\chapter{Subjectivity under Control: Critique and Resistance in
  Post-Disciplinary Societies}\label{cha:control}
\glsresetall

%%%%%%%%%\epigraph{	The society of control is characterized not by the power of the institutions of modernity, or  pre-modernity, the army, the prison, the university, the church, but instead by what he Deleuze called \enquote{the ultra-rapid forms of free-floating control that are  inherent in distributed networks}.}{\cite[318-319]{galloway2004}, \cite{mackenzie2021}}


\epigraph{A systematic rejection of subjectivity in the name of a mythical scientific objectivity continues to reign in the University. In the heyday of structuralism the subject was methodically  excluded from its own multiple and heterogeneous material of expression. It is time to re-examine machinic productions of  images, signs of artificial intelligence, etc., as new materials of subjectivity.}{\citeauthorfull{guattari1995a} \cite*[133]{guattari1995a}}

\citeauthorfull{deleuze1992a}’s \parencite*{deleuze1992a} short and speculative essay, \citetitle{deleuze1992a}, introduced a fragmentary but generative diagnosis of contemporary power structures.
It sketches a transition from the closed environments of institutions like school, factory, prison that played the pivotal role in shaping human subjectivity into a more diffuse machinery, increasingly reinforced by digital technologies and governed via the functionalities made available by computational advancements. In control societies, these new affordances form an \gls{assemblage} that distributes the disciplinary operation across the social field without any further institutional mediation \parencite[see][139]{hardt1998}, enabling a more fluid, flexible, and continuous operation of power.  Control is thus encountered as a micropolitical force acting directly upon everyday life, and is rather characterised with a pre-emptive role.

The formulation of control has already inspired critical readings of emerging computational cultures, internet infrastructures, and surveillance capitalism. Early developments in \glspl{nn} and \glspl{dnn} have already played a prominent role by enabling increasingly capable systems, built upon a long history of \gls{nlp}, and supporting applications such as search engines, social media platforms, recommendation systems, and automated filtering. Within this trajectory, \gls{ai} quickly became a central object in theorising control societies; yet, we now stand at a threshold beyond the early imaginaries of \textit{cyberspace} or the \textit{virtual}: the contemporary \gls{ai} landscape is dominated by \gls{genai} systems, particularly \glspl{llm}, which no longer merely transmit or classify information; they increasingly participate in the production of meaning itself \parencite{kazakov2025, dishon2024}. These models generalise across domains, transfer knowledge between tasks, and adapt to unforeseen situations rather than remaining bound to narrow, predefined functions \parencite{xu2024}. Kazakov \parencite*{kazakov2025} characterises this development as a mode of scalar Darwinism, defined by relentless quantitative expansion rather than qualitative transformation. \Glspl{llm} and other \gls{genai} systems advance primarily by scaling; more parameters, larger datasets, and increasing computational resources, without fundamental architectural innovation. This trajectory reinforces existing capitalist logics, treating data as a resource to be extracted and leveraged; competitive advantage derives from scale rather than novelty. Just as neoliberal governmentality construed \textit{the market} as a quasi-metaphysical plane that produces the optimal outcomes without direct intervention \parencite[131]{foucault2008}, contemporary \gls{ai} discourse often assumes that scaling models and data will automatically yield the solutions humanity is said to need.\sidenote{Not always this explicit, but the technosolutionist propagation is particularly strong in the frontlines of tech giants:

	\begin{minipage}{\marginparwidth}
		\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{images/musk2.png}
		\vspace{0.3em} % Optional spacing
	\end{minipage}

