"The question of how these two disparate logics - network sociality and neoliberal competitive individualism - relate to each other is arguably the key issue in the analysis of contemporary power relations. "One of the earliest attempts to capture their convergence in a single formulation is arguably Deleuze’s famous ‘post-script on the societies of control’. Here, Deleuze argues that the ‘disciplinary’ institutions described by Foucault as typical of modern societies - prisons, regimented and conformist schools, hospitals, asylums - were giving way to new modes of power. The novelty of these new modes, Deleuze suggests, lies in the fact that whereas their predecessors tended to impose highly delimited norms on their participants - demanding a singular standard of behaviour in the workplace, the classroom, the home or the street - these new forms instead orient themselves toward the development of dense and extensive systems of monitoring which could allow the system itself to anticipate and adapt to changes in the behaviour of individuals and populations. "Deleuze’s account is almost certainly influenced by Foucault’s own lectures in the late 70s, in which he seems to posit the emergence of a logic of ‘security’-informing practices of governance that potentially displaces the normative logic of discipline and supervision. Will’s analysis of the functioning of the Prism system seems to illustrate this hypothesis very nicely. What is at stake for the institutions of government now is the observation, anticipation and management of relationships and behaviours: the actual content of messages, or of consciences, is of little consequence. Contrast this with the obsession of all state spies - from the Spanish Inquisition, or the withchfinders of the seventeenth century, to the last days of the Stasi - with learning the ‘truth’ of an individual’s personal beliefs, and making it conform to an established norm, and we understand almost everything we need to about the shift from disciplinary societies to the societies of control." ~ Jeremy Gilbert #philosophy #politics
Posted on: Fri, 19 Jul 2013 11:06:09 +0000