Post
568
Philosopher Gilles Deleuze in 1985-86 about society of control, probabilities, and power. Visionary words in an era of autoregressive models:
"The biopolitics of populations appears when right sets about administering life, says Foucault, administering life in any open multiplicities whatever. You see the importance of the difference between discipline and biopolitics. The one is in an open space, with large multiplicities to which limits are not assignable. They can only be treated by the calculus of probabilities, hence the development of the calculus of probabilities and the meaning [sens] of the social control of probabilities, the probabilities of marriage in a nation, the probabilities of mortality, probabilities of natality. Natality, nuptiality, mortality …
... When Foucault directly addresses the question of power, namely, one of his great theses: no, power does not repress, or it represses only secondarily. What does it do? It does something much more profound and, doubtless, more formidable that repressing: it forms, it shapes. It does not silence, it does worse: it makes speak. It disciplines, it standardizes [normalise]. But repression is entirely secondary in relation to the positive operations of power.
Power does not repress, it disciplines, it manages, it controls, it standardizes, etcetera. It does not silence, it makes speak. It does not prevent acting, it makes act."
From the Deleuze Seminars at Université Paris 8 translated by Purdue University -> https://deleuze.cla.purdue.edu/
"The biopolitics of populations appears when right sets about administering life, says Foucault, administering life in any open multiplicities whatever. You see the importance of the difference between discipline and biopolitics. The one is in an open space, with large multiplicities to which limits are not assignable. They can only be treated by the calculus of probabilities, hence the development of the calculus of probabilities and the meaning [sens] of the social control of probabilities, the probabilities of marriage in a nation, the probabilities of mortality, probabilities of natality. Natality, nuptiality, mortality …
... When Foucault directly addresses the question of power, namely, one of his great theses: no, power does not repress, or it represses only secondarily. What does it do? It does something much more profound and, doubtless, more formidable that repressing: it forms, it shapes. It does not silence, it does worse: it makes speak. It disciplines, it standardizes [normalise]. But repression is entirely secondary in relation to the positive operations of power.
Power does not repress, it disciplines, it manages, it controls, it standardizes, etcetera. It does not silence, it makes speak. It does not prevent acting, it makes act."
From the Deleuze Seminars at Université Paris 8 translated by Purdue University -> https://deleuze.cla.purdue.edu/