Gilles Deleuze and the Concept of “Societies of Control”

Deleuze’s concept of societies of control names a transformation in the dominant forms of power accompanying the passage from industrial modernity to late twentieth‑ and twenty‑first‑century capitalism. Drawing on and extending Michel Foucault’s analysis of disciplinary societies, Deleuze argues that the classical regime of enclosed institutions—family, school, barracks, factory, hospital, prison—is gradually being displaced by a new, more diffuse, flexible and continuous form of power that operates through open circuits, digital codes, and incessant modulation rather than through rigid spatial confinement.¹²³⁴ In this new regime individuals become dividuals, endlessly decomposed into data points and profiles, while corporations, networks, and information systems replace the factory as the paradigmatic sites of power.⁵⁶²⁷ Control no longer primarily forbids or confines; it instead incites, channels, and optimizes through incentives, personalization and self-monitoring, often under the guise of freedom, mobility and choice.⁸⁵⁶⁹ This report reconstructs Deleuze’s notion of societies of control in its historical context, analyzes its central conceptual features—modulation, codes, dividuation, and indefinite postponement—situates it in relation to capitalism and digital technologies, and explores both the subjective consequences and the possibilities of resistance that Deleuze envisages. In doing so, it also considers subsequent interpretations that update Deleuze’s speculative vision in light of big data, predictive analytics and platform capitalism, while highlighting points of tension and critique in the reception of the concept.[^1]^101856112974

1. Historical Background: From Discipline to Control

1.1 Foucault’s disciplinary societies as Deleuze’s point of departure

Deleuze’s “Postscript on the Societies of Control” presupposes and reworks Michel Foucault’s account of disciplinary societies, developed most notably in Discipline and Punish.¹²³ Foucault’s disciplinary regime corresponds historically to eighteenth‑ and nineteenth‑century Western industrial societies and reaches its apogee in the early twentieth century.¹³ It is characterized by a constellation of enclosed institutions—the family, the school, the barracks, the factory, the hospital and the prison—within which bodies are spatially confined, temporally regimented, and subjected to detailed procedures of surveillance, normalization and examination.¹⁶³ The prison provided for Foucault the central model through which to decipher this broader carceral archipelago, since disciplinary techniques radiate outward from the prison to organize the other institutions of modern life.¹⁶³

In disciplinary societies, power works by segmenting and articulating spaces, times and activities: one passes from one closed environment to another, each with its specific rules, hierarchies and routines. Deleuze condenses Foucault’s description into a striking narrative sequence: the subject moves from the family as first milieu, to the school, then to the barracks, then to the factory, perhaps to the hospital, and possibly to the prison, which is the culminating enclosure of the system.¹²³ Although one might never enter a prison, the prison nonetheless functions as the central analogy for understanding all the other enclosures, because everywhere the same logic of confinement, examination, and normalization prevails.¹⁶³ In the factory in particular, the disciplinary project is especially visible: it aims to concentrate bodies in a place, distribute them in space, schedule them in time, and compose them into a productive force whose output exceeds the sum of individual efforts.¹⁶

Disciplinary institutions thus operate by forming individuals as docile and useful bodies. The term individual refers here not to a free subject but to a unit produced and formatted by disciplinary apparatuses: each individual is localized in a cell, desk, bed, workstation or barracks bunk, inscribed in files and registers, and measured against norms that define what counts as proper performance or behavior.¹⁶³ The basic technologies of power are architectural (walls, partitions, corridors), temporal (timetables, schedules), and documentary (records, dossiers), all geared toward making bodies visible, calculable and correctable.¹⁶³ When Deleuze announces that disciplinary societies are being replaced by societies of control, it is this entire configuration of enclosures and techniques that he takes as his contrast term.

1.2 Deleuze’s thesis of a transition to societies of control

Writing in the late 1980s, Deleuze suggests that disciplinary societies are now giving way to a new social formation he names societies of control.[^1]¹⁰¹²³⁴ He explicitly cites Foucault as the theorist of disciplinary societies while claiming that Foucault himself had already diagnosed an ongoing mutation in the forms of power—a shift beyond the disciplinary paradigm that Foucault did not live to theorize fully.¹¹² Deleuze therefore presents his Postscript as a brief, speculative attempt to name and sketch the contours of this emerging regime, rather than as a complete theory.[^1]¹⁰²³ The key idea is that the logic of confinement within discrete institutional spaces is increasingly undermined by processes of reform, flexibilization and decentralization, while a more diffuse, continuous and technologically mediated form of power spreads throughout the social field.⁵¹¹²⁹

Deleuze owes the very term “control” to the writer William Burroughs, who had used it to describe a new kind of cybernetic power that works through linguistic and informational systems.[^1]¹⁰² He also invokes Paul Virilio’s analyses of ultrarapid, free‑floating forms of control that operate in real time and are no longer tied to the slow, confined temporality of enclosed institutions.⁵² Control, for Deleuze, thus refers not simply to command or domination in general, but to a historically specific configuration of power that is inseparable from new technologies, new forms of capitalism, and new modes of subjectivation.[^1]¹⁰⁵²

Importantly, Deleuze does not claim that disciplinary institutions vanish; rather, he argues that they are “breaking down” in the sense that they no longer function as the primary forms of power.¹¹²⁴ Schools, factories, hospitals and prisons persist, but they are increasingly permeated by control mechanisms that leak out of the institution and extend across social space. This is why Deleuze describes contemporary capitalism and governance structures as “post‑disciplinary” rather than simply “post‑institutional.”¹⁶² Control does not abolish discipline so much as it “vampirizes” or parasitically rearticulates it within new, more flexible and continuous networks of power.¹²⁵²⁹

1.3 Sovereignty, discipline, control: a tripartite schema

Deleuze situates societies of control within a longer genealogy of power that also includes the older societies of sovereignty.⁵²⁹ Although the Postscript focuses on the transition from discipline to control, Deleuze notes that Foucault himself distinguished three major forms of power: sovereign power, disciplinary power, and the emergent forms of biopolitical and governmental power.¹¹² In sovereign societies, associated with premodern monarchies, the central figure is the sovereign who exercises power through spectacular displays, juridical decrees, and the right over life and death. Sovereign power is discontinuous, interventionist and centered on the person of the ruler. Discipline, by contrast, is anonymous, continuous and internal to the social fabric, functioning through institutions that organize daily life and bodily habits.¹⁶²³

Societies of control represent a further mutation beyond discipline. If sovereignty concentrates power in the person of the king and discipline concentrates it in institutions, control disperses power into networks and flows that permeate the entire socius.⁵² Deleuze’s tripartite schema is thus not merely chronological but also conceptual: it expresses a movement from centralized, spectacular power to localized, institutional power and finally to distributed, molecular power that acts in real time through information, communication and modulation. This distributed character will be crucial to understanding why Deleuze links control to digital technologies, corporate management and the reconfiguration of subjectivity in late capitalism.⁸⁵⁶²⁹⁷

2. Enclosures and Modulations: The Core Distinction

2.1 The metaphor of molds versus modulations

One of Deleuze’s most cited formulations contrasts the enclosures of disciplinary societies with the modulations of control societies. He writes that “enclosures are molds, distinct castings, but controls are a modulation, like a self‑deforming cast that will continuously change from one moment to the other.”¹⁵²⁹ This vivid metaphor captures the shift from fixed, discrete forms of confinement to dynamic, continuous processes of adjustment. In a disciplinary system, the individual is cast into a mold corresponding to a given institution: student, soldier, worker, patient, prisoner. Each mold has a clear boundary and a relatively stable internal structure. The subject moves from one mold to another over the course of life, repeatedly “starting again” as one enters the next enclosure and is re‑formatted according to its norms.¹⁵²⁹

