Garnet, I completely agree with your assessment:
"...there are a lot of other people that deserve our attention that have been totally neglected. The well-known folks had enough coverage already..." But, when we continue to rehash the 'greats,' how do we draw attention to, identify, the 'new' or 'alternative' voices? Let's start a list. Who do you suggest? Personally, I'm a fan of Wendy Chun, Yuk Hui, Donna Haraway, and Tiziana Terranova. But maybe we should be more specific, which specific tools from which specific authors build on, but provide a path beyond the canon? ... seconding voyd, I do also quite like Zero Books... -Minka On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 10:21 AM Garnet Hertz <garnethe...@gmail.com> wrote: > Emaline: based on your response, it looks like you have the same careerism > as Seb. No? > > 1. Why would anybody use the term "imbricated" in a tweet without being > insecure? > https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/10/complex-academic-writing/412255/ > 2. I don't hate Foucault and Deleuze (I did my PhD w Mark Poster, perhaps > one of the bigger fans of these guys) - but thinking that advanced thought > starts and stops with these people is totally lazy scholarship. > 3. Max Herman: "I sometimes think the flaws or errors in three main names > -- Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche". Sounds okay, but is about a hundred years > late. > 4. Seb may be trying to keep academia alive, but this sort of resembles a > zombie life form that isn't worth the life support. > > I think I'm primarily gagging at a fetishization of the same group of guys > that everybody worships: Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, Baudrillard, Deleuze, > Guattari, Jameson, etc. It's totally true that they really are fantastic: I > think I literally have every printed word of all of these people on my > bookshelf. I also still consider Baudrillard the best theoretical summary > of my life's work, for example -- his writing is amazingly inspiring and > bright. But by continuing to worship the same incantation of sacred names > we really run the risk of our outfit (critical studies, digital humanities, > or whatever) of becoming totally irrelevant and disconnected from the tools > and dialogue of today. In my opinion, if your scholarship is focused on Freud, > Marx, and Nietzsche then maybe you're in a stagnant nostalgic backwater of > thought. There are so many new tools, techniques and scholars that bring so > many fresh perspectives on different topics that we need to dig down and do > work on instead of just taking for granted the names that our grad advisors > assigned us. If nothing else, we really owe it to the non-European and > non-male scholars around us that have done fantastic, vigorous scholarship. > If we're writing theory or history it's up to us to dig deeper into the > archive of this stuff and put the effort to find people outside the canon > and write them into history. This is what great historians do, I think. > They worry less about careerism and focus on paying attention to what is > actually going on in the real world - and they formulate a fantastic way to > summarize the gestalt of it without leaning on a bunch of clichés. They cut > a fresh and insightful path. If nothing else, your long term careerism will > accelerate by stepping out of your theoretical safe zone. Fuck Freud, > Marx, Nietzsche, Baudrillard, Deleuze, Guattari, and Jameson -- not that > they're wrong, but that there are a lot of other people that deserve our > attention that have been totally neglected. The well-known folks had enough > coverage already - they are useful in establishing a base zone for your > arguments, but I really think all of these individuals would agree with me > in moving forward. I think they'd say "Move on and clue in to what's > happening now" -- or maybe encouraging us to not totally fetishize May 1968. > > In summary, I'd like to try to encourage people to be more like an > inspirational groundbreaker than a careerist schmuck, I guess. Only a few > beyond the small circle of critical studies colleagues genuinely care about > the chain of thought between Freud-Marx-Nietzsche. Not that they're > useless, but that a lot has happened since they were writing. We're in a > significantly different world than when these folks were around. The work > isn't completely useless, just not the best set of tools for discussing the > problems of today. No? > > Garnet > > On Sun, Jun 16, 2019 at 1:34 PM Emaline Friedman < > emalinefried...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Garnet, >> >> I laughed at your response ! Not at all interested in tearing you apart, >> but wanting to explore this sense of "who cares?", toward which I'm also >> inclined. >> >> What really makes me think "who cares" is the obvious careerism baked >> into the argument. I think one could put Seb's basic idea in a tweet and >> credit Kojin Karatani: "all the modes of control are imbricated. everything >> is happening all at once". Hence we have digital feudalism, social coercion >> via reciprocity, state surveillance, and the marketization of everything a >> la real subsumption simultaneously. Great. Now what? >> >> As a young person emerging from grad school, I often think that if we >> were actually adapting to the abundance of the net that no one would be >> reading Foucault and Deleuze anymore. They're already perfectly distilled >> and advanced upon by diligent secondary readers who have used them well. >> And yet...one must continue to read "the greats" even when there isn't much >> left to mine. A perfect example is this tone of "I'm going to show you >> something you've NEVER SEEN BEFORE in these mystical 6 pages of Deleuze's >> writings! Voila!": >> >> Could it be that the final sketch of control, the “Postscript on Control >> Societies,” encrypts the kind of multithreaded historical method that is >> necessary for engaging with the epistemic demands of the period it >> ostensibly defines? >> >> I am read in Deleuze, adore his thought, and I've never understood why >> people have this sort of "there's gold in them hills!" attitude about the >> Postscript in particular. It's of very minor academic interest at best that >> Deleuze makes an uncharacteristic judgment call (things are getting worse, >> not better). I'd actually love it if anyone on this list would like to >> convince me otherwise. >> >> But back to the point...maybe this text isn't unhinged from reality, but >> demonstrates the reality that academic grooming is primarily aimed to keep >> academia alive. So Seb and many of us here think thoughts just lofty enough >> to subordinate direct action to spending inordinate amounts of time reading >> and writing theses that basically say "history isn't neat, everything is in >> play". >> >> And yet! I like to read texts like these! They inspire me. I work in open >> source tech now and ideas like these both remind me that what I do is >> culturally important, and WAY more important than my ego needs, it's a real >> site of struggle. When I share these ideas with my collaborators, we think >> critically together about how our abstract plans will hit the "ground" as >> habitus for users. >> >> TLDR if you think a work of theory is too abstract, it's probably >> inspiring someone "on the ground", anyway. if you're uncomfortable with a >> division of labor whereby academics do this and other people do other >> stuff, take my and probably most other nettimers' lives as evidence that >> such a division is not fixed >> >> >> On Fri, Jun 14, 2019 at 12:25 PM Garnet Hertz <garnethe...