Nineteenth-century Egyptian reforms operated through devices that re-presented an abstract realm of ideas

Evidence

This merger of Foucault’s ideas of the disciplinary, microphysical aspect of modern power with Derrida’s work on the operation of the sign and the production of meaning is what informs Mitchell’s usage of the notion of “enframing,” a term that is central to his argument and one which is borrowed from Heidegger. As understood and used by Mitchell “enframing is a method of dividing up and containing, as in the construction of barracks or the building of villages, which operates by conjuring up a neutral surface or volume called ‘space.’” This enframing is made possible through such devices as the map that was superimposed on the labyrinth of streets of old, medieval Cairo, the timetable that divided time in equal slots in the newly constructed schools, the table of contents that was attached to the new mass-circulating printed book, the inventory list, the census, the roll-call. What these devices were able to do was not only to bring about a system of power that “worked by reordering material space in exact dimensions and acquiring a continuous bodily hold on its subjects”25; they also had a metaphysical dimension, creating a powerful effect that made things look as if they were a representation of another realm, that of ideas. This aspect of power that these devices had is based on an essential and basic distinction that the new notion of order based itself on: the “mental” plan/model that is imposed on the “material” reality/activity. This Cartesian distinction between the ideal and the material, Mitchell argues, is an essential characteristic of the western metaphysic and was crucial in the introduction of so many of the “reforms” that Egypt witnessed in the nineteenth century. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 653

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Mitchell’s borrowed Heideggerian notion of ‘enframing’ and lists its concrete devices: maps, timetables, tables of contents, censuses, roll-calls.
• XREF: Connects to Foucault’s disciplinary power and Derrida’s sign theories used across postcolonial and colonial-governmentality scholarship.