Genealogy, Immanent Critique and Forms of Life: A Path for Decolonial Studies

1.1 Thematizing and Criticizing Forms of Life

The venture proposed by Rahel Jaeggi in Critique of Forms of Life (2018) delves into the very core of the critical project and casts a wide gaze into the socio-ontology of the problems/contradictions posed by forms of life. Forms of life can be broadly categorized as an ensemble of practices and orientations, institutional manifestations and materializations related to the cultural and social reproductions of life. Its critique, therefore, focuses on the specific constitution of a form of life. Jaeggi states that to criticize something as a form of life is to ask whether a form of life as such is flourishing or has turned out well or is rational, and not only whether it reflects a just social order in the narrower sense.

To demonstrate the specificity of this type of criticism Jaeggi reflects upon a recurrent theme of her book, the marketization of life, or as she puts it, commodification as a form-of-life problem. Commodification as form of life raises questions on the one hand of (distributive) justice — marketized health care and so on disproportionately affecting the poorest — and on other hand of the good life; if marketization can be considered a success and how the understanding of certain goods as commodities and treating them as such has implications for ourselves and our social practices. The problem concerns the very constitution of a form of life as marked by marketization, the goods themselves, and not only their distribution within certain limits or a defined order. Therefore, the values of a specific form of life become the focus of contestation. However, this debate of values reveals just how far from self-evident the establishing of these values are and to what extent they are the result of sociohistorical constellations.

The debate here rests not only on practical evaluative questions – questions about the right action – but also on differences over the appropriateness of collective patterns of interpretation and its framework conditions. Nevertheless, the framework conditions are not always readily available, and one doesn’t just haphazardly stumble upon them. That’s why thematizing these framework conditions as such, and rendering them visible, is a large part of the endeavor in the criticism of forms of life. This leads to the realization that forms of life, as a concept, need an appropriate mode of connection to the empirical (sociohistorical constellations), if the final aim is to shape a form of social critique. The process of thematizing forms of life provides a connection to a particular understanding of genealogy. It’s important to underline that our particular form of genealogy fully realizes itself through Saar’s systematic and tridimensional reading of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals(2009).

Saar (2007) has a very particular defense of genealogy; he understands that it goes far beyond mere methodological historicism, as it employs a sophisticated philosophical apparatus that shapes and informs its narratives. Genealogy, according to him, has a specific range of objects, a specific mode of explanation, and a specific textual form; these characteristics inform the three dimensions. The first dimension, the thematic dimension, puts the subject as an object, and fits the insight of a form of life thematizing itself.

Saar argues that Nietzsche’s exposition and description of the conditions and circumstances of emergence of moral practices is centered around the subject and the self. The genealogical endeavor places a variety of moral practices, judgments, and beliefs in their historical, social, and cultural context and, therefore, destroys any illusion about the naturalness or unity of the moral world. Also, it pluralizes the moral subject by demonstrating that in history a variety of conceptions of moral agencies and moral values have always been competing, and that the success of one form of moral meant the decline of another.

If morality is to be taken as a complex social institution that structures and shapes the subject and his practices, the attempt to contextualize and criticize it needs a kind of discourse that puts the history of morality up and against its moral concepts, practices, and institutions, thereby thematizing itself. It becomes, then, more than a history of moral behavior and explores more deeply the individualizing and subjectifying effects of different systems of morality. Looking back at the arguments posed by Jaeggi it’s possible to notice in the effort to avoid the narrower domain of questions regarding morality and justice, an intuitive claim of genealogy’s thematic dimension.

Jaeggi (2018) sets up her reconstruction of immanent criticism with a few touchstones: the inherent norms of a form of a life are at once functional and ethical; immanent-critical analysis, neither simply discovers nor freely conceives the contradictory connections of social reality and it cannot base its analysis and evaluation on ultimate reasons nor on an interpretation of social reality that is definitive and independent of the actors; validation is encountered in the historical and social constellations; normative rightness is the result of engagement in the process of criticism and the viability of the immanent criticism depends on the demonstration that such process is rational.

