Key Arguments

• After detailing the seriation of training, Foucault states that by gathering temporal dispersal into a profitable result, disciplinary power ‘is articulated directly onto time; it assures its control and guarantees its use.’
• He characterizes disciplinary time as revealing ‘a linear time whose moments are integrated, one upon another, and which is orientated towards a terminal, stable point; in short, an “evolutive” time.’
• He explicitly connects this to broader eighteenth‑century developments, noting that ‘administrative and economic techniques of control reveal a social time of a serial, orientated, cumulative type: the discovery of an evolution in terms of “progress”. The disciplinary techniques reveal individual series: the discovery of an evolution in terms of “genesis”.’
• He proposes that ‘These two great “discoveries” of the eighteenth century – the progress of societies and the geneses of individuals – were perhaps correlative with the new techniques of power, and more specifically, with a new way of administering time and making it useful, by segmentation, seriation, synthesis and totalization.’
• He concludes that ‘“Evolutive” historicity, as it was then constituted – and so profoundly that it is still self-evident for many today – is bound up with a mode of functioning of power.’
• He contrasts this ‘dynamics’ of continuous evolutions with earlier ‘history‑remembering’ of dynasties and exploits, suggesting that the ‘small temporal continuum of individuality-genesis’—like the cell or organism—is itself ‘an effect and an object of discipline.’

Source Quotes

The ‘seriation’ of successive activities makes possible a whole investment of duration by power: the possibility of a detailed control and a regular intervention (of differentiation, correction, punishment, elimination) in each moment of time; the possibility of characterizing, and therefore of using individuals according to the level in the series that they are moving through; the possibility of accumulating time and activity, of rediscovering them, totalized and usable in a final result, which is the ultimate capacity of an individual. Temporal dispersal is brought together to produce a profit, thus mastering a duration that would otherwise elude one’s grasp. Power is articulated directly onto time; it assures its control and guarantees its use. The disciplinary methods reveal a linear time whose moments are integrated, one upon another, and which is orientated towards a terminal, stable point; in short, an ‘evolutive’ time.

Power is articulated directly onto time; it assures its control and guarantees its use. The disciplinary methods reveal a linear time whose moments are integrated, one upon another, and which is orientated towards a terminal, stable point; in short, an ‘evolutive’ time. But it must be recalled that, at the same moment, the administrative and economic techniques of control reveal a social time of a serial, orientated, cumulative type: the discovery of an evolution in terms of ‘progress’.

The disciplinary methods reveal a linear time whose moments are integrated, one upon another, and which is orientated towards a terminal, stable point; in short, an ‘evolutive’ time. But it must be recalled that, at the same moment, the administrative and economic techniques of control reveal a social time of a serial, orientated, cumulative type: the discovery of an evolution in terms of ‘progress’. The disciplinary techniques reveal individual series: the discovery of an evolution in terms of ‘genesis’. These two great ‘discoveries’ of the eighteenth century – the progress of societies and the geneses of individuals – were perhaps correlative with the new techniques of power, and more specifically, with a new way of administering time and making it useful, by segmentation, seriation, synthesis and totalization.

The disciplinary techniques reveal individual series: the discovery of an evolution in terms of ‘genesis’. These two great ‘discoveries’ of the eighteenth century – the progress of societies and the geneses of individuals – were perhaps correlative with the new techniques of power, and more specifically, with a new way of administering time and making it useful, by segmentation, seriation, synthesis and totalization. A macro- and a micro-physics of power made possible, not the invention of history (it had long had no need of that), but the integration of a temporal, unitary, continuous, cumulative dimension in the exercise of controls and the practice of dominations.

A macro- and a micro-physics of power made possible, not the invention of history (it had long had no need of that), but the integration of a temporal, unitary, continuous, cumulative dimension in the exercise of controls and the practice of dominations. ‘Evolutive’ historicity, as it was then constituted – and so profoundly that it is still self-evident for many today – is bound up with a mode of functioning of power. No doubt it is as if the ‘history-remembering’ of the chronicles, genealogies, exploits, reigns and deeds had long been linked to a modality of power.

With the new techniques of subjection, the ‘dynamics’ of continuous evolutions tends to replace the ‘dynasties’ of solemn events. In any case, the small temporal continuum of individuality-genesis certainly seems to be, like the individuality-cell or the individuality-organism, an effect and an object of discipline. And, at the centre of this seriation of time, one finds a procedure that is, for it, what the drawing up of ‘tables’ was for the distribution of individuals and cellular segmentation, or, again, what ‘manoeuvre’ was for the economy of activities and organic control.

Key Concepts

• Temporal dispersal is brought together to produce a profit, thus mastering a duration that would otherwise elude one’s grasp. Power is articulated directly onto time; it assures its control and guarantees its use.
• The disciplinary methods reveal a linear time whose moments are integrated, one upon another, and which is orientated towards a terminal, stable point; in short, an ‘evolutive’ time.
• the administrative and economic techniques of control reveal a social time of a serial, orientated, cumulative type: the discovery of an evolution in terms of ‘progress’. The disciplinary techniques reveal individual series: the discovery of an evolution in terms of ‘genesis’.
• These two great ‘discoveries’ of the eighteenth century – the progress of societies and the geneses of individuals – were perhaps correlative with the new techniques of power, and more specifically, with a new way of administering time and making it useful, by segmentation, seriation, synthesis and totalization.
• ‘Evolutive’ historicity, as it was then constituted – and so profoundly that it is still self-evident for many today – is bound up with a mode of functioning of power.
• the small temporal continuum of individuality-genesis certainly seems to be, like the individuality-cell or the individuality-organism, an effect and an object of discipline.

Context

Later part of ‘The organization of geneses’, where Foucault thematizes the temporal logic of discipline and links individual training series to the eighteenth‑century emergence of notions of social progress and individual development, arguing that our sense of evolutive history is tied to disciplinary power.