I

I
I

The Global Society of Control

, Michael Hardt

Deleuze tells us that the society we live in today IS a society of

control, a term that he borrows from the paranoid world ofWilliam
Burroughs. Deleuze claims to be following Foucault in this insight,
but I must admit it is difficult to find anywhere in Foucault's opus
(the books, essays, or interviews) a clear expression of the passage
from disciplinary society to the society of control. In effect, with
the announcement of this passage Deleuze is articula:ti~g after
~oucault's~eath an idea that he finds inarticulate or unantkflated
III Foucault s work. . ' ,I ,i
-~"~-DeleT1Ze'S aroclliauonofthis idea,l:i6Wever, IS itself veny me'ager
-the essay is nOII\?re than five',p';lges long) He really tel~s us
very little about the society of",~ontrol. In effect he says that the
institutions that constituted di~ciplinary society-the school, the
family, the hospital, the prison, the factory-" are all today every-
where in crisis. The walls of the institutions are breaking down in
, such a way that their disciplinary logics do not become ineffective
but are rather generalized in fluid forms across the social field.
The striated space of the institutions of disciplinary society gives
way to the smooth space of the society of control. Or, according
to Deleuze's beautiful image, the structured tunnels of the mole
are replaced by the infinite undulations of the snake. Whereas
disciplinary society forged fluid, distinct castings, the society of
control functions through flexible, modulating networks, "like a
self-deforming cast that changes continually, from one instant to

DiscO'UTSe, 20.3, Fall1998, pp. 139-152. Copyright by 1998 Wayne State University Press,
Detroit, Michigan 48201-1309.
,I!T!H '" r'-:--"-, ,-, ;-'-;i'?:,,~,: _,...'.,--:: -.: ,,,_<?-,,.~. ,;", -c.

~
,m()ill. . Discourse 20.3
Illl .::
~ , ,I
'~~l #ext, or like a sieve whose pattern changes from one point to
the''tiext. "2
. . ::'What Deleuze gives us, in effect, is a simple image of this
'passage, certainly a beautiful and poetic image, but one that is not
artic~latedenough to allow us to grasp this new form of society. The
task ~f articulating this image remains a task for us to accomplish,
,land 1 think the best way to do that is to link it in relation to a
iiseries of other passages that have been proposed as characterizing
contemporary society. I Will try to elaborate the nature of this
passage, then,by posingits relation to the passage from modern to
posnnodern society expressed in the work ofauthors such as Fredric
Jame~on, the end of history described by Francis Fukuyama, and
the ,changing form that racism takes in our societies according. to
Etidnne Balibar and others. Above all, though, I want to situate the
RasJage Deleuze speaks of in terms of ~o passages that Antonio
,l'tJegri and I have been trying to elaborate in the last few years:
't~~e; first is what we call the Withering of civil society, which like
'.t; r~f'.'.g. assage towa:d the society.of ~on.tro~ refers to the decline. of the
~.e ,~atoryfunctionsofthe social mstitutions; and the second IS what
:'I#;;all the passage fr~m imperi~ism, which was perfected p~m~ly
r ,! ~e ~uropean ,nation-States m the quest for global dommation,
II,
I

fro plre, today s w~rld orde:. I~ ?ther words, when we speak of

,t!,' Ire we are refernng to a Jundlcal form and a form of power
li thk1is very different from the old European imperialisms. On one
'ha;tid, according to the ancient Greco-Roman tradition; Empire is a
i notion of universal power, a notion ofworld order that has perha~s
. '~e~1 ~~~~: ~~~e~:~tht:~~:~~~~~j~~;::~~~:~:~~::~:~n- nnn _
hat~le in general-or in Foucault's terms we might say that Empire
i is the fully realized regime ofbiopower. I would like to suggest, then,
! that the social form of this new Empire that we are living today is
the global society of control.