By contrast, control operates not by imposing a single rigid mold for a given period, but by constantly modulating the parameters of inclusion, exclusion and participation. The self‑deforming cast evokes a flexible apparatus that adapts in real time to performance metrics, market conditions, risk profiles or behavioral data. Rather than being confined for a fixed term to an institution with predetermined rules, the subject is exposed to a continuous process of evaluation, reclassification and recalibration. Education is no longer confined to a school term but becomes lifelong learning; employment is no longer a stable contract but a sequence of projects, temporary assignments and precarious gigs; health care is no longer a matter of hospital stays alone but of continuous monitoring, home care and self‑tracking.^10851129

The concept of modulation is philosophically significant for Deleuze because it resonates with his broader interest in processes, variations and intensities rather than fixed forms. In earlier work he had drawn on Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of individuation, where modulation designates a continuous transformation of structures rather than the mere repetition of a given mold.¹³⁹ In the Postscript, modulation becomes the technical figure for understanding how control societies can maintain order without relying on stable, enclosed institutions. Power tracks and shapes flows rather than confining bodies within fixed spaces. This explains why Deleuze associates control with flexible labor, corporate management techniques and the pervasive use of information technologies that enable continuous feedback and adjustment.[^1]^10128529

2.2 The breakdown of enclosures and the illusion of openness

Deleuze’s diagnosis of a transition from molds to modulations manifests concretely in the partial “breaking down” of traditional institutions.¹⁵¹¹² Schools experiment with open plans, remote learning, and continuous assessment; factories outsource production, rely on just‑in‑time logistics, and blur the boundaries between work and home; hospitals promote outpatient care, home treatment and preventive lifestyle management; prisons introduce electronic monitoring, community service and risk‑based parole.^18561127 In each case, the rigid spatial and temporal enclosure is weakened, and power appears to become more flexible, humane or liberating.

A crucial point in Deleuze’s analysis is that this apparent opening does not necessarily mean a diminution of control. On the contrary, the dispersion of institutional functions into the open social field is accompanied by extensive new techniques of tracking, monitoring and data capture. The institution no longer confines, but the individual is “in orbit” within a continuous network in which every movement is potentially recorded and evaluated.⁵⁶²⁷ Contemporary commentators note that electronic ankle bracelets, CCTV networks, workplace computer monitoring, and the tracking of online activity exemplify this shift: instead of being locked in a cell or fixed workstation, the subject moves through an environment saturated with sensors and communication systems that register position, transactions and interactions.⁸⁵⁶²⁷

This dispersal of power creates an illusion of openness and freedom. Since the subject is no longer visibly confined, it becomes easier to perceive control as voluntary participation or self‑initiated optimization. The new paradigm is biopolitical in the sense that it integrates life processes—health, education, mobility, consumption—into a continuous game of access and opportunity where individuals appear to choose their paths while being guided by incentives, risk scores and personalized offers.¹⁸⁵⁶⁹⁷ People “enclose” themselves through their own perceptual and behavioral habits in spaces that appear open, public or common but are in fact shaped by invisible constraints, algorithmic curations and subtle nudges.¹⁸⁵⁶⁹⁷ Deleuze’s distinction between molds and modulations thus allows us to grasp how power becomes at once less visible and more pervasive.

3. Codes, Passwords, and the Emergence of the “Dividual”

3.1 From signatures and numbers to codes

Another central conceptual pair in Deleuze’s text is that between signatures or numbers, on the one hand, and codes or passwords, on the other. In disciplinary societies, individuals are identified and localized through signatures (names) and numbers (identity numbers, matriculation numbers, cell numbers) inscribed in files and registers associated with specific institutions.¹⁵²⁷ The signature anchors identity in a personal, legal subject, while the number allows for classification within the architecture of the institution: student number in a school, inmate number in a prison, employee number in a factory. These identifiers are largely static and tied to the bounded spaces and times of the enclosures.

In societies of control, by contrast, Deleuze argues that the crucial element is no longer the signature or number but the code. The numerical language of control is made of codes that grant or deny access to information, resources and spaces.⁵²⁷ Instead of a single institutional number, the subject now possesses multiple passwords, PINs, login credentials, and access tokens that govern participation in diverse networks: banking systems, communication platforms, corporate intranets, transportation infrastructures, social media, and state databases. The code is inherently dynamic: it can be activated, suspended, or revoked at different times, and it allows for fine‑grained modulation of permissions and restrictions. As Deleuze illustrates with Félix Guattari’s imagined city, one might be able to leave one’s apartment and neighborhood thanks to an electronic card, but the card could also be rejected on a particular day or during certain hours; what matters is less the physical barrier than the computer that tracks each person’s position and orchestrates a universal modulation of access.⁷

Codes replace the centralized, visible architecture of the prison or factory with a dispersed, invisible architecture of access points and databases. The key point is that power now lies in the capacity to manage these codes and to recombine the data associated with them across different domains. The subject’s life becomes a sequence of coded transactions and interactions, each leaving traces that can be aggregated, analyzed and monetized. This is why contemporary interpretations of Deleuze’s concept emphasize how control societies crystallize around digital technologies, big data, and predictive analytics: the code is the medium through which control is exercised and updated in real time.⁸⁵²⁷

3.2 From individuals to dividuals

The transition from signatures and numbers to codes is accompanied, in Deleuze’s account, by a transformation of the basic unit of power from the individual to what he calls the dividual.⁵⁶²⁷ The term “individual” etymologically designates something indivisible, a whole subject or body that cannot be further partitioned. In disciplinary societies, institutions constituted individuals as units within masses: the factory organized workers into a collective body that could be surveyed from above by management and mobilized collectively by unions.⁷ The disciplinary pair is thus mass/individual. In control societies, by contrast, Deleuze claims that we no longer deal with masses and individuals but with samples, data, markets, and “banks.”⁵²⁷ The individual is decomposed into divisible elements: profiles, scores, preferences, transaction histories, geolocation traces, biometric markers.

A dividual is therefore a physically embodied human subject that is endlessly divisible and reducible to data representations via modern technologies of control like computer-based systems.⁷ Data about a person—purchases, clicks, movements, communications—can be separated from their source, recombined with data from others, and used to generate new categorizations and interventions. For example, a credit score aggregates financial behaviors into a single number that determines access to loans and services; social media platforms generate behavioral segments for advertisers based on inferred interests; security agencies create risk profiles based on travel patterns, contacts, and online activity.⁸⁵⁶²⁷ In each case, the subject is both split and recomposed by algorithmic processes that operate beyond their direct awareness or control.

Importantly, Deleuze emphasizes that this dividuation undermines the classical sense of an autonomous individual agent. If what counts for access and inclusion is not the person as such but the data pattern they instantiate at a given moment, then subjectivity becomes a kind of moving average of coded attributes. As one commentator notes, “we live now, Deleuze held, within societies of control. How can we be deemed individual in its irreducible and autonomous sense of agency when we are divided into those with and without access?”⁷ Control is defined by differential access: some have codes that open doors, others encounter blocked permissions. This differential access is continually recalibrated as new data flows in, making belonging a metastable, provisional state rather than a fixed status.

