Genealogy describes Foucault’s attempt to reveal discourse at the moment it appears in history as a system of constraint. Genealogy compels Foucault to analyze literary, biological, medical, religious and ethical bodies of knowledge, and how such “knowledges” might, for example, relate to the discourse on heredity or sexuality. He is led to study the effects of discourses claiming to be scientific – psychiatry, sociology, medicine – on practices such as the penal system, as they first appear.
