Postscript on the Societies of Control

Deluze was a French philosopher friend and scholar of Focault, also influences by the work of Boudelair and Gides. He was one of the first to register the events of may 1986 in conceptual terms (in response to the students's uprising). Deluze also worked with Félix Guattari, and produced texts such as Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus(1980). He wrote on authors-more or less known and on films by approaching each author and work with a constructivist attitude.

Deleuze dedicated his work to the creation of new philosophical concepts. He was concerned with, the position of the social and political at the core of being, and the difference of transcendental hierarchy. And worked with the nature of thought, identity and time, through the disruption of the canonical tradition of philosophy.

Postscript on the society of control

Deleuze discusses Focault distinction and shift between disciplinary societies to societies of control. Focault analyze these environments of enclosure-especially the factory and the transition from this productive model (of production and of control to other productive models).

He starts with an historical background to illustrate how this shift has happened. 

Disciplinary societies were a model of production and control typical of the 18th and 19th century, that because of crisis of values and institutions from the second world war this model is shifting to the current one: of society of control. 

Disciplinary societies had at their time came as a substitution for a previous production model, the societies of sovereignty at the hand of Napoleon. The role of these societies of sovereignty was to tax, rather than to organize production, and to rule on death, rather than to administer life.

The new phase of control of production given by disciplinary societies, organised and controlled production through various areas of confinement, consisting in the factory, the school, the prison, the hospital, and the barrack (which was the home). The factory was the most important of these areas of confinement because used to be the place where production happened, and the control over the productive process was exemplified.  The enclosed environment of the factory was based on the analogical model of the prison: where you went to work, you were contained for a certain amount of hours, you then clocked out, left and were free until the next day (the action of you physically clocking out is important).

The logic by which these control systems operate: in disciplinary societies is that all the different spaces of enclosure are different from one another. For example,  the factory is a space of enclosure, when you go home you stop being controlled by that environment and you get into the space of enclosure of the home (barrack). When you are finished with in the space of enclosure of the school, you return the one of the barrack and then, and only after you get to the one of the factory, from which you return to the barrack every night. The control from one space of enclosure does not extend to the next, but nevertheless they are inseparable and together they form a system. The control system of the school helps you get to the factory, that then  controls you being able (gives you the ability) to be in  the home-barrack (pay rent), and so on-and this is comparable to a system of geometry, variable and numerical. (depending on the school comes a different factory, and the type of activity of the factory gets you different numbers- or positions that allows in different types of barracks (the factory is intended as the work place and not necessary-A factory in the actual sense).

In this scenario  enclosures are molds but controls are modulations- the various environments (molds) shape the controlled individual- shape the production and the mean of production- which is the individual himself. These are modulated by the degree and nature of control exercised in each- and the control is what will change this cast.With the switch from disciplinary societies to societies of control there is drastic change in the nature of the organism of control and in productive models.

The enclosed entity of the factory (workplace) of disciplinary societies is replaced by the corporation in societies of control (gaseous and immaterial). Changes of productive modes where productivity obtained through modulation of wages  in the factory, is replaced by the modulation of salaries operating through challenges, contexts, and comic group sessions in the corporation (see home depot for example). This change in productive modes implies the switch from the internal control of internal forces: combination of high production and low wages to the productivity model of the corporation based on the modulation of salaries which raises in accordance to rank and merit, and operate through challenges, contexts, and group sessions.

Resistance to control also changed: the one to one confrontation of production against control in disciplinary societies (resistance externalized by the mass resistance of the union), in societies of control is dissipated by portraying rivalry as an healthy form of emulation, motivating forces and putting people in competition with one another, because it seems that productivity is enhanced this way (productivity and not production, because production has ceased to exist). This new externalization of productivity help avoid revolts that were based and built on solidarity-and the modulating factor is salary according to merit.    

All phases that in earlier disciplinary societies where distinct containment, in societies of control are all integrated, and the method of control has adjusted . 

A similar condition translates to education and training replaces schooling (we don't study theories but we operationalize methods), and continuous control replaces the examination. System of control have become integrative and while with disciplinary societies on one was always starting over and went through different phases, from the school to the barrack, and from the barrack to the factory. In societies of control the process is continuous and integrated. 

The trial by Kafka-the disciplinary system

Disciplinary system has also changed and it has switched from the disciplinary system of apparent acquittal to the unlimited postponement of societies of control. The case of Amanda Knox in Italy is an example of how a misunderstanding of apparent acquittal (by counselors operating in a society of control) has led to a conviction for murder. Kafka describes the juridical system reflecting this type of formation in "the trial." In the unlimited postponement the individual is accused of something (he is unaware of what this is). The matter is investigated but he does not know the progress. He is never prosecuted but he is nevertheless punished-with the exclusion from society.