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >>> I'm likely going to get torn apart for saying this, but in regards to >>> "Periodizing With Control"... who cares? What are the implications of this? >>> >>> Seb is super smart and this is nicely crafted and researched - but this >>> lacks any sort of case study, place, context, time or any connection to the >>> real world. It's a bit like Foucault theorising about a concept, Deleuze >>> putting a layer on top of it, Jameson reinterpreting a layer on top of >>> that, Galloway building on top of that, and Seb embellishing that. It's the >>> standard incantation of names that resembles an item that has 5 layers of >>> paint (or clay) on it but the base is lost in the process. >>> >>> While all this was going on, the base layer of world is literally >>> melting down, politics and nationalism has gone to hell, academic >>> institutions are in a tailspin and the writing has never taken notice - or >>> at least this text doesn't notice. I'd argue (and would love to be proven >>> wrong, but) this text is completely unhinged from reality. No? >>> >>> Garnet >>> >>> >>> On Thu, 13 Jun 2019, 6:29 pm Nil, <divideby...@protonmail.com> wrote: >>> >>>> Periodizing With Control >>>> >>>> by Seb Franklin >>>> >>>> This essay is guided by the following question: what kinds of critical >>>> possibilities become legible if one reads Gilles Deleuze’s >>>> conceptualization of control societies both as a work of periodization >>>> theory and as a theory of periodization? In other words, how might one read >>>> control in methodological terms? One of the motivations for this inquiry is >>>> Fredric Jameson’s observation that periodizing hypotheses “tend to >>>> obliterate difference and to project an idea of the historical period as >>>> massive homogeneity (bounded on either side by inexplicable chronological >>>> metamorphoses and punctuation marks” (1991, 3-4). Jameson’s solution to >>>> this problem is to conceive of the “cultural dominant” that replaces the >>>> concept of style within aesthetic analysis and that thus allows for “the >>>> presence and coexistence of a range of different, yet subordinate, >>>> features” (1991, 4). The features that Deleuze attributes to control >>>> suggest the possibility that this analytical rubric can be extended to the >>>> analysis of “dominant” features that occur not in spheres conventionally >>>> described in aesthetic (or stylistic) terms, such as architecture, >>>> literature, and visual art, but in material- discursive arrangements like >>>> governmentality, technology, and economics. A close reading of Deleuze’s >>>> theorization of control reveals those three threads to be knotted together >>>> in ways that both invite and are irreducible to historical breaks. Because >>>> of this, Deleuze’s writing on control societies points towards modes of >>>> historical analysis that can account for complex assemblages of epistemic >>>> abstractions and the concrete situations that undergird and (for worse and >>>> for better) exceed them. >>>> >>>> It is certainly the case that periodizing gestures appear to ground the >>>> essays “Having an Idea in Cinema” (1998; first delivered as a lecture at La >>>> Fémis in 1987) and “Postscript on Control Societies,” as well the >>>> conversation with Antonio Negri published as “Control and Becoming” (1995; >>>> first published in 1990). [1] Across these texts Deleuze names and sketches >>>> the contours of a sociopolitical and economic logic that diverges in >>>> important ways from the earlier regimes of sovereignty and discipline >>>> theorized by Michel Foucault. In the earliest of what one might call the >>>> control texts, ostensibly a commentary on the cinema of Jean-Marie Straub >>>> and Danièle Huillet, Deleuze itemizes the signature components of >>>> disciplinary societies—“the accumulation of structures of confinement” >>>> (prisons, hospitals, workshops, and schools)—in order to demarcate a period >>>> in which “we” were “entering into societies of control that are defined >>>> very differently” (1998, 17). These newer types of societies are signaled >>>> by a specific mode of social management: the age of control comes about >>>> when “those who look after our interests do not need or will no longer need >>>> structures of confinement,” with the result that the exemplary forms of >>>> social regulation begin to “spread out” (1998, 17-18). >>>> >>>> So, the dissolution of institutional spaces and the concomitant >>>> ‘spreading out’ of disciplinary power marks the first characteristic of >>>> control societies and, apparently, establishes their difference from >>>> arrangements centered on ‘classical’ sovereignty or disciplinary power. The >>>> exemplary diagram here is the highway system, in which “people can drive >>>> infinitely and ‘freely’ without being at all confined yet while still being >>>> perfectly controlled” (1998, 18). In “Control and Becoming” Deleuze once >>>> again speaks of the passage through sovereignty and discipline and the >>>> breakdown of the latter’s sites of confinement, but he adds a second >>>> valence in the form of a discussion of technology that is only hinted at in >>>> the earlier piece’s allusions to information and communication. In this >>>> conversation Deleuze again appears bound to the notion of the historical >>>> break: he suggests that sovereign societies correspond to “simple >>>> mechanical machines,” disciplinary societies to “thermodynamic machines,” >>>> and control societies to “cybernetic machines and computers” (1995a, 175). >>>> >>>> These two intertwined narratives—of distributed governmentality and >>>> technologies of computation—represent the two main vectors through which >>>> the concept of control has shaped subsequent critical writing. For example, >>>> one might read Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s concept of empire (2000) >>>> as emphasizing the former, and Alexander R. Galloway’s Protocol: How >>>> Control Exists After Decentralization (2004) as privileging the latter, >>>> although in truth each addresses both technology and power in some ratio. >>>> Equally, one can identify commonalities between the lineaments of control >>>> societies