Phrase-"The cry goes up that one is murdering history..."

"The cry goes up that one is murdering history, whenever, in historical analysis – and especially if it is concerned with though, ideas, or knowledge – one is seen to be using in too obvious a way the categories of discontinuity and difference, the notions of threshold, rupture and transformation, the description of series and limits" (14).

According to Foucault, the preservation of history has become little more than a structuring system. No longer preserved or affirmed as a “living and continuous…place of rest, certainty, reconciliation, a place of tranquilized sleep” (14). Foucault sees the true essence of history and the study of history, as a disappearing discipline. With the attention being turned from the events of the time, to the concern over where each event fits in history. The historical analysis of history before history is made, “the problem is no longer one of tradition, of tracing a line, but one of division, of limits” (5). As history is constantly analyzed and filed away, who is left to verify it’s truth or meaning.