0:06 DO WE LIVE IN WHAT THE PHILOSOPHER Gilles Deleuzes CALLS A CONTROL SOCIETY?

0:10 IS THE NETWORKED NATURE OF THE CONTEMPORARY MEDIA

0:17 A CHARACTERISTIC FEATURE OF SOCIETIES OF CONTROL ?
0:22 OR DOES THE CURRENT LOSS OF FAITH IN CAPITALISM NEO-LIBERALISM SIGNAL THAT
THE SOCIETY OF CONTROL ARE , NOW IN CRISIS ?
0:35 Deleuzes 1990 essay Postscript on the society of control
0:38 is concerned with the transition from Michel Foucaults disciplinary society
0:42 to what Deleuze calls Societies of Control.
0:46 Disciplinary societies are characterized
0:47 by vast closed environments , each with their own laws
0:51 each with their own laws , through which each individual ceassesly passe
s
0:55 one to the other: family, school, barracks , factory
0:58 and, depending on circumstances, the hospital .
1:01 Above all it is the prison which serves as the
1:05 analogical model for the closed system of disciplinary society.
1:12 These environments are about closure
1:15 and confinement.
1;19 Their project is to concentrate, to distribute in space
1:21 order in time and administer life
1:26 Deleuze claims Disciplinary societies reached their peak in the 20th centu
ry
1:30 The claim is that Just as Foucaults disciplinary society has
1:35 superseded society of soveriegnity
1:37 , in a process that has accelereted after World war 2 ,
1:41 social organization today , has
1:45 ceased to be disciplinary
1:47 So much so that all
1:50 those enclosed spaces associated with the disciplinary society are in cris
is.
1:53 The family is in crisis
1:55 The health services is in crisis
1:58 The factory system is in crisis
2:00 All of which appears quite recognizable today , of course
2:04 What iss even more interesting, as far as the contemporary situations is co
ncerned, is that
2:09 all attempts by government to reform these confined
2:13 environment for the disciplinary society are in vain.
2:16 No matter how long these bounded spaces may linger
2:19 no matter how long their death rolls may be,
2:23 ultimately they are finished, for Deleuze.
2:26 Disciplinary societies are supposedly being replaced
2:31 by societies of control. The latter are
2:34 are our immediate future according to Deleuze in this essay ,
2:37 and Foucault allows it to be believed
2:41 It contain extremely rapid free-floating forms and continuous
2:45 control an instant communication
2:47 Their operating environment spaces are much more open
2:51 As a result, __________ disciplinaries societies
2:55 are like different models or casting which shape individuals.
2:59 The mechanisms of the society of control
3:02 are a modulation, like self deforming cars
3:06 that will continuously be changed from one moment to the other.
3:09 Instead of the prison or factories of the disciplinary society
3:13 we now have the corporation , which is like a spirit , a gas
3:17 Deleuze puts it like this:
3:21 The factory constitutes individuals
3:24 as a single body to the double advantage of the boss who survey
3:28 each individual within the mass . And to the union that mobilizes the mass
resistance

3:32 But, the corporation constantly presents the brashest rivalry

3:36 as a healthy form of emulation
3:39 an excellent motivational force that opposes individuals
3:43 against one another and runs through
3:46 each dividing each within
3:50 This is the case not just with regards to the corporation but also
3:54 to the School and the University, we would argue .
3:58 Here too, perpetual training reigns , by the introduction of
4:02 audit culture, valuations, performance-related pay
4:07 and other forms of never-ending monitoring ,
4:12 micro-management with continuous control
4:13 which can be: continued assessment, training and staff development
4:17 replacing the examination.
4:20 In a control based system , nothing is left alone for long
4:24 Deleuze maintain elsewhere. Like the school, the university
4:28 has been handed over to the corporation.
4:33 It is becoming less and less a closed site differentiated from the worksp
ace
4:38 as another closed site.
4:41 That said, it's not a matter of one form of society be more powerful than t
he other:
4:46 disciplinarian as opposed to control society.
4:49 Both types containing liberating and enslaving forces
4:52 that confront one another, so there's no need for
4:57 fear or hope, for Deleuze.
4:57 Only to look for new weapons
5:01 Although written in nineteen ninety
5:04 Deleuzes essay seems surprisingly topical and current today
5:07 Nowhere more so, perhaps, as when he described the transition from the ca
pitalism
5:13 of the past to that of the present .
5:17 It is worth quoting him at length at this point :
5:21 Nineteenth-century capitalism is a capitalism of concentration for producti
on and property
5:25 It, therefore, erects a factory as a space of enclosure,
5:30 the capitalist being the owner of the means of production
5:33 but also progressively the owner and the other spaces
5:36 conceived through analogy:
5:40 the workers familial house, the school .
5:44 As for markets they are conquered sometimes by specialization
5:46 sometimes by colonization
5:47 sometimes by lowering the cost of production .
5:52 But in the present situation, capitalism is no longer involved in productio
n
5:56 which it often relegates to the third world
6:00 It is a capitalism of higher order production
6:03 It no longer buys raw materials and no longer sells the finished products;
6:05 It buys the finished
6:08 products or assembled parts.
6:13 What it wants is to sell its services , but what it wants is to buy is stoc
ks
6:15 This is no longer a capitalism for production but for the products
6:18 Which is to say; we are being sold
6:22 It is essentially dispersive
6:25 and the factory has given way to the corporation
6:28 the family, the school, the army the factory no longer the distinct
6:33 analogical spaces that converge towards an
6:36 owner, state or private power but coded figures
6:39 - deformable and transformable of a single corporation
6:43 that now has only stockholders .

