Counter-history’s style is an erotic passion and relentless denunciation of power.
Evidence
History no longer has the ceremonial character of something that reinforces power, but a new pathos will mark with its splendor a school of thought that will, broadly speaking, become French rightwing thought. What I mean by this 1s, first, an almost erotic passion for historical knowledge; second, the systematic perversion of interpretive understanding; third, relentless denunciations; fourth, the articulation of history around something resembling a plot, an attack on the State, a coup d’état or an assault on the State or against the State. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 151
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines the four stylistic traits of counter-history’s new pathos, useful for recognizing this discourse in later Islamophobia readings.
- XREF: These four traits are a ready-made diagnostic grid for spotting ‘plot against the State’ discourse in contemporary nativist and Islamophobic rhetoric.