concern the relationship between certain forms of nonideal (and/or realist) theory and genealogical theory in light of questions concerning the place of normativity in philosophical critique.  

 

 

First, recall the distinction between normativity in the broad sense of that which is guided by a rule or subject to a rule.  This is normativity in the sense of determinateness.  That which is determinate is subsumed under some rule in virtue of which it is possible to be correct or incorrect about the matter in question (this correctness can be either ethical or epistemic in form).

Second, contrast nonideal theory and genealogical theory.

Some forms of nonideal theory are characterized as taking injustices as the starting point of theory, in a way that is obviously concerned with normative phenomena (namely phenomena of injustice).  The concern here is with normative phenomena in the sub-sense of prescriptively normative and concerned with what we ought to do (canonical normative notions here include injustices, wrongs, harms, oppressions, etc.).

Genealogical theory/critique, by contrast, is focused primarily on the problematic, at least in its Foucauldian modes (at least on the interpretation of Foucault pursued by some, including Koopman [2013]).  The problematic (or Foucault's "problematizations") are not determinate.  They are indeterminate.  They are a site of confusion and doubt and exhibit a lack of ruleishness or correctness.  An indeterminate situation is one where we do not know if some action or institution is just or unjust.  On this view, genealogy is not itself normatively ambitious.  But it may still be normatively concerned, or relevant to normative questions.

Third, consider now some of the centermost challenges facing these various forms of theory.

The challenge facing nonideal theory, in those of its forms specified above, is clarifying how we can know that some phenomena (or action or institution) is to be determined as an instance of injustice, rather than a false claim to injustice (consider as one paradigm those who claim to be 'victims' of 'reverse discrimination').  These forms of nonideal theory often seem to implicit assume that we can reliable assess a situation for a determinate (broad sense) normative prescription (narrow sense), and that this is not really the core subject at issue.  To the perspective of the anti-foundationalist political theorist, these forms of nonideal theory just appear to be smuggling in the answer to the question where all the work needs to be focused.

In response to these foundationalist challenge threatening some forms of nonideal theory, other forms of nonideal theory (and realist theory) offer a different picture of how we should think about normative phenomena.  This alternative form of nonideal theory does not begin with injustice but begins with claims to it (or a "sense" of it, in the words of Judith Shklar).  Often it is straightaway clarified that these claims to injustice come into conflict with one another (here a good source is Isaiah Berlin, whose conception of politics was influential for Bernard Williams).  Here the theorist need not claim to be in possession of some normative foundation.  But the weight of the challenge accordingly shifts.  Now the challenge for nonideal theory in this form is to specify how an analysis or description of conflicting claims can ever move over into normative theory, or if it cannot so move, at least how it can position itself as relevant to the normative questions it is clearly concerned with.

The challenge facing genealogical theory is how to make its diagnosis of problematic or indeterminate situations relevant to normative critique.  There are a few strategies for this in the literature.  One is to argue that genealogy should rigorously avoid the normative.  A related strategy is to say that genealogy need not, but surely can be allowed to, rigorously avoid the normative.  On these views, it suffices to diagnosis.  On my own view, this is deeply misguided, because it begs the question (which is a pragmatic question I would confess) of what political theory is supposed to be fair -- if political theory cannot offer us any good thought about the question of 'what to do' then it has abandoned a job that some cynic is going to happily fill (the world we actually live in is too often one populated by such cynics).  So another view in genealogy is to hold that genealogical diagnosis supplies conceptual material that is salient for downstream prognostic, and possibly even prescriptive, work that would offer ideas toward the normative determination of what the genealogy initially shows to be a problematically indeterminate situation.

The challenge facing genealogical theory seems rather close in form to the challenge facing some forms of ideal theory, namely those that put conflicts over injustice claims front and center.  Both forms have a challenge of how to move forward from there and offer something in the way of a normative component that philosophy seemingly ought to apply.  Here the issue seems to me to be one of hooking up, or stitching together, normativity in the broader sense of a clarification or settling of an indeterminate situation and normativity in the narrower sense of offering an ethical/political prescription of what justice (for example) requires.  I do not have a clear solution to this, but it is my view (with which of course there can be reasonable disagreement) that political philosophy ought not to just shirk this question indefinitely.