She understands that history does not entail a necessary learning process, not every way of processing an experience can be deemed satisfactory or adequate, and quelling a crisis is not necessarily the same thing as resolving it. This speaks to her reappropriation of Hegel’s determinate negation and her formal perspective of success. Which leads into the dynamics between the process of determinate negation and the idea of progress and success; Jaeggi understands that learning processes are triggered by experiences of the failure and the inadequacy of a form of life as measured by the requirements imposed on it or posed within it. So, the possibility to learn something arises only when this problem can be mastered reflexively at a certain normative level in the mode of a process of enrichment and differentiation. This process implies that the crisis of the old already contains the potential for its productive supersession, and not only that the trigger of the crisis gives rise to the means for resolving it, but also is then triggered at a moment when these resources are already available. The measure of rightness and its rational character rests in the process itself.

The immanent criticism comprehends a development of critique and justification that coincide and a crucial factor for the appraisal of success in a form of life is whether there is space for reflection. The latter conclusion sets up Jaeggi’s appropriation of the Hegelian conception of history as progress in the consciousness of freedom. Jaeggi understands that it refers to freedom not as a predetermined goal, but as an insight mediated by crisis experiences into conditions of the performance of our practices.

Jaeggi’s project of problem-solving takes, then, the form of a hermeneutic anticipation of an assumed solution and a desirable goal, inspired by Terry Pinkard’s (1994) dialectical history (1994). The cogency of such anticipation can only be demonstrated retrospectively in interaction with the results of the correspondingly changed practice. Basically, it is a trial-and-error format — an open dialectic. In this process, a historical social transformation can then be understood as a learning process with reference to which one position is deemed better or worse than the previous one, and as representing progress or regression. And yet Jaeggi is positive that in history setbacks are more likely than progress, and considering her proposition of critique and justification, one can only really be aware of what is going wrong. For that reason, it is no surprise that the author proposes that the key to explore the preconditions of emancipation and collective self-determination is in the understanding “the complicated relationship between the power to shape conditions of life, the lack of transparency, and the often intractable complexity of interlinked practices and attitudes” (2018, p. 313).

It stands to reason that Jaeggi is not reverting her argument towards some variety of hegemonic or agonal theory, so the implications of relations of power must be outside of that. Jaeggi is intuitively supporting the second dimension of genealogy. Saar underlines that Nietzsche’s genealogy relies on the idea of “will to power” — an explanatory concept that can help to decipher “life”. Power as an explanatory concept appears in Nietzsche’s text on a methodological reflection regarding how to construe the history of punishment as a social practice. Genealogy’s explanatory dimension — reading history through “power” and its related forms — gives a better chance of demonstrating how our practices and institutions really are provisional and at times problematic instances of freedom. If the preconditions of emancipation claim for a deep understanding of the power relations that shape our conditions of life, an approach that prioritizes the perspective of (problematic) power relations within this open dialectic makes great sense. Jaeggi is trying to make a point in the conclusion of her book that is quite clear: there is no positive answer to the question of what makes a form of life good or an adequate form of life. All that exists is a negative, indirect answer: failing forms of life suffer from a collective practical reflexive deficit. So, shouldn’t the approach towards a critique be a narrative of the power relations that build or enable a deficit of reflexiveness?

The present genealogical proposal sets itself apart of the critique of forms of life and utilizes it to enhance itself. The conceptualization of forms of life can make genealogy a more approachable option of critique. It illustrates how a problem within a form of life can become a hindrance towards the experiences of freedom which is invaluable to the thematic search of a prospect of critique. Genealogy’s treatment of (documented) history can be a point of entry to the sociohistorical and a cipher to the resiliency of the nexus knowledge/action. On the one hand, the genealogical proposal adheres to the mode of development and justification – determinate negation – and deals with the spectrum of an experiential process. On the other, the proposal does not hold the determination of success of history in the forefront of its critical scheme. In this proposal the question would revolve around the experiences of freedom damaged by the process of relations of power. From the negation of said process the transformation is seeded, where the crisis of the old already contains the potential for its productive supersession. The genealogical critique rests on the continuous analyses of the deficits of forms of life and doesn’t focus on the confirmation of the successes of history. If we can only know for certain the unsatisfactory, the deficit and the failing, then the building blocks for the future would benefit from the explanatory dimension of a genealogy.

