Siah
05-01-05, 01:28
Postscript on the Societies of Control
Gilles Deleuze
taken from:
Gilles Deleuze, "Postscript on the Societies of Control", from _OCTOBER_ 59, Winter 1992, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 3-7. (This essay first appeared in L'Autre journal, no. 1 (May 1990)
1. Historical
In the disciplinary societies that Foucault situated in the eighteenth and nineteeth centuries, the individual was continuously located within one closed environment or another, each having its own laws. First there was the family, then the school, then the barracks, the factory, the hospital, and even the prison, each with their own rules and order.
But, the disciplinary society was not the first society. Before that we had the societies of sovereignty. In that culture, the goal rule who was to die rather than, as in the disciplinary society, how people should live. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the societiety of soverity, however, gave way to the disciplinary society. It was a transition fostered by the changes wroght by Napoleon.
And, now, another transition is taking place. This transition is not complete, but it began shortly after WWII. In this new society, which we can call the society of control, the closed environments (i.e., schools, factories) are given way to different forms of power. These control societies control the population with new technologies, molecular engineering, genetic manipulation, and so forth.
This shift to a society of control is not inherently better or worse than the prior societies. All three kinds of society (disciplinary, sovereignty, and control) have both liberating and enslaving forces that confront one another. Nevertheless, the forces that fight the enslaving forces are facing new means of control and need to discover new weapons.
2. Logic
Let's look at the meaning of these changes. In the disciplinary society, the enclosures (schools, prisons, and so forth) are independent of each other. We might think of each of them as presenting a kind of psychological mold that shapes the mind and behavior of the people within them. There were controls in terms of wages and discpline, but the molds of the enclosures were largely successful in maintaining order. In a society of control, on the other hand, the vestiges of these discplinary molds are accompanied by technological controls that deform the original castings and monitor and shape the state of things in an ongoing kind of way.
For example, think of the the factory as a mold and wages as a control. In recent times the priority of the factory has been replaced by the priority of the the corporation, which is much more abstract and mythical. The corporation brings much more subtle methods of control, implemeting new methods of wage control (the merit bonus, for exmaple) that require continuous monitoring of wage related variables. In the era of the discplinary society, the factory was more stable and the laboring force formed a single cohesive body that could be mobilized for mass resistance. By shifting to the corporation as a mold individuals are set against each other, in competition, and are divided by such strategies as paying people according to the corporate judgment of their merit. Whereas in the past, people psyches were cast in the relatively stable enclosure of the school education, now there is perpetual training within the corporation especially since ongoing education is required for continued employment.
In the disciplinary, one left one enclosure for another, going from school, to the factory, to the barracks and so forth. In the control society, one never completely leaves a particular enclosure, or the different enclosues collaborate to create more control.
Because of this shift from a disciplinary to a control society, we are in a kind of crisis today. In the former society each individual had a signature that represented that individual's place within the cultural mass. In the new society, on the other hand, the signature of the individual, her place in the masses, is no longer important. What is important her access to information, her password.
The importance of the password over the signature is enhanced by shifts in our system of of exchange. In the disciplinary society mnted money was defineable. Today's floating rates of exchange can be modulated by computers, markets can be made by altering the concentration of property at a distance. Goods are no longer required to generate money. Services and shuffling of stocks produces capital and modulates capital.
And, just as the factory has given way to the corporation, so the family has given way to the school and the army, and these new enclosures are also yielding to new methods of control. They all bring new techniques for continously managing the shifts of forces to produce markets and hence capital. new kinds of corruption are possible which give us an impudent new breed of masters.
3. Program
We can only imagine that the control mechanisms of today's society will increase. It is not just science fiction that we might imagine ourselves with an electronic collar. A computer could be made to track our every position and effect a universal modulation of our behavior. But, we are just at the beginning of this new form of control. It is only just now disrupting the weapons against enslavement of the past. But, in today society, unions, for example, will have difficulties serving as a weapon against enslavement for they are tied to the whole history of discipline with stable and closed spaces. It is not clear that they will be able adapt themselves.
Neverthless, paradoxically, many young people boast of being motivated by these new changes. They request apprenticeships and permanent training -- and thus the new era is launched.