There Is No More Outside

The passage from disciplinary society to the society of control is

: :h~racterized first of ail by the collapse of the walls that defined the
II 'stitutions. There is progressively less distinction, in other words,
i.: .. er..
,een inside and out$ide. This is really part of a general change
" ifheway that power marks space in the passage from modernity
II !'I'OSt1Ilbdernity. Modern sovereignty has always been conceived
!! :~rms of a (real or imagined) territory and the relation of that
I

, ~,::r,:Wtory to its outside. Early modern social theorists, for example,

f I!'. ';.1
."f,
. 'f.
 .' ,,"',; ~. , ;/,:,:,,-,~:_., ..,;.

from Hobbes to Rousseau, understood the civil order as a limited

and interior space that is opposed or contrasted to the external .
order of nature. The bounded space of civil order, its place, is
defined by its separation from the external spaces of nature. In an
analogous fashion, the theorists of modern psychology understood
drives, passions, instincts, and the unconscious 'metaphorically in
spatial terms as an outside within the human mind, a continuation
of nature deep within us. Here the sovereignty of the Self rests on
a dialectical relation between the natural order of drives and the
ciVil order of reason or consciousness. Finally, modern anthropol-
ogy's various discourses on primitive societies often function as the
outside that defines the bounds of the civil world. The process of
modernization, then, in all these varied contexts, is the internaliza-
tion of the outside, that is, the civilization of nature.
In the postmodern world, however, this dialectic between inside
and outside, between the civil order and the natural order, has CoW~
to an end. This is one precise sense in which the contemp or3 t
world is postmodern. "Postmodernism," Fredric Jameson tells ~,
"is what you have when the modernization process is comp~ete d
nature is gone for good."3 Certainly we continue to have forests
and crickets and thunderstorms in our world, and we continue to
understand our psyches as driven by natural instincts and passions,
but we have no nature in the sense that these forces and phenomena
are no longer understood as outside, that is, they are not seen as
original and independent of the artifice of the civil order. In a
postmodern world all phenomena and forces are artificial, or as
---some-mfght say, -partor-history. tlie-irio(ret~(fiaIecticof inside-.illif------
outside has been replaced by a pl<}.y of degrees and intensities, of
hybridity and artificiality. "',
Secondly, the outs~de has also declined in terms of a rather
different modern dialectic that defined the relation between pub-
lic and private in liberal political theory. The public spaces of
modern society, which constitute the place of liberal politics, tend
to disappear in the postmodern world. According to the liberal
tradition, the modern individual, at home in its private spaces,
regards the public as its outside. The outside is the place proper
to politics, where the action of the individual is exposed in the
presence of others and there seeks recognition. In the procesiS of
postmodernization, however, such public spaces are increasi~ y
becorning privatized. The urban landscape is shifting from t e .
modern focus on the common square and the public encoun d:! I
to the closed spaces of malls, freeways, and gated communities.' .
The architecture and urban planning of megalopolises such as
Los Angeles and Sao Paulo have tended to limit public access
 Discourse 20.3

iJhd interaction as well as limited chance encounters of different

, !~ridal subjects, creating rather a series of protected interior and
! ; solate4 spac~s. Alternatively, consid:r how ~e banlieu of Paris has

! I: ~co~e asenes of amorph~us and. mdefimte space~ th~t promo~e

, ~s91a~on rather than any mteractIOn or commumcatlOn. Pubhc
:spac5 has beenprivatize~to such.an ~xte?t that it no lo~ger~akes
[S9 se!to understand SOCIal orgamzatlOn m terms of a dIaleCtIC be-
!t\f ,en private and public spaces, between inside and outside. The
n
! I ",
l. 'i: Of. modern liberal politics has disappeared and thus from this
our postmodern and imperial society is characterized by a .
, . ,
; t: tofthe political. In effect, the place of politics has been de-
a. "'~I .,'ze&
,; ';, :~,l"j this ~egard, Guy D~bord's an~~sis of the society of the
, !:s ''I: de, thIrty years after Its cOmpOSItIon, seems ever more apt
'I ,",' "gent. 4 In postmodern society the spectacle is a virtual place,
, lo"Mi,,' e accurately, a non-place of politics. The spectacle is at once
,uni~':danddiffuse in such a way that it is impossible to distinguish
any inside from outside-the natural from the social, the private
,from te pUb~ic. The liberal notion o.fthe public, the pl~ce oUr:'ide
,'where e act m the presence of others, has been both umversalized
: (becase weare always now under the gaze of others, monitored
, I, ~y safety cameras) and sublimated or de-actualized in the virtual
,I spaces of the spectacle. The end of the outside is the end of liberal
I politics. .
'Fi~ally,from the perspective of Empire, or rather from that of
tl;te cOfltemporary world order, there is no longer an outside also
i~ irFatpirdsense, a prope'i-Iy military-sense. When Francis Fukuyama------
, eta.iuts ~at the contemporary historicalpas~ageis d~fined by the
Ie: d:?f hIstory, he means that the era of major conflICts has come
: t . 'an end: in other words, sovereign power will no longer con-
f1)nt its Other, it will no longer face its outside, but rather pro-
i ,';s~ivelyexpand
I.. ;
its boundaries to envelop the entire globe as its
, I ,; r domain. 5 The history of imperialist, interimperialist, and
I' i i . ' - , perialist wars is over: The end of that history has ushered
I: i~1 , i ~ireign of pea~e. Or reall!, we ~ave en~ered ~e era of mi~or
I