So far, we are still within a two dimensional form of critique, is that enough? The third dimension of this genealogical process comes to surpass the dual model of critique and to reassess the ambitions of reflexiveness and of political emancipation of this critique.

2.1 Genealogy’s Style and Potential for Decolonial Studies

Regarding the third dimension of genealogy, it’s important to bear in mind that genealogy differs from the traditional writing of history. According to Saar (2007), this is due to its primarily interpretative way of connecting historical events. In order to apprehend the complexity of the genealogical discursive dimension, a twofold approach can be illustrative: the first part involves the degree of genealogical rhetoric and the other refers to the manner in which the text addresses the readers.

Saar understands that the genealogical thesis about history and its movements of values, institutions and practices are experimental by nature. It offers hypothetical scenarios in which a specific emergency is narrated in relatively causal terms within a process related to power. Such scenarios are created through highly imaginative metaphors and illustrations in which Nietzsche’s artistic use of rhetoric emerges. Nietzsche seeks to reveal the internal connections between morality and power through theoretical fictions. Nietzsche alters the point of view of history and rethinks his hypotheses from this other point of view; he succeeds in making power relations visible and thinkable in areas that until then weren’t expected.

Genealogical discourse utilizes a writing style that is conscious of the direct relationship it seeks with its audience; genealogical writing ultimately depends on its audience. The audience of a genealogical text must recognize itself in these narratives, even if these narratives demonstrate a strange view compared to their previously held one. This strangeness effect is the result of the genealogical scope of illustrating how the subjects are always under influence of powers and forces hitherto invisible, that is, that the subjects are involved in a power relationship. The idea that a particular text measures its own success by how much it affects its own readers it’s instigating.

The audience of a genealogy is invited through a journey of its own past, and through this journey the past is rendered readable by relations of power that impact the audience’s present. If a genealogy is successful it offers us time, it transforms our relationship with our own accelerated lives, and it moves us towards actions to change the apparent anti-climactic future of the society of acceleration plagued by the escalation of reified relations.

Genealogy is not necessarily agreeing or negating your point of view regarding the history of your present but gives a voice to this history of discontinuity in continuity — an outside voice that can often be unsettling. This strangeness effect is caused by the realization that we are not in this predicament by accident; choices were made, practices emerged, and institutions were built, and all of this could have been different.

A Foucaultian genealogy is the closest in effect to the proposal of the tridimensional genealogy of this dissertation. Although in some aspects they are quite different: the proposal of a tridimensional genealogy gains in analytical and theoretical heft with the introduction of conceptualizations of forms of life, deficit of reflexiveness and resonant relations and it is self-aware of its own expected impact on the social formations. We are sure that Foucault would not consider any of those additions a positive, but, regarding the third dimension of genealogy for example, the stance on experiential factor of his work is significant.

He understands that the function of the experience is to wrench the subject from itself, of seeing to it that the subject is no longer itself. In this sense, his work is part of a project of desubjectivation, and the author is keenly aware that wrenching the subject from itself requires a certain type of writing — a fictionalized and scandalized version of history. Much like Rosa, Foucault perceives that an experience (being touched and affected), is a completely private experience but can only be fully appreciated to the extent that it escapes subjectivity, “inviting others to share an experience of what we are, not only our past but also our present and that at end we would establish new relationships with the subject at issue” (Foucault, 2001, p. 242).

