Total history vs general history

From Geography

Foucault defines total history as follows:

     ‘The project of total history is one that seeks to reconstitute the overall form of a civilization, 
      the principle –material or spiritual- of society, the significance common to all the phenomena of a period, 
      the law that accounts for their cohesion – what is called metaphorically the ‘face’ of a period.’
 									 (Foucault in Philo 2000, p. 210)

In other words, total history generalizes phenomena of a period. It constitutes a certain cohesion, relation, between events that is representative for a specific period in time. As Olivier Kramsch outlined in his lecture, total history has a continuity focus, in which events follow upon each other and history is represented as a series of important events(Kramsch, lecture 17.09.2010). Foucault fights the concept of total history as instead of looking at the ‘big men’ and ‘big events’, he looks at moments in history where meaning was contested and possibly changed. He traces back the emergence of historical events as he feels that there is a need to understand why, where and under which circumstances historical events emerged. This approach to history is termed ‘general history’. In this sense, general history can be related to the concept of Genealogy. The principle of general history is outlined as:

       ‘a geographical way of looking at the world in which one sees only ‘spaces of dispersion’, 
	spaces where things proliferate in a jumbled-up manner on the same ‘level’ as one another’ 
										(Philo 2000, p.207).

Foucault argues that we should put events in a plane landscape, with no order, only the distance between them having a meaning. Events being nearby or further away, being on the right or left of one another. Foucault rejects hierarchical relations. In line with general history of Foucault is what Dreyfus and Rabinow (1982) term ‘local, changing rules’ (in Philo 2000, p. 219). Foucault argues that total history overlooks details and differences at particular places and times. (Philo 2000, p.210). Foucault’s critique to total history can thus be said to emerge from a post-modern belief that nothing is fundamental (Philo 2000, p.211).

References:

Philo, C. (2000). Foucault’s geography. In: Crang, M. & Thrift, N. (eds.) Thinking space. Routledge, London, pp.205-238.

Published by Anouk Soomers and Sabrina Willems