Domination is analyzed via its functioning instruments, not its legitimation

Evidence

We do not try to trace their origins back to that which gives them their basic legitimacy. We have to try, on the contrary, to identify the technical instruments that guarantee that they function. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 1486

Categorization

• XREF: This methodological refusal of legitimacy-questions sets up genealogy and the later investigation of how modern bureaucratic rationality enables mass exclusion without needing legitimation. — connects to: Domination is perpetuated by thought’s own ossification, not by technology; Vagueness itself functions as an instrument of domination — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 114; Fantasy domination does not translate to actual submission — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1006 (+1 more)