Modern power fuses instrumentalism with force while premodern force stayed constrained by higher precepts

Evidence

I would like to suggest that a satisfactory explanation resides in the structures of power that Foucault diagnosed and that was the “mother” structure that governed both colonialism and its concomitant genocide. If we see power not as a logic or as a logically structured domain, but rather as a system of tactics and strategies that operate under specific conditions in a specific manner, changing course and tactics as the situation requires, we begin to understand its instrumentalist nature, one that reflected and was reflected by the larger structure of instrumentalism and instrumentalist reason that is the hallmark of the Enlightenment. In this sense modern power is instrumentalism meshed with, backed by, and fronted by force. It is precisely here where modern power differs from its premodern counterparts, and not only in the order of its composition, but mainly in its very constitution. Premodern power was sheer force, backed and fronted by instrumentalism, but it was not meshed with it. Indeed, as I have noted earlier in the context of the benchmark principle, worldly force, violent as it may have been, operated under the benchmark constraints of higher principles, whether they were legal-moral precepts or the equally strong dictates of custom and its precepts. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 386

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the pivotal difference Hallaq draws between modern and premodern power — instrumentalism meshed with force vs. force merely backstopped by it.
• XREF: Connects to Foucault’s power analysis and to the earlier ‘benchmark principle’ discussed in this book — power bounded by legal-moral and customary precepts. — connects to: Instrumentarian power governs through inducement and reinforcement rather than overt coercion — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1629; Instrumentalism treats the other as mere means without any limiting agency — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 522; The organic cosmos gave way to a mechanical order where power meant active intervention — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 758
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 386