Knowledge here was evaluated in terms of whether it was “powerful” (kuvvetli) and the
extent of this “powerfulness”. The knowledge drew its “power” (kuvvet) from articulation,
founded upon various conditions necessary to achieve narrative coherence: simplification,
customisation, generalisation and conceptualisation. The historical knowledge of slave
descendants was denied legitimacy, since it did not rely on the specific framework that turned a
flow of time into a meaningful sequence of events, that is, the narrative of history.