Key Arguments

• Foucault insists that enclosure is neither sufficient nor constant: "But the principle of ‘enclosure’ is neither constant, nor indispensable, nor sufficient in disciplinary machinery. This machinery works space in a much more flexible and detailed way."
• The first flexible technique is "elementary location or partitioning": "It does this first of all on the principle of elementary location or partitioning. Each individual has his own place; and each place its individual."
• Discipline seeks to break up groups and undifferentiated pluralities: "Avoid distributions in groups; break up collective dispositions; analyse confused, massive or transient pluralities."
• Disciplinary space aims to match the number of spatial sections to the number of individuals: "Disciplinary space tends to be divided into as many sections as there are bodies or elements to be distributed."
• This partitioning is explicitly anti‑desertion, anti‑vagabondage, anti‑concentration: "One must eliminate the effects of imprecise distributions, the uncontrolled disappearance of individuals, their diffuse circulation, their unusable and dangerous coagulation; it was a tactic of anti-desertion, anti-vagabondage, anti-concentration."
• The partitioned space has as its aims location, supervision and assessment: "Its aim was to establish presences and absences, to know where and how to locate individuals, to set up useful communications, to interrupt others, to be able at each moment to supervise the conduct of each individual, to assess it, to judge it, to calculate its qualities or merits."
• He explicitly characterizes this as a knowledge–power procedure: "It was a procedure, therefore, aimed at knowing, mastering and using. Discipline organizes an analytical space."
• Foucault links this to the older monastic cell, noting that even when compartments are ideal, disciplinary space remains fundamentally cellular: "And there, too, it encountered an old architectural and religious method: the monastic cell. Even if the compartments it assigns become purely ideal, the disciplinary space is always, basically, cellular."

Source Quotes

2. But the principle of ‘enclosure’ is neither constant, nor indispensable, nor sufficient in disciplinary machinery. This machinery works space in a much more flexible and detailed way. It does this first of all on the principle of elementary location or partitioning.

This machinery works space in a much more flexible and detailed way. It does this first of all on the principle of elementary location or partitioning. Each individual has his own place; and each place its individual. Avoid distributions in groups; break up collective dispositions; analyse confused, massive or transient pluralities.

Each individual has his own place; and each place its individual. Avoid distributions in groups; break up collective dispositions; analyse confused, massive or transient pluralities. Disciplinary space tends to be divided into as many sections as there are bodies or elements to be distributed.

Avoid distributions in groups; break up collective dispositions; analyse confused, massive or transient pluralities. Disciplinary space tends to be divided into as many sections as there are bodies or elements to be distributed. One must eliminate the effects of imprecise distributions, the uncontrolled disappearance of individuals, their diffuse circulation, their unusable and dangerous coagulation; it was a tactic of anti-desertion, anti-vagabondage, anti-concentration.

Disciplinary space tends to be divided into as many sections as there are bodies or elements to be distributed. One must eliminate the effects of imprecise distributions, the uncontrolled disappearance of individuals, their diffuse circulation, their unusable and dangerous coagulation; it was a tactic of anti-desertion, anti-vagabondage, anti-concentration. Its aim was to establish presences and absences, to know where and how to locate individuals, to set up useful communications, to interrupt others, to be able at each moment to supervise the conduct of each individual, to assess it, to judge it, to calculate its qualities or merits.

One must eliminate the effects of imprecise distributions, the uncontrolled disappearance of individuals, their diffuse circulation, their unusable and dangerous coagulation; it was a tactic of anti-desertion, anti-vagabondage, anti-concentration. Its aim was to establish presences and absences, to know where and how to locate individuals, to set up useful communications, to interrupt others, to be able at each moment to supervise the conduct of each individual, to assess it, to judge it, to calculate its qualities or merits. It was a procedure, therefore, aimed at knowing, mastering and using.

Its aim was to establish presences and absences, to know where and how to locate individuals, to set up useful communications, to interrupt others, to be able at each moment to supervise the conduct of each individual, to assess it, to judge it, to calculate its qualities or merits. It was a procedure, therefore, aimed at knowing, mastering and using. Discipline organizes an analytical space. And there, too, it encountered an old architectural and religious method: the monastic cell.

And there, too, it encountered an old architectural and religious method: the monastic cell. Even if the compartments it assigns become purely ideal, the disciplinary space is always, basically, cellular. Solitude was necessary to both body and soul, according to a certain asceticism: they must, at certain moments at least, confront temptation and perhaps the severity of God alone.

Key Concepts

• But the principle of ‘enclosure’ is neither constant, nor indispensable, nor sufficient in disciplinary machinery. This machinery works space in a much more flexible and detailed way.
• It does this first of all on the principle of elementary location or partitioning. Each individual has his own place; and each place its individual.
• Avoid distributions in groups; break up collective dispositions; analyse confused, massive or transient pluralities.
• Disciplinary space tends to be divided into as many sections as there are bodies or elements to be distributed.
• it was a tactic of anti-desertion, anti-vagabondage, anti-concentration.
• Its aim was to establish presences and absences, to know where and how to locate individuals, to set up useful communications, to interrupt others, to be able at each moment to supervise the conduct of each individual, to assess it, to judge it, to calculate its qualities or merits.
• It was a procedure, therefore, aimed at knowing, mastering and using. Discipline organizes an analytical space.
• Even if the compartments it assigns become purely ideal, the disciplinary space is always, basically, cellular.

Context

Second technique in 'The art of distributions', where Foucault generalizes from architectural enclosure to the finer-grained partitioning that underpins disciplinary spaces in various institutions, drawing on the monastic cell as a precursor.