, ": i ,: ternal conflICts. Every Impenal war IS a CIVIl war, a pohce

. I : . '

: <l :,., : -from Los Angeles and Granada to Mogadishu and Sarajevo.
, ,W fl, 't, the separation of tasks between the external and internal
'~r.of power (between the army and the police, the CIA and the
" :fBI)is increasingly vague and indeterminate.
:' In our terms the end of history that Fukuyama refers to is the
.:I ~nd th~ crisis at the center of ~odernity,~e co~:rent and defin-
of
mg c~nfhct that was the foundatIon and raison d etre for modern
';,,0'<:- . ,.,. ..~ ,.., . ,...",".,; ,:.>,~, _<,......:. . .

F4'~N)fi8

sovereignty. History has ended precisely and only to the extent that
it is conceived in Hegelian terms-as the movement ofa dialectic
, of contradictions, a play of absolute negations and subsumption.
The binaries that defined modern conflict have become blurred.
The Other that might delimit a sovereignSe1fhas become fractured
and indistinct, and there is no longer an outside that can bound the
place ofsovereign ty. At one point in the ColdWar, in an exaggerated
version of the crisis of modernity, every enemy imaginable (from
.women's garden clubs and Hollywood films to national liberation' .
movements) could be identified as communist, that is, part of the 1
unified enemy. The outside is what gave the crisis of the modern
and imperialist world its coherence. Today it is increasingly difficult
for the ideologues ofthe United States to name the enemy, or rather
there seem to be minor and elusive enemies everywhere. 6 The end
of the crisis of modernity has given rise to a proliferation of minor
and indefinite crises in the iinperial society of control, or as we
prefer, to an omni-erisis.
It is useful to remember here that the capitalist market is
one machine that has always run counter to any division between
inside and outside. The capitalist market is thwarted by exclusions
and it thrives by including always increasing numbers within its
sphere. Profit can only be generated through contact, engagement,
interchange, and commerce. The realization of the world market
would constitute the point of arrival of this tendency. In its ideal
form there is no outside to the world market: the entire globe is its
domain.'LWe--might-llse--the- fO-F-m0f--the--woFld---maFket--as-a--mode~'
for understanding the form of.... imperial..
sovetc:;ignty in its entirety.
' . '

Perhaps, just as Foucault recognized the ~opticon as the diagram

of modern power and disciplinary society, the world market migh~
serve adequately (even though it is not an architecture; it is really art
anti-architecture) as the diagram of imperial power and the society
of control. 8 ' ,
The striated space of modernity constructs places that are con-
tinually engaged in and founded on a dialectical play with their
outsides. The space of imperial sovereignty, in contrast, is smooth.
It might appear that it is free of the binary divisions of modern
boundaries, or striation, but really it is criss-crossed by so many fault
lines that it only appears as a co:iltimious, uniform space. In this
sense, the'clearly defined crisis of modernity gives way to an omni- .
crisis in the imperial framework. In this smooth space of empire,
there is no place of power - it is both everywhere and nowhere. The
empire is an u-topos, or rather a non-place.
 Discourse 20.3

