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.

• 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).

• 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.