Key Arguments

• Foucault identifies four interconnected ways in which discipline ‘adds up and capitalizes time’, drawing especially on military organization as the clearest example.
• First, discipline ‘Divide[s] duration into successive or parallel segments, each of which must end at a specific time’, such as separating the period of training from practice, keeping recruits’ instruction distinct from veterans’ exercises, and teaching posture, marching, and weapons handling sequentially without moving on before mastery.
• Second, it ‘Organize[s] these threads according to an analytical plan – successions of elements as simple as possible, combining according to increasing complexity’, replacing analogical copying of whole actions with ‘elementary’ instruction in ‘simple gestures – the position of the fingers, the bend of the leg, the movement of the arms’.
• Third, each temporal segment is ‘finalized’ by a determinate duration and an examination that simultaneously checks attainment of a required level, guarantees standardized apprenticeship, and differentiates individuals by ability, as exemplified by the multi-stage officer examinations for soldiers moving from the second to the first class.
• Fourth, discipline ‘Draw[s] up series of series’ by specifying, for each person’s level, seniority and rank, which exercises apply; common exercises have different functions depending on position, and at the end of each series others ‘begin, branch off and subdivide in turn’, creating a ‘disciplinary polyphony of exercises’.
• Foucault generalizes that this temporal organization—segmentation, analytic progression, exams, and branching series—was ‘gradually imposed on pedagogical practice’, replacing an ‘initiatory’ time supervised by a single master and a single exam with ‘multiple and progressive series’ and graded programmes.

Source Quotes

The disciplines, which analyse space, break up and rearrange activities, must also be understood as machinery for adding up and capitalizing time. This was done in four ways, which emerge most clearly in military organization. 1.

This was done in four ways, which emerge most clearly in military organization. 1. Divide duration into successive or parallel segments, each of which must end at a specific time. For example, isolate the period of training and the period of practice; do not mix the instruction of recruits and the exercise of veterans; open separate military schools for the armed service (in 1764, the creation of the École Militaire in Paris, in 1776 the creation of twelve schools in the provinces); recruit professional soldiers at the youngest possible age, take children, ‘have them adopted by the nation, and brought up in special schools’ (Servan, J.,

For example, isolate the period of training and the period of practice; do not mix the instruction of recruits and the exercise of veterans; open separate military schools for the armed service (in 1764, the creation of the École Militaire in Paris, in 1776 the creation of twelve schools in the provinces); recruit professional soldiers at the youngest possible age, take children, ‘have them adopted by the nation, and brought up in special schools’ (Servan, J., 456); teach in turn posture, marching, the handling of weapons, shooting, and do not pass to another activity until the first has been completely mastered: ‘One of the principal mistakes is to show a soldier every exercise at once’ (‘Règlement de 1743 …’); in short, break down time into separate and adjusted threads. 2.

456); teach in turn posture, marching, the handling of weapons, shooting, and do not pass to another activity until the first has been completely mastered: ‘One of the principal mistakes is to show a soldier every exercise at once’ (‘Règlement de 1743 …’); in short, break down time into separate and adjusted threads. 2. Organize these threads according to an analytical plan – successions of elements as simple as possible, combining according to increasing complexity. This presupposes that instruction should abandon the principle of analogical repetition.

This presupposes that instruction should abandon the principle of analogical repetition. In the sixteenth century, military exercise consisted above all in copying all or part of the action, and of generally increasing the soldier’s skill or strength;7 in the eighteenth century, the instruction of the ‘manual’ followed the principle of the ‘elementary’ and not of the ‘exemplary’: simple gestures – the position of the fingers, the bend of the leg, the movement of the arms – basic elements for useful actions that also provide a general training in strength, skill, docility. 3.

