Discourse operates as a strategic field of force-relations, not mere representation

Evidence

The strategic model of intelligibility, with a vocabulary one of whose primary sources is the schema of war, applies to the forces of discourse as well as to nondiscursive force-relations. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 363

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies Foucault’s strategic model of intelligibility: discourse analyzed as a field of forces borrowing the schema of war, applicable to both discursive and nondiscursive relations.
• XREF: Directly connects to the reader’s stated goal — this is the strategic/productive view of discourse that the Islamophobia field assumes (representation as productive, not reflective). — connects to: Speech is fundamentally agonistic play, not mere communication — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 142; Performative utterances create states of affairs rather than merely describing them. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 83; Sacralized political discourse becomes constitutive regardless of professed sincerity — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 98 (+3 more)
• QUESTION: Worth tracing how the war-schema vocabulary, applied to discourse, sets up Foucault’s later biopolitics/necropolitics language of struggle and subjection.