User:Themsen/RW3

Synopsis – Reading, Writing and Research Methodologies – 5 November 2014

• Gille Deleuze, Postscript on Societies of Control, 1990

In the text the author describes and comparatively analyzes the transition from a disciplinary society to a society of control currently in the process of developing. According to Deleuze, the society of control is built around spaces of codes (unlike the disciplinary society’s enclosed spaces) in order to give access or reject access, operated and tracked by computers. The many codes of access Deleuze argues create dividuals, described as “undulatory, in orbit, in a continuous network” (Deleuze, 1990), as opposed to the disciplinary society’s individual. Another dimension to the space of the society of control is its malleability. One example Deleuze mentions as a recent mutation in capitalism where corporations shape themselves to contain both liberating and enslaving forces in order to internally in order control and service their network of subjects.

Concepts pertaining to the society of control which weren’t mentioned in the text include the super-panopticon, nudging, extension of enclosures and deterritorialization.

In control society a second level of panopticism has occurred; the super-panopticon. The super-panopticon conducts its surveillance, examination and observation through computers. You could even speak of a second-level mode of documentation as instead of observing you directly, making its surveillance apparent, it tracks the traces left from your use of codes. Through the action of surveillance and tracing your codes of passage or in-access, activity or inactivity, it encodes the subject into the society of control.

Nudging could be exemplified as the practice of social spaces of ‘free’ choice constructed to allow the subject to make the choices which are most beneficial for the society of control, such as product placement for example; the products which are most ‘productive’ to the conducts of control society are easier to reach than those it deems as ‘least productive’.

The extension of enclosures includes the extension of institutions into a more deterritorialized world following the internet and various other ubiquitous communications. The workspace becomes extended to the home and other spaces which are still subject to the surveillance of electronic technology.

• Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 184-194

In this excerpt the author presents the current society of the time as the disciplinary society, arguing that the society was built upon the full adoption of examination, examining and documenting the subject, making the body an object with the act of examination. Through documentation, Foucault argues, the individual grew forth as a measurable, observable asset to the disciplinary society. This process of individuation, as Foucault calls it, happens in the dynamic between examiner and examined where the documentation of the examined makes the examined the object, and through the internalization of the objective examination the examined can form their individuality and status; in this sense the definition of the individual is controlled by the examiner and can be used as a tool of domination and control. Due to the methods of examination the disciplines no longer required to refer to the textual tradition of author-authorities, but rather “as from a domain of objects perpetually offered for examination” (Foucault, 186). In the disciplinary society the exercise of power changed from the visible and manifested use of power to the examination of its subjects through surveillance and the compulsory subjugation of its citizens through discipline. Among his concluding remarks in the excerpt Foucault writes, “that moment when the sciences of man became possible is the moment when a new technology of power and a new political anatomy of the body were implemented” (Foucault, 193).

There are a number of concepts not mentioned in the excerpt pertaining to the disciplinary society, most of which are important to bring up. The surveillance was initially not camera-operated but conducted by observers such as the Mass Observation Unit in the United Kingdoms. This unit sought to examine the population of the UK from an anthropological standpoint, using methods from the anthropological studies of tribal people, to examine how people conducted themselves in detail. This was a project which focused on the study of individuals and masses.

Other methods of control in the disciplinary society were training of the body and mind, penetance, self-regulation and normalizing judgement.

Training was imposed as a principle of self-improvement, to reform the body and mind in order to improve them.

Penetance might sound like a pasta, but was in fact punishment and reform through the process of looking into oneself, one extreme example of penetance being the solitary cell and another example would be the panopticon which controlled convicts through the perceived surveillance of the mechanical lens, an indirect (but to the convict perceivably direct) method of examination.

Self-regulation is tied to the paradigms of discipline. It works according to the mantra of ‘fitting in’ in order to gain status as an individual.

Normalizing judgement is a method of control where the disciplinary society upholds judgement over its citizens, controlling and dominating them through the use of examination and the scientific ‘truths’ of science. Normalizing judgement is similar to the mantra ‘it’s my way or the highway’ where the judgement of the disciplines are meant to impose the tenants of the disciplinary societies on individuals which deviate from the societal paradigm. As with all of these concepts, normalizing judgement isn’t only used by ‘the boss’ of the society but is a practice also used by individuals to reel deviants back into the fold in order to preserve and contain the control of disciplinary society.

• Alladi Venkatesh, The Mode of Information and the Cultures of the Internet – A conversation with Mark Poster, 2000

In this conversation between Mark Poster and Alladi Venkatesh Poster is asked about his views on his past and current views on the technologically mediated communication in cyberspace and the repercussions this has on the real-life politics of culture and culture of politics. Mark Poster speaks of cyberspace as a distinct, yet different social space compared to what he calls the territorial politics of real life. Poster uses the term underdetermination to define cultural objects which exist in cyberspace; objects which have “very little specificity” (Venkatesh, 2000) although with some very determinant constraints. The underdetermined cultural object, Poster argues, is a kind of disturber or reconfigurer in the situation of communication. As an example the underdetermined cultural objects in the music business make way for a reconfiguration of the music commodity, turning it into something more similar to older ways of sharing music. Poster presents the foundation behind his research as the mutual relevance of post-structuralist theory and contemporary communication systems, stating that “the social appearance of language was changing because of the mediation of technology and that post-structuralist theory was one set of positions that tried to account for and give prominence to language” (Venkatesh, 2000). The RL politics taking part in mediated communications are also reconfigured, as debates can be communicated globally with access to an informal, non-political and non-institutional atmosphere of discussion similar to a café. These characteristics both lay the foundations for a cyberdemocracy with global participation in mind.