Gilles Deleuze
taken from:
Gilles Deleuze, "Postscript on the Societies of Control", from _OCTOBER_ 59, Winter 1992, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 3-7. (This essay first appeared in L'Autre journal, no. 1 (May 1990)
1. Historical
In the disciplinary societies that Foucault situated in the eighteenth and nineteeth centuries, the individual was continuously located within one closed environment or another, each having its own laws. First there was the family, then the school, then the barracks, the factory, the hospital, and even the prison, each with their own rules and order.
But, the disciplinary society was not the first society. Before that we had the societies of sovereignty. In that culture, the goal rule who was to die rather than, as in the disciplinary society, how people should live. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the societiety of soverity, however, gave way to the disciplinary society. It was a transition fostered by the changes wroght by Napoleon.
And, now, another transition is taking place. This transition is not complete, but it began shortly after WWII. In this new society, which we can call the society of control, the closed environments (i.e., schools, factories) are given way to different forms of power. These control societies control the population with new technologies, molecular engineering, genetic manipulation, and so forth.
This shift to a society of control is not inherently better or worse than the prior societies. All three kinds of society (disciplinary, sovereignty, and control) have both liberating and enslaving forces that confront one another. Nevertheless, the forces that fight the enslaving forces are facing new means of control and need to discover new weapons.
2. Logic
Let's look at the meaning of these changes. In the disciplinary society, the enclosures (schools, prisons, and so forth) are independent of each other. We might think of each of them as presenting a kind of psychological mold that shapes the mind and behavior of the people within them. There were controls in terms of wages and discpline, but the molds of the enclosures were largely successful in maintaining order. In a society of control, on the other hand, the vestiges of these discplinary molds are accompanied by technological controls that deform the original castings and monitor and shape the state of things in an ongoing kind of way.
For example, think of the the factory as a mold and wages as a control. In recent times the priority of the factory has been replaced by the priority of the the corporation, which is much more abstract and mythical. The corporation brings much more subtle methods of control, implemeting new methods of wage control (the merit bonus, for exmaple) that require continuous monitoring of wage related variables. In the era of the discplinary society, the factory was more stable and the laboring force formed a single cohesive body that could be mobilized for mass resistance. By shifting to the corporation as a mold individuals are set against each other, in competition, and are divided by such strategies as paying people according to the corporate judgment of their merit. Whereas in the past, people psyches were cast in the relatively stable enclosure of the school education, now there is perpetual training within the corporation especially since ongoing education is required for continued employment.
In the disciplinary, one left one enclosure for another, going from school, to the factory, to the barracks and so forth. In the control society, one never completely leaves a particular enclosure, or the different enclosues collaborate to create more control.
Because of this shift from a disciplinary to a control society, we are in a kind of crisis today. In the former society each individual had a signature that represented that individual's place within the cultural mass. In the new society, on the other hand, the signature of the individual, her place in the masses, is no longer important. What is important her access to information, her password.
The importance of the password over the signature is enhanced by shifts in our system of of exchange. In the disciplinary society mnted money was defineable. Today's floating rates of exchange can be modulated by computers, markets can be made by altering the concentration of property at a distance. Goods are no longer required to generate money. Services and shuffling of stocks produces capital and modulates capital.
And, just as the factory has given way to the corporation, so the family has given way to the school and the army, and these new enclosures are also yielding to new methods of control. They all bring new techniques for continously managing the shifts of forces to produce markets and hence capital. new kinds of corruption are possible which give us an impudent new breed of masters.
3. Program
We can only imagine that the control mechanisms of today's society will increase. It is not just science fiction that we might imagine ourselves with an electronic collar. A computer could be made to track our every position and effect a universal modulation of our behavior. But, we are just at the beginning of this new form of control. It is only just now disrupting the weapons against enslavement of the past. But, in today society, unions, for example, will have difficulties serving as a weapon against enslavement for they are tied to the whole history of discipline with stable and closed spaces. It is not clear that they will be able adapt themselves.
Neverthless, paradoxically, many young people boast of being motivated by these new changes. They request apprenticeships and permanent training -- and thus the new era is launched.