Society is configured as a permanent binary war, not a pyramid or organism

Evidence

A binary structure runs through society. And here you see the emergence of something I will try to come back to, as it is very 1mportant. The great pyramidal description that the Middle Ages or philosophico-political theories gave of the social body, the great image of the organism or the human body painted by Hobbes, or even the ternary organization (the three orders) that prevailed in France (and to a certain extent a number of other countries in Europe) and which continued to articulate a certain number of discourses, or in any case most institutions, 1s being challenged by a binary conception of society. This had happened before, but this is the first time the binary conception has been articulated with a specific history. There are two groups, two categories of individuals, or two armies, and they are opposed to each other. And beneath the lapses of memory, the illusions, and the lies that would have us believe that there is a ternary order, a pyramid of subordinations, beneath the lies that would have us believe that the social body is governed by either natural necessities or functional demands, we must rediscover the war that is still going on, war with all its accidents and incidents. Why do we have to rediscover war? Well, because this ancient war is a […] permanent war. We really do have to become experts on battles, because the war has not ended, because preparations are still being made for the decisive battles, and because we have to win the decisive battle. In other words, the enemies who face us still pose a threat to us, and it is not some reconciliation or pacification that will allow us to bring the war to an end. It will end only to the extent that we really are the victors. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 1647

Categorization

• DEFINE: Foucault introduces the ‘binary conception of society’ as a distinct analytical model contrasted with Hobbesian and ternary-organized social descriptions.
• XREF: Sets up the war/peace inversion the reader will later need for the ‘war beneath peace’ mechanism in Orientalism and race-thinking readings.