The timetable imposes abstract clock-time as the frame for all activity

Evidence

Between the reveille that opens it and the lights extinguished to mark its end, ‘time’ is written out upon the exterior surface of the day. The device of the timetable separates out the dimension of time to form a framework, in which the activities of studying, eating, and exercising are to be contained. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 259 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In the same way there was no need for a daily timetable. The ordinary sequence of the day’s lessons mirrored on a smaller scale the same textual order. The first lessons would be given immediately after dawn prayers, by those teaching the Quran. These were followed by lessons in hadith, followed by Quranic interpretation, and so on, working outwards eventually to the study of mysticism, left to the period after evening prayer. The order of teaching, in other words, even the order of the day, was inseparable from the necessary relation between texts and commentaries that constituted legal practice. Practice was not something organised within the indifferent order of the timetable; it unfolded in its meaningful sequence. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 290 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Daily routines treat time as objective despite its contested meaning — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 1260; Academic schedule flexibility masks ever-accessible unbounded work hours — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love:…, 618; Chronopolitics makes control of rhythm a core instrument of domination. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 96 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Timetables impose abstract time onto bodily activity as an external frame #corroborates (0.97) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 259
• The daily lesson order followed textual sequence, not clock time #complicates (0.80) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 290