From genealogy to geo-epistemology: A turn towards locality of space, time and knowledge

Abstract

The topic of this paper is the research of the relations among knowledge, identity and space. The links among these notions have been established due to a genealogical approach, which shrinks the field of analysis and opens a question of the origin of these links, and due to a genealogical approach as an analytics of knowledge and discourse shaped by space, an analytics that starts from the claim that space(s) is created due to knowledge, power and dicourses. Our theoretical approach in this paper is based on the so-called spatial turn in social sciences, or the approaches of Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault and David Harvey. Although their analyses are quite different, all of them pointed out the significance of social practices and power in the analysis of space. We cannot consider space as 'background scenery' of social processes anymore, since the social practices are always spatial. Geo-epistemological analysis of the relation between knowledge and identity have been 'localized' to European space, which owes its speciality to different archeological layers for institutions, where practices and discourses that took part in formation of European knowledge/identity were put. The authors conclude that Europe formed the image of itself through knowledge and history, and that exactly this 'locality' of practices of this space enabled the appearance of the specific relations of knowledge/power/space - an universal knowledge that, since the Classicism, would be recognized as European knowledge/identity.

Keywords

• genealogy
• geo-epistemology
• space
• Europe
• knowledge/identity