After Foucault
EXCERPT (page 53)
"And yet, in the wake of Foucault’s work, the philosopher Gilles Deleuze defended the position that a much more dramatic revolution in power was already well underway — and that Panoptic discipline had reached its apotheosis during the industrial era. This was no small claim, and one which threatened to displace the terms of modern power relations in their entirety. But how was this transformation posited — what new apparatuses and figures of subjection accompanied its appearance, i.e., how was it qualitatively different than the forms of social control it claimed to surpass?"
"...the Panopticon must not be understood as a dream building: it is the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form."
- Michel Foucault
EXCERPT (Pages 53-54)
"For Deleuze technological production gave rise to the ‘control man’ — the undulating, serpentine and continuous producer of speculative profits and precarious social relations.59 This post-disciplinary figure stood in sharp opposition to the ‘monetary mole’ of discontinuous production and protracted upward mobility.60 As such, the erratic dividual of control societies presupposes a greater need for systems of domination than the disciplinary subject proper — being both a more unstable and modulated subject — repressed by variation rather than force; by difference rather than homogeneity; by over-availability rather than restriction. The ‘monetary mole’ always dug in, committed to local businesses and national brand names; to climbing the corporate ladder; to familial relations and familiar routines, whereas the ‘control man’ was part of an entirely different model of social normativity — one who’s core traits were networking, undercutting and streamlining production; seeking out the perfected means of profiteering; and valorizing unrestricted opportunism and rapid accumulation. Unlike the ‘monetary mole’, the ‘control man’ saw no contradiction in lobbying for the consolidated influence of economic power(s) over every aspect of contemporary life: governance, education, militarism, health and even inter-subjective relations. With the rise of post-industrial/transnational capital, the prospects of radical deregulation and the defense of the ‘divine hand of the market’ became the call of the day – the ‘control man’s’ cri d’ames.
Where the ‘monetary mole’ was circumscribed by a slow incremental burrowing process called industrialization, ‘progress’, or even modernity, the ‘control man’ was used to short-term commitments, perpetual travel, corporate restructuring, office politics, social angling and furtive alliances — a becoming-corporate-animal or reified-raider mentality focused only on the hope of quick returns and dramatic gains. The ‘control man’ was a disciple of post-industrial techniques — technologization, financialization, spectacularization and speculation. Often called the ‘creative’ or the ‘executive’ class, this new group of producers lacked the same set of commitments as the ‘monetary mole’ — but with good reason.61 Maintaining ‘control’, in this instance, often meant surviving the radical destructuration of all environs, (nation-state, public institutions, the home, etc.), and especially the places and functions associated with hard production and secure employment. This quasi-schizoid subject witnessed the rise of liquid capitalism or what Zygmunt Bauman has defined as liquid modernity — a period “where all patterns of dependency and interaction... are now malleable to an extent unexperienced by, and unimaginable for, past generations.”62 Unlike the subject of modern industrialization, the ‘control man’ laid no claim on ‘development’, but only on developing the potential of over-capacity, planned obsolescence and unrestricted profiteering. In short, the ‘control man’ accepts economic Darwinism in light of the failing prospects of economic determinism."
