A summary and critical review of Gilles Deleuze Negotiations 'Postscript on control societies'

Postscript on control societies

Notes

- Foucault associated disciplinary societies with the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

- They operate by organizing major sites of confinement.

- Individuals are always going from one closed site to another, each with its own laws, first of all family, then school, then the barracks, then the factory, hospital from time to time, maybe prison, the model site of confinement.

- Prison provides the model for the others.

- Foucault has thoroughly analysed the idea behind sites of confinement.

- However Foucault knew how short lived this model was.

- Napoleon seems to have effected the overall transformation from one kind of society into another.

- Discipline would in its turn begin to break down as new forces moved slowly into place, then made rapid advances after the second world war: we were no longer in disciplinary societies, we were leaving them behind.

- Were in a midst of a general breakdown of all sites of confinement- prisons, hospitals, factories, schools, the family.

- The family is an 'interior' that's breaking down like all other interiors- educational, professional and so on. 

- The appropriate ministers have constantly been announcing supposedly appropriate reforms. 

- Educational reforms, industrial reforms, hospital, army, prison reforms; but everyone knows these institutions are in more or less terminal decline.

- Its simply a matter of nursing them through their death throes and keeping people busy until the new forces knocking at the door take over.

- control societies are taking over from disciplinary societies.

- 'Control' is the name proposed by Burroughs to characterize the new monster.

- Paul Virilo too is constantly analyzing the ultra rapid forms of apparently free floating control that are taking over from the old disciplines at work within the time scales of closed systems.

- Its not a question of asking whether the old or new system is harsher or more bearable, because there's a conflict in each between the ways they free and enslave us.

- With the breakdown of the hospital as the site of confinement, for instance, community psychiatry, day hospitals, and home care initially presented new freedoms, while at the same time contributing to mechanisms of control as rigorous as the harshest confinement.

- The various forms of control are inseparable variations, forming a system of varying geometry whose language is digital.

- Confinements are molds, different moldings, while controls are a modulation, like a self- transmuting molding continually changing from one moment to the next.

- School is being replaced by continuing education and exams by continuous assessment. This is the surest way of turning education into a business.

- In disciplinary societies you were always starting all over again, while in control societies you never finish anything- buisness, training, and military service being coexisting metastable states of a single modulation, a sort of universal transmutation.

- Apparent acquittal in disciplinary societies and endless postponement in control societies are two different ways of doing things, and if our legal system is tottering, is itself breaking down, its because were going from one to the other.

- Disciplinary societies have two pole signatures standing for individuals and numbers or places in a register standing for their position in a mass.

- In control societies on the other hand, the key is no longer a number or a signature but a code: codes are passwords, whereas disciplinary societies are ruled by precepts.

- The digital language of control is made up of codes indicating whether access to some information should be allowed or denied. We are no longer dealing with a duality of mass and individual. Individuals become dividuals and masses become samples, data, markets, or banks. 

- Its easy to set up a correspondence between any society and some type of machine.

- The old sovereign societies worked with simple machines, levers, pulleys, clocks.

- Recent disciplinary societies were equipped with thermodynamic machines.

- Control societies function with a third generation of machines, with information technology and computers, where the passive danger is noise and the active, piracy and viral contamination. 

- This technological development is more deeply rooted in a mutation of capitalism. 

- Markets are won by taking control rather than by establishing a discipline, by fixing rates rather than by reducing costs, by transforming products rather than by specializing production.T

- Marketing is the instrument of social control and produces the arrogant breed who are our masters.

- Control is short term and rapidly shifting, but at the same time continuous and unbounded, whereas discipline was long term, infinite and discontinuous.

-  We don't have to stray into science fiction to find a control mechanism that can fix the position of any element at any given moment, an animal in game reserve, a man in a business. 

- Felix Guatarri has imagined a town where anyone can leave there flat using their (dividual) electronic card that opens this and that barrier, the card however may reject you at different times and on particular days. It is a computer that is making sure everyone is in a permissible place, and effecting a universal modulation. 

