Abstract

In this paper I would like to reflect on discipline as a category, and explain the quotation marks in the title, as they can always follow and amend the word discipline. my intention is to reconstruct a decades-long resistance to discipline, and to uncover the origin of praise for self-discipline, un-discipline or interdisciplinarity. Further, I would like to offer a few arguments in favor of discipline as one of the most important protocols of social ontology, and the unconditioned condition of cooperation, life and group work. Discipline is joint learning, as well as production and a nurturing of knowledge that constitutes and sustains an institution. the question is whether individuals’ discipline indeed makes an institution necessarily better or more just.