Deleuze develops the Foucaultian thought on history of societies and how they are governed from societies of sovereignty to disciplinary societies (Foucault's terms) to societies
of control (Deleuze's term).
Keywords:
Computer as the new machine or apparatus – similar to Networks of
automatons in Rhizomes
Training which never ends
The spirit of corporation
Obsolete disciplinary mechanisms
Really? I kind of understood it a little differently (that is if I understood anything at all!) I thought there was a difference in Foucault's analysis of society and Deleuze's ...while Foucault's account seems to be about the organization and rationalization of planning and ordering of society, Deleuze's seems to bee about the post-disciplinary period of crisis, the break down of organization in all spheres of life including family, school, etc.
ReplyDeleteI though 'Society of control' was a new invention in place of society of discipline - modeled on the corporation, based on ideas of competition, merit, continual training. And from Holland's essay also I thought the chief characteristic of such corporations / (capitalistic) societies was a lack of meaning, with the exception of the current market trend which provides a sort of temporal meaning to activities. That's what I thought he meant by the comparison between 'apparent acquittal of disciplinary societies' vs. 'limitless postponment of control societies' (in Kafka)
Another difference I thought was there - disciplinary societies provides recognition to the individual through the individualizing effect as well as a totalizing effect by which he occupies a particular place/role within society; in control society the individualization is lost and individuals are just reduced to whether they have a 'password' that guards entry into the society - therefore they are marked by access to information; the individual is a sample, data in a society that is characterized by 'floating rates of exchange' (again for me this was a clue to the lack of meaninglessness and significance at the individual level)
-Control societies - resemble the mutation of capitalism - where the dealing is with services and stocks - intangibles rather than tangibles of production. Market as an instrument of social control and marketing as the "soul" of the corporation ... these comments again seemed to me to be an indication of a different kind of strategy than the disciplinary society where there are disciplined and routinized tasks set for each individual; the new form rather seems to be more subtle through images of greater progress and where everyone is compeled to plug into the modern technologized world, accessing latest information, buying into latest forms of consumerism, getting more 'skilled' and trained, etc, or left behind. And I feel therefore for him the danger of not being able to resist this is greater since the control is exerted by having sold you this ideology already that then does not raise doubts in the mind that can have you resist it.
I completely agree with whatever you have said about Deleuze’s ideas. But I think Deleuze is not offering a counter to Foucault, or critiquing Foucault, or pointing to the limitations of Foucault’s analysis of 18th, 19th and early 20th century (which is when disciplinary society reaches its maturity) societies. What he is doing instead, I think, is extending Foucault’s idea to the late twentieth century, a period which sees the rise of the ‘Corporate’. Foucault in his “Discipline and Punish” just analysed the nature of ‘control’ in 18th, 19th and early 20th century. In his essay ‘Governmentality’, he explains the nature of control when sovereign kings ruled. See paragraph 2 where Deleuze speaks of Foucault’s analysis and acknowledges that Foucault recognized the ‘transience of his model’. Foucault can never generalize as a historian; his analysis is limited to the time frame he has considered. Deleuze (in paragraph 3, lines 9, 10, 11) is hinting at what Foucault already saw [“one that Foucault recognizes as our immediate future”]. I think Foucault’s concept of “bio power” is somewhat similar to what Deleuze is elaborating in this essay. It’s a post script. So it can only be an addition to what has already been said or hinted at.
DeleteYour right that Deleuze's is not a counter / critique of Foucault. And even I never meant that in my response. But I feel there's something essentially very different about Deleuze's locus of the analysis from Foucault's. Foucault's ideas about power and the organization of society seem to me to be still rooted in human relations and interactions. Even the rise of institutions such as the prison or the school system seems still to have a very tangible human interaction quality to it. Whereas in Deleuze's work it seems to me like he's talking of more intangible relations - somewhat like the 'invisible hand' of the market(of the Adam Smith kind). It seems like he's suggesting the uncontrollable growth force of the market which has set everything into a spiral and has imposed a form of control that isn't within any centralized body - for example like the state might be for Foucault. I agree that Foucault's analysis is of course limited to his times, but I still doubt that his analysis would have proceeded in the direction that Deleuze takes it since I think for Foucault power is still essentially a facet of human relations. It's in that sense that I think the two of them are different. And I think I did read a line somewhere to that effect where Deleuze does comment about taking a different line from Foucault (and Freud??) I think.