and a still-growing body of periodizing concepts, both >>>> celebratory and critical, that do not mention Deleuze’s concept but that >>>> define a similar set of historical movements in more universal terms: the >>>> information age; digital culture; the network society; post-industrial >>>> society; the age of big data; and so on, and so on, and so on. >>>> >>>> So many ways to dream a ‘pure’ economy of services and informatic >>>> exchanges. But what do such imaginaries occlude? Does ‘real subsumption’ >>>> really describe the full, evenly distributed inclusion and valorization of >>>> all social activity? Or does it describe the complex of material >>>> conditions, conceptual operations, and imaginaries that organize social >>>> life around abstract principles for the efficient extraction of relative >>>> surplus while remaining structurally premised on the regulatory function of >>>> surplus populations and, increasingly, the second-order extraction of >>>> residual value from these populations? Can one really disaggregate the >>>> general and generalizing notion of “free floating,” decentralized, and >>>> computer-enabled control societies from such imaginaries, even if Deleuze’s >>>> intent is ostensibly critical if not revolutionary? Based on the general >>>> tendency with which the Deleuzian concept of control has been deployed in >>>> critical writing, the answer must be no, as Wendy Hui Kyong Chun suggests >>>> when she writes that the notion of control risks sustaining the very >>>> discursive formation that it sets out to critique (2006, 9). Across the >>>> control texts, though, it is possible to identify a more complex system of >>>> periodization, one that is less concerned with linear (albeit staggered and >>>> layered) progression than with the multiplication of different, often >>>> competing systems of historical knowledge that make the absolute novelty >>>> and specificity of control societies impossible to sustain even as it is >>>> defined and deployed as an explanatory periodization theory. This movement, >>>> which starts to appear with a couple of passing remarks in “Control and >>>> Becoming” and that comes more fully into view across the six pages of the >>>> “Postscript,” suggests that Deleuze is concerned not only with extending >>>> Foucault’s periodizing project but also complicating the kind of historical >>>> thinking that produces the various totalizing concepts listed above. Could >>>> it be that the final sketch of control, the “Postscript on Control >>>> Societies,” encrypts the kind of multithreaded historical method that is >>>> necessary for engaging with the epistemic demands of the period it >>>> ostensibly defines? Might this, rather than the specific characteristics >>>> that Deleuze attributes to control, represent the real import of his >>>> intervention? The remainder of this essay examines the intersections of the >>>> three strands touched upon in this introductory discussion—power, >>>> technology, and economy—in order to foreground these >>>> historical-methodological possibilities. >>>> >>>> 1. Power >>>> >>>> As cleanly as the discipline-control sequence appears to function, it >>>> becomes clear across the control texts that the relationship between the >>>> two terms cannot be reduced to one of direct succession or linear >>>> extension. In “Having an idea in Cinema,” for example, Deleuze points out >>>> “there are all kinds of things left over from disciplinary societies, and >>>> this for years on end” (1998, 17). In the conversation with Negri he >>>> further complicates the relationship between the two periodizing concepts >>>> by stating that Foucault was “one of the first to say that we’re moving >>>> away from disciplinary societies, we’ve already left them behind” (1995a, >>>> 174). And in the “Postscript” he writes that “Control is the name proposed >>>> by Burroughs for this new monster, and Foucault sees it fast approaching” >>>> (1995b, 178). So control is: a discrete period full of leftovers from a >>>> previous one; an episteme that is at once being approached and that has >>>> already been fully entered; and a period that is yet to be entered but that >>>> will be soon. There is nothing like a consensus across these three temporal >>>> relations. Each, however, makes it clear that the relationship between the >>>> periodizing terms cannot be understood in terms of a break. This opens up a >>>> series of questions that have methodological, as well as historical >>>> implications. What is the temporal relationship between discipline and >>>> control? What role does sovereignty play in the two ‘later’ periods? What >>>> drives the Globally uneven movement between disciplinarity and control, and >>>> how can the latter function as a periodizing device if it cannot be >>>> detached from the former? The only possible answer is that the logic of >>>> control does not invent new relations, but mobilizes and reorients >>>> techniques and technologies whose origins predate it. Such techniques and >>>> technologies must thus be understood as recursive; they both originate in >>>> and belong to a specific regime and perform essential functions within >>>> subsequent regimes. Because of this, historically attentive analyses of >>>> control cannot remain in the twentieth century, but must set about >>>> gathering the threads that, in the appropriate combination and at the >>>> correct level of development, constitute apparatuses of power that are >>>> distinctive in character even as they retain objects and practices that >>>> first become legible in earlier moments. One way of doing this is by >>>> considering the specific phenomena Deleuze implicates when he suggests that >>>> Foucault already identified the roots of control in disciplinary societies. >>>> >>>> In the “Postscript” Deleuze identifies two particular tendencies in the >>>> systems of management unearthed by Foucault: the first centers on the >>>> production of the individual subject through techniques of discipline, and >>>> the second addresses the biopolitical formatting of a given society as a >>>> mass delineated by statistical models and confined by thresholds or >>>> filters. Where disciplines saw “no incompatibility at all” between masses >>>> and individuals, so that signatures could stand in for the latter while >>>> lists or registers accounted for the individual’s place in a mass, control >>>> reformulates masses as “samples, data, markets, or banks” and recasts >>>> individuals as “dividuals” (1995b, 180). The resonance with Foucault’s >>>> theorization of biopolitics and biopower is marked: what are samples and >>>> data if not computational technologies for the production of the >>>> “forecasts, statistical estimates, and overall measures” that Foucault >>>> positions as emblematic of biopower (Foucault 2003, 246)? What are markets >>>> and banks if not electronically augmented examples of the “subtle, rational >>>> mechanisms” of biopolitics that include “insurance, individual and >>>> collective savings, safety measures, and so on” (Foucault 2003, 246)? What >>>> is the dividual if not the subject mapped in terms of generalized, discrete >>>> predicates (race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, age), none of which >>>> can metonymically stand in for the ‘whole’ person? How, in other words, >>>> does control differ from biopower? >>>> >>>> The proximity between Deleuze’s theorization of the cybernetic movement >>>> from masses to data and Foucault’s conceptualization of mechanisms that >>>> seek “homeostasis” (249) is registered in the odd way in which Hardt and >>>> Negri introduce the two in Empire: they write that “Foucault’s work allows >>>> us to recognize a historical, epochal passage in social forms from >>>> disciplinary society to societies of control.” (2000, 22-23), Only in the >>>> footnote to this claim do they reveal that this epochal passage is “not >>>> articulated explicitly by Foucault but remains implicit in his work,” an >>>> observation that is only guided (rather than prefigured) by “the excellent >>>> commentaries of Gilles Deleuze” (2000, 419n1). Within Foucault’s oeuvre The >>>> Birth of Biopolitics (first delivered in lecture form in 1978 and 1979; >>>> English translation 2008) might be the book in which a genealogy of control >>>> is most explicitly articulated, although it is notable that this text >>>> focuses on the imaginaries of political economists rather than those of >>>> governments. “Society Must be Defended” (delivered in lecture form in 1975 >>>> and 1976; English translation 2003) and volume I of The History of >>>> Sexuality (1976; English translation 1978), both of which center on >>>> techniques of governmentality, disclose connections between discipline, >>>> biopower, and control that make theories of linear succession unworkable. >>>> >>>> So, the identification between biopower and control appears so overt >>>> that Hardt and Negri more or less conflate the two and are able to >>>> attribute the definition of the latter to latent content in Foucault’s >>>> writings. They then make the claim that “[i]n the passage from disciplinary >>>> society to the society of control, a new paradigm of power is realized >>>> which is defined by the technologies that recognize society as the realm of >>>> biopower” (Hardt and Negri 2000, 24). So control societies come about when >>>> the ratio of biopower to discipline shifts in favor of the latter. What, >>>> then, is revealed about the historical specificity of control societies >>>> when one recognizes that Foucault locates the emergence of the techniques >>>> of biopower, in concert with those of discipline, in the eighteenth >>>> century? For this is the claim that grounds Foucault’s introduction to the >>>> concept of biopower in “Society Must be Defended,” where he states that >>>> “the two sets of mechanisms—one disciplinary and one regulatory >>>> [biopolitical]” are “not mutually exclusive, and can be articulated with >>>> each other” (2003, 250). This is restated in volume I of The History of >>>> Sexuality, in which Foucault writes that power over life evolves in “two >>>> basic forms” from the seventeenth century onwards (1978, 139). These two >>>> forms again correspond to the regimes of discipline and biopower. While the >>>> second of these appears “somewhat later” than the first, it is clear that >>>> Foucault does not theorize the two as discrete, successive developments. >>>> Nor are they theorized as “antithetical” (Foucault 1978, 139). Rather, they >>>> form “two poles of development linked together by a whole intermediary >>>> cluster of relations” (1978, 139). This diagram—two poles linked by >>>> intermediary clusters—suggests that control emerges not from a waning of >>>> disciplinary power, but rather through a shift in the articulations of >>>> discipline and biopower that is much more complex than a simple passage >>>> through which a given society becomes increasingly intelligible as >>>> graspable through the terms of the latter. Equally, although the former >>>> might appear to be organized around inclusion and exclusion and the latter >>>> around integration, thinking the two as articulated logics emphasizes a >>>> more complex relationship: biopower is organized around thresholds that >>>> render and occlude populations, while disciplinary techniques both regulate >>>> the education, productivity, and health of ‘normal’ individuals (above the >>>> threshold) and manage the bodies that fall below the line separating the >>>> normal from the abnormal, or that which should be made to live from that >>>> which can be left to die. >>>> >>>> Once so-called disciplinary societies are understood to be organized >>>> around both the ‘pure’ individualizing function of disciplinary >>>> institutions and the massifying, averaging, and sorting functions of >>>> statistical modeling and management, the historical movement from the >>>> eighteenth, and nineteenth century articulations of discipline and biopower >>>> to the phenomena Deleuze associates with control must be understood in >>>> terms of shifts in scale and conceptual emphasis. Furthermore, these shifts >>>> can be connected to the function of particular technologies, which not only >>>> facilitate specific practices of capture, representation, and management >>>> but also generate and modify the dominant conceptual bases around which >>>> social formations are imagined and normalized. Consider the following >>>> proposition, which draws together the governmental and the technological >>>> valences of control: the mutation of a regime organized around the hinged, >>>> lockable thresholds of factories, plantations, and prisons into a regime >>>> organized around logic gates and supply chain diagrams can be understood as >>>> a movement between enclosures that are larger than and that enclose, >>>> include, and exclude bodies and microscopic enclosures that are premised on >>>> logics of selection and that position non-selected beings as nonexistent or >>>> structurally invisible rather than aberrant but existent. [2] Or, consider >>>> the ways in which the necropolitical regimes identified by Achille Mbembe >>>> (2003) and the genealogical link between panopticon and slave ship that >>>> Simone Browne traces so brilliantly in Dark Matters (2015, 31-62) persist >>>> and are reframed or modulated through the shifts in articulation sketched >>>> here. [3] These articulations, modulations, and intensifications are >>>> organized around (but not determined by) technological regimes. The >>>> relationship between the individual and the dividual, for example, is >>>> intelligible as the difference between the world rendered mechanically or >>>> thermodynamically and the world rendered digitally—a shift that reframes >>>> Deleuze’s comments about the signature technologies of