Postscript on the Societies of Control. In Ji, No. 34, 2004.

The article is a translation of a text by Gilles Deleuze. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s analysis of disciplinary societies, the author argues that the second half of the twentieth century marked a transition to a new form of organization: the society of control. This stage is characterized by a crisis of traditional institutions of confinement: the prison, medicine, the school, and the family. The process of production is also changing radically: the closed system of the factory is being displaced by the flexible model of the corporation. According to the author, modern capitalism is no longer directly involved in production, since this function has been transferred to Third World countries. It expands through the sale of finished products, marketing, and the sale of services and securities. Markets oriented toward short-term operations become the main instrument of social control. The article concludes with a forecast of the transformations the society of control will undergo in the future.