. j
;
Imperial Racism .
, ,

I Ii
"
' .
,i: The end of the outside, which characterizes the passage from
Iii
I's~iplinary society to the society of control, certainly shows one of
i 11"~'~cesin the shifting configurations of racism and alterity in our
ir
,I ,':i I~i : ties . W~ sho~d note first of al~ that it has ?ecome increasingly
I!lf:lfult to Identify the general hnes of raCIsm. In fact, we are
, Fo~'tinually told by ~oliticians, the ,media, and eve? ~istorians that
raF~sm has progressIvely receded III modern socIetIes-from the
'. end of slavery to decolonization struggles and civil rights move-
, ments. Certain specific traditional practices of racism have un-
dou~tedlY declined and one might be tempted to view the end
of t e Apartheid laws in South Mrica as the symbolic close of an
.enti .e era of racial segregation. From our perspective, however,
it is clear on the contrary that racism has not receded, but ac-
tually progressed in the contemporary world, both in extent and
iIite~sity. It appears to have declined only because its form and
strategies have changed. If we take manichean divisions between
I inside an~ o~tsi~e and exclusionary pr~ctices (in So~th Afric~, in
;th colomal CIty, III the Southeastern Umted States, or III PalestIne)
as e paradigm of modern racisms, we must now ask what is the

fcontrol. .
"I II Many analysts describe this passage as a shift in the dominant

:h~oretical form of racism, from a racist theory based on biology

'd>1;one based on culture. The dominant modem racist theory and
I ,'I' ~~jconcomifanT pfactfces of segregation:-are~cefilerea on essentlar- .---- - .
.!" j ": l~fogical differences among races. Blood and genes stand behind
II~b~i differences in skin color as the real substance of racial differ-
iln(~e. Subordinated peoples are thus conceived (at least implicitly)
I, aN~ther than human, as a different order of being. Indeed we can,