sovereignty, >>>> discipline, and control in epistemic terms. >>>> >>>> 2. Technology >>>> >>>> Considered in isolation, “machines don’t explain anything” (Deleuze >>>> 1995a, 175); rather, they “express the social forms capable of producing >>>> them and making use of them” (Deleuze 1995b, 180). At the same time, the >>>> “language” of discipline can be specified as “analogical,” while control >>>> operates through languages that are “digital (although not necessarily >>>> binary)” (1995b, 178). So analogue and digital, while associated with >>>> certain classes of machine, must be understood to exceed the technical >>>> registers that shape them and to function as conceptual operators within >>>> discursive-material fields (which might include systems of production, >>>> management, and regulation). With this in mind, how might one derive a >>>> non-deterministic theory of the relationship between technology, power, and >>>> economy from the control texts? This question lurks in the background of >>>> the “Postscript on Control Societies,” and it constitutes one of the most >>>> telling ways in which that text can be read as an encrypted theory of >>>> historical method as well as a diagram of a specific period. >>>> >>>> As is suggested at the end of the preceding section, the shift in scale >>>> from the door of the enclosure to the gate of the logic circuit circles >>>> around a technological development, but is also comes to undergird >>>> epistemological claims about fundamental categories such as thinking, the >>>> human, and sociality. And, as the discussion of discipline and biopolitics >>>> at the end of the preceding section suggests, the historical, >>>> concept-generating function of technology that Deleuze sketches with his >>>> claim about “collective apparatuses” impedes linear periodization by >>>> implementing a recursive temporality: specific technologies give concrete >>>> form to collective social forces that precede them, and in so doing >>>> intensify and reorient these forces, coming to function as what Hans-Jörg >>>> Rheinberger (1997) calls “epistemic things.” In other words, a specific >>>> technology might come to concretize and exemplify the abstractions >>>> undergirding a given political-economic regime, but it does so by securing >>>> or amplifying certain conceptual structures or operations that logically >>>> and historically precede it, as well as by reorienting concepts and >>>> facilitating new practices and relations that point (again, for better and >>>> worse) towards different sociopolitical arrangements. For example, as >>>> Bernhard Siegert (2012, 2015) shows, the door permits a body to pass >>>> through when it is open, thus both expressing and securing the >>>> inside/outside distinction (and, by extension, the logic of disciplinary >>>> power), whereas the logic gate permits a signal to pass through only when >>>> it is closed, thus securing a conceptual system that permits conceptual >>>> mixtures of inside and outside, and human and nonhuman, that exemplify >>>> distinctive regimes of accumulation and management. >>>> >>>> This recursive theorization of technology as product, expression, and >>>> shifter of social forces is one of the moments at which continuities >>>> between the control texts and Deleuze’s earlier collaborations with >>>> Guattari become most overt. Consider the similarities between the >>>> “collective apparatuses” of which machines form one element and the “social >>>> machine” that Deleuze and Guattari identify in their book on Kafka: >>>> >>>> a machine is never simply technical. Quite the contrary, it is >>>> technical only as a social machine, taking men and women into its gears, >>>> or, rather, having men and women as part of its gears along with things, >>>> structures, metals, materials. Even more, Kafka doesn’t think only about >>>> the conditions of alienated, mechanized labor—he knows all about that in >>>> great, intimate detail—but his genius is that he considers men and women to >>>> be part of the machine not only in their work but even more so in their >>>> adjacent activities, in their leisure, in their loves, in their >>>> protestations, in their indignations, and so on (1986, 81). >>>> >>>> This claim, which is redolent of the “social factory” thesis advanced >>>> by Mario Tronti and taken up by many subsequent writers, makes it clear >>>> that “collective apparatuses” centered on technology include concepts, >>>> systems of management, and normative ways of living as well as procedures >>>> of extraction, definition, and occlusion. The mechanical factory of >>>> “gears,” “structures,” “metals,” and “materials” is one such apparatus, and >>>> it is imbricated with specific orientations of “leisure,” “loves,” >>>> ”protestations,” and so on. What kinds of orientation center on >>>> computation? >>>> >>>> In Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic (Franklin 2015) I tracked some >>>> of the ways in which the electronic digital computer functions both as a >>>> specific device and as a source of ideas and metaphors within the shifting >>>> social and economic imaginaries of capitalism. The genealogy I posit moves >>>> through the imbrications of computation and socioeconomic imagination in >>>> Charles Babbage’s interrelated work on computing engines, theology, and >>>> political economy in the 1830s, Herman Hollerith’s tabulating machines of >>>> the 1890s, and the diffusion of computer metaphors following the emergence >>>> of the multi-discipline formation of cybernetics from the 1940s onwards. >>>> Following this, I trace some of the ways in which these imaginaries become >>>> visible in economic theories, systems of accumulation, production, and >>>> circulation, management styles, psychology (including mid-twentieth century >>>> developments in psychoanalysis and later practices such as NLP), >>>> literature, and film. Across these analyses I focus on the ways in which >>>> the articulations of human and (computing) machine, sociality and >>>> (computer) network, produce normative visions that cleave ever closer to >>>> the insistent but impossible ideal of capital as a logic that promises to >>>> integrate the entirety of the social without remainder. As I attempted to >>>> show in that book, there are a number of places in which one can look for >>>> images of the collective apparatuses fantasized under celebratory and >>>> critical accounts of control. The prehistory of computing machines and >>>> their projected applications to workplace organization, value extraction, >>>> and population management is one. The Macy Conferences of 1946-1953 are >>>> another. The TCP/IP suite and Google’s PageRank and AdSense technologies >>>> are others (Pasquinelli 2009). And production and recruitment manifestos >>>> from the Toyota Production System to the Netflix “culture code” are yet >>>> others. But one can also look to an earlier project associated