Borrowing an old word for a new practice masks conceptual rupture as restoration

Evidence

These activities required the elaboration of a new concept denoting an entire field of practice, of thought. Using the long-established word siyasa, however, caused an apparent continuity with the past, so that the knowledge and practices it referred to appeared not as the introduction of something previously unthought, but simply the reintroduction of something ‘neglected’. … As Foucault argues, modern politics was born with the concern not for aggregates but individuals – individuals who could be separately cared for, schooled, disciplined, and kept clean in an economy of individual order and well-being. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 339

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains how siyasa’s inherited vocabulary disguised the novelty of modern political practice.
• XREF: Connects to Foucault’s distinction between aggregate sovereignty and modern individualizing power — the reader’s framework on governmentality. — connects to: Paralogy as a move differs from innovation as system improvement — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 429; New phenomena require new vocabulary, but familiar terms get repurposed — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 203