tWibk of numerous instances of colonialist discourse that describe

n~tives using animal attributes, as not quite human, as being of a
dif1:r.e.nt nature. These m.odern racist theories grounded in biol-
ogy imply or tend towards an ontological difference-a necessary,
ete nal; and immutable rift in the order of being. In response to
this theoretical position, then, modern anti-racism positions itself
againstthe notion of biologicalessentialism, and insists that differ-
ences among the races are constituted instead by social and cultural
forc,es. These modern antiracist theorists operate on the belief
that social constructivism will free us from the straightjacket of
biological determinism: if our differences are socially and culturally
d~termined, according to this idea, then all humans are in principle
, I equal, of one ontological order, of one nature. .
I I
 The paSsage to Empire, however, the passage to the societY 'f
control, to postmodemity, has brought a shift in the dominant l' .. I
of racist theory so that biological differences have been replac ~ i
by sociological and cultural signifiers as the key representation :of
racial hatred and fear. In this way imperial racist theory attacks
modem anti-racism from the rear, and actually coopts and enlists its
.arguments. Imperial racist theory agrees that races do not constitute
isolable biological units and that nature cannot be divided. into
different human races. It also agrees that the behavior ofindividuals
and their abilities or aptitudes are not the result of their blood or
even their genes, but are due to their belonging to different his-
torically determined cultures (21). 9 Differences are thus not fixed
and immutable but contingent effects ofsocial history. Postmodern
racist theory and modem anti-racist theory are really saying very
much the same thing, and it is difficult in this regard to tell them
apart. In fact, it is precisely because this relativist and culturalist
argumentis assumed to be necessarily anti-racist that the dominant
ideology of our entire society today appears to be against racism,
and that postmodem racist theory appears not to be racist at all.
We should look more closely, however, at how imperial racist
theory operates. Etienne Balibar calls the new racism a differential-
ist racism, a racism without race, or more precisely, a racism that
does not rest on a biological concept of race. Although biology is .
abandoned as the foundation and support, he says, culture is niaJe .
to fill the role that biology had played.l O We are accustomedll~!l 1
~
thinking that nature
___ _ . ... __
~ ~ ..
~_....---. ~
and biology are fixed and immutable,
'_ --------.....- -------.--. .
but
.
that!
t
.---- cUlture is plasuc and fluid: cultures can change historically and mix
to form infinite hybrids. Th~re is ,!.limit t6~tPe flexibility ofcultures,
however, in postmodern racisttheory:.'i)ifferences between cultures
and traditions are, in the final analysis, insurmountable. It is futile
and even dangerous, according to this postmodern theory, to allow
or insist that cultures mix: Serbs and Croats, Hutus and Tutzis,
African-Americans and Korean-Americans must remain separate.
The cultural position is no less "essentialist" than a biological one
as a theory of social difference, or at least it establishes an equally
strong theoretical ground for social separation and segregation.
This is a properly pluralist theoretical position: all cultural identities
are equal in principle. This pluralism accepts all the differences of
who we are as long as we agree to act on the basis of these differences
ofidentity and thus preserve them as contingent, perhaps, but quite
persistent markers ofsocial separation. The theoretical substitution
of culture for race or biology is thus transformed paradoxically into
a theory of the preservation oftace. This shift in racist theory shows
us how the imperial and postmodern theory of the society of control
 Ulscourse U.:J
!i'[19"
I III' 1f"1
"
_'ah jbpt what is traditionally thought to be an anti-racist position
l<tPat is,_ a pluralist position against all necessary markers of racial
xclusi~n) and still maintain a strong principle ofsocial separation.
Wel.should be careful to note at this point that imperial racist
~eory ,of the society of control is a theory of segregation, not a
1,t1fe.'ory of hierarchy. Whereas modern racist theory poses a hier-
'iatfhY among the races as the fundamental condition that makes
I!:egregation necessary, imperial theory has nothing to say about
: hesup~riority or inferiority of different races or ethnic groups in
I rinciple. It regards that as purely contingent, a practical matter.
, ~nl o~er w.<;>rds, racial hierarchy is viewed not as cause but effect of
~ocialicircumstances.For example, African-American students ina
~e'rta.iP region register consistently lower scores on aptitude tests
ill I tAsian-American students. Imperial theory understands this as
du,J riot to any necessary racial inferiority but rather to cultural
:l':.: ,
*nces: Asian-American culture places higher importance on
I !, 'tion, encourages students to study in groups, and so forth.
I it :, "i'Trarchy of t~e different races ~s determine~only a P?steriori,
k,'!, ,I: ect of theIr cultures-that IS, on the baSIS of theIr perfor-
.P I,: ' J According to imperial theory, then, racial supremacy and
, s' p;, ination is not a theoretical question, but arises through free
: i c~, : ~ i~tion, a ~nd of market meritocracy of eul~re. _
'i: ,I' 'CISt practIce, of course, does not necessanly correspond to
o

;the self-understandings ofracist theory, which is all we have consid-

'Ieted~t to this point. It is clear from what we have seen, however,

.:~~~\;~~;;;~;,~;-~~_~:~~~i~~~~~~~:;~o~~C~;;~~:~~~~'~:<f~
i ~~as Seen as grounding the modern practices of racial exclusion.
': ccordingto Deleuze and Guattari, though, "European racism ...
'I Has never- operated by exclusion, or by the designation of some-
, oIieas Other.... Racism operates by the determination of degrees
of devi'ance in relation to the White-Man face, which endeavors
tq integrate nonconforming traits into increasingly eccentric and
I ~Ck'fard waves.... From the viewpoint of racism, there is no ex-
- 'It~ri~f' there are no people on the outside."l1 De1euze and Guattari
,e I ~nge us, in effect, to conceive racist practice not in terms of
'ei ,lu'sion but as a strategy of differential inclusion. No identity is
, i' ated as Other, no one is excluded from the domain, there is
r; 0: tside. Just as postInodern racist theory cannot pose as a point
, ,:, parture any' essential differences among human races, post-
,t: n r~cist practice cannot.begin by an exclusion of the ra~ial
1_

