The soldier becomes a measurable spatial segment rather than a reservoir of courage

Evidence

The soldier is above all a fragment of mobile space, before he is courage or honour. Guibert describes the soldier in the following way: ‘When he is under arms, he occupies two feet along his greatest diameter, that is to say, taking him from one end to the other, and about one foot in his greatest thickness taken from the chest to the shoulders, to which one must add an interval of a foot between him and the next man; this gives two feet in all directions per soldier and indicates that a troop of infantry in battle occupies, either in its front or in its depth, as many steps as it has ranks’ (Guibert, 27). This is a functional reduction of the body. But it is also an insertion of this body-segment in a whole ensemble over which it is articulated. The soldier whose body has been trained to function part by part for particular operations must in turn form an element in a mechanism at another level. — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 248

Categorization

• XREF: The reduction of the soldier to feet of occupied space mirrors how telescreens reduce Oceania’s subjects to observable segments — both erase the person for the geometry of the apparatus. — connects to: A soldier’s aiming reverie through a gun-sight becomes an absorbing, trance-like experience — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 61; Conscription aimed to drastically reshape the peasant soldier’s body and daily habits

Related

• A soldier’s aiming reverie through a gun-sight becomes an absorbing, trance-like experience (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• A soldier’s aiming reverie through a gun-sight becomes an absorbing, trance-like experience #expands (0.78) — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 61
• Conscription aimed to drastically reshape the peasant soldier’s body and daily habits #expands (0.75)