Official blueprints overstate power’s consistency and conceal its cracks

Evidence

The point to be made, therefore, about relying only on blueprints and official programs to detect and highlight the logic of the new forms of power (as Mitchell and Foucault argue), is that these sources are bound to present too monolithic a picture of this power that impresses us with its logic and consistency. What this chapter attempted to do is to unveil this charade of power to see it for what it really was: offering an impressive façade, it is true, but a façade nevertheless. And one that is full of cracks at that. To rely solely on these sources, therefore, is to overstate the consistency of these new forms of power. This is so not only as mentioned above because there is bound to be considerable difference between the plan and its execution, but also because even on the textual level, even before seeing how the army applied these blueprints, these texts were not as tidy and neat as is often assumed. They are full of gaps, omissions, moments of silence and embarrassing inconsistencies that are often brushed aside in the attempt to produce the logic of these texts. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 954

The point to be made, therefore, about relying only on blueprints and official programs to detect and highlight the logic of the new forms of power (as Mitchell and Foucault argue), is that these sources are bound to present too monolithic a picture of this power that impresses us with its logic and consistency. What this chapter attempted to do is to unveil this charade of power to see it for what it really was: offering an impressive façade, it is true, but a façade nevertheless. And one that is full of cracks at that. To rely solely on these sources, therefore, is to overstate the consistency of these new forms of power. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 954

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A methodological claim with wide reach: primary ‘programmatic’ sources construct the very image of monolithic power that historians then mistake for reality — the source itself performs the coherence.
• XREF: Directly engages Foucault and Mitchell as named by the author; resonates with ‘Communication as Culture’ on how formalism shapes what counts as knowledge. — connects to: A gap separates the President’s formal paper powers from his real accumulated powers — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 2865; the MOC “The Violence That Builds: How Modern Order Is Forged, Not Broken, by Force”
• QUESTION: Worth checking how far this methodological caution applies to other modernization narratives beyond the Egyptian army.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 954