I'!jf' ::WhIte supremacy functIons rather through first engagmg

':~ ,'.r I and then s~bordinati~gdifferen.ces accordi~g to degrees.of
d" ' ce from whIteness. This has nothing to do WIth xenophobIa,
_ r! I :
 the hatred and fear of the unknown barbarian. It is a hatred born
in proximity and elaborated through the degrees of difference of
the neighbor.
This is not to say that our societIes are devoid of racial exclu-
sions-certainly they are criss-crossed with numerous lines of racial
barriers, across each urban landscape and across the globe. The .
point, rather, is that racial exclusion arises generally as a result
of differential inclusion. In other words, it would be a mistake
today, and perhaps is also misleading when considering the past,
to pose the Apartheid or Jim Crow laws as the paradigm of racial
hierarchy. Difference is not written in law, and the imposition of
alterity does not go to the extreme of Otherness. Empire does
not think differences in absolute terms-it poses racial differences
neYer .as a difference of nature but always adifference of degree,
never as necessary but always accidental. Subordination is enacted .[
in regimes of everyday practices that are more mobile and flexible I
. but that create racial hierarchies that are nonetheless stable and;
brutal.
The form and strategies ofpostmodern racism in the society of
control help to higWight the contrast between modern and imperial
sovereignty more generally. Colonial racism, the racism of modern
sovereignty, first pushes difference to the extreme and then in a
second moment recuperates the Other as negative foundation of
"the Self. The modern construction ofa people is in timately involved
in this operation. A people is defined not only in terms of a shared
past and common desires or potential, but primarily in dialectical
. -raafioiiloifS-otl1et;itsoiItside~-*people'(whetherdiasporicornot)- .
is always defined in terms ofaplace (b_e it vir"fit(\l Or actual) . Imperial
order, in contrast, has nothing to do "Mtb this dialectic. Imperial
racism, or differential racism, in the society of control integrates
others with its order and then orchestrates those differences in
a system of control. Fixed and biological notions of peoples thus
tend to dissolve into a fluid and amorphous multitude, which is
of course shot through with lines of conflict and antagonism but
none which appear as fixed and eternal boundaries. The surface of
the imperial society of control continuously shifts in such a w<l;y
that it dest~bilizes any notio~ of place. T~e central mom~nt ~f I
"modem raCism takes place on Its boundary, III the global antIthesI~ i
between inside and outside. As Du Bois said nearly 100 years ago!
the problem of the 20th century is the problem ofthe color.line;
Imperial racism, on the other hand, looking forward perhaps to the
next century, rests rather on the play of differences and the man-
agement of microconflictualities within its continually expanding
domain. "
 ,
To many across the world, of course, the racial relativism of
Empire and its first movement of Universal inclusion is itself threat-
ening. Being outside provides a certain protection and autonomy.
, In this sense, the rise of various discourses of essential and original
I racial or ethnic difference may be seen as a defensive reaction to
! imperial inclusion. The rise of Confusionism in China or religious
i fundamentalisms in the United St~tes and the Arab world all cast
the identity of the group as founded on ancient origins and finally
incommensurable with the outside. world. The ethnic conflicts in
Rwanda, the Balkans, and even the I
Middle' East are commonly .
it understood as a reemergence of irrepressible and irreconcilable
,rlancientalterities. From our perspective, of course, these differences
~. and conflicts cannot be understood in the context of any ancient
~, origins but only by situating them ~thin the present imperial con-
IIil figuration. Empire will accept th. e raci al and ethnic di ferences it
II . .
" lincls and put them to work; it will stfnd by observing these conflicts
and intervene when adjustment is necessary. Any attempt to remain
Other to Empire will be futile. It feeds on alterity, relativizing it and
Imanaging it. . . '
,
i
I
---ontlieGeneration and COliruption of Subjectivity
. I
The progressive lack of distincqon between inside and outside
in the passage from disciplinary society to the society of control,
has important implications for the i form of the social production
lufsubje-ctiviry:0neorthe centraniliain6Sl cornmon lhesesuof the
institutional analyses of modern social theory is that subjectivity .
is' not pre-given and original but at least to some degree formed
in the field of social-forces. The subjectivities that interact on the
sodal plane are themselves substantially created by society. In this
1.1 sense, these institutional analyses bave progressively emptied out
, any notion of a presocial subjectivity; rather the production of
! . subjectivity is rooted firmly in the ~nctioning of the major social
:I~j institutions, such as the prison, tr~e family, the factory, and the
,i school. Two aspects of this production process should be high-
hi lighted. First, subjectivity is not regarded as something fixed or
" given. It is a constant process of generation. When the boss hails
you on the shopfloor, or the gradeschool principle hails you in
the school corridor a subjectivity is formed. The material practices
! set out for the subject in the context of the institution (be they

