Education and "Societies of Control" from Disciplinary Pedagogy to Perpetual Training

Abstract

This paper discusses Deleuze's concept of 'societies of control' that suggests we have moved beyond Foucault's 'disciplinary societies' based on technologies of confinement to one based on a form of power he terms 'control' that operates through constant communication. The paper explores the way in which the notion of control is applied to new institutional forms defined by open, networked and flexible architectures that blurs boundaries among the different institutional spaces we inhabit. Using Deleuze's notion of control the paper tracks the fundamental shift from 'disciplinary pedagogy' to 'perpetual training' and explores its significance for the global knowledge economy through the concept of the spatialization of knowledge which draws on Deleuze and Guattari's 'geophilosophy', the principle of territory and a form of capitalism of communication.