HORTENSIUS, or: On the Cultivation of Subjects in Noman’s Garden
- Jojo Amoah
- Nov 22, 2022
- 36 min read
Updated: Mar 11
Then from out the cave the mighty Polyphemus answered them: ‘My friends, it is Noman that is slaying me by guile and not by force’. And they made answer and addressed him with winged words: ‘If, then, no man does violence to thee in thy loneliness, sickness which comes from great Zeus thou mayest in no wise escape’. —Homer, The Odyssey, Book IX
[…] for when man was first placed in the Garden of Eden, he was put there ut operaretur eum, that he might cultivate it; which shows that man was not born to be idle […] let us cultivate our garden. —Voltaire, Candide
Introduction
The emergence of global digital surveillance and control heralds the advent of digital technologies as the nexus of social cohesion and political decision-making. The ominous image of representatives from Google, Apple, Facebook (Meta), and Amazon engaging in political discourse with representatives from the seven most economically advanced nations in the world at the G7 meeting in 2017 epitomises how this emergence has upset the balance of power. This new form of surveillance and control marks a paradigm shift within surveillance theory. Whereas Foucauldian panopticism had informed our understanding of the dynamic between surveillance and control, many recent publications are more likely to be informed by Deleuze’s concept of the society of control, which reconceives the dynamic as existing between access and control. We are, then, beckoned to shift the locus of our analyses from subjectification to access control as the primary power mechanism to be analysed.
In this paper, I examine the contemporary discussion surrounding Foucauldian and Deleuzean methods of power analysis. While I will defend the Foucauldian focus on subjectification as a privileged power mechanism, I recognise that Foucault’s analysis of subjectification as such is untenable. This paper seeks to uncover how a post-Foucauldian conception of subjectification can contribute to the discourse on power in the emerging societal landscape of global digital surveillance and control. In order to arrive at a post-Foucauldian conception of subjectification, I first elucidate what exactly Foucault means by subject. Then, informed by Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein, I exposit how a subject arrives at their operating framework, ie, their framework of possible thought and action. Employing Deleuze’s concept of territory, I then arrive at a conception of how the operating framework of subjects can be produced and reproduced. This exploration ultimately culminates in ten theses regarding a post-Foucauldian concept of power and subjectification. Finally, I conclude that a post-Foucauldian conception of subjectification can restore the focus on subjectification within power analysis, thereby providing us with an explanatory model that can account for the voluntary display of intentional socially desirable behaviour by subjects en masse.