Gilles Deleuze “Postscript on the Societies of Control”
Deleuze, Gilles. 1992. Postscript on the Societies of Control. October 59:3-7.
Disciplinary societies theorized by Foucault peak in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Analogical models focused on enclosure and the creation and management of productive force. Ordering. Distribution. Concetration.
Replacement of sovereign society in era of Napoleon. Sovereign society characterized by taxation, ruling of death.
Control society response to the crisis of enclosure. Most powerful example would be the corporation as opposed to the factory.
WAGES > SALARY (variability)
MOLD/CAST > MODULATION (flexibility)
SCHOOL > PERPETUAL TRAINING (endlessness)
SIGNATURE > CODE/PASSWORD (access)
Individuals within mass is no longer the model. Replace with dividuals or quanitifable and calculable markets/samples/data-sets which can be reordered and recomposed as necessary.
Surfing as the sport of the control society. Emphasis not on the highly regimented system of play on the traditional football field, but the gliding and adaptive, yet restricted surfer.
“Types of machines are easily matched with each type of society—not that machines are determining, but because they express those social forms capable of generating them and using them” (6).
Interesting quote in light of Alexander Galloway’s “Allegories of Control.” Computers and games have not created the control society, but have emerged from the conditions that have been set. They were technologies perhaps designed to facilitate the function of the control society.
What then is the purpose of counter-gaming? If games embody but do not create the control society (they allegorize it), what would be the purpose of a counter-production? Certainly they create new experiences and express alternative social forms, but isn’t this not what Galloway is interested in? Counter-gaming is inevitably about installing new logics. I think the real potential however is found in the affective experience of the player not in trying to generate emancipatory algorithms. Finding the expression within the expression.
Capitalism no longer about production (which has been relegated to the Third World). Capitalism now about the product and its marketing.
PRODUCTION > PRODUCT
“what counts is not the barrier but the computer that tracks each person’s position-licit or illicit-and effects a universal modulation” (7).
Hey Tanner good luck! We’ll see how I do after my exams, but so far the process of blogging my notes was really helpful as an organizational and conceptual tool. I saw on your gameology post you’re looking at citation managers - I know Zotero is hot these days but I’ll chime in for Endnote. The citation/ref list feature is nice but I really use it most as database software — the “big list of what I know,” as one advisor put it. Plus I love searching for keywords, theorists, terms, projects etc., then resorting so I can see stuff like, all sound studies references in chronological order, all foucault method, etc. Anyway have fun….
Hi Trav,
I am having a really hard time deciding between Zotero and Endnote. I am rather addicted to the ease of pulling citations off the web in Zotero, but yes the database nature of Endnote is really appealing! I am torn!