	— \citeauthorfull{musk2025} \cite*{musk2025}
}

Whether this acceleration will eventually enable more sophisticated forms of \gls{ai}, including \gls{agi}\sidenote{\Gls{agi} is a hypothetical intelligence of a machine capable of understanding, learning, and performing any intellectual task that a human being can do. It generalises across domains, transfers knowledge between tasks, and adapts to new, unforeseen situations, rather than being specialised for narrow tasks \parencite{xu2024}.}, remains contested. What is clear is that these systems continue to expand in capability, generality, and reach. \Gls{genai} models, especially \glspl{llm}, now function as computational agents that operate within and across domains, mediating how information is organised, circulated, and apprehended. They do not simply support existing knowledge practices; they increasingly generate outputs that are taken as meaningful, authoritative, and actionable \parencite{montanari2025, dishon2024}. Their interpretive operations shape what becomes visible or legible, filter which forms of knowledge can travel, and condition how subjects encounter and interpret information. Processes of subjectivation, therefore, unfold within a landscape where computational models actively participate in producing the categories, associations, and interpretive cues through which reality is navigated. As \gls{genai} systems occupy roles once associated with expert judgement, they begin to function as distributed institutional actors. This development intensifies the micropolitical dynamics identified in control societies, raising the question of how critique and resistance might be articulated when meaning is co-produced by systems whose authority derives from scale and statistical inference. The following analysis situates \gls{genai} within the historical transition from disciplinary institutions to control, in order to examine how these models shape institutional logics and the production of subjectivity.

The chapter proceeds in four steps:

\begin{enumerate}
	\item It revisits the genealogy of subjectivation, from classical accounts to post-structuralism.
	\item It updates Deleuze’s account by examining modulation, dividuation, and the role of computational infrastructures in extending discipline into continuous control.
	\item It considers how critique and resistance may be conceptualised under these conditions, engaging some of the relevant reflections on \citeauthor{deleuze1992a}'s \parencite*[]{deleuze1992a} formulation of control societies.
	\item It then turns to contemporary debate around \gls{genai}  models and examines how they may function as institutional \glspl{dispositif} that govern meaning and what might be their relevance to the already established arguments on resistance and critique (or the lack thereof), preparing the scene for an in depth analysis in the following chapter.
\end{enumerate}

\section{The Genealogy of the Docile Bodies}
As \citeauthor{Foucault1978} \parencite*[]{Foucault1978} defined the trajectory of politics as approaching the desire to infuse the \enquote{life itself}, he framed the pursuit of an effective methodology of subjectification\sidenote{The terms subjectivation (although the British English form of the word subjectivisation would be more fitting, critical theorists, especially French scholars, tend to use this form more often) and subjectification are often used interchangeably. However, this study refers to subjectivation in terms of Hegelian becoming, that is, becoming conscious as an internal process; and subjectification as an external process that refers to the formation of subjectivity through a machinery, as, for example, how \citeauthor{Foucault1978} mentions it, to emphasise a specific nuance. Still, considering how critical theory, especially post-structuralist theory, refers to subject, subjectivity, and individuality, there is a large intersection between the two. For a more in-depth reading about the difference between the two terms, refer to Chapters 3 and 5 in \citeauthor{wille2015}’s \parencite*[]{wille2015} \citetitle{wille2015}.} axis around which \enquote{biopower} and \enquote{biopolitics} were organised.\sidenote{Although \citeauthor{foucault1995} introduces these terms early in his theory \parencite*[see e.g.][]{foucault1995}, for a more concrete definition in relation to neoliberal governmentality, refer to \citetitle{foucault2008} \parencite*[]{foucault2008}.} The problem of subjectivity; its emergence, formation, and nature, however, has long occupied Western philosophy, morphing with shifts in different branches of philosophy like epistemology and metaphysics. Its philosophical genealogy stretches back to ancient concerns with soul and selfhood (see e.g. \citeauthorfull{aristotle1986}'s \citetitle{aristotle1986} \cite*{aristotle1986}), but its modern formulation takes decisive shape with \citeauthorfull{descartes2008}'s \parencite*[see][]{descartes2008} \enquote{cogito}, which installs the thinking subject as the indubitable ground of knowledge. From there, \citeauthorfull{kant2009}'s \parencite*[see][]{kant2009} \textit{Copernican Revolution} redirects philosophical inquiry by elevating the mind from its passive definition to an entity that actively structures our experience of the world, putting it at the centre of our perception of the world. Subjectivity is already playing a prominent role in Kant's theory as we perceive the world as it appears to us (in phenomena) and not as it is (in noumena), however, it is \citeauthorfull{hegel2019} \parencite*[see][]{hegel2019}  who emphasises the social substance of subjectivation (which can be read as a part of his \textit{Keplerian Revolution} in philosophy). Hegel shows that the subject comes into being only through social struggle and dependence, binding subject formation to power from the outset. It is therefore no coincidence that \citeauthorfull{marx1988}, especially in his earlier works, emphasises the role of labour as a medium of human subjectivity (e.g. in \cite{marx1988}). In these writings, \citeauthor{marx1988} critiques idealist accounts of subjectivity, arguing that subjectivity arises from \enquote{sensuous human activity} that is always shaped through socio-historical development and grounded in material conditions rather than in an abstract interiority \parencite[see][3]{wang2023a}. This can be read as standing in relation to his broader attempt to turn Hegel’s dialectic upside down and place it on a materialist foundation, grounding the becoming of the subject in concrete practices and the historical life-processes of species-being\sidenote{Alternatively species-essence; Ger. \textit{Gattungswesen}. The concept \citeauthor{marx1988} \parencite*[see][]{marx1988} uses to refer to the essential social and creative nature of human beings, which is realised through free, conscious activity and social relations.\nocite{wang2023a}} \parencite[see][3]{wang2023a}.

