Tahtawi redefined siyasa to include self-policing and bodily self-discipline

Evidence

The definition was extended further in ‘private siyasa’, also known as the siyasa of the house, and the fifth kind, al-siyasa al-dhatiyya, the siyasa of the self, in which politics was expressed in terms of hygiene, education, and discipline. The ‘siyasa of the self is ‘an individual’s inspection of his actions, circumstances, words, character, and desires, and his control of them with the reins of his reason’. ‘Man’, Tahtawi added, ‘is in fact his own doctor – some refer to this as al-siyasa al-badaniyya (the siyasa of the body).’ These statements extend the meaning of siyasa from leadership or government to embrace the practices of ‘political policy’ – the policing and inspection (the word used has a military connotation, tafaqqud) of the body, mind, and character of the individual subject. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 341

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows siyasa expanding inward to embrace government of the self and body — physiological politics.
• XREF: The self-as-doctor and bodily self-inspection resonates with Foucault’s technologies of the self and biopolitics.
• SEED: Angle: how a borrowed ancient word (siyasa) was stretched to carry the entire weight of modern self-governance and hygiene — a lexical history of internalized discipline.