more than >>>> any other with the practice of disciplinary power. >>>> >>>> Jeremy Bentham’s 1787 essay “Panopticon, or, The Inspection House” >>>> begins with a grand announcement: “Morals reformed—health >>>> preserved—industry invigorated—public burdens lighted—Economy seated, as it >>>> were, upon a rock—the gordian knot of the poor laws not cut, but untied—all >>>> by a simple idea in architecture!” Resisting the oft-repeated distinction >>>> between discipline and biopower, Bernhard Siegert takes the universality of >>>> this claim as an opportunity to locate an unexamined genealogy of >>>> digital-social technologies that, perhaps surprisingly, includes the >>>> disciplinary technologies of panopticon and penny post as well as the >>>> nascent computing machines theorized and developed by Babbage and Ada >>>> Lovelace. “The Panopticon was applicable to every kind of bio-politics,” >>>> Siegert writes of Bentham’s pronouncement, because on it, like on the penny >>>> post and the analytical engine, “contents and applications were programs >>>> that ran (or would run)” only because “such machines were blind to them” >>>> (Siegert 1999, 126-127). This leads him to a theorization of power that is >>>> compelling for thinking through the historical logic of technology that the >>>> control texts insist upon: >>>> >>>> That the machine or power became abstract, Deleuze has said, merely >>>> meant that it became programmable. But power itself became machinelike in >>>> the process. The rationality of power—functionality or >>>> universality—requires the prior standardization of the data it >>>> processes—via postage stamps or punch cards, it makes no >>>> difference…Disciplinary machine, postal machine, adding machine: after >>>> their interconnection was established, bodies, discourses, and numbers were >>>> one and the same with regard to the technology of power: data, and as such, >>>> contingent (Siegert 1999, 127). >>>> >>>> The central figure here is not enumeration but abstraction. In >>>> Siegert’s account one finds a description of the disciplinary technology >>>> par excellence in which the latter appears not as a thermodynamic machine >>>> (in line with Deleuze’s periodization) but as a digital information >>>> processor which functions through abstraction, remains structurally >>>> indifferent to the specifics of the purpose to which it is turned, and thus >>>> formats its human subjects as unmarked inputs and/or outputs. His >>>> theorization emphasizes the necessity for analyses of technology and >>>> culture to take into account the conceptual operations that both undergird >>>> and extend out of particular machines, connecting them, in often surprising >>>> ways, to past devices and practices as well as to current and future >>>> formations. >>>> >>>> Siegert does not speak of the value form in his theorization of >>>> panopticon, penny post, and computing machine as abstract machines of >>>> power, but the resonance between his account and that most central of >>>> Marxian concepts is pronounced. With this provocation in mind, the >>>> theorization of technology Deleuze sets out in the “Postscript” is >>>> suggestive of some compelling direction for the integration of media theory >>>> and history within studies of economy and governmentality. Siegert’s work >>>> on cultural techniques (2015) will prove useful here, as might the writing >>>> of Friedrich Kittler, Cornelia Vismann, Sybille Krämer, Wolfgang Ernst, >>>> Markus Krajewski, and others. Equally, Galloway’s work on François Laruelle >>>> (2014) points towards ways in which historically and geographically >>>> specific modes of thought constitute a relationship between modernity and >>>> digitality long before and far away from the electronic digital computer. >>>> Amplified through these later media-theoretical interventions, the mode of >>>> historical analysis diagrammed in the “Postscript” invites one to consider >>>> the ways in which investigations into cultural techniques, the materiality >>>> of signifying systems, the conceptual character of digitality, and the >>>> concept-generating function of technologies might intersect with analyses >>>> of capitalism in ways that can illuminate the complexities of the >>>> post-1970s period in which Marxian analysis appears both especially vital >>>> and incessantly troubled by transformations in regimes of labor, value >>>> extraction, and accumulation. >>>> >>>> 3. Economy >>>> >>>> Deleuze underscores the discursive effects of “information technologies >>>> and computers” by insisting that such devices are “deeply rooted in a >>>> mutation of capitalism” (1995b, 180). This mutation, he notes, “has been >>>> widely summarized” (1995b, 180); its effects can be seen in the movement >>>> towards the service-based, reticular ideals of production and distribution >>>> touched upon in the opening passages of this essay. As Deleuze puts it, the >>>> distinguishing features of movement results in a dispersed mode of value >>>> extraction under which the most visible Global North businesses seek to >>>> sell “services” and buy “activities,” directing their activities towards >>>> “sales or markets” rather than the production of goods (1995b, 181). These >>>> shifts constitute another vector along which one might set out a >>>> periodization theory—the movement from production to “metaproduction” >>>> (1995b, 181), or, from Fordism to post-Fordism. This shift is directly >>>> correlated to the emergence of what is often termed a neoliberal logic of >>>> competition that is theorized by scholars such as Wendy Brown as “extending >>>> and disseminating market values to all institutions and social action, even >>>> as the market itself remains a distinctive player” (Brown 2003, n.p.). As >>>> Deleuze notes, one of the outcomes of the economic shifts with which >>>> control is associated is the injection of “an inexorable rivalry presented >>>> as healthy competition, a wonderful motivation that sets individuals >>>> against each other and sets itself up in each of them, dividing each within >>>> himself” (1995b, 179). Across the pages of the “Postscript” the economic >>>> practices associated with control are said to: emerge in relation to >>>> computer technologies; function within (a mutated) capitalism; limn the >>>> contours of the dominant economic models of the day (many of which are >>>> often theorized by orthodox Marxian scholars as subsidiary or even >>>> antithetical to the production-centered tenets of capitalism); and >>>> intersect with a mode of governmentality and sense-training. That Deleuze >>>> presents these practices as part of the same historical regime shows that >>>> the economic logic that he associates with of control societies cannot be >>>> thought through without also addressing a number of other historical >>>> frames, several of which function across quite different durations and >>>> contexts. As stated