DeleteNow we need more info. On the kind of interaction between Foucault and Deleuze. How did they converse with each others ideas?
DeleteDear all,
DeleteGlad to see you are in the thick of trying to compare Foucault and Deleuze, will catch up with your readings and discussions when I return. But just thought I would insert here that many scholars do find a major difference between them, which may simply be the difference between the systems of discipline that evolved under 'modernity' and the post-industrial situation. In Deleuze's concept of the ‘control society, power is exercised not through ‘discipline’ as understood by Foucault but through a regime of continual mobility and constant training which rewards individual performance, as well as segmentation of time and space. While a disciplinary regime fixes people in time and space, control embraces mobility, constant communication, and adaptability (Brown 2002: 716). Thus 'New Age' management regimes invade the very selves of workers, creating individualized employees, the work process depends on creating new forms of sociality and on controlling and enhancing communication (on this, see Rose). On control society in management, see:
Brown, Megan. 2003. Survival at work: flexibility and adaptability in American corporate culture. Cultural Studies 17(5): 713-33.
Some of the fundamental critique on western metaphysics is common to Deleuze and Foucault. eg nonlinearity, binary oppositions, subject and object determinations, essentializations, linguistic certainities and many more. In certain other aspects they are different. One such instance is the critique of geneology that Deleuze discusses in his "Rhizome" is very different from the way Foucault approches it in his essay "Nietzsche, Geneology, History. It does not seem like Deleuze was critical of Foucault's understanding of Geneology but he seems to directly address it and interpret it as arborscent where as Foucault differentiates it from the traditional practice of history and interprets it as a palimpsest which we discussed in the last class. At anyrate both go about scrambling the foundations of unified, solidified/osscified edifices of classical practices The mobilizing energy to thought, concepts and paradigms set in motion by Deleuze is bold, free and wild in its design. Where as Foucault dissolves concrete paradigms through an archeological process from within the academic model--an inside job. More disscussion in class....
DeleteVasanthi
And my last question before today's class. Why did Deleuze use the word 'postscript'? What preceded it as script? In other words, what was he responding to, or building on, or adding to?
ReplyDeleteHi All,
ReplyDeleteRashmi and Maitheyi have discussed societies of control following from Deleuze's Postscript and perhaps also referring to Holland's piece. The only thing I want to pitch in here is that in the introduction of A Thousand Plateaus, Massumi explains that Foucault was referring to different times. The gaze facilitated by the panopticon is an 19th century and early 20th century feature. In the crisp Postscript, Deleuze also makes this distinction and comments that societies are no more space bound. But that does not mean that surveillance is gone. Rather control takes a more deterritorialised form.
Besides, I thought I would add a few words on the concept of 'rhizome'.
Deleuze and Guattari explains rhizome thus ;“A rhizome as subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radicles. Bulbs and tubers are rhizomes” (pg 7). The discernible features of rhizome that I could identify (there is much more that I couldn't identify) are the following -
- is an assemblage
- has multiplicity of entries and exits
- any point can be connected to another (therefore no linearity?)
- has no hierarchy
- has no genealogy - can start from the 'middle'
- it is not 'amenable to any structural or generative model' (pg 12)
- is not like a tree but a bulb!
Here through the metaphor of rhizome the authors are referring to how one must receive a book. My simple question is how does this concept of rhizome help us understand societies of control? May be reading the whole book might give some clues but for me it seems a difficult task to link the 2. I hope we can take this discussion further in class.