Egyptian army discipline adopted Foucault’s disciplinary power over retribution

Evidence

Disciplining and training soldiers, however, could not be brought about only by passing laws, even if these laws differed in nature from earlier ones in that they no longer aimed at gaining retribution and intended instead to make obedience more habitual by drawing a closer association between crime and punishment. To increase the effectiveness of guards, sentry officers and patrol soldiers the legal codes designed for the army and reviewed so far were supplemented by other techniques of keeping order, imposing discipline and exhibiting power. These new techniques represent a new kind of power, what Foucault calls “disciplinary power,” which, it was hoped, would not only instill the feeling of the perpetual presence of surveillant and watchful guards but also would adjust the body of the soldier so finely that its movements would be reduced to stable, standardized, comparable, and combinable units. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 708

Categorization

• XREF: Explicit invocation of Foucault’s disciplinary power from Discipline and Punish — the same theoretical lens applied to the reform era generally.