By beginning in this way, Garfinkel indicates that the world of Orwell is no longer a major threat. Today, the direction from which harm may come involves a world controlled by the people behind the surveillance camera and, in general, by all those who manage our personal information. The discredit attached to Orwell’s anticipation works as part of the process of legitimation for Garfinkel’s work, still keeping to the rhetoric of menace. In Claisse’s words, Garfinkel uses Orwell as a negative target, a preceding anticipation, uchronic in the sense that  it could have happened but did not.    

Frédéric Claisse correlates all this with the theoretical heritage of Michel Foucault, and also the novelist William Burroughs, assimilated and extended by certain writings of Gilles Deleuze. In his book Discipline and Punish, published in 1975, Michel Foucault discussed the emergence of “societies of discipline”, which come after “societies of sovereignty.” These began to develop in the 18th century, and reached their height in the 20th century. These “societies of discipline” were characterised by the institution of “places of confinement”, that is, the family, the school, the military barracks, the factory, the hospital, the asylum, and the prison. These are institutions that are pervasive within society, normalise individuals, and tell them how to behave and what they must do. However, all these institutions undergo crises and reforms, and that has happened a number of times in recent decades.

Prophetic precedent

Deleuze comes after Foucault somewhat as Garfinkel after Orwell (although Foucault did give evidence of the changes Deleuze will focus on). Deleuze stands in greater historical continuity with Foucault, but observes that we are no longer living in a “society of discipline” but in a “society of control.” Reforms have changed the places of confinement, but according to Deleuze have only served to manage their death throes. “We have entered into societies of control, which no longer operate using confinement, by which utilise continuous control and instantaneous communication.” (2) There is a strong analogy here between Orwell and Garfinkel, a common feeling of urgency: “It is happening now.” We pass from a State that is powerful and centralised, which maintains institutions for confinement, to a situation where ‘control’ is distributed, spread out, continuous, instantaneous. Orwell and Foucault thus become foils, propping up the critiques of Garfinkel or Deleuze. And these two authors desire to activate the responsibility of the reader. “There is no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons” (Deleuze, 1990) (3).

The contribution made by William Burroughs to the thought of Deleuze has to do precisely with the notion of control. The control is total and immanent. Initially, Burroughs did not openly analyse the mechanisms of society. He used the notion of control to advance work on his relation with his heroin addiction (‘Junky’). But this dependence was seen by the most pessimistic and deterministic philosophers and sociologists as a total metaphor for capitalist society. Burroughs himself uses his addiction to engage in a determined reflection on the emergence of new information technologies and communication, making language the mode of Control par excellence for generations to come. Claisse characterises Burroughs as a prophetic precedent, a pioneer invoked in the reflections of Deleuze.

(2) Ibid, p. 158.
(3) Ibid, p. 159.