3.3 Mapping and channelling instead of enclosing

The concept of dividuation dovetails with another distinction emphasized by Deleuze’s interpreters: whereas discipline organizes by enclosing and segregating spaces, control organizes by mapping and channelling movements.¹⁸⁵²⁷ In disciplinary societies, behavior is coerced by walls, gates, and doors; in control societies, it is guided by flows, interfaces, prompts and affordances. A recent updating of Deleuze’s Postscript notes that control works fluidly: instead of walls and boundaries, social organization is accomplished by mapping and channelling our movements through data collection and predictive analytics.⁸ The paradigmatic contrast is between the penitentiary and the electronic ankle bracelet, or between the factory assembly line and the distributed workflow managed through digital platforms.⁸⁵⁶

Mapping here refers not only to physical location but also to the tracking of activities over time. Electronic cards, loyalty programs, smartphones, and online accounts generate detailed maps of where people go, what they buy, whom they communicate with, and how they spend their time.⁸⁵⁶⁷ These maps allow institutions to channel behavior by selectively offering incentives, opportunities or warnings. Control does not need to forbid or block; it can instead lead and lure, making some paths more attractive, convenient or rewarding than others.⁸⁶ Rather than imposing a rigid mold from above, power operates through the configuration of choice architectures that harness dividuated data to modulate the field of possible actions. This anticipatory aspect of control—regulating behavior by predicting it—is central to contemporary discussions of big data and algorithmic governance, and it represents an important extension of Deleuze’s initial insights.⁸⁵⁶

4. Time, Work, and Indefinite Postponement

4.1 From long-term confinement to short-term, continuous control

The temporal structure of control societies differs as much from that of disciplinary societies as their spatial structure does. Discipline, Deleuze suggests, is associated with long‑duration, finite confinements: one spends years in school, a term of military service, decades in a factory job, fixed sentences in prison.¹⁵² These are extended, clearly bounded intervals within which one is subjected to a regimen that begins and ends. Even if disciplinary power is in some sense permanent, it is organized as a sequence of phases, each with its rituals of initiation and completion. There is a narrative of life stages: childhood education, adult labor, retirement, with specific episodes of hospitalization or imprisonment.¹⁵

Control, by contrast, is short-term and rapidly shifting, yet continuous and without limit.⁵² Rather than undergoing long periods of stable confinement, subjects experience rapidly changing configurations of control that are nonetheless incessant. Performance metrics, scorecards, and targets are updated quarterly, monthly, or even daily. Access privileges and risk scores are recalculated in real time. Employment contracts are temporary, projects-based, and subject to constant renegotiation. Education is no longer something one finishes but a lifelong process of training, reskilling and professional development.^10851129 The temporality of control is thus one of permanent transition and instability: one is always in the middle of an assessment, an application, a renewal, a training, a review.

Deleuze captures this transformation with the remark that in disciplinary societies one was always starting again, whereas in control societies one is never finished.¹⁵²⁹ In the disciplinary sequence, each enclosure has a beginning and end, marking a new start when one moves from school to barracks to factory. In the control regime, these distinct phases coexist in a metastable state within one and the same modulation. One is simultaneously student, worker, consumer, debtor, network participant, and monitored subject, with no clear boundaries between roles or times of the day. The corporation, the educational system, the armed services become “metastable states” coexisting in a universal system of deformation.¹⁵²⁹ This continuous deformation undermines any sense of completion or secure identity; one’s status is always provisional and open to revision.

4.2 Kafka, acquittal, and indefinite postponement

Several commentators have noted that Deleuze’s account of the temporality of control resonates with Franz Kafka’s descriptions of bureaucratic power, especially in The Trial.[^1]¹⁰ Mark Fisher, for instance, emphasizes Deleuze’s claim that Kafka is the prophet of distributed, cybernetic power characteristic of control societies.[^1] In The Trial, Kafka distinguishes between two types of acquittal available to the accused: definite acquittal, which would resolve the case once and for all, and ostensible acquittal, in which the charges are dropped in appearance but could be reactivated at any time.[^1] However, Kafka suggests that definite acquittal is no longer really possible, if it ever was; what remains is a regime in which proceedings can be indefinitely postponed, deferred, or suspended.[^1]¹⁰

Deleuze reads this as an anticipation of control societies, where power operates by indefinite postponement rather than definitive judgment.[^1]¹⁰ The dreaded ultimate decision—on one’s legal status, professional security, or social inclusion—never quite arrives; instead one is kept within an endlessly protracted process of evaluation, negotiation and provisional authorization.[^1]¹⁰ Education becomes a lifelong process; training persists as long as one’s working life continues; work is taken home and continues into off‑hours; working from home and “homing from work” blur boundaries between labor and leisure.¹⁰⁵ One is perpetually updating one’s profile, improving one’s score, renewing one’s accreditation, optimizing one’s performance. There is always more to be done, more data to be generated, more tasks to be completed.

The psychological effect of indefinite postponement is to shift control from external surveillance to internal policing. As Fisher notes, in this “indefinite” mode of power, external coercion is increasingly replaced by self‑monitoring, self‑motivation and self‑blame.¹⁰ In William Burroughs’s fiction, the figure of the “Control Addict” captures this paradox: the one who is addicted to control but also the one possessed by Control.¹⁰ Control works only if subjects are complicit with it, internalizing the demand to be constantly available, responsive, and improving. Deleuze’s remark that many young people boast of being “motivated” and continually request apprenticeships and permanent training underscores how the desire for self‑optimization becomes a key vector of control.⁶² Indefinite postponement thus binds subjects to an endless process that they take to be their own project of self‑realization.

4.3 Work, flexibility, and the new capitalism

Deleuze explicitly links societies of control to a new stage of capitalism that he describes as a “capitalism of higher‑order production” or of products and services.[^1]¹⁰¹²² In disciplinary Fordist capitalism, the factory buys raw materials and sells finished products; it organizes production within a single enclosure, with a stable workforce and predictable outputs.[^1]¹⁰¹²⁵² In control capitalism, by contrast, firms buy finished products or semi‑finished components and buy the activities of subcontractors, temp agencies, and dispersed producers.[^1]¹²⁵² The corporation is no longer a solid body but a kind of spirit or gas, diffused across multiple sites and operations, oriented toward innovation, branding and financial flows rather than the direct supervision of a fixed workforce.⁵²

This new capitalism requires and produces a different mode of work and subjectivity. Jobs become more precarious and flexible; employment contracts are short‑term; workers are urged to be entrepreneurs of themselves, managing their own skills, networks and reputations.⁸⁵⁶² Salaries are regulated according to merit, performance indicators and competitive evaluation rather than fixed wage scales tied to stable positions.¹⁴⁵² Corporations foster internal competition and rivalry as a “healthy” motivational force, pitting workers against each other in continuous benchmarking and ratings.¹⁴²⁷ This renders solidarity more difficult and reduces the effectiveness of collective bargaining, since each worker’s situation is individualized and continually recalculated.

Control thus dovetails with post‑Fordist, neoliberal forms of capitalism that valorize flexibility, mobility and innovation. As one commentator puts it, the infrastructure of control invites and encourages individuals—or rather “dividuals”—to divide and distribute their time, skills and attention among multiple corporate and state enterprises that float over global flows.⁶ The flow never stops; there is nowhere that flows do not penetrate. Everything in society bears down on individuals at once, all the time, and everywhere, although they apparently bring this on themselves by seeking opportunities, connectivity and self‑improvement.⁵⁶² Deleuze’s concept of control is therefore inseparable from an analysis of contemporary capitalism as an immanent system that constantly overcomes its own limitations only to encounter them again at a broader level, its fundamental limit being capital itself.¹

5. Control, Capitalism, and Digital Technologies

5.1 Control as communication and information management

In a conversation with Toni Negri, Deleuze emphasizes that what is becoming hegemonic today is not simply sovereign or disciplinary power but a third kind: the control of “communication.”¹¹¹ This does not mean only mass media but the entire apparatus of information and communication technologies that mediate social relations. Control societies operate through continuous control and instant communication, rather than confinement in silent, closed institutions.¹¹² Email, messaging, databases, and digital platforms enable real‑time feedback, monitoring and coordination across dispersed sites. The medium of power is no longer primarily architectural or documentary but informational.