at the outset, it may be that the imposition of this >>>> multi-threaded, incommensurable historical method is the real endowment >>>> passed on by Deleuze via the control texts. >>>> >>>> “Today,” Deleuze stated in a 1995 interview in Le Nouvel Observateur, >>>> “I can say I feel completely Marxist. The article I have published on the >>>> ‘society of control,’ for example, is completely Marxist, yet I write about >>>> things that Marx did not know” (1995c). If the “Postscript” is “completely >>>> Marxist” then it is remarkable for the challenges it poses to classical >>>> Marxist categories of historical analysis. Perhaps this is most overt in >>>> the theorization of spatio-temporal dispersion, the movement from the >>>> “body” of the factory to businesses that are a “soul” or “gas” (1995b, >>>> 179), the account of the movement of art away from “closed sites” and into >>>> “the open circuits of banking,” (1995b, 181), and the baleful description >>>> of “speech and communication” becoming “thoroughly permeated” by “money” >>>> (1995a, 175). Each of these phenomena resonates with recent theorizations >>>> that rest on and extend Marx’s concept of real subsumption (Marx 1994, >>>> 93-116). In Hardt and Negri’s exemplary version of such an extension, real >>>> subsumption describes nothing less than the total enclosure of society by >>>> capital. For example, they write that: >>>> >>>> [w]ith the real subsumption of society under capital…capital has become >>>> a world. Use value and all the other references to values and processes of >>>> valorization that were conceived to be outside the capitalist mode of >>>> production have progressively vanished. Subjectivity is entirely immersed >>>> in exchange and language, but that does not mean it is now pacific. >>>> Technological development based on the generalization of the communicative >>>> relationships of production is a motor of crisis, and productive general >>>> intellect is a nest of antagonisms (2000, 386). >>>> >>>> This notion of real subsumption far exceeds that found in Marx’s >>>> writing, where it describes the processes through which commodity >>>> production is restructured in order to maximize efficiency, for example by >>>> increasing the proportion of production that is automated by machinery (a >>>> process described as an increase in the organic composition of capital). >>>> [4] An outcome of this procedure is a general decrease in the surplus labor >>>> congealed in a given commodity (a process Marx describes in terms of a >>>> decrease in absolute surplus value extraction) and rising unemployment, all >>>> of which, lead to a decline in profit derived from commodity production and >>>> make it necessary for new sources of value to be sought in the sphere of >>>> reproduction. The practices and theories glossed by the term >>>> ‘neoliberalism’ might all be understood as responses to this process. The >>>> phenomena that Guy Debord theorizes in The Society of the Spectacle furnish >>>> other examples, as does the exponential growth of the tertiary (service) >>>> sector. None of these regimes of extraction are evenly distributed; >>>> participation is subject to processes of gendering and racialization, >>>> related constructions of physical and cognitive capacity, and other >>>> procedures for selecting whose attention, rationality, and affective >>>> capacities should be defined as valorizable, and in which ways. As such, >>>> the notion that real subsumption progressively integrates that which exists >>>> outside the capitalist mode of production is impossible; indeed, the clean >>>> distinction between inside and outside that would make such a movement >>>> possible is shown to be antithetical to the logic of capital. >>>> >>>> As Rosa Luxemburg writes, capitalism “depends in all respects on >>>> non-capitalist strata and social organizations existing side by side with >>>> it” (2003, 345). The essential role played by so-called ‘non-productive’ >>>> domestic labor (childbirth and child rearing, cooking cleaning) in the >>>> reproduction of labor power is perhaps the most obvious example of this. >>>> With this in mind, for real subsumption to be functional in concert with >>>> any periodization theory the notion of a process through which capital in >>>> all senses encircles “the world” must be replaced with specific, >>>> materialist examinations of the dynamics of inside and outside, >>>> representation and occlusion, and integration and suspension that are >>>> imbricated with the transformations collected under the ideas of >>>> post-industrial or post-Fordist production. In the “fully Marxist” pages of >>>> the “Postscript” Deleuze insists that one account for both sides of this >>>> dialectic: on the one hand, he tracks the shifts in labor relations and >>>> accumulation detailed above (e.g. in the shift from the factory to the >>>> business, from goods to services, and so on); on the other hand, he makes >>>> it clear that the forms of dispersal and modulation that characterize these >>>> shifts are secured against the “three quarters of humanity in extreme >>>> poverty, too poor to have debts and too numerous to be confined” (1995b, >>>> 181). Extending this relation beyond Deleuze’s sketch, today one might >>>> observe that racialized and gendered surplus populations serve as proxy, >>>> object, or raw material within some of the newer modes of accumulation, >>>> from the “commodified life” of inmates in private prisons and detention >>>> centers (Tadiar 2012) to the forms of service, surrogacy, and outsourced >>>> labor that are understood not to generate value directly but to facilitate >>>> the valorization and reproduction of other, more directly valorizable lives >>>> (Vora 2015). >>>> >>>> In the end, it is this dialectical, materialist impulse that grounds >>>> the movement between ‘clean’ periodization and the coexistence of unmatched >>>> and even conflicting areas of inquiry within the “Postscript.” Tracking the >>>> techniques and technologies of dispersed sovereignty, mapping the >>>> affordances and discursive implications of computing machines, and >>>> itemizing the emerging dynamics of an economy without commodities are all >>>> necessary endeavors. But the analysis of sociopolitical distribution must >>>> take into account the persistence of violent corralling, much of which now >>>> operates through for-profit providers and the legal and discursive framing >>>> of prisoners and detainees as nonhuman. The analysis of computer media must >>>> remain attentive to the historicity and materiality of devices, their >>>> users, and the people that labor, often precariously and in deleterious >>>> conditions, to produce them; it must also address the ways in which all of >>>> these are abstracted, in the same way but with quite different >>>> implications, by the cultural and technical operations of the media in >>>> question. And, for now at