Historical discourse divides into philology, political economy, and biology

Evidence

The second process we see taking shape at the time of the Revolution is the way in which this tactic is deployed in three directions which correspond to three different battles and produce three rather different tactics: One is centered on nationalities, and is therefore essentially in continuity with the phenomena of language and, therefore, philology; the second centers on social classes, views economic domination as the wee central phenomenon, and is therefore closely related to political economy; the third direction, finally, 1s centered on neither nationalities nor classes, but upon race, and views biological specification and selection as the central phenomenon; there is, then, a continuity between this historical discourse and the biological problematic. Philology, political economy, biology. Language, labor, life. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 205

Categorization

• DEFINE: Foucault’s tripartite branching of the historical tactic — language, labor, life — the genealogy feeding into later biopolitics and racisms.
• XREF: The race/bio branch directly seeds the biopolitics and race-thinking readings that follow in this curriculum. — connects to: A philosophy of praxis methodology must be a systematic philology of history and politics; Gramsci’s philology means studying the Certain as distinct from the True; the MOC “The Great Derivative: How the Athens-to-Washington Story Fabricates the Inheritance It Pretends to Record”

Related

• Gramsci’s philology means studying the Certain as distinct from the True (similarity 0.90)
• A philosophy of praxis methodology must be a systematic philology of history and politics (similarity 0.90)
• Historical discourse functions as a transferable tactic, not an ideology (similarity 0.79)
• Historical discourse functioned as an instrument forged in struggles over power. (similarity 0.79)
• Discourse exceeds ideology by refusing the true-false distinction about facts (similarity 0.78)
• Eighteenth-century historical discourse made war the primary analyzer of political relations (similarity 0.78)