kneeling down to pray or changing hundreds of diapers) are the

.production process of its own subj<'jctivity. In a reflexive, way, then,
through its own actions the subject is acted on, generated. Second,
the institutions provide above all a discrete place (the home, the
chapel, the classroom, the shopfloor). where the production of
subjectivity is enacted. The various institutions of modern society
should be viewed as an archipelago offactories ofsubjectivity. In the
course of a life, an individual passes linearly into and outof these
various institutions (from the school to the barracks to the factory)
and is formed by them. Each institution has its own rules an~ logics
of subjectivation: "School tells us: 'You're not at home an~'r.).rrF.i.;
the army tells us: 'You're not in school anymore.',"12 On thetlier
hand, within the walls of each institution the individual is a' le~st
partially shielded from the forces of the other institutions-In th~
convent one is normally safe from the apparatus of the family,
at home one is normally out of reach of factory discipline. The
relation between inside and outside is central to the functioning
of the modern institutions. In effect, the clearly delimited place of
the institutions is reflected in the regular and fixed form of the
subjectivities produced.
In the passage to the society of control, the first aspect of the
modern disciplinary condition is. certainly still the case, that is,
subjectivities are still produced in the social factory. In fact, the
social institutions produce subjectivity in an ever more intense
way. We might say that postmodernism is what you have when
the modern theory of social constructivism is taken to its extreme
and all subjectivity is recognized as artificial. The passage, then,
is not one of opposition but rather of intensification. As we said
e(lfli.~~, .th~.~~Il.!<;.IJ1P().r'yqI!Of..th~ imJjJl1tion~IDeans. thauhe.
enclosures that used to define the lil11~ted space of the institutions
have broken down so that the--logic th:aronce functioned primarily
within the institutional walls nOW""spreads across the entirtt social
terrain. We should note, however, that this omni-crisis oftIie ansti-
tutions looks verydifferent i~ different case.s. In the un.ited$.llate~.'
for example, there ate contmually decreasmg proporUons pf ~ne
population involved in the nuclear family while steadily incr~ashlg
proportions are confined to prisons. Both institutions, though, tHe
nuclear family and the prison, can be said to be equally everywhere
in crisis, in the sense that the place of their effectivity is increasingly
undefined. The walls of the institutions are breaking down so that
inside and outside become indistinguishable. One should not think
. that the crisis of the nuclear family has brought a decline in the .
forces of patriarchy-on the contrary, discourses and practices of
"familyvalues" seem to be everywhere across the social field. The old
feminist slogan "the personal is political" has been reversed in such
a way that the boundaries between public and private have been
fractured. unleashin!! circuits of control throug:hout the "intimate
 JPublic sphere. "13 The' crisis of the prison too means that carceral
ibgics and techniques have increasingly spread to other domains
~f society. The production of subjectivity in the imperial society of
control tends to be not limited to any specific places. One is always
still in the family, always still in school, always still in prison, and
so forth. In the general breakdown, then, the functioning of the
institutions is both more intensive and more extensive. The institu-
tions work even though they break down-and perhaps they work
all the better the more they break down. Their logics pass in waves
of intensity across undulating social surfaces. The indefinacy of the
place of the production corresponds to the indeterminacy of the
form of the subjectivities produced. The imperial social institutions
of control might be seen then in a fluid process of the generation
and corruption of subjectivity.
'II Control is thus an intensification and generalization of disci-

'I "pline, when the boundaries of the institutions have been breached,
:'corrupted, so that there is no longer a distinction between inside
i,i~md outside. The Ideological State Apparatusses should also be
:111 ~ecog~iied as ope.r~~ng in the society of co~trol,.perhaps with more

pntenslty and fleXIbilIty that Althusser ever Imagmed. "

