Fabled kinship narratives guaranteed the nation’s homogeneity and continuous power

Evidence

There is, however, one basic difference between England and France. In England, the Conquest and the Norman/Saxon racial duality was history’s essential point of articulation, whereas in France there was, until the end of the seventeenth century, no heterogeneity within the body of the nation. The whole system of a fabled kinship between the Gauls and the Trojans, the Gauls and the Germans, and then the Gauls and the Romans, and so on, made it possible to guarantee both a continuous transmission of power and the unproblematic homogeneity of the body of the nation. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 142

Categorization

• XREF: This is the machinery behind the ‘imagined community’ and later race-thinking — the myth of homogeneous national descent that Islamophobia-era readings of French universalism will inherit. — connects to: Colonial racism welded dynastic legitimacy to national community by universalizing inherited superiority; National consciousness forms through language and literature, not only through shared ancestry; Colonial race-thinking substitutes ethnological difference for kinship with non-whites — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 106 (+1 more)

Related

• Nobility’s conquest doctrine split France into two peoples before race-thinking emerged (similarity 0.82)
• England built its history on racial duality while France long asserted national homogeneity (similarity 0.81)
• Racial exclusion could prefigure colonial-native relations within a single nation (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Colonial racism welded dynastic legitimacy to national community by universalizing inherited superiority #corroborates (0.82)
• Colonial race-thinking substitutes ethnological difference for kinship with non-whites #expands (0.78) — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 106
• National consciousness forms through language and literature, not only through shared ancestry #complicates (0.75)
• Trust extends kin-group loyalty outward to the whole society #expands (0.72)