Society of Control v. The Individual
Project: Branding the Species
Project: Branding the Species
In considering the idea of branding the human species, one thing stuck out to me the most, which is this idea that we are all somehow interconnected into a society of control, be it at school, home or the workplace. In researching Deleuze and Foucault's essays, I realized just how complicated the matter of "individuality" really is and how hard it is to say I am an individual and be able to support my statement.
My whole journey and train of thought towards this subject can be found here: DMA Brand Lab II Blog, but below I'll just highlight a few of my issues below.
One of the crucial points I believe I struggled with at first was being able to voice out my own opinions based on the theories I had read by Deleuze and Foucault. For example, Deleuze states in The Society of Control that, "We no longer find ourselves dealing with the mass/individual pair. Individuals have become "dividuals," and masses, samples, data, markets, or 'banks.'" Yet, after reading all these powerful opinions I found myself just taking their words and visualizing them rather than synthesizing them and channeling them into my own personal convictions. To say the least, I was a bit confused and lost as to how I would be able to convey the construct of the "society of control" without being overly depressing or too cliché. In many ways, the way I felt about the society of control was negative and this was truly felt by the images I found to support this idea of the society of control. The references that came to mind were mostly dark from shocking images of corpses from the Holocaust to melancholy images of child laborers. Altogether, I believe my own negative views were perhaps affected by my own struggles with understanding how we are somehow sucked into this society of control. In some ways, I feel contempt from the expectations we are supposed to uphold because it has, under stress, caused my health to crumble and my anxiety to rise, but at the same time I feel that there is still hope and joy derived from the relationships that are formed from the society of control.
However, as the dark imagery I was focusing on was too depressing to represent society as a whole, I decided to focus on how we are individuals and dividuals and how we are able to choose our own path and forge our own impressions. Yet with the many cliches that exist, it is hard to unravel what is truly an individual and how a person is an individual without sounding like a "dividual."
As I look at my own life and how I consider myself to be an individual, I think of elements that combine to create a unique person or being. When our lives are broken apart we form units that are easily contained within a "dividual" standpoint, but together we get so many different mixes of choices and preferences that there is no denying the separation from one person to the next. For example, we are all trained to think critically, but our perceptions of issues will differ due to our own personal views and experiences. Also, the different combinations of skin, hair color and bone structure give us our individual look (except for perhaps identical twins). Yet, in regards to that, even identical twins know that despite looking very similar, they also have their differences in personality and preferences.
So yes, we are involved in a society of control, but it is the different elements of the control taken together that give us our individuality. I am by nature a fragile person that is easily hurt, who easily starts crying when I feel emotionally broken. Others may relate to me on that, but may not also hold the same standard of cleanliness and order. Also, my experiences are unique and mine alone. I must daily battle with my own fears while still upholding an image of peace and calm. I may have been trained to do so, but it does not dismiss the fact that these issues are still my own personal distractions and sorrows.
Experience is then perhaps a very crucial part of the divergence of the individual from the "dividual." No two people will have the same set of experiences. We may have similar experiences which allow us to relate, but we will not have the exact same experiences which impact us in the same way. For example, many children are picked on by bullies in their classes, yet some will experience more pain and depression from that than other kids. Also, the capacity to which the bully inflicts pain can reside on different levels from physical pain to emotional pain. Thereby, the scars that remain behind in each child from their previous experiences with bullies are all painful and hard to dismiss, but the impact will be different, as the origins could have been different in context and the pain could have been inflicted in a variety of ways.
My whole journey and train of thought towards this subject can be found here: DMA Brand Lab II Blog, but below I'll just highlight a few of my issues below.
One of the crucial points I believe I struggled with at first was being able to voice out my own opinions based on the theories I had read by Deleuze and Foucault. For example, Deleuze states in The Society of Control that, "We no longer find ourselves dealing with the mass/individual pair. Individuals have become "dividuals," and masses, samples, data, markets, or 'banks.'" Yet, after reading all these powerful opinions I found myself just taking their words and visualizing them rather than synthesizing them and channeling them into my own personal convictions. To say the least, I was a bit confused and lost as to how I would be able to convey the construct of the "society of control" without being overly depressing or too cliché. In many ways, the way I felt about the society of control was negative and this was truly felt by the images I found to support this idea of the society of control. The references that came to mind were mostly dark from shocking images of corpses from the Holocaust to melancholy images of child laborers. Altogether, I believe my own negative views were perhaps affected by my own struggles with understanding how we are somehow sucked into this society of control. In some ways, I feel contempt from the expectations we are supposed to uphold because it has, under stress, caused my health to crumble and my anxiety to rise, but at the same time I feel that there is still hope and joy derived from the relationships that are formed from the society of control.
However, as the dark imagery I was focusing on was too depressing to represent society as a whole, I decided to focus on how we are individuals and dividuals and how we are able to choose our own path and forge our own impressions. Yet with the many cliches that exist, it is hard to unravel what is truly an individual and how a person is an individual without sounding like a "dividual."
As I look at my own life and how I consider myself to be an individual, I think of elements that combine to create a unique person or being. When our lives are broken apart we form units that are easily contained within a "dividual" standpoint, but together we get so many different mixes of choices and preferences that there is no denying the separation from one person to the next. For example, we are all trained to think critically, but our perceptions of issues will differ due to our own personal views and experiences. Also, the different combinations of skin, hair color and bone structure give us our individual look (except for perhaps identical twins). Yet, in regards to that, even identical twins know that despite looking very similar, they also have their differences in personality and preferences.
So yes, we are involved in a society of control, but it is the different elements of the control taken together that give us our individuality. I am by nature a fragile person that is easily hurt, who easily starts crying when I feel emotionally broken. Others may relate to me on that, but may not also hold the same standard of cleanliness and order. Also, my experiences are unique and mine alone. I must daily battle with my own fears while still upholding an image of peace and calm. I may have been trained to do so, but it does not dismiss the fact that these issues are still my own personal distractions and sorrows.
Experience is then perhaps a very crucial part of the divergence of the individual from the "dividual." No two people will have the same set of experiences. We may have similar experiences which allow us to relate, but we will not have the exact same experiences which impact us in the same way. For example, many children are picked on by bullies in their classes, yet some will experience more pain and depression from that than other kids. Also, the capacity to which the bully inflicts pain can reside on different levels from physical pain to emotional pain. Thereby, the scars that remain behind in each child from their previous experiences with bullies are all painful and hard to dismiss, but the impact will be different, as the origins could have been different in context and the pain could have been inflicted in a variety of ways.
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