6:44 The conquest of the market is made by grabbing control

6:49 and no longer by disciplinary training.
6:54 Corruption thereby gains a new power.
6:58 Marketing has become the center of the soul of the corporation
7:00 We are told that the corporations have a soul
7:02 which is the most terrifying news in the world.
7:05 The operation of markets is now the instrument of social control and forms
the impudent breed of our master
7:09 Control is short-term and of rapid rates of turnover,
7:13 but also continuous
7:17 and without limits
7:21 While discipline is of long-duration infinite and discontinuous.
7:25 Man is no longer man enclosed , but man in debt
7:28 With this , Deleuzes Postscript on the Societies of Control
7:32 appears to announce not just the fate of Corporation
7:36 and with it the university, but also anticipates the current credit crunch
7:40 and global financial crisis.
7:43 A crisis at the lead in the promise capitalism from
7:47 A fall of capitalism to creditalism.
7:50 As well as events such as the recent protests outside
7:52 British factories against the import from workers from Europe
7:54 Is the current financial crisis a
8:00 symptom of a crisis of the disciplinary societies?
8:02 Or is it the operation of the markets
8:05 simply the market
8:12 or is it the control society control themselves that are in crisis ?
8:17 And if it is the control society itself that is in crisis, could we follow
Deleuze leads
8:20 and try to predict what form of society is going to come after the society
of control ?
8:24 Would this be an interesting and useful thing to do ?
8:27 In a recent lecture in London , the philosopher
8:31 Bernard Stiegler appeared to be tempting to say something of this kind.
8:35 He suggested that we are faced by two possible future scenarios
8:39
as the control societies
8:43 in the sense explained by Deleuze , as industrial capitalism passes from
8:46 consumerist of the society control
8:50 to what Stephen calls an economy of contribution.
8:53 Yet this analysis only bags a host of other questions.
8:57 Can these two economies: the consumer economy
9:00 and economy of contribution be so easily opposed as Stiegler
9:05 seems to imply ?
9:06 Can even disciplinary societies and the Societies of Control
9:11 be so easily contrasted ?
9:14 Didn't forms of what Deleuzes refers to as control
9:17 exist in disciplinary societies and vice versa ?
9:20 Are the institutions at the disciplinary society
9:24 really finished everywhere ?
9:27 Isnt this a too linear and straightforward a model ?
9:30 don't some societies and other spaces in places around the world
9:34 still rely on the deployment of disciplinary technologies that power
9:38 production and so on ?
9:42 Presumably these are the very third world countries in which , Deleuze argu
es
9:46 the Control Societies outsourced their production to and , if that is so,
9:49 doesn't control rely on and support a disciplinary and disciplined
9:54 or don't some aspect of those societies still rely on disciplinary
9:59 technologies ? Not least the prison system , surely the
10:03 deterant of encarceration relies on its break from the more cotidion cont

