Abstract: The oft-noted rise of interest in genealogy, even amongst the traditionally less historically-inclined analytic mainstream, has also led to a renewed preoccupation with genealogical debunking arguments, and the more general worry – styled by Amia Srinivasan as ‘genealogical anxiety’ – that “the causal origins of our representations, once revealed, will somehow undermine, destabilize, or cast doubt on the legitimacy or standing of those representations” (2019, 128). To what extent this should trouble our conception of knowledge is contested, but I want to argue that our reasons for anxiety aren’t purely epistemic in nature; rather, there is a specifically ethical concern we might find ourselves confronted with when we consider the contingent formations of power critical genealogies reveal. The worry here is not so much the truth or falsity of a particular representation, but rather what asserting the truth of a representation does in terms of upholding or undermining certain power relations. Elaborating this problem in the context of feminism, I argue that ethical forms of genealogical anxiety are resistant to the usual antidotes employed to dispel our concerns (such as appeals to genealogical luck) due to the threat of complacency – confidence in a particular perspective risks a desensitisation to the existence of alternatives, to the potential detriment of both oneself and others. Given this, I suggest that we shouldn’t try to appease or resolve ethical genealogical anxiety: rather than a pathology to be cured, I argue that it can be cultivated as a productive critical attitude. Noting various possible limitations – including the threats of regress and self-defeat – I return to the feminist context to consider how this attitude might look in practice. I conclude by offering some more general reflections on the genealogical engagement with and proliferation of alternative representations, and how this might serve to unsettle (and unflatten) our own.
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Post-Kantian European Philosophy Seminar Convenors: Jack Wearing, Joseph Schear, Kate Kirkpatrick and Mark Wrathall.