Thus, even before twentieth-century critiques, the entanglement of subjectivity and power is already visible.
Following \citeauthor{marx1988}, \citeauthorfull{lukacs1976} deepens the problem of subjectivity by arguing, through his reading of early \citeauthor{hegel2019}, that labour mediates the unity of subject and object, creating a \enquote{second nature} in which the subject forms itself through socio-historical activity \parencite[see][]{lukacs1976}. In both his early writings and his later works, \citeauthor{lukacs1976} treats labour as the practical medium through which humans transcend mere instinctual life, realise their purposes in the world, and achieve relative freedom within material constraints \parencite[see][4]{wang2023a}. By grounding subject formation in concrete social practice, Lukács marks the final major account centred on labour before later twentieth-century theories would fundamentally challenge the very primacy of such a humanistic, agent-centred subject. Works of \citeauthorfull{saussure2011} \parencite*[see][]{saussure2011}, \citeauthorfull{levi-strauss1963} \parencite*[see][]{levi-strauss1963},  and \citeauthorfull{althusser1977} \parencite*[see][]{althusser1977} have
%%%%%%%%%%who can be roughly categorised as structuralists, 
shifted attention from interior experience to the impersonal systems of language, myth, and ideology that precede and produce subjectivity. The subject, in this specific current, becomes an effect of signifying structures; it is interpolated by ideological apparatuses and made legible within symbolic orders. Post-structuralist thought introduced a specific kind of radicalisation of it: \citeauthorfull{barthes1977} \parencite*[see][]{barthes1977}, \citeauthorfull{derrida2016} \parencite*[see][]{derrida2016}, and \citeauthorfull{kristeva1980} \parencite*[see][]{kristeva1980} foreground the instability, iterability, and difference at the heart of these structures themselves. In post-structuralism, the autonomous subject of modernity dissolves into the relational field of discourse and social practice. What appears as subjectivity is only an instance, a provisional effect emerging from the entangled formations of language, power, and social formations. There is no pre-given subject behind the \textit{text}; the subject exists only as a position; produced, fractured, and dynamic.