rolling the forces of our lives

10:07 and control relies upon its distinctive disciplinary
10:13 powers
10:14 Coming back to Stieglers idea of the economy f contribution
10:19 If people aren't
10:22 happens missions times so they know they
10:26 have contributed , as he insists
10:30 this would still be part of a conventional economy of
10:33 debt and exchange, in which case ,
10:35 it would not be a particularly new or different form of economy at all
10:38 There's certainly nothing particularly
10:41 new about the way one features society in Stieglers case
10:44 The degree of participation that is perceived as being
10:49 afforded by the contemporary computer-aided communication
10:52 is being singled out here , privileged
10:56 and then used to provide an explanation of the nature of the society as su
ch.
10:59 Although the particular machine metaphor for this is being drawn on , may
be
11:05 different, for Stiegler this kind of contribution society is commonly as
sociated with
11:09 the culture of web 2.0
11:10 rather than anything to do with the clock, steam,
11:14 engine or petrol motors .
11:17 This way of using a conceptual Metaphor using dominant
11:21 machine metaphors of a given era is quite dominant now.
11:24 One conceptual metaphor may have been replaced with another
11:27 but the relation between that metaphor
11:29 and the conceptual model of the world is much the same .
11:31 There is nothing really all that different here
11:36 as far as the structure of the analysis is concerned
11:39 the meaning of the world that is being read is much the same
11:43 of the dominant technology in a given era.
11:46 With each type of Society corresponding to particular
11:50 kind of machine . As in Deleuzes control societies.
11:53 Now, in this interview with Nigri , Deleuze acknowledges that
11:57 machines don't explain anything .
12:02 You have to analyze the collective arrangements in which
12:05 machines are one component, albeit an apparently priviledge one .
12:08 Still it's no use to know that , on this evidence,
12:11 both these theorists, Deleuze and Stiegler, seem to be extremely confiden
t
12:16 in their ability to access these collective arrangement.
12:19 The nature of social reality may have
12:22 changed to the extend that , it now can be said to be based
12:26 more around the kind of production associated with the control society and
their end prizes.
12:30 As Maurizio Lazzarato _______ than it is with the factories of the fordis
m,
12:35 modernism and
12:39 disciplinary societies
12:42 But on this evidence, the ability of philosophers or social
12:46 theorists to access or analyze this reality
12:49 clearly has not undergone anything like such a profound transformation.
12:54 This points to something that , in different ways,
12:58 can be said to be a feature of both Stieglers talk and
13:02 Deleuzes text ?
13:04 But even though Greg Seigworth positions the current Deleuzeian boom in
13:07 contrast to human icultural theory , in terms in a
13:10 protection is man something that'd

13:16 actually rather structured as about

13:20 Isnt there something that is rather structuralist about the analysis of bo
th Deleuzes and Stieglers here ?
13:22 Witness their apparent interest in uncovering underlying system of things
13:27 and bringing to light and rendering visible
13:30 the structural principles arrangements ,and relationships that are
13:35 at the heart a society as it were.
13:36 Witness too ,the reliance of both these thinkers on what appeared to be a
rather
13:40 simple confrontation of binaries:
13:43 consumption versus contribution ;
13:46 discipline versus control ;
13:49 factory vs corporation ;
13:50 body versus gas;
13:52 machine versus computer;
13:54 Not to mention the grand narratives
13:57 of almost linear historical development and progression they appear to p
rovide
14:00 Without doubt there is something very persuasive and seductive about all t
his
14:06 but there is also something xx pervasive xxx as well.
14:10 In their use of a grand narrative and machine metaphors,
14:13 could analysis of this kind not be said to tell us
14:17 almost as much, if not more , about the will to power and knowledge
14:21 of their authors and those who follow their footsteps in an attempt to bu
ild on
14:25 that foundation as they do contemporary society ?
14:26 In this respect, it is relatively easy a matter , perhaps too easy
14:32 to came up with explanations as to why
14:36 text such as Postscript on the society of Control has been taken up and u
sed so
14:40 readily within the social sciences and social theories specially.
14:45 It meets a need for large explanations of contemporary societies,
14:49 the workings of which can otherwise, often be too ambiguous and complex
14:52 and difficult to grasp.
14:54 Explanations that have an added
14:56 advantage in that they can also be contrasted to previous structuralist
15:01 ( post or otherwise ) theories, thus helping the user to feel as if they a
re
15:07 indeed very much at the cutting edge of some fashionable
15:10 new Deleuzian paradigm.
15:12 Or such an explanation is itself
15:15 too simplistic and reductive in time ?
15:18 Take the way Deleuze with his comments about the continuous network of c
odes 15:25 codes that marks access to information or rejects and web surfing it,
has frequently been
15:29 drawn to say something about the Internet and the network of contemporary
society.
15:34 That the Internet is a characteristic feature
15:38 of the society of control , for Deleuze , whereas the old society of sover
eignty
15:42 made use of simple machines : levers, pulleys and clocks,
15:46 The societies and control operate
15:50 essentially with machines of a third type: computers
15:56 In this sense it would be a fairly simple matter to position the xxxx pape
r textbook
15:57 as belonging to disciplinary society and would
16:03 always xxxxxxxxxxxx from book to book to book
16:06 Our liquid book then presumably belong to the society of control
16:11 with their continuous variation. After all, one can finish a conventiona

