User:Notes on "Fandom of Labor"/Draft essay

We've moved from the disciplinary society into the society of control is what Deleuze claism in his postscript on the Societies of control. In addition to that we can put the immaterial Labour which Lazzarato has researched. These three texts research society from a still mass controlled by observation to a fluently reshaping society with controls that are modulations to a society which tries to make it's workers interface between different activities.

The society of control is a society which disciplines it's inhabitants by means of observation with the aim of binding forces together in order to multiply and reduce them.

This disciplinary system is built upon a few instruments; hierarchal observation, normalizing judgement and examination. 'Hierarchal observation is an apparatus in which the techniques that make it possible to see induce effects of power, and in which, the means of coercion make those on whom they are applied clearly visible' (Foucault, 1975, pg 171). The disciplinary apparatuses of Foucault have the principle of embedding surveillance. The perfect apparatus has an architecture in which it would be possible for a single gaze to see everything constantly (Foucault, 1975). It permits an internal view on it's inhabitants and would operate to transform it's individuals. Via the hierarchized surveillance, which is absolute and indiscreet, the inhabitants are controlled. ' It is a power that seems all the less “corporal” in that it is more subtly 'physical' (Foucault, 1975, pg 177)

The apparatus works in combination with a normalizing judgement in which the individuals are disciplined into a mass behavior. Non-conforming is punishable and the punishment is being exercised by humiliating the subjects. Being an incapable individual lowers the human in the hierarchy of the system.

The examination combines normalizing judgement and the observing hierarchy. It is the fact of being able to be constantly seen that maintains the individual in his subjection. The examination is the technique by which power instead of imposing it's marks on it's subjects, molds them in a mechanism of objectification.

We see that the individual plays an important role in the disciplinary society of Foucault. Deleuzes society of control still works with the individual as a startpoint but the apparatus in which the individual is placed is no longer one of creating a vast, still mass in enclosed environments but one in which controls are modulations and, control mechanisms are inseparable variations which act in independent variables in which an individual is to start over each time from zero (Deleuze, 1992).

In the society of discipline the individual Foucault speaks about is transformed. From a producer of energy into a undulatory man in a continuous network. The signature or number is no longer important instead there is the password.

The machine of control society is the computer. Spaces are no longer analogical that converge towards an owner but they converge to coded figures - deformable and transformable – of a single corporation that now has only stockholders. Capitalism is no longer involved in production. It no longer buys raw materials and sells the finished products it buys what it wants to buy in stocks. There is no longer capitalism for the production but for the product. Man is no longer man enclosed but man in debt.

The card is the conception of control mechanism, giving the position of any element within an open environment at any given instant.

In the society of control we see that the individual transforms along with it's surrounding. The individual in immaterial labour that is being discussed by Lazzarato the worker is responsible for his own motivation and control. We see that it is no longer a system which works with controlling or disciplining it's workers but it has become a system which tries to integrate it's workers into a part of the factory because of the active role that is the choice between alternatives and different levels (Lazzarato, 1996). Jobs and responsibilities are no longer specified which causes a need for the workers to communicate clearly amongst each other for they are a collective coordination.

“The process of production of communication tends to become immediately the process of valorization” (Lazarrato, 1996, pg 143).

Also the consumer plays a very important key in the cycle of immaterial labor. The most important content in the cycle of immaterial labor is subjectivity. The economic has become a social process. The consumer re-defines the product or service therefore there is no establishing of an objective. On the other hand immaterial workers satisfy a demand by the consumer and at the same time establish that demand (Lazzarato, 1996). We see that innovation no longer rests upon production but has become subordinate to commercial imperatives.

So not only the workers have become a part of the production process “the factory” but the consumer has been integrated into the system as well.