Historical discourse functioned as an instrument forged in struggles over power.

Evidence

What I have been trying to show you is not exactly what 1s known as “the history of ideas.” | have not so much been trying to show you how the nobility used historical discourse to express either its demands or its misfortunes, as to show how a certain instrument of struggle was actually forged in the struggles that took place around the workings of power—struggles within power and against power. That instrument is a knowledge, a new (or at least partly new) knowledge: the new form of history. The recall of history in this form is basically, I think, the wedge that the nobility will try to drive between the knowledge of the sovereign and the expertise of the administration, and it will do so in order to disconnect the absolute will of the sovereign from the absolute docility of his administration. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 151

Categorization

• XREF: Foucault’s insistence that knowledge forms are forged in struggle—not pure ideas—prefigures how he will treat race and war discourse as weapons. — connects to: Knowledge produced by discourse subjects those who are known to power; Translations of theory books become political interventions in local nationalist struggles. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 827; Historical action requires welding dispersed wills into one cultural-social unity. (+13 more)

Related

• Historical discourse functions as a transferable tactic, not an ideology (similarity 0.90)
• Historical knowledge is itself a weapon within the war it narrates (similarity 0.86)
• Historico-political discourse claims partisan truth that functions as a weapon, excluding juridical universality (similarity 0.86)
• War-deciphering discourse is historico-political, critical and mythical rather than juridical (similarity 0.85)
• Discourse exceeds ideology by refusing the true-false distinction about facts (similarity 0.85)
• History became the discourse each class used to claim its rights (similarity 0.85)
• The dialectic neutralized a prior historical discourse of race struggle (similarity 0.83)
• Knowledge produced by discourse subjects those who are known to power (similarity 0.83)
• Eighteenth-century historical discourse made war the primary analyzer of political relations (similarity 0.82)
• Historico-political analysis explains order from below through confusion, violence, and strife (similarity 0.81)
• Historical discourse once functioned to legitimate the State’s sovereignty (similarity 0.81)
• Systems of power necessarily generate the subversive discursive strategies that oppose them. (similarity 0.80)
• Discourse operates as a strategic field of force-relations, not mere representation (similarity 0.80)
• Discourse is a system through which knowledge becomes power over the known. (similarity 0.80)
• A homogeneous epistemological field enables political tactical uses of discourse (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Historical discourse functions as a transferable tactic, not an ideology #expands (0.85) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 205
• Discourse produces knowledge that shapes perceptions and enacts power #expands (0.80) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 687
• War-deciphering discourse is historico-political, critical and mythical rather than juridical #expands (0.78) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 285
• Historico-political analysis explains order from below through confusion, violence, and strife #corroborates (0.75) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 284
• Orientalism is a discourse produced in uneven exchanges with multiple kinds of power #exemplifies (0.75)
• Class struggle derives historically from the earlier discourse of race struggle #exemplifies (0.75) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 96