- It may be that older means of control, borrowed from the old sovereign societies, will come back into play, adapted as necessary. 

- The key thing is that we are at the beginning of something new. In the prison system the attempt to find alternatives to custody, at least for minor offences, and the use of electronic tagging to force offenders to stay at home between certain hours.

- In the school system: forms of continuous assessment, the impact of continuing education on schools, and the related move away from any research in universities, 'business' being brought into education at every level.  

- In the hospital system: the new medicine 'without doctors or patients' that identifies potential cases and subjects at risk and is nothing to do with any progress towards individualizing treatment, which is how its presented, but is the substitution for individual or numbered bodies of coded 'dividual' matter to be controlled.

Review

Foucault associated disciplinary societies with the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they operate by organizing major sites of confinement. Individuals are always going from one closed site to another, each with its own laws: first of all the family, then school, then the barracks, then the factory, hospital from time to time, and then prison which is the model site of confinement. Foucault has thoroughly analyzed the idea behind sites of confinement, however he knew how short lived this model would become. The era of Napoleon seems to have effected the overall transformation from one kind of society into the other, discipline would in its turn begin to break down as new forces moved slowly into place, which made rapid advances after the second world war; we were no longer in disciplinary societies, we were leaving them behind. We're in the midst of a general breakdown of all sites of confinement- prisons, hospitals, factories, schools and the family. The family is an 'interior' thats breaking down like all other interiors- educational, professional and so on. The appropriate ministers have been constantly announcing supposedly appropriate reforms, educational reforms, industrial reforms, hospital, army and prison reforms; however everyone knows these institutions are in more or less terminal decline. 

Control societies are taking over from disciplinary societies, control is the name proposed by Burroughs to characterize the new monster. With the breakdown of the hospital as the site of confinement, community psychiatry, day hospitals, and home care initially presented new freedoms, while at the same time were contributing to mechanisms of control as rigorous as the harshest confinement. Confinements are molds, different moldings, while controls are a modulation, like a self- transmuting molding continually changing from one moment to the next, school is being replaced by continuing education and exams by continuous assessment, this is the surest way of turning education into a business. In disciplinary societies you were always starting all over again, while in control societies you never finish anything. 

 Disciplinary societies have two pole signatures standing for individuals and numbers or places in a register standing for their position in a mass, in control societies on the other hand, the key is no longer a number or a signature but a code: codes are passwords, whereas disciplinary societies are ruled by precepts. The digital language of control is made up of codes indicating whether access to some information should be allowed or denied. We are no longer dealing with a duality of mass and individual. Individuals become dividuals and masses become samples, data, markets, or banks. Its easy to set up a correspondence between any society and some type of machine. This technological development is more deeply rooted in a mutation of capitalism, markets are won by taking control rather than by establishing a discipline, by fixing rates rather than by reducing costs, by transforming products rather than by specializing production. Marketing is the instrument of social control and produces the arrogant breed who are our masters. Control is short term and rapidly shifting, but at the same time continuous and unbounded, whereas discipline was long term, infinite and discontinuous. 

Felix Guatarri has imagined a town where anyone can leave there flat using their (dividual) electronic card that opens this and that barrier, the card however may reject you at different times and on particular days. It is a computer that is making sure everyone is in a permissible place, and effecting a universal modulation. The key thing is that we are at the beginning of something new. In the prison system it was the attempt to find alternatives to custody, and the use of electronic tagging to force offenders to stay at home between certain hours. In the school system the forms of continuous assessment, the impact of continuing education on schools 'business' were being brought into education at every level.  In the hospital system the new medicine 'without doctors or patients' that identifies potential cases and subjects at risk and is nothing to do with any progress towards individualizing treatment is the substitution for individual or numbered bodies of coded 'dividual' matter to be controlled.

Deluze, G. (1995). Postscript on control societies. In: Negotiations . West Sussex: Columbia University Press. p180.