This focus on communication allows Deleuze to link control to cybernetics, to the feedback loops that connect behavior to information and information to subsequent interventions. In such a regime, what matters is not the isolated act but the patterns that can be inferred from aggregated data, and the capacity to intervene preemptively or responsively. For example, workplace surveillance today often takes the form of software that records keystrokes, mouse movements, screen content, and digital communications, enabling managers to quantify productivity and detect deviations.⁷ Traffic surveillance uses cameras and sensors to track vehicles, automate fines, and manage flows. Social media platforms collect data on clicks, likes and shares, feeding it into recommendation algorithms that shape what users see next. In each case, communication channels double as control channels.

Deleuze’s insistence that “creating has always been something different from communication,” and that the key may be to create “vacuoles of noncommunication” or circuit breakers to elude control, underscores how deeply communication has been captured by power.¹ In a control society, injunctions to openness, transparency, feedback and participation can themselves become mechanisms of control: constant connectivity makes one continuously reachable, accountable, and subject to evaluation. This raises the question of how to reclaim spaces and times that are not constantly plugged into networks of capture and modulation, a question we will return to when discussing resistance.

5.2 Big data, predictive analytics, and the perfection of control

Recent work explicitly updating Deleuze’s Postscript for the era of big data argues that what was in 1990 a broad speculative vision has now developed into a set of identifiable economic and technological mechanisms clustered around personal information, predictive analytics and marketing.⁸ The central claim is that today’s advancing control society coerces without prohibitions and through incentives that are enjoyable because they compel individuals to obey their own personal information.⁸ Data gathering is no longer limited to a single electronic card but occurs through multiple and multiplying mechanisms: smartphones, browsers, apps, sensors, loyalty programs, wearables and credit cards all contribute to vast data troves.⁸⁵⁶⁷ Data compiling is no longer centered on a single gatherer but is dispersed across corporations and enterprises, with data brokerage and cloud infrastructures enabling cross‑sector aggregation.⁸

Crucially, data recording has become subordinate to data synthesis and analysis. What matters is less the isolated record than the predictive patterns that can be extracted by machine learning algorithms. Predictive analytics enables what Deleuze only hints at: control through anticipatory regulation rather than explicit prohibition. A recent interpreter formulates Deleuze’s most pressing question as: How can there be control if nothing is forbidden?⁸ The proposed answer is that predictive analytics, data-driven marketing and social media strategies regulate behavior by offering tailored incentives. Consumers are not contained or forced; they are lured and directed by appeals that exploit their inferred anxieties, desires and vulnerabilities.⁸

Targeting in advertising, for example, involves presenting specific messages, offers or content to particular individuals based on their predicted responsiveness.⁸ Recommendation systems on streaming platforms, news feeds and online stores nudge users toward certain choices, shaping the cultural and informational environment they inhabit. Insurance companies use telematics data to adjust premiums in real time, effectively rewarding compliant driving behavior while penalizing deviations. Gig economy platforms use algorithmically managed ratings and dynamic pricing to modulate workers’ availability and effort. In all these cases, there are no obvious walls or prohibitions; instead, behavior is channelled by a landscape of opportunities and temptations, many of which are “nearly impossible to resist or escape.”⁸

In such an environment, control as an effective tool for social organization may surpass discipline as a coercive power. Where discipline manifested as towering walls and locking doors, control is the strategy of leading and luring, directing individuals without walls by triggering narrowly tailored desires and fears.⁸⁵⁶ The strategic requirement is precisely the absence of explicit prohibitions: there should be no blocked possibilities, only options that steer subjects in desirable directions. This realization sharpens Deleuze’s insights into code and dividuation, showing how contemporary capitalism leverages personal information to render control both intimate and invisible.

5.3 The corporate paradigm: from factory to corporation to platform

Deleuze proposes that the corporation, rather than the factory, is the paradigmatic institution of societies of control.¹⁰¹²⁵² The factory is a closed site, a physical body that contains its internal forces at an equilibrium aimed at maximizing production while minimizing wages.⁵² It concentrates bodies and machines in a single location, organizes them in a fixed hierarchy, and pays wages according to relatively stable scales. The corporation, by contrast, is “a spirit, a gas”; it is not encapsulated by its office space but exists as a brand, a legal and financial entity, a network of contracts, franchises and partnerships.¹⁴⁵² This diffuse character is even more evident in the era of remote work and global supply chains, where employees may be scattered across continents and production outsourced to independent contractors.

Within the corporation, control takes the form of continuous evaluation, goal-setting, and motivational strategies. Management uses performance reviews, merit-based pay, team competitions, and corporate culture initiatives to maintain productivity and loyalty.¹⁴⁵²⁷ Workers are urged to internalize corporate values and to view themselves as self‑motivated, flexible and innovative. Deleuze notes that the corporation presents rivalry as a healthy form of emulation, an excellent motivational force that divides individuals against one another and within themselves.²⁷ The result is a workforce that is constantly modulated through incentives and metrics rather than disciplined through fixed routines alone.

Today, one might argue that the corporate form itself is being transformed by the rise of platforms. Platform companies such as social media networks, ride‑hailing apps, and e‑commerce giants operate not by directly organizing production but by orchestrating interactions among users, advertisers, suppliers and workers. They exemplify control society’s logic of modulation: they set algorithmic rules, adjust them in real time, and let the system self‑organize, intervening primarily through code updates and business policy tweaks. Workers and users become dividuals circulating within these digital ecosystems, where access and visibility depend on opaque ranking and recommendation algorithms. Even if Deleuze could not foresee the specific forms of platform capitalism, his analysis of corporations as gaseous, modulatory entities provides a conceptual template for understanding these developments.⁸⁵⁶²⁹⁷

6. Subjectivity, Spectacle, and the Desire for Control

6.1 Internalization of control and the figure of the control addict

One of the most striking aspects of Deleuze’s diagnosis is his emphasis on the internalization of control. In disciplinary societies, much of the coercion is external, enforced by guards, teachers, foremen and institutional rules, though Foucault already highlighted how subjects internalize surveillance through panoptic mechanisms.¹⁶³ In control societies, internalization becomes even more pronounced: “external surveillance is succeeded by internal policing,” as Fisher puts it.¹⁰ Control only works if one is complicit with it, if one takes up the imperatives of continuous self‑monitoring, self‑optimization and self‑disclosure as one’s own project.¹⁰

William Burroughs’s figure of the “Control Addict” captures this ambivalence.¹⁰ The control addict is the one who seeks to master their environment, to reduce uncertainty, to optimize outcomes; yet in doing so, they become possessed by Control, subordinated to systems that promise mastery while ensuring dependency. In contemporary terms, one might think of the compulsive checking of metrics (steps, likes, followers, productivity dashboards), the anxious maintenance of professional and social profiles, and the constant fear of falling behind in a competitive environment. Control becomes a kind of addiction: one cannot withdraw from the systems that track and rank one’s performance without risking exclusion or failure, yet participation means submitting to endless evaluation.¹⁰⁸⁵⁶

Deleuze notes with a mixture of irony and unease that many young people “strangely boast of being ‘motivated’”; they eagerly seek apprenticeships, internships, and continuous training.⁶² While motivation and lifelong learning are not negative in themselves, in a control society they can serve as vectors through which subjects volunteer for endless modulation, seeing it as self‑improvement. The work ethic merges with therapeutic and entrepreneurial discourses, producing a subject who sees themselves as a project to be ceaselessly developed and optimized. Failure is individualized as a lack of motivation or adaptability rather than attributed to structural constraints. In this way, control penetrates deeply into the subjective experience of freedom, desire and self‑worth.

