La genealogía de la moral familiar

Abstract

The family continues imposing itself and generating patterns which structure our vision of the social world, and this is not the effect of anthropological necessity. On the contrary, thanks to the socially predetermined equation between the political and familial categories of perception of the social world and equation which is at the root of this vision—, family structures are recognized to be the natural foundation of all things, perticularly the public thing —[the respublica]: the family appears all the more as the natural foundation of the political order as it is itself perceived according to the categories on the basis of which the political order is built. This circular equation is the result of the ruling classes’ symbolic investment strategy: the impose judgment categories which are advantageous to them, and favor practices susceptible of being assessed in their favor, so that the economic, cultural and political foundations of their domination seem natural. Representations of the family also very directly partake of the strategies which contribute to the reproduction of social structures.