Where post-structuralism dissolves the subject into discourse, \citeauthor{foucault1980} re-situates its production within the material operations of power, showing how institutions and practices fabricate subjects through discipline. In his account on \enquote{the careful fabrication of subjectivities} \parencite[215]{foucault1995}, disciplinary institutions operate as enclosed environments that shape individuals by acting directly on their bodies and conduct. Schools, prisons, factories, and families regulate behaviour by organising routines, structuring space, assigning tasks, and training bodies\sidenote{In critical theory, the concept of \textit{body} is usually, though not exclusively, taken to mean the human body, but also seen as a surface of social inscription, often thought in its social context. While philosophy, since Descartes, often mistrusted the body as a source of impulses, Spinoza insisted on asking what a body can do. A major shift came with Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, which foregrounded embodied perception, and with feminist theory, beginning with Beauvoir, which exposed the neglect of sexual difference. Later thinkers such as Butler challenged the distinction between natural and cultural bodies, and Haraway reconceived the body as cyborg, blurred with animals and machines. Politically, feminism introduced the notion of \enquote{body politics,} while cultural studies analysed the body as a site of media representation and social anxiety. Foucault’s concepts of discipline and biopower remain central, highlighting how bodies are inscribed and governed within regimes of power \parencite[see][98-99]{buchanan2018}.} to perform specific functions. The mechanism of discipline relies on continuous surveillance. The \enquote{panoptic} apparatus induces a \enquote{state of conscious and permanent visibility} \parencite[202–203]{foucault1995}, prompting individuals to monitor and correct themselves as they internalise the institutional gaze. Unlike sovereign power, which relied on spectacular punishment and the prerogative \enquote{to rule on death rather than to administer life} \parencite*[3]{deleuze1992a}, disciplinary power works through the everyday regulation of bodies and habits. It functions as a \enquote{political technology of the body} \parencite[26]{foucault1995}: diffuse rather than centralised, operating through innumerable practices, spaces, and procedures. Since it is enacted by institutions and reproduced by the subjects themselves, discipline exhibits what Foucault calls a \enquote{microphysical manifestation of power} \parencite[26–27]{foucault1995}. Power therefore circulates throughout the social field rather than emanating from a single source, constituting individuals by making them visible, knowable, and governable.

As the emergence of subjectivity becomes increasingly associated with the exercise of power, modern forms of governance come into focus. They do not merely constrain individuals from the outside but shape what can be known, felt, and done by organising the very conditions of selfhood. Once \gls{genai} models participate in producing meaning and participating in the (re-)production of knowledge, the question of how they relate to subjectivation becomes unavoidable. This is particularly relevant given the association Foucault builds between the process of subjectification and subjugation:

\begin{quote}
	[A]ll these present struggles revolve around the question: Who are we? They are a refusal of these abstractions, of economic and ideological state violence, which ignore who we are individually, and also a refusal of a scientific or administrative inquisition which determines who one is. [...] This form of power applies itself to immediate everyday life which categorizes the individual, marks him by his own individuality, attaches him to his own identity, imposes a law of truth on him which he must recognize and which others have to recognize in him. It is a form of power which makes individuals subjects. There are two meanings of the word \enquote{subject}: subject to someone else by control and dependence; and tied to his own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge. Both meanings suggest a form of power which subjugates and makes subject to.

	\citereset
	— \cite[781]{foucault1982}
\end{quote}

Subjectivation, therefore, involves a double movement: the subject emerges only through the operations that simultaneously render it governable, and at the same time, governance aims to align emerging forms of subjectivity with its prevailing order of truth. Power is a productive force in this sense; it shapes identities and establishes the standards by which individuals become intelligible to themselves and to others. Production of knowledge is central to the architectural logic of the disciplinary power; as \citeauthor{Krasmann2017} notes, it is \enquote{not so much about discovering the truth, but rather about producing certain truths} \parencite*[11]{Krasmann2017}. The knowledge on bodies renders them accessible and open to intervention, and control over the production of knowledge shapes the nature of social production and the truth itself. The disciplinary production of subjects through enclosure and surveillance establishes the conceptual ground for the emergence of a different configuration of power. As the routines, procedures, and techniques of discipline diffuse beyond the walls of institutions, they begin to operate more flexibly, no longer enclosing subjects but acting on them through circulating flows of information, assessment, and anticipation, marking a further shift in their operation.

%%%%%%%%%%the shift from discipline to what \citeauthor{deleuze1992a} identifies as control.