6.2 Spectacle, mediation, and the subjugation of social life to its products

Deleuze’s societies of control can fruitfully be compared to Guy Debord’s concept of the spectacle, which also describes a regime in which social life is subordinated to images and representations.⁸¹³ Debord argues that in the spectacle, direct experience and the determination of events by individuals are replaced by a passive contemplation of images chosen by others.⁸ The spectacle is not a collection of images but a social relation among people mediated by images.⁸¹³ It is a permanent “opium war” waged to control and maintain the existing order, in which the more the spectator contemplates, the less they live; the more they recognize themselves in the dominant images of need, the less they understand their own desires.⁸¹³

This diagnosis parallels Deleuze’s concern that control works by mediating access to reality through codes, screens and interfaces. If the spectacle subjugates social life to its own products—commodities and images—control societies subjugate social life to data and algorithms. In both cases, individuals become alienated from their own activity, which returns to them in an externalized, mediated form that shapes their perceptions and actions. Debord emphasizes how people’s gestures are no longer their own but those of another who represents them to them; Deleuze highlights how individuals’ data is collected, recombined and used to guide them, such that they become dividuals governed by the representations constructed from their own unconscious activity.¹³⁷

The relation between spectacle and control is not one of identity but of overlap. The spectacle emphasizes the visual and ideological dimension of capitalist domination, whereas Deleuze’s control foregrounds the operational and cybernetic dimension. Yet both converge in contemporary digital capitalism, where images, data and algorithms intertwine. Social media platforms exemplify this convergence: they present an endless stream of images and narratives for contemplation while extracting behavioral data and modulating attention through algorithmic curation. The result is a regime in which individuals both passively consume representations and actively generate data that feeds back into the system of control, blurring the line between spectatorship and participation.⁸¹³⁵⁶⁷

6.3 The seductions of control: enjoyment, freedom, and self-expression

A notable trait of control societies, emphasized by recent interpreters, is that they often operate not through grim prohibitions but through pleasurable incentives.⁸⁵⁶ Control coerces without prohibitions and through incentives that can be enjoyable, even euphoric, because they appear as opportunities for self‑expression, connection or convenience.⁸ Personalized recommendations, tailored offers, gamified interfaces and instant feedback loops can be genuinely satisfying, giving users a sense of being seen, understood and catered to. The convenience of skipping lines, receiving relevant content, or automating tasks can feel like an increase in freedom, even when it depends on extensive data collection and profiling.¹⁴⁶

Deleuze’s concept helps explain how this enjoyment is compatible with deep forms of control. Consider the example of using a smartphone app to “skip the line” at a government office or store. By granting access to personal information and installing a tracking app, one may receive a number that allows priority service.¹⁴ The immediate experience is of increased freedom and efficiency. Yet, as one commentator notes, this freedom is an illusion, because one has had to forego privacy and accept continuous monitoring in exchange.¹⁴⁶ The same dynamic applies to social media, navigation apps, smart home devices and health trackers: the benefits are real, but they are the surface of a deeper apparatus of data extraction and behavioral modulation.

The seductions of control complicate traditional political categories of oppression and resistance. If control works by shaping desires and presenting attractive options, then simply rejecting prohibitions is insufficient. Moreover, the line between genuine empowerment and co‑opted self‑expression becomes blurry. When individuals use platforms to express themselves, organize, or create, they simultaneously feed the data infrastructures that enable control. Deleuze’s insistence that creation must be distinguished from communication gestures toward the need to invent forms of life and expression that do not simply reinforce existing circuits of capture.¹¹¹ This task becomes particularly urgent when the desire for control—over one’s life, environment and identity—is itself mobilized by systems that promise mastery while deepening dependency.

7. Spatiality, Speed, and the Geometry of Control

7.1 From closed geometries to open circuits

Control societies reorganize not only institutions and subjectivity but also the spatial logic of power. Disciplinary societies concentrate power in closed geometries: the factory, barracks, school and prison are bounded spaces with controlled entry and exit points, surveillance arrangements, and spatial hierarchies.¹⁵⁶³ Urban planning under discipline often emphasized zoning and separation: industrial districts, residential neighborhoods, institutional precincts. The geometry of power is territorial and Euclidean, organized around enclosed volumes and partitions.

In control societies, this geometry shifts toward open circuits and networks. As one commentator puts it, people leave spaces of enclosure in order to enter into the open circuits of a flowing world of information and data, unbound to their tribal enclaves of family or community.⁵ They move through plastic bubbles of cosmopolitan “non‑places”—airports, shopping malls, highways, digital interfaces—that remain the same even as they travel from site to site in the new global village.⁵ The enclosed institution persists but is embedded within and traversed by broader networks of flows: transportation systems, communication infrastructures, supply chains, data networks. Power operates by organizing these flows, by controlling access points and configuring paths rather than by sealing off spaces.

Deleuze’s comparison of the shift from moles to serpents captures this transformation.⁵ The disciplinary man is like a mole, burrowing through discrete tunnels, appearing and disappearing within fixed enclosures. The man of control is like a serpent, undulatory, always in orbit within a continuous network. Surfing replaces older sports as the emblematic metaphor: instead of training in a bounded field or court, the subject rides waves, navigating changing conditions and gradients.⁵ Spatially, control societies replace the architecture of walls with the topology of networks, where nodes and links matter more than stable boundaries.

7.2 Virilio and the speed of free-floating control

Paul Virilio’s analyses of speed and technology complement Deleuze’s account of control societies. Deleuze notes that Virilio continually analyzes ultrarapid forms of free‑floating control that replace old disciplines operating in the time frame of a closed system.⁵² For Virilio, the acceleration of transport, communication and computation transforms the conditions of power and perception. Real‑time technologies collapse distances and durations, enabling remote control, instant feedback and pervasive surveillance. The battlefield, for example, becomes a theater of information flows managed by command centers far from the front lines; the city becomes a field of real‑time monitoring through cameras and sensors.

Control societies exploit these speeds to manage populations and flows. Electronic governance systems, financial markets, and logistics operations rely on high‑frequency data to adjust decisions on the fly. The faster information travels, the more power can be exercised at a distance, without the need for fixed institutions. Virilio’s concern about “dromocracy”—rule by speed—resonates with Deleuze’s emphasis on continuous modulation: the more rapidly parameters can be updated in response to data, the more finely tuned control can become.⁵² At the same time, acceleration intensifies the experience of never being finished, of being constantly “on call” and subject to immediate demands.

The speed dimension also highlights new vulnerabilities and forms of resistance. High‑speed systems can be disrupted by relatively small disturbances, amplifying the effects of sabotage or error. Deleuze notes that while the danger in disciplinary societies was often rebellion or revolution, in control societies it may become sabotage.¹⁴² Interrupting flows, hacking systems, or creating “lag” can have significant consequences in a highly synchronized environment. However, such tactics also risk reinforcing the logic of speed by being absorbed into cybersecurity and resilience frameworks. The challenge is to think forms of slowness, delay or opacity that are not simply countermeasures within the same regime but genuine alternatives.

7.3 Biopolitical perception and self-enclosure in open spaces

Control societies can be described, from another angle, as biopolitical regimes in which power is immanent to the social field and distributed to the minds and bodies of citizens.¹⁵⁹ The means of social integration and exclusion are no longer realized primarily as spatial enclosures but through perceptual and cognitive mechanisms that guide embodied interaction. People constantly scan their environment for opportunities and affordances, for permissions and interdictions, in ways shaped by learned habits, signs, and interfaces.¹⁵⁹ For instance, one learns to interpret signals from apps, signage, and social cues about where one is welcome, what behavior is expected, and what is likely to be rewarded or penalized.

