"Society of control" & "Racism and Fascism" - Group 9

Born in the 17th arrondisment of Paris 1925 Gilles Deleuze was a great French philosopher. His educational background is as follows;

Schools

• Attended public schools before the Second World War.
• Attended school in Normandy for a year.
• Returned to Paris – attended the Lycée Carnot and then he studied at Henry IV.
• 1944-1948 – Studied Philosophy at the Sorbonne.
• 1948 – Gained his agrégation in Philosophy.

Teaching

• 1948 – Began teaching philosophy in various Paris Lycées (high schools).
• 1957 – Taught history of philosophy at the Sorbonne
• 1960-64 – Researcher with the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique.
• 1964-69 – Taught at the University of Lyon and then took a position as professor of philosophy at Vincennes.
• 1969 – Deleuze took a teaching position at the experimental University of Paris VII, and he continued to teach there until his retirement in 1987.

Other Facts

• While studying, some of Deleuze’s professors included Ferdinand Aliquié, Georges Canguilhem, and Jean Hyppolite.
• Gilles Deleuze was married to Denise Paul “Fanny” Grandjouan in 1956.
• He became very good friends with Michel Foucault in 1962.
• Deleuze experienced his first major incidence of pulmonary illness in 1968.
• 1969 – Gilles Deleuze became friends and started a partnership with Félix Guattari.
• Deleuze took his own life on November 4, 1995.

Society of control

The text deals primarily with control in a time- sequence manner, the distinction between disciplinary societies and the society of control. The text can be associated with Foucault’s work regarding the old disciplinary systems and the “closed environment”. According to Deleuze

• A disciplinary society is characterized by scheduled control such as tests.
• A control society is characterized by constant surveillance.

Other aspects the text centers on are:

• Deleuze illustrated the change between the two different societies by the constant reform. For example: The Quebec school reform
• Surveillance brings instability
• Signature vs. id number to identify individuals
• Modulation (surf) of the control society brings the individual production in a wave movement, as opposed to production/ leisure.
• Sovereignty made use of simple machines while disciplinary societies use machines involving energy and control societies use machines called computers.
• The mutation of capitalism and how marketing is the new form of control
• Continuous forms of control: prison, schools, hospital and corporation.

Morrison

Toni Morrison whose original name Chloe Anthony Wofford was
born on February 18th 1931 in Lorain, Ohio, U.S.
Morrison is a African American writer noted for her examination of black experience (particularly black female experience) within the black community. lToni Morrison, the first black woman to receive Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.She attended Howard University (B.A., 1953) and Cornell University (M.A., 1955). After teaching at Texas Southern University for two years, she taught at Howard from 1957 to 1964. lIn 1965 she became a fiction editor. From 1984 she taught writing at the State University
of New York at Albany, leaving in 1989 to join the faculty of Princeton University.
She currently holds a place on the editorial board of The Nation magazine.

Books and texts
The central theme of Morrison's novels is the black American experience; in an unjust society her characters struggle to find themselves and their cultural identity.
Love (2003)
Paradise (1999)
Jazz (1992)
Beloved (1987)
Tar Baby (1981)
Song of Solomon (1977) ; its publication brought Morrison to national attention.
Sula (1973)
The Bluest Eye (1970)

Racism and Fascism

In her work Morrison discuss marketing and the consequence on our mental state. “Fascism talks ideology, but it is really just marketing – marketing for power.”

Fear and denial are an atmosphere in which its victims have lost the fight. Control is the central idea; Fascism is control, marketing is control.

Morrison describes the process used to attain a sense of racism and the fascism system of control. Racism and fascism are described as viruses and we have become the carriers.