Discipline: The Structuring of Time and Space

In my previous posts I have focused on the composition of power in terms of punishment and torture. This was to show that these expressions of power could be understood historically, in that the when the locus of power was singular, these overtly brutal shows of power were necessary. For discussion on this, please read my post “The Function of Power: The Sovereign in the 'Classical Age'”. As alluded to in my last post, in the 18^th century an emphasis on efficiency was beginning to appear. Where executions were once extremely messy and public affairs, they were beginning to be more private and less tortuous.

This change symbolized a different way in which power would manifest itself. Instead of exerting itself as overt spectacles as punishment in the classical age did, discipline would exert power in enumerable small pushes. While public punishments would exert all of the sovereign’s power at once, streamlined and organized institutions would structure time and space in order to control and reform individuals. But how can an institution do this? The answer to this is found in an institution that is quite old, the monastery. In this setting individuals where separated and partitioned for much of their time into cells, not only this but the time of these individuals were regulated. Beginning in the 18^th century, Foucault finds that these two ways in which the monastic setting has been structured for a long time is applied, with greater severity and sophistication, in other institutions like colleges and hospitals.

However, the poster child for the application of disciplinary measures and the results of these measures can be found in the military. The construction of the soldier from the peasant is done through many acts of discipline; broadly speaking, this is done in terms of changing how an individual thinks (and behaves) in terms of time and space. I do not mean the highly abstract notions of time and space, but the spacial relationship between one person and another (e.g. living in the barracks and sleeping in evenly spaced single beds every night) and how one thinks about how they spend their ‘time’. By regulating the activities of a person down to the quarter of the hour or the minute, you will change how that person think about time, what I mean by this can be found in any schedule for persons going through basic training. The many pressures that go into changing how a person is and behaves are disciplines.

This is relevant to my study because these disciplines exist in every institution, including the University. Understanding how the student is disciplined and formed will help me understand how power is manifested in this institution today. 

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Random House, 1997.