From the perspective of spatial practices, this transition appears as a re‑articulation of enclosure and perception. People “enclose” themselves through their own perceptual and behavioral habits in a terrain that appears more open, public or common but remains enclosed in subtler ways.¹⁵⁹ One might feel free in a shopping mall, social media platform, or smart city, yet one’s attention and movement are guided by architecture, interface design, and algorithmic curation. Paths are prefigured by store layouts, recommendation systems, or navigational aids. Areas that are physically open may be psychologically or digitally fenced off by reputation scores, targeted policing, or differential pricing.

Deleuze’s concept of modulation helps explain why these enclosures are not fixed but adjustable. Access to a given space or opportunity can be granted or withdrawn based on credit scores, loyalty status, behavioral histories or security flags.⁸⁵⁶⁷ Instead of a binary inside/outside, one confronts graduated levels of access, each with associated conditions. The result is a landscape of subtle boundaries that are often invisible until crossed. This environment encourages self‑regulation: people avoid risky areas, adjust behavior to maintain favorable scores, and shape their self‑presentation to align with perceived norms of platforms and institutions. In this way, biopolitical perception and self‑enclosure reinforce control while preserving the appearance of openness.

8. Critiques, Limits, and Ambivalences of the Concept

8.1 Is Deleuze overwrought? The need for finer distinctions

Some commentators have suggested that Deleuze’s portrayal of control societies is overstated or overly ominous.⁶ From this perspective, Deleuze’s ominous language tends to pathologize developments that many people experience as beneficial, such as neighborhood clinics, hospices, day care centers, or flexible work arrangements.⁶ When Deleuze notes that such institutions might participate in mechanisms of control equal to the harshest confinements, critics ask whether this conflation blurs crucial distinctions. Is following rules at a day care center really as oppressive as being in prison?⁶ If all forms of guidance, regulation and care are subsumed under the rubric of control, the concept risks losing its critical specificity.

This critique points to a tension in Deleuze’s text between analytic differentiation and rhetorical intensification. On the one hand, Deleuze offers fine-grained distinctions between sovereignty, discipline and control, and among molds, modulations, individuals and dividuals.¹⁵²⁹⁷ On the other hand, his prophetic tone and sweeping assertions can make it seem as though control pervades everything, leaving little room for nuances of experience and degrees of coercion. A more measured account would need to investigate how different populations and institutions are differentially affected by control mechanisms, and how traditional disciplinary and sovereign powers persist and interact with control, rather than assuming a complete replacement.

This does not invalidate Deleuze’s insights but suggests that they need to be used as heuristic tools rather than literal descriptions of every aspect of social life. For instance, one can acknowledge that day care centers may incorporate control mechanisms—surveillance, normative evaluation, risk management—without equating them with prisons. Similarly, flexible work arrangements can be both empowering and exploitative, depending on the context and the balance of power between employers and workers. Deleuze’s concept invites us to analyze these ambivalences rather than to subsume them under a single dark image.

8.2 Control, law, and explicit coercion

Another limitation of the control concept concerns its focus on soft, incentivizing mechanisms at the expense of ongoing forms of explicit coercion and legal repression. While Deleuze acknowledges that prisons, police and courts persist, his model highlights modulation and incentive structures more than direct prohibitions and punishments.¹⁵² Yet in many contexts, especially for marginalized populations, traditional disciplinary and sovereign powers remain starkly present: mass incarceration, aggressive policing, immigration detention, and punitive welfare regimes continue to shape lives through confinement and deprivation.

Recent analyses of surveillance and control note that these harsher forms of power often intersect with algorithmic and data-driven control mechanisms, producing what some call “digital punishment” or “algorithmic oppression.” Systems for predictive policing, risk assessment, and welfare fraud detection combine control’s data-based modulation with discipline’s punitive sanctions. This suggests that rather than a clean move from discipline to control, we see complex hybrid regimes in which different modalities of power reinforce each other. Deleuze’s tripartite schema remains useful for distinguishing logics but must be supplemented by empirical work on their articulation.

Furthermore, the emphasis on control through incentives and enjoyment may obscure how coercion can be reasserted when subjects fail to respond appropriately to incentives. For example, unemployment benefits may be conditional on active job search and training participation, with sanctions applied for non-compliance. Here, control technologies track compliance and generate assessments, but discipline re-enters in the form of benefit cuts or legal penalties. This interplay suggests that control should be seen as a layer added to, and sometimes superimposed on, older forms rather than as a successor that renders them obsolete.

8.3 Ambivalent potentials of modulation and openness

Deleuze’s concept of modulation carries an ambivalent charge. On one side, modulation is associated with control, because it enables continuous adjustment of parameters to optimize governance and exploitation.¹¹³⁵²⁹ On the other side, modulation also signifies creativity, flexibility and the opening of new possibilities, as seen in Simondon’s philosophy of individuation and in Deleuze and Guattari’s own celebration of flows and deterritorialization. The question arises of whether modulation is intrinsically problematic or whether its positive aspects have been “short‑circuited by a market logic that distorts continuous variation,” as one analysis suggests.¹³

This ambiguity extends to the breakdown of enclosures. Deleuze notes that the dismantling of rigid institutions such as asylums, prisons, and disciplinary schools was initially experienced as a liberation and demanded by social movements.¹¹² Open hospitals, community care, alternative education and deinstitutionalization were progressive reforms. The subsequent emergence of control mechanisms in these open spaces does not retroactively invalidate the struggles that made the reforms possible. It does, however, show how capitalism and the state can appropriate and reconfigure emancipatory gains. The openness that once signified liberation can become a condition of exploitative flexibility and precariousness.

Acknowledging this ambivalence is crucial for a nuanced critique. It would be too simple to advocate a return to enclosures or rigid molds as a remedy for control. Instead, the challenge is to differentiate between forms of openness that enable collective autonomy and those that facilitate control. Modulation as such is not the enemy; its capture by market logics and state apparatuses is. Deleuze’s insistence on the need to invent “new weapons” suggests that reappropriating modulation, speed and networks for emancipatory purposes is both difficult and necessary.²

9. Resistance, Lines of Flight, and “New Weapons”

9.1 Creating vacuoles of noncommunication

In his conversation with Negri, Deleuze suggests that in a control society the key may be to create “vacuoles of noncommunication,” circuit breakers that allow us to elude control.¹¹¹ This proposal stems from the recognition that communication networks are saturated with control mechanisms: every message, transaction and trace can become a data point in a larger apparatus of capture. Simply participating more in communication circuits risks reinforcing control. Deleuze therefore distinguishes creation from communication: creating involves inventing new forms of life, thought and practice that cannot be fully subsumed under existing codes and channels.¹¹¹

Vacuoles of noncommunication are not mere withdrawal or silence; they are spaces and times in which different rhythms, relations and practices can emerge. They might take the form of offline gatherings, encrypted or ephemeral exchanges, or simply periods of non-responsiveness and disconnection. In contemporary terms, digital minimalism, refusal of certain platforms, and the building of alternative infrastructures can be seen as attempts to carve out such vacuoles. However, Deleuze cautions against romanticizing isolation: the goal is not to escape society but to create forms of association that avoid the most insidious mechanisms of control.