least, the analysis of ‘immaterial’ economic >>>> formations must think these relations in relation to the persistence of >>>> older modes and against newer but less widely discussed methods for the >>>> violent extraction of value from human life, many of which are also >>>> presented as services. The radical promise of periodization lies in its >>>> capacity to provisionally impose a set of historical markers against which >>>> one can 1) capture and measure interactions between abstractions and >>>> concrete sociality while also 2) registering the ways in which those >>>> interactions produce a surplus that exceeds or is too faint to register >>>> within those markers. Since abstraction, capture, and measuring are >>>> themselves expressions of the social relations whose changing articulations >>>> are registered in the passage designated as that from discipline to >>>> control, the impossibility of absolutely clean periodization is as >>>> important as—and registers the critical value of—the diagnostic utility >>>> that periodization affords. >>>> >>>> ------------------------------------------------------- >>>> >>>> Seb Franklin is Lecturer in Contemporary Literature at King’s College >>>> London, where he co-convenes the MA in Contemporary Literature, Culture, >>>> and Theory. He is the author of Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic (MIT >>>> Press, 2015). >>>> >>>> Notes >>>> >>>> [1] It is possible to identify a larger archive of texts that, while >>>> not naming control as such, certainly examine the same historical >>>> tendencies; see the chapter “7000 B.C.: Apparatus of Capture” (Deleuze and >>>> Guattari 1987, 424-473) and the appendix to (Deleuze 1999, 102-110). >>>> >>>> [2] This argument can be extended to other discursive formations that >>>> operate in the present. For example, one can follow Jord/ana Rosenberg and >>>> take the molecule rather than the logic gate as the exemplary epistemic >>>> object in order to examine a different valence of the contemporary moment >>>> (Rosenberg 2014). >>>> >>>> [3] On the systemic practice and occlusion of slavery in supply chains >>>> see http://eureka.sbs.ox.ac.uk/5847/1/REVISED_MSSCaproofed1format.pdf >>>> >>>> [4] For a rigorous account of real subsumption as it pertains to >>>> periodization see (Endnotes 2010). >>>> >>>> References >>>> >>>> Brown, Wendy. 2003. “Neo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy.” >>>> Theory and Event 7:1. >>>> >>>> Browne, Simone. 2015. Dark Matters: on the Surveillance of Blackness. >>>> Durham, NC: Duke University Press. >>>> >>>> Bentham, Jeremy. 1843. “Panopticon, or, the Inspection-House,” in The >>>> Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. 4. Edinburgh: William Tait. >>>> >>>> Deleuze, Gilles. 1995a. “Control and Becoming,” in Negotiations, trans. >>>> Martin Joughin. New York: Columbia University Press. >>>> >>>> Deleuze, Gilles. 1995b. “Postscript on Control Societies,” in >>>> Negotiations, trans. Martin Joughin. New York: Columbia University Press. >>>> >>>> Deleuze, Gilles. 1995c. “Le ‘Je me souviens’ de Gilles Deleuze,” Le >>>> Nouvel Observateur, 16-22 November. >>>> >>>> Deleuze, Gilles. 1998. “Having an Idea in Cinema,” trans. Eleanor >>>> Kaufman, in Deleuze and Guattari: New Mappings in Politics, Philosophy, and >>>> Culture, ed. Eleanor Kaufman and Kevin Jon Heller. Minneapolis: University >>>> of Minnesota Press. >>>> >>>> Deleuze, Gilles. 1995. Foucualt, trans. Seán Hand. London: Continuum. >>>> >>>> Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1986. Kafka: Toward a Minor >>>> Literature, trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota >>>> Press. >>>> >>>> Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus, trans. >>>> Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. >>>> >>>> Endnotes. 2010. “The History of Subsumption,” Endnotes 2. >>>> >>>> Foucault, Michel. 1978. The History of Sexuality, Volume I, trans. >>>> Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books. >>>> >>>> Foucault, Michel. 2003. “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the >>>> Collège de France 1975-1976, trans. David Macey. London: Allen Lane. >>>> >>>> Foucault, Michel. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the >>>> Collège de France 1978-1979, trans. Graham Burchell. London: Palgrave >>>> Macmillan. >>>> >>>> Franklin, Seb. 2015. Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic. Cambridge, >>>> MA: MIT Press. >>>> >>>> Galloway, Alexander R. 2004. Protocol: How Control Exists After >>>> Decentralization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. >>>> >>>> Galloway, Alexander R. 2014. Laruelle: Against the Digital. >>>> Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. >>>> >>>> Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. 2000. Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard >>>> University Press. >>>> >>>> Jameson, Fredric. 1991. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late >>>> Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. >>>> >>>> Luxemburg, Rosa. 2003. The Accumulation of Capital, trans. Agnes >>>> Schwarzschild. London, New York: Routledge. >>>> >>>> Marx, Karl. 1996. Capital, Vol. 1, trans. Richard Dixon, in Karl Marx >>>> Frederick Engels Collected Works, Vol. 35. London; Lawrence and Wishart. >>>> >>>> Marx, Karl. 1994. Economic Manuscript of 1861-63, trans, Ben Fowkes, in >>>> Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected Works, Vol. 34. London; Lawrence and >>>> Wishart. >>>> >>>> Mbembe, Achille. 2003. “Necropolitics,” trans. Libby Meintjes, Public >>>> Culture 15:1. >>>> >>>> Pasquinelli, Matteo. 2009. “Google’s PageRank Algorithm: A Diagram of >>>> Cognitive Capitalism and the Rentier of the Common Intellect,” in Deep >>>> Search, ed. Konrad Becker, Felix Stalder. London: Transaction Publishers. >>>> >>>> Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. 1997. Towards a History of Epistemic Things: >>>> Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube. Stanford, CA: Stanford University >>>> Press. >>>> >>>> Rosenberg, Jordana. 2014. “The Molecularization of Sexuality,” Theory >>>> and Event 17:2. >>>> >>>> Siegert, Bernhard. 1999. Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal >>>> System, trans. Kevin Repp. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. >>>> >>>> Siegert, Bernhard. 2012. “Doors: On the Materiality of the Symbolic,” >>>> trans. John Durham Peters, Grey Room 47. >>>> >>>> Siegert, Bernhard. 2015. Cultural Techniques: Grids, Filters, Doors, >>>> and Other Articulations of the Real, trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young. New >>>> York: Fordham University Press. >>>> >>>> Tadiar, Neferti X.M. 2012. “Life-Times in Fate Playing,” South Atlantic >>>> Quarterly 111:4. >>>> >>>> Vora, Kalindi. 2015. Life Support: Biocapital and the New History of >>>> Outsourced Labor. 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