The idea of establishing new relationships now lends itself perfectly to the point in question. Not only fits the proposition of genealogy’s third dimension but also poses a challenge to our own shortcomings. Foucault makes the case that Nietzsche conceives genealogy as wirkliche Historie (effective history), but what does this conceptualization entail? Within genealogy historical meaning becomes a dimension of effective history to the extent it places everything considered immutable by man within a process of development. It provides a dissociating view that is capable of decomposing itself and shattering the unity of man’s being: “History becomes ‘effective’ to the degree that it introduces discontinuity into our very being—as it divides our emotions, dramatizes our instincts, multiplies our body and sets it against itself” (Foucault, 1977, p. 154). The effective history is, in the end, affirmation of knowledge as perspective, as a voice that it’s never neutral towards the reality that surrounds us.

The idea of knowledge as perspective challenges the affirmation of a conceptual totality. Yet, one must be aware that arguments of that nature are not always dated or totalitarian views. Sometimes even the contemporaneous conceptualizations that push towards emancipation can fall into the trap. Let’s investigate Jaeggi’s characterizations of solidarity and de-solidarization in the paper Solidarity and Indifference (2001).

Solidarity based on a non-instrumental understanding of cooperation and its availability tied with the power to reshape networks of cooperative relations, to be a part of and to be able to form and reform our social conditions, speaks to the goals posed by a genealogical immanent criticism of forms of life. Yet, there are still questions around the effectiveness of said approach in promoting social and political change. Also, a more theoretical question appears, is this solidarity (cooperative and non-instrumental) a power relation? And, if so, what are the terms that mark this cooperative interplay? What are the traits of failure in this relation?

Regarding the last question, the decline of solidarity is underlined by the process of de-solidarization. De-solidarization as an expression of a disconnection between individuals who actually are involved with or dependent on each other and have good reasons to form solidaristic bonds is an interesting take that brings to the forefront the more interesting question on the structural obstacles that prevent people and social groups from attaining these bonds. In the article, the characterization of the process of de-solidarization is brief but there are some aspects regarding the nature of these obstacles preventing the bonds of solidarity: “a misapprehension of modern dependencies; not individualization but a certain ideology of individualism; not the decline of public virtues but the transformation of social cooperation is a threat for solidarity” (Jaeggi, 2001, p. 305).

There’s some space to elaborate on said transformation of social cooperation that involves a lack of transparency of dependencies and a particular brand of individualism. Yet, these points do not close the examination on solidarity and the process of de-solidarization, specifically considering South-North relations. The global South has its place in the constitution of a “modern form of life” and yet it is, at times, poorly utilized theoretically. The social fabric of countries historically marked by hierarchical relations to this day, reinforced by social and economic inequalities of late capitalism, have much to contribute to the critique of the process of de-solidarization and even to the concept of solidarity itself. Brasil’s hierarchical social grammar comes to mind as a prime example of challenge to a non-instrumental and cooperative form of relation to bloom.

The conclusion is not that some social formations cannot enable bonds of solidarity, but one could say that some are more affected by the de-solidarization and that the bond itself may have different instantiations. How can the experience of different bonds of solidarity between social formations be a factor in the creation of a shared “common ground”? One that perhaps could fuel different forms of life to face the failures of liberalism to fulfill its promise of a pluralism that would settle the societal conflicts. These are theoretical and political questions that are still waiting for possible answers especially considering that the idea of solidarity returned recently into Jaeggi’s project of critique as a bridge to the shared experience within forms of life of the failures of liberalism to fulfill its promise of a pluralism that would settle the societal conflicts.^[1]

Looking to the other side of spectrum, it is possible to argue that some decolonial studies struggle with few blind spots of themselves. Take the work of Quijano for example, his essay on the book Des/colonialidad y bien vivir (2014) rethreads his proposition that “development” was, above all in the Latin American debate, the key term of a political discourse associated with an elusive project of relative deconcentration and redistribution of control over industrial capital, in the new geography that was configured in global modern colonial capitalism at the end of the Second World War.