The difficulty lies in the fact that control can also exploit the desire for withdrawal, packaging it as wellness, mindfulness or curated disconnection sold as services. Vacuoles of noncommunication must therefore be thought of in political and collective terms, not merely as individual lifestyle choices. They need to support processes of subjectification that elude both established forms of knowledge and dominant forms of power, enabling people to constitute themselves as subjects in new ways.¹¹ This is a demanding task, requiring not only critique but also experimentation with organizational forms, technologies and practices.

9.2 Resistance at the level of “our every move”

Deleuze concludes his discussion with Negri by remarking that “our ability to resist control, or our submission to it, has to be assessed at the level of our every move.”¹¹ This statement encapsulates both the ubiquity of control and the micropolitical nature of resistance. If control operates through continuous modulation of access, incentives and information flows, then resistance cannot be confined to spectacular events or institutional politics alone; it must also address everyday practices, gestures, and habits. Choices about how to use technologies, how to manage time, how to engage with institutions and markets all become sites where one either reproduces or interrupts control dynamics.

This does not mean that responsibility lies solely with individuals. On the contrary, Deleuze’s emphasis on “our every move” should be read as an invitation to collective reflection and experimentation: how can we redesign systems, platforms, and institutions so that they foster autonomy rather than control? For example, debates over data governance, platform regulation, and algorithmic transparency can be seen as attempts to assert democratic control over control mechanisms. Cooperative platforms, commons-based peer production, and community networks are experiments in building infrastructures that do not depend on the extraction and exploitation of personal data.

At the same time, Deleuze’s philosophy cautions against believing that institutional reforms alone can solve the problem. Control is not simply a matter of bad policies or tech monopolies; it is rooted in deeper configurations of desire, knowledge and power. Resistance must therefore also involve what he and Guattari call “lines of flight”: processes of deterritorialization that open up new possibilities without reproducing the same structures in a different guise. These lines of flight are risky, as they can lead to new forms of capture or collapse, but they are also the source of genuine transformation.

9.3 The role of creation and the politics of modulation

For Deleuze, creation is inherently political in a control society. To create is to produce new modes of existence, new affects, new percepts and concepts that cannot be fully integrated into existing apparatuses of control.¹¹¹² Artistic, scientific, and philosophical creations can all contribute to this process, as can new social movements and organizational experiments. What matters is not communication about problems but the invention of practices that actually change how we live, perceive and relate. In this sense, creation is a way of reappropriating modulation: instead of being modulated by data-driven systems, one generates new modulations of life that escape predictable patterns.

Some contemporary theorists have explored how modulation can be politicized in this way. For instance, by designing technologies that maximize user autonomy, privacy and collective governance, one can harness the flexibility and adaptability of digital systems without defaulting to surveillance and exploitation. Encryption, decentralized architectures, and open-source development are technical means that can support such political projects. At the same time, critical pedagogy, cooperative institutions and non-commodified cultural practices can modulate subjectivities differently, fostering capacities for solidarity, critical reflection and care rather than competition and self-optimization.

However, Deleuze would likely insist that there is no guaranteed formula: every new weapon can eventually be neutralized or turned into a tool of control. Platforms once hailed as liberatory have become central instruments of surveillance capitalism; encryption tools are incorporated into commercial ecosystems; community projects can be co-opted. This precariousness underscores the importance of ongoing vigilance and experimentation. Societies of control are not static; they continually evolve as capitalism and technology change. Resistance must therefore be equally dynamic, inventive, and attuned to shifts in the terrain.

10. Updating Deleuze: Big Data, Platforms, and Contemporary Control

10.1 Control without prohibition and the problem of consent

As noted earlier, a key question posed by recent interpreters of Deleuze is how control functions when nothing appears to be forbidden.⁸ In many contemporary liberal democracies, explicit censorship, bans and prohibitions are less salient than the subtle shaping of environments and choices through data-driven personalization. The strategic requirement for control today, according to one analysis, is that there be no explicit prohibitions, no blocked possibilities, no clearly forbidden ways.⁸ Instead, there are only opportunities and temptations, some of which lead toward desired outcomes and others away from them. When all paths seem open, resistance becomes difficult because there is no obvious obstacle or enemy to push against.

This raises profound questions about consent and autonomy. If individuals “freely” click “I agree” to terms of service, share data in exchange for convenience, and respond to targeted appeals, can we say that they consent to control? Or is their consent manufactured by asymmetries of information, power and necessity? Deleuze’s concept of dividuation suggests that consent is complicated by the fact that interventions often target inferred preferences and vulnerabilities that individuals are not fully aware of. Moreover, decisions are increasingly made not about persons as such but about profiles, scores and segments, making it difficult to contest or even detect forms of discrimination and manipulation.

In this context, Deleuze’s emphasis on the need for new weapons and vacuoles of noncommunication can be read as a call for collective renegotiation of consent. Democratic societies must grapple with what counts as legitimate use of personal data, how to ensure meaningful control by data subjects, and how to prevent the construction of environments in which the only viable options involve massive surveillance and modulation. Legal frameworks such as data protection regulations and algorithmic accountability measures are part of this struggle, but deeper cultural and institutional changes are also required.

10.2 The expansion of control into intimate domains

One of the most striking features of contemporary control mechanisms is their expansion into domains that were previously less regulated: intimate relationships, emotional life, and the private home. Deleuze already anticipated that control would extend into consumption habits and domestic spaces, but today this extension is highly visible in the form of smart home devices, health trackers, dating apps, and mental health platforms. Everyday activities such as sleeping, eating, exercising, socializing and relaxing become sites of data collection and optimization.

For example, wearable devices monitor heart rates, sleep cycles, and physical activity, providing feedback and recommendations aimed at improving health. While such tools can empower users to make informed choices, they also integrate bodily processes into data infrastructures accessible to corporations and insurers. Dating apps collect detailed information about preferences and interactions, using algorithms to suggest matches and gamify romantic pursuits. Smart speakers listen for commands but can also record ambient conversations, raising concerns about surveillance within the home. Emotional states are inferred from online behavior to tailor content and advertisements.

This penetration of control into intimate life intensifies the internalization of control and the difficulty of distinguishing between self-care and self-surveillance. Individuals may come to see their moods, relationships and bodies as projects to be optimized through continual monitoring and adjustment. The risk is that norms of well-being and success become ever more demanding and standardized, enforced not by direct coercion but by subtle comparison, ranking and nudging. Societies of control thus deepen biopolitical governance, shaping not only actions and locations but also affects and desires.

10.3 Global flows, borders, and differential control

Control societies operate within a global context characterized by intense flows of capital, information, commodities and people. Deleuze’s notion of control helps illuminate the paradoxical combination of openness and closure at national borders and in global mobility regimes. On one hand, economic globalization and digital networks facilitate the rapid movement of financial capital, goods and certain categories of people (tourists, skilled workers, business travelers). On the other hand, states deploy sophisticated control mechanisms to monitor and regulate migration, often targeting specific groups deemed risky or undesirable.

Electronic passports, biometric databases, airline passenger screening systems, and border surveillance technologies are all instruments of control: they allow states to modulate entries and exits, granting or denying access based on risk profiles and geopolitical considerations.⁶²⁷ The same dividual logic applies: individuals are represented by data profiles that determine their treatment, sometimes without their knowledge. The experience of control thus varies dramatically depending on one’s passport, legal status, and socio-economic position. While some enjoy relatively seamless mobility, others face intense scrutiny, arbitrary detentions, or dangerous journeys.

Deleuze’s framework invites us to see these inequalities not as anomalies but as integral to control societies. Differential access is their defining feature: control is exercised by selectively opening and closing channels, not by uniform confinement. This has implications for resistance, which must address global power relations and solidarities across borders. The challenge is to contest control mechanisms that reproduce racial, class and geopolitical hierarchies while recognizing that some forms of monitoring may be justified for safety. Once again, finer distinctions are required, but Deleuze’s concept remains a powerful tool for mapping the landscape.