l
16:16 book and start a new one but one can never finish a liquid book
16:21 neither in reading it nor in writing it.
16:25 Rather it, too, is part of a continuous network.
16:28 The corporation, the educational system, the armed services being meta-st
able 16:34 states coexisting systems, like an universal system of information
16:38 Notice that this does not necessarily have to be negative
16:43 But , how does one combat the gaseous liquid nature
16:47 of the coorporation , of the university in the society of control ?
16:50 Is political struggle now to be conducted with forms of resistance that ar
e fixed and solid
16:54 Or should the gaseous enterprise
16:58 be combated with new forms of resistance
17:02 creativity and struggle that are similar in spirit ???
17:05 gas or liquid nature? more tactical
17:09 and strategic , and are therefore likewise subject to
17:13 continous change and modulation. If so
17:16 how is such an emphasis on creating and beeing
17:19 _____to now ____unexpected to be distinguished from
17:24 capitalism with its continued inovations and creativity
17:28 It is here that question on ethics and politics come into play.
17:32 It's where we would argue
17:36 we are required to make responsible ethical and political decisions
17:40 in specific, albeit undecidable , situations
17:46 and circumstances
17:50 After all creativity is not inherently ethical and political at all .
17:54 Some forms of creativity are
17:56 more ethical and political than others depending on the particular situati
on and context.
17:58 In this respect , given our concern with raising questions on
18:03 intellectual property
18:04 copyright and so forth with the liquid book project,
18:07 it is interesting that while Deleuze spends very little time in this essay
18:12 investigating precisely what the new weapons
18:15 we would use against the controls societies are.
18:18 Of the two, he does mention computer piracy as one
18:23 the other being the introduction of viruses .
18:27 Nevertheless, Deleuzes writing is previous to the world wide web as we cur
rently know,and understand
18:31 So this raises a question mark concerning the extent
18:35 in which Deleuze is able to tell something about the Web
18:39 Might the web not have followed a line of flight away from the concept
18:42 control in the intervening years ?
18:45 Is there a danger of using
18:47 this concept to interpret the web will not only go against Deleuze on his
18:50 emphasis on creativity and experimentation
18:55 as opposed to representation by saying this is that ?
18:59 But will in effect resulted in an attempt to discipline the Web
19:03 in order to make it more like Deleuze's philosophy.
19:06 As when people talk about digital media with its binary code
19:11 allowing the modulation of a fixed structural grid that might never be
19:15 finally escaped . After all if the web is today still
19:21 as Deleuze describes in his essay , then there has been very little actual
modulation
19:25 continuous change since 1990 ? Or is it the point
19:30 that there has been change in modulation , but it is within a
19:34 fixed structural grid?
19:37 And how appropriate is the concept of control
19:40 when it comes to thinking about the Web anyway ?
19:44 What about the question Mark Poster raises

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in his essay on who controls digital culture ?

Can digital culture actually be controlled in a conventional sense ?
Isnt the very term control a rather awkward one in this context?
Isn't it too much of a
___feature___ form of a society that existed before those of control,
Deleuze is referring to?
Suddenly one of the things that is both interesting and
surprising about Deleuzes writing
and it's feature essay on control societies
is its vagueness and the lack and subtlety
and some of the ideas and language ...or should that be openness?
For example we know this is been _____ created
and it's about experiencing and experimenting rather than interpreting.
In science one speaks of a control group
and of an experimental group,
The latter only being possible because of its relations to the former .
So there's clearly a link
here between control and experiment
But it is interesting that so many responses to Deleuzes
Postscript to the Societies of Control do seem to represent
and interpret it saying This means that
rather than experiment with it.
The generous response would be to say
that this occurs because such interpretations are part of the very system
control and interpretation Deleuze is trying to combat?
Perhaps using this essay
as some form of modest weapon ?
The one last question that remains concerns
Deleuzes own responsibility
Is there a case to be made that its
too easy for texts such as Postscript on the society of Control to be picked
and adopted in rather unsubtle and uninteresting ways ?
Or is this in fact one of the reasons Deleuzes essay
has proved so influential ?