Urban space, citizens’ minds, and bodies materialised together as objects of discipline.

Evidence

The ‘disorder’ of Cairo and other cities had suddenly become visible. The urban space in which Egyptians moved had become a political matter, material to be ‘organised’ by the construction of great thoroughfares radiating out from the geographical and political centre. At the same moment Egyptians themselves, as they moved through this space, became similarly material, their minds and bodies thought to need discipline and training. The space, the minds, and the bodies all materialised at the same moment, in a common economy of order and discipline. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 221

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that space, minds, and bodies ‘all materialised at the same moment, in a common economy of order and discipline’ crystallizes the book’s whole thesis in one dense paragraph — a genuinely paradigm-shifting formulation of how colonial modernity conjured its own objects of governance.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 221