Conclusion: The Significance and Future of Deleuze’s Societies of Control

Deleuze’s concept of societies of control offers a compelling and prescient diagnosis of transformations in power, subjectivity and capitalism from the late twentieth century onward. Building on Foucault’s analysis of disciplinary societies, Deleuze identifies a shift from enclosed institutional spaces to diffuse networks, from molds to modulations, from signatures and numbers to codes and passwords, from individuals to dividuals.[^1]^10152974 In this new regime, power operates through continuous control and instant communication rather than through long-term confinement and rigid routines.¹¹² It maps and channels movements by leveraging data, predictive analytics and personalized incentives, often with the consent and even enthusiasm of those it governs.⁸⁵⁶

Central to Deleuze’s analysis is the insight that control societies do not simply liberate individuals from disciplinary enclosures; they rearticulate power in more flexible, pervasive and intimate ways. The breakdown of traditional institutions, the rise of corporations and platforms, and the proliferation of digital technologies create an environment in which subjects are never finished with anything: always training, updating, optimizing, and being evaluated.^1018529 Indefinite postponement replaces definite judgments; access and opportunities are modulated in real time based on data-driven profiles; internalized self-monitoring supersedes external coercion.[^1]¹⁰⁸⁵⁶⁷ Kafka’s prophetic visions of endless trials and deferred acquittals, Debord’s spectacle of mediated social relations, and Virilio’s ultrarapid free-floating control all converge in Deleuze’s concept.[^1]^1081352

At the same time, Deleuze’s notion of control is not without problems and requires careful, nuanced application. Critics rightly note that not all forms of guidance, care or flexibility are equally oppressive, and that older modes of sovereign and disciplinary power remain operative, often interwoven with control mechanisms.¹²⁵⁶ The concept runs the risk of inflation if it is applied indiscriminately to any form of regulation or technology. To remain analytically sharp, it must be used to highlight specific features: the predominance of modulation over confinement; the role of codes and data in structuring access; the decomposing of individuals into dividual profiles; the ubiquity of incentives and anticipatory interventions; and the extension of power into previously less regulated domains of life.^1856297

Despite these caveats, subsequent developments in digital capitalism, big data and platform economies have largely confirmed and intensified Deleuze’s insights. The rise of predictive analytics, targeted advertising, algorithmic governance and pervasive surveillance infrastructures has made control more concrete and operational than it was in 1990.⁸⁵⁶²⁷ Today, the key challenge is not to prove that control societies exist but to understand how they function, whom they benefit and harm, and how they might be transformed. Deleuze’s emphasis on the creation of vacuoles of noncommunication, on the distinction between communication and creation, and on the need for “new weapons” suggests that resistance must be inventive, micropolitical and collective.¹¹¹²

Such resistance involves multiple dimensions. Legally and institutionally, it means contesting data extraction and discriminatory algorithms, demanding transparency and accountability, and building democratic oversight over infrastructures of control. Technologically, it means designing systems that prioritize privacy, user agency and commons-based governance over surveillance and monetization. Culturally and subjectively, it means cultivating forms of life that do not revolve around ceaseless self-optimization and competitive individuation, reclaiming time, spaces and relationships from the grip of continuous modulation. Politically, it requires solidarity across the differentiated experiences of control, recognizing that those most exposed to harsh forms of surveillance and punishment are often marginalized populations.

Ultimately, Deleuze’s concept of societies of control is valuable not because it offers a closed theory but because it provides a set of conceptual tools for ongoing critical inquiry. Terms such as modulation, dividuation, code, and indefinite postponement help us perceive patterns in contemporary social life that might otherwise remain obscured. They encourage us to ask how institutions, technologies and practices shape our capacities to act, think and feel, and how we might reconfigure them. In this sense, Deleuze’s Postscript is less a definitive diagnosis than an invitation to think with and beyond him, to trace the evolving contours of control in our own time and to imagine, in theory and practice, what it would mean to live otherwise.[^1]^101856112974 [^1] theanarchistlibrary.org

Footnotes

1. narrative-environments.github.io ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³ ↩²⁴ ↩²⁵ ↩²⁶ ↩²⁷ ↩²⁸ ↩²⁹ ↩³⁰ ↩³¹ ↩³² ↩³³ ↩³⁴ ↩³⁵ ↩³⁶ ↩³⁷ ↩³⁸ ↩³⁹ ↩⁴⁰ ↩⁴¹ ↩⁴² ↩⁴³ ↩⁴⁴ ↩⁴⁵ ↩⁴⁶

2. deleuze.cla.purdue.edu ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³ ↩²⁴ ↩²⁵ ↩²⁶ ↩²⁷ ↩²⁸ ↩²⁹ ↩³⁰ ↩³¹ ↩³² ↩³³ ↩³⁴ ↩³⁵ ↩³⁶ ↩³⁷ ↩³⁸ ↩³⁹ ↩⁴⁰ ↩⁴¹ ↩⁴² ↩⁴³ ↩⁴⁴ ↩⁴⁵ ↩⁴⁶ ↩⁴⁷ ↩⁴⁸ ↩⁴⁹ ↩⁵⁰ ↩⁵¹ ↩⁵² ↩⁵³ ↩⁵⁴ ↩⁵⁵ ↩⁵⁶ ↩⁵⁷ ↩⁵⁸ ↩⁵⁹ ↩⁶⁰ ↩⁶¹ ↩⁶² ↩⁶³ ↩⁶⁴ ↩⁶⁵ ↩⁶⁶ ↩⁶⁷ ↩⁶⁸ ↩⁶⁹ ↩⁷⁰ ↩⁷¹ ↩⁷² ↩⁷³ ↩⁷⁴ ↩⁷⁵

3. www.jstor.org ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴

4. deleuze.cla.purdue.edu ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

5. socialecologies.wordpress.com ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³ ↩²⁴ ↩²⁵ ↩²⁶ ↩²⁷ ↩²⁸ ↩²⁹ ↩³⁰ ↩³¹ ↩³² ↩³³ ↩³⁴ ↩³⁵ ↩³⁶ ↩³⁷ ↩³⁸ ↩³⁹ ↩⁴⁰ ↩⁴¹ ↩⁴² ↩⁴³ ↩⁴⁴ ↩⁴⁵ ↩⁴⁶ ↩⁴⁷ ↩⁴⁸ ↩⁴⁹ ↩⁵⁰ ↩⁵¹ ↩⁵² ↩⁵³ ↩⁵⁴ ↩⁵⁵ ↩⁵⁶ ↩⁵⁷ ↩⁵⁸ ↩⁵⁹ ↩⁶⁰ ↩⁶¹ ↩⁶² ↩⁶³ ↩⁶⁴ ↩⁶⁵ ↩⁶⁶ ↩⁶⁷ ↩⁶⁸ ↩⁶⁹ ↩⁷⁰ ↩⁷¹ ↩⁷² ↩⁷³ ↩⁷⁴ ↩⁷⁵ ↩⁷⁶

6. fmdolan.com ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³ ↩²⁴ ↩²⁵ ↩²⁶ ↩²⁷ ↩²⁸ ↩²⁹ ↩³⁰ ↩³¹ ↩³² ↩³³ ↩³⁴ ↩³⁵ ↩³⁶ ↩³⁷ ↩³⁸ ↩³⁹ ↩⁴⁰ ↩⁴¹ ↩⁴² ↩⁴³ ↩⁴⁴ ↩⁴⁵ ↩⁴⁶ ↩⁴⁷ ↩⁴⁸ ↩⁴⁹

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