A conquering class can be reframed as internal usurpers rather than foreign invaders
Evidence
You can also see—and this is important—that the invasion of the nobility is analyzed not as the effect of a military invasion and of the irruption of barbarism, but as the result of usurpation from within. The fact of the conquest is still there, but it is stripped of its barbarian context and the right-effects that might have resulted from the military victory. The nobles are not barbarians, but they are crooks, political crooks. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 217
Categorization
- XREF: The reinterpretation of conquest as internal usurpation parallels how dominant groups rewrite their own ascendancy — a mechanism relevant to reading colonial and racial origin narratives. — connects to: Dubos redefined feudalism as internal usurpation rather than foreign conquest — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 216