Key Arguments

• Foucault notes that the traditional time-table’s principle was essentially negative: to forbid wasting time, conceived as morally and economically accountable to God and men, by eliminating idleness.
• Discipline rearranges this into a ‘positive economy’ that poses the principle of ‘a theoretically ever-growing use of time: exhaustion rather than use’, aiming to extract from time more available moments and from each moment more useful forces.
• This requires intensifying the use of even the ‘slightest moment’, as if time’s fragmentation were inexhaustible or could be arranged towards an ideal of maximum speed and efficiency.
• He cites Prussian infantry regulations, imitated across Europe, as implementing this logic: the more time is broken down into multiple subdivisions and disarticulated under supervisory gaze, the more one can accelerate or optimally regulate operations.
• The regulations of 1743 specify detailed temporal stages for weapon handling (six stages to bring the weapon to the foot, four to extend it, thirteen to raise it to the shoulder), exemplifying how exhaustive temporal coding is used to optimize speed and control.
• Similarly, the ‘mutual improvement school’ is organized ‘as a machine to intensify the use of time’ by overcoming the linearity of individual teaching: different groups perform different ordered operations simultaneously, under monitors, so that every moment is filled.
• Signals, whistles, and orders impose temporal norms on all, designed ‘both to accelerate the process of learning and to teach speed as a virtue’, with commands meant ‘to accustom the children to executing well and quickly the same operations’ and to reduce time ‘lost’ in transitions.
• These examples demonstrate that disciplinary time is oriented toward continuous intensification and acceleration of activity, rather than merely the avoidance of idle gaps.

Source Quotes

Thus disciplinary power appears to have the function not so much of deduction as of synthesis, not so much of exploitation of the product as of coercive link with the apparatus of production. 5. Exhaustive use. The principle that underlay the time-table in its traditional form was essentially negative; it was the principle of non-idleness: it was forbidden to waste time, which was counted by God and paid for by men; the time-table was to eliminate the danger of wasting it – a moral offence and economic dishonesty.

Exhaustive use. The principle that underlay the time-table in its traditional form was essentially negative; it was the principle of non-idleness: it was forbidden to waste time, which was counted by God and paid for by men; the time-table was to eliminate the danger of wasting it – a moral offence and economic dishonesty. Discipline, on the other hand, arranges a positive economy; it poses the principle of a theoretically ever-growing use of time: exhaustion rather than use; it is a question of extracting, from time, ever more available moments and, from each moment, ever more useful forces.

The principle that underlay the time-table in its traditional form was essentially negative; it was the principle of non-idleness: it was forbidden to waste time, which was counted by God and paid for by men; the time-table was to eliminate the danger of wasting it – a moral offence and economic dishonesty. Discipline, on the other hand, arranges a positive economy; it poses the principle of a theoretically ever-growing use of time: exhaustion rather than use; it is a question of extracting, from time, ever more available moments and, from each moment, ever more useful forces. This means that one must seek to intensify the use of the slightest moment, as if time, in its very fragmentation, were inexhaustible or as if, at least by an ever more detailed internal arrangement, one could tend towards an ideal point at which one maintained maximum speed and maximum efficiency.

This means that one must seek to intensify the use of the slightest moment, as if time, in its very fragmentation, were inexhaustible or as if, at least by an ever more detailed internal arrangement, one could tend towards an ideal point at which one maintained maximum speed and maximum efficiency. It was precisely this that was implemented in the celebrated regulations of the Prussian infantry that the whole of Europe imitated after the victories of Frederick II:4 the more time is broken down, the more its subdivisions multiply, the better one disarticulates it by deploying its internal elements under a gaze that supervises them, the more one can accelerate an operation, or at least regulate it according to an optimum speed; hence this regulation of the time of an action that was so important in the army and which was to be so throughout the entire technology of human activity: the Prussian regulations of 1743 laid down six stages to bring the weapon to one’s foot, four to extend it, thirteen to raise it to the shoulder, etc. By other means, the ‘mutual improvement school’ was also arranged as a machine to intensify the use of time; its organization made it possible to obviate the linear, successive character of the master’s teaching: it regulated the counterpoint of operations performed, at the same moment, by different groups of pupils under the direction of monitors and assistants, so that each passing moment was filled with many different, but ordered activities; and, on the other hand, the rhythm imposed by signals, whistles, orders imposed on everyone temporal norms that were intended both to accelerate the process of learning and to teach speed as a virtue;5 ‘the sole aim of these commands … is to accustom the children to executing well and quickly the same operations, to diminish as far as possible by speed the loss of time caused by moving from one operation to another’ (Bernard). Through this technique of subjection a new object was being formed; slowly, it superseded the mechanical body – the body composed of solids and assigned movements, the image of which had for so long haunted those who dreamt of disciplinary perfection.

Key Concepts

• 5. Exhaustive use.
• The principle that underlay the time-table in its traditional form was essentially negative; it was the principle of non-idleness:
• Discipline, on the other hand, arranges a positive economy; it poses the principle of a theoretically ever-growing use of time: exhaustion rather than use; it is a question of extracting, from time, ever more available moments and, from each moment, ever more useful forces.
• the more time is broken down, the more its subdivisions multiply, the better one disarticulates it by deploying its internal elements under a gaze that supervises them, the more one can accelerate an operation, or at least regulate it according to an optimum speed;
• the Prussian regulations of 1743 laid down six stages to bring the weapon to one’s foot, four to extend it, thirteen to raise it to the shoulder, etc.
• the ‘mutual improvement school’ was also arranged as a machine to intensify the use of time;
• so that each passing moment was filled with many different, but ordered activities;
• the rhythm imposed by signals, whistles, orders imposed on everyone temporal norms that were intended both to accelerate the process of learning and to teach speed as a virtue;
• ‘the sole aim of these commands … is to accustom the children to executing well and quickly the same operations, to diminish as far as possible by speed the loss of time caused by moving from one operation to another’

Context

Fourth numbered subsection of 'The control of activity', where Foucault generalizes beyond scheduling to show how disciplinary institutions aim at exhaustive, intensified, and accelerated use of time in both military and pedagogical contexts.