ABSTRACT
If the relations of ‘‘truth’’ and ‘‘power’’—or the ‘‘politics of truth’’—are
constitutive of hegemony,1 their role in the struggles to build a new (or
counter) hegemony is equally crucial. Ienaga’s textbook lawsuit needs to be
examined in terms of the ‘‘multiple games of truth’’ deployed in its process,
as articulated by Foucault. For example, should historical narratives in school textbooks be written based on ‘‘truths,’’ that is, facts verified by
‘‘science’’? Here ‘‘science’’—including ‘‘historical science’’—means a sys-
tematic approach to the knowledge of a given field, one that makes claims
of validity by employing a logic of scholarly inquiry shared by scholars of
that field in general.2