I , ' This passage is not isolated to the most economically advanced

and powerful countries;"cbut tends to be generalized to different

~
egrees aeros,,s the world. The apologia of colonial administration
ways involved its establishment of social and political institutions
'n the colonies. Today's noncolonial forms of domination equally
__iIly~lvt:. t!J:!:_~~~?~.!_ o(~~.!'_~i~}l_ti?Il~: :p!enP~?je~_~?~poli_~~a.! .n:o<:1_~~Il~ _
ization in underdeveloped or subordinated countries is concerned
centrally with the establishment of a stable set of institutions that'
constitute the backbone of a new civil society. The disciplinary
regimes necessary to establish the global Fordist system of pro-
duction, for example, required that a whole array of social and
political institutions be in place. We can even point to examples
of this exportation in direct and individual terms (which are only
indicative of a more general and diffuse process) in which pri-
maty institutions in Europe and the United States adopt and foster
(j fledgling institutions: official unions such as the AFL form and
!~ enco~ag~ f~rei!?n Offspring, First World ec~n?~ists help create
I ,financIal mstltutlons and teach fiscal responslblhty, and even par-
i lliaments and the U.S. Congress teach forms and procedures of rule.
;1 Well, whereas in the process of modernization the most powerful

countries export institutional forms to the subordinated ones, in

'I the present process of postmodernization what is exported is the
:" general crisis of the institutions. The Empire's institutional struc-
ture is like a software program that carries a virus along with it, so
that it is continually modulating and corrupting the institutional
forms around it. We have to forget any notion of a linear sequence
offorms that each society must pass through-from so-called "prim-
itiveness" to "civilization"-as if Latin American or African societies
today coUld take the form that European society had 100 years
ago. Each contemporary social formation is linked together as part
of the imperial design. Those who are clamoring today for a new
constitution of civil society as the vehicle for the transition from
either socialist States or dictatorial regimes are merely nostalgic for
a previous stage of capitalist society and stuck in a dream of political
modernization that was not really so rosy even when it had a certain
effectivity. Imperial postniodernization, in any case, makes all that
irrevocably a thing of the past. The society of control is tendendally
everywhere the order of the day. . 1' . ! '~

Notes

1Gilles Deleuze, "Postscript on the Societies of Control," October 59

(Winter 1991): 3-7. For a brief analysis ofthis essay, see Michael Hardt,
'The Withering of Civil Society," Social Text 45 (1995) 27-44.
2 Gilles Deleuze, "Postscript" 4.
FredricJameson, Postmodemism, (ff the Cultural Logic ofLate CaPitalism
3
(Durham: Duke UP, 1991) ix.
4See Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholson-
Smith (New York: Zone Books, 1994).
5See Francis Fukuyama, The
.
End of History
- and the Last Man
.
(New
York: Free Press, 1992). -.
6'We have watched the war machine ... set its sights ona new
type of enemy, no longer another State, or even another regime, but
'l'ennemi quelconque' [the whatever enemy) ... " (Gilles Deleuze and
Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi [Minneapolis: U
of Minnesota P, 1987)) 422.
7 There are undoubtedly zones of deprivation within the wor~d :mar;-
ket where the flow of capital and goods is reduced to a minimum. In. J~tp~
cases this deprivation is determined by an explicit political deciSi:+~ (~
in the trade sanctions against Iraq) and in other cases it follows :fr6fl1;th~
implicit logics of global capital (as in the cycles of poverty and starva60n in
Sub-Saharan Mrica). In all cases, however, these zones do not constitute aIjl
outside to the capitalist market, but rather they function within the world
market as the most subordinated rungs of the global economic hierarchy.
8 For .an excellent explanation of Foucault's notion of the diagram,
see Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, trans. Sean Hand (Minneapolis: U of Min-
nesota P, 1988) 34-37.
 Discourse 20.3

See Etienne Balibar, "Is There a 'Neo-Racism'?" in Etienne Balibar

9
and Immanuel Wallerstein, eds., Race, Nation, Class (London: Verso, 1991)
17-28.
10 Balibar 21-22.
11 Deleuze and Guattari 178.
'.

12 Deleuze and Guatarri 209.

See Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City:
13
Essays on Sex and Citizenship (Durham: Duke UP, 1997). On her formulation
bf the reactionary reversal of the slogan "the per~onal is political," see 175-
, 80. For her analysis.ofthe "intimate public sphere," see 2-24.
Ii I .

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