In the sixteenth century, military exercise consisted above all in copying all or part of the action, and of generally increasing the soldier’s skill or strength;7 in the eighteenth century, the instruction of the ‘manual’ followed the principle of the ‘elementary’ and not of the ‘exemplary’: simple gestures – the position of the fingers, the bend of the leg, the movement of the arms – basic elements for useful actions that also provide a general training in strength, skill, docility. 3. Finalize these temporal segments, decide on how long each will last and conclude it with an examination, which will have the triple function of showing whether the subject has reached the level required, of guaranteeing that each subject undergoes the same apprenticeship and of differentiating the abilities of each individual. When the sergeants, corporals, etc. ‘entrusted with the task of instructing the others, are of the opinion that a particular soldier is ready to pass into the first class, they will present him first to the officers of their company, who will carefully examine him; if they do not find him sufficiently practised, they will refuse to admit him; if, on the other hand, the man presented seems to them to be ready, the said officers will themselves propose him to the commanding officer of the regiment, who will see him if he thinks it necessary, and will have him examined by the senior officers.

The slightest mistakes will be enough to have him rejected, and no one will be able to pass from the second class to the first until he has undergone this first examination’ (Instruction par l’exercise de l’infanterie, 14 mai 1754). 4. Draw up series of series; lay down for each individual, according to his level, his seniority, his rank, the exercises that are suited to him; common exercises have a differing role and each difference involves specific exercises. At the end of each series, others begin, branch off and subdivide in turn.

Thus each individual is caught up in a temporal series which specifically defines his level or his rank. It is a disciplinary polyphony of exercises: ‘Soldiers of the second class will be exercised every morning by sergeants, corporals, anspessades, lance-corporals … The lance-corporals will be exercised every Sunday by the head of the section …; the corporals and anspessades will be exercised every Tuesday afternoon by the sergeants and their company and these in turn on the afternoons of every second, twelfth and twenty-second day of each month by senior officers’ (Instruction …). It is this disciplinary time that was gradually imposed on pedagogical practice – specializing the time of training and detaching it from the adult time, from the time of mastery; arranging different stages, separated from one another by graded examinations; drawing up programmes, each of which must take place during a particular stage and which involves exercises of increasing difficulty; qualifying individuals according to the way in which they progress through these series.

It is this disciplinary time that was gradually imposed on pedagogical practice – specializing the time of training and detaching it from the adult time, from the time of mastery; arranging different stages, separated from one another by graded examinations; drawing up programmes, each of which must take place during a particular stage and which involves exercises of increasing difficulty; qualifying individuals according to the way in which they progress through these series. For the ‘initiatory’ time of traditional training (an overall time, supervised by the master alone, authorized by a single examination), disciplinary time had substituted its multiple and progressive series. A whole analytical pedagogy was being formed, meticulous in its detail (it broke down the subject being taught into its simplest elements, it hierarchized each stage of development into small steps) and also very precocious in its history (it largely anticipated the genetic analyses of the idéologues, whose technical model it appears to have been).

Key Concepts

• This was done in four ways, which emerge most clearly in military organization.
• 1. Divide duration into successive or parallel segments, each of which must end at a specific time.
• in short, break down time into separate and adjusted threads.
• 2. Organize these threads according to an analytical plan – successions of elements as simple as possible, combining according to increasing complexity.
• simple gestures – the position of the fingers, the bend of the leg, the movement of the arms – basic elements for useful actions that also provide a general training in strength, skill, docility.
• 3. Finalize these temporal segments, decide on how long each will last and conclude it with an examination, which will have the triple function of showing whether the subject has reached the level required, of guaranteeing that each subject undergoes the same apprenticeship and of differentiating the abilities of each individual.
• 4. Draw up series of series; lay down for each individual, according to his level, his seniority, his rank, the exercises that are suited to him; common exercises have a differing role and each difference involves specific exercises.
• It is a disciplinary polyphony of exercises:
• For the ‘initiatory’ time of traditional training (an overall time, supervised by the master alone, authorized by a single examination), disciplinary time had substituted its multiple and progressive series.

Context

Middle of ‘The organization of geneses’, where Foucault schematizes four disciplinary operations on time, using eighteenth‑century military regulations as his primary empirical illustration and then extending the schema to schools.