Foucault treated history as war and battle, not language and meaning.

Evidence

The paradox arises in Derrida’s case thanks to a radically anti­ realist philosophy of language which denies us the possibility of knowing a reality independent of discourse. This anti-realism compels him, as we have seen, to question the possibility of giving an account of the relationship between forms of discourse and social practices, whether the latter sustain or challenge existing relations of domina­ tion. By contrast, the ‘worldly’ poststructuralism of Foucault and Deleuze attaches central importance to this relationship. Far from operating on the inside of discourse, they seek thoroughly to contex­ tualize it. Thus Foucault declared: ‘I believe one’s point of reference should not be the great model of language and signs, but that of war and battle. The history which bears and determines us has the form of a war rather than a language: relations of power, not relations of meaning.’ — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 333

Categorization

• XREF: Directly speaks to the reader’s research thread on Foucault’s race-struggle/Hotman-Boulainvilliers counter-history motif from Society Must Be Defended — Callinicos is here already framing the war-analytic break with Derridean textualism.
• DEFINE: Defines the ‘worldly’ poststructuralism of Foucault/Deleuze against Derridean textualism by its orienting point of reference: war and battle over language and signs.