According to him, it can be said that in Latin America the main result of said development was the removal of the “oligarchic State” and some of its instances in the social existence of the population of these countries. But neither its historical/structural dependence on the global coloniality of power, nor the modes of exploitation and domination inherent in this pattern of power, have been eradicated or altered enough to give rise to democratic state production and management. Not even to get rid of the hegemony of Eurocentrism. In other words, these changes did not lead to “development”.

Quijano’s take is paradigmatic and takes into account mainly how the colonial process affected the forging of democratic states in Latin America. However, it does falter at times in recognize how significant is the reproduction of said colonial process within those states. Internal colonialism has a major part in the reproduction of said coloniality of power.^[2] Which is a well-known aspect of the dependency argument that broadens the spectrum of colonial impact within the culture and the societal struggles in Latin American countries. This is not to say that Quijano ignores the subject, but it is clear that it does not have the same heft and consistency when compared to the colonial/Eurocentric point. Which leads into his use of the terms Eurocentric and Eurocentrism. Quijano is purposefully broad on said use, and it does work as an ever-present enemy. It is possible to notice that when he mentions that postmodernity denominates the final imposition of technocratization/instrumentalization of what until then was known as “modern rationality”, that in the end is a reconfiguration of coloniality/modernity/Eurocentrism. There’s no doubt Eurocentrism is a problem, but it is also a question. A historic question that cannot be avoided and yet remains to be thematized and criticized.

In this essay, Quijano (2014) utilizes historic contexts in a very limited capacity. His use of the term historical heterogeneity encompasses: the “indigenized” population, prior to European colonization; the experiences under the coloniality, for almost half a millennium and what is now being produced in the new movement of society towards the decoloniality of power. In previous works, such as El Movimiento Indigena y Las cuestiones pendientes en America Latina (Quijano, 2006), there’s a concern with the characterization and potential of the social structures of the indigenous communities particularly from Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. Nevertheless, the idealized experiences of coloniality are still an integral part of the argument posed there. In the end, he’s project of “Bien Vivir” (Living well, loosely translated) is impacted by the idealizations that itself sustains and lacks the normative heft implied. Quijano’s proposal is well intended, and it has quite a few insights on the part that race played in the coloniality and yet does not pierce through enough the fabric of sociality of Latin America. Why is that? Well, there’s a lot of reasons to that. One that could be addressed here refers to the process of critique, if knowledge is perspective, idealizations of universality or particularity either from the North or the South of the globe do not seem to contribute to the realization of our own effective history.

Aimé Césaire (2006) on one of his essays about colonialism gives a clear snapshot of this violent historical process, through speeches, letters and documents recovered he demonstrates how much of this process as much as it was ruthless towards the colonized and it was, the discourse to sanitize what actually was happening in the colonies for the people of the metropolis surely kept the humanists from questioning the validity of said process. The discourse changed through time, emerged as religious, turned economical and became eventually psychological. Césaire’s approach indubitably presents genealogical traits and illustrates how the dichotomy between colony and metropolis was reinforced and normalized. The insight is that as much as the Global South must deal with aftermath of colonial dominance and its own internal colonialism reproducing itself, the global North has to be accountable by the normalization of colonial rule, a process that although it was less violent can be insidious and even perennial. The idea of decolonial studies is (or it should be) to bring about this history so that we can reconcile with that a move forward. Moving forward in the academic circles and out too.^[3]

The genealogist’s work is not only in the gray, but also outside of that — working with people, addressing concrete problems, and supporting political action. Both parts are critical. In recent years, we’ve seen that progressive measures can be easily rolled back by political actors and that policy has become reactive or even inactive at times. Direct political action is the measure that attends to the most urgent problems in our life and yet we won’t be able to prevent the recurrence of those problems if we don’t properly narrate to those that will come after us.

An effective history — a genealogy as immanent criticism of forms of life — must have its place to rationally comprehend the historical process in an impactful way that affects us and moves us towards new political action. The hope is that the result of such a process is the creation of a consciously critical attitude, as Horkheimer once expected; not only as part of the development of societies, but also as an expression of self-determination.