\section{The Emergence of Modulative Control}

\epigraph{You see control can never be a means to any practical end\ldots It can never be a means to anything but more control\ldots Like junk\ldots}{\cite[81]{burroughs1979}}

%INFO:\subsection{1. From Disciplinary to Control Societies}
%
Following \citeauthor{foucault1995}’s genealogy of power, from sovereign regimes to disciplinary societies, \citeauthor{deleuze1992a} introduces a further historical configuration: \enquote{the society of control} \parencite[]{deleuze1992a}. \citeauthor{deleuze1992a} points to an institutional crisis and charts the replacement of enclosed institutional spaces; schools, factories, prisons, family\sidenote{Which \gls{dg} were eager to emphasise its institutional nature of (see \citetitle{deleuze1983} \cite*{deleuze1983}).} by diffuse, pervasive mechanisms of flexible forms of control.
Deleuze notes that the 20th century marks the transition,
the disciplinary institutions were already fading out after WWII \parencite[3]{deleuze1992a}. While disciplinary regimes operated through enclosures, segregating individuals into clearly defined spaces associated with specific functions, control societies rely on more fluid mechanisms: instead of physical boundaries, social organisation is achieved by tracking, directing, and modulating movement and behaviour across interconnected and permeable environments (see \cite[3]{brusseau2020}). As \citeauthorfull{hardt1998} \parencite*[139]{hardt1998} puts it, \enquote{the walls of the institutions are breaking down in such a way that their disciplinary logics do not become ineffective but are rather generalized in fluid forms across the social field} as new forms of biopolitical governance start taking hold \parencite[see also][122]{mackenzie2018}.

As movement between institutions required subjects to reset themselves and start anew in each, the machinery of discipline operated in parallel but remained compartmentalised. Although a common language circulated between these enclosures, their relation was strictly \enquote{analogical} \parencite[4]{deleuze1992a}. Control, a term Deleuze borrows from \citeauthorfull{burroughs1979} \parencite*[]{burroughs1979}, signifies both this institutional shift and a fundamental change in the machinery of subjectivation. It marks the rise of a post-disciplinary \gls{dispositif} powered by computational advancements,  in which power is no longer exercised by confining bodies within discrete environments but by continuously modulating informational flows that shape conduct directly:

\begin{quote}
	Control differs from governmentality in two interconnected ways: first, control is dependent upon electronic technology as its primary mode of delivery. This most obviously means technology that is able to process, store, and transmit huge amounts of information, creating an \enquote{informational milieu} that conditions both what is capable of being thought and how it is to be thought. Second, control no longer presupposes an \enquote{outside,} not even as an included lack or absence because, operating by differing from itself, it is able to treat the whole of life as so many statistical variations of itself.

	\citereset
	— \cite[457]{moore2007}
\end{quote}

Building on these distinctions, control can be understood as a regime in which the mechanisms of disciplinary governmentality become internalised within technological infrastructures that act upon continuous informational flows. \enquote{Modulation} replaces the \enquote{moulds} that characterise disciplinary institutions: where moulding imposed form from fixed sites, modulation operates as a flexible and dynamic process that acts across domains rather than through segmented enclosures \parencite[see][4]{deleuze1992a}. It functions through ongoing feedback and adjustment, shifting from a \enquote{form-imposing} to a \enquote{self-regulating} mode in the production of subjectivity \parencite[74]{hui2015}.\sidenote{Control and its modulating form are not necessarily digital; the term refers to an operational logic that becomes dominant with contemporary capitalism. Deleuze illustrates this shift in the transition from factory to corporation, where production is no longer confined to a delimited site but distributed across an abstract field of work with variable remuneration. Likewise, education no longer concludes with the school but extends into lifelong training \parencite[6]{deleuze1992a}. While modulation predates digital systems, contemporary technologies intensify and expand this logic, providing the material conditions through which discipline is transformed into control.}

Under control, the subject who once moved between distinct institutional roles undergoes a new kind of fragmentation. The self may remain socially continuous, yet its qualities and behaviours are isolated, analysed, and acted upon in smaller, detachable components \parencite[5]{mackenzie2021}. To capture this transformation, \citeauthor{deleuze1992a} introduces the figure of the \enquote{dividual}: the former individual is now treated as divisible and can be decomposed into data particles, micro-traces, and partial qualities circulating across digital and organisational infrastructures \parencite{deleuze1992a}. These dividual elements are treated as operational units; detached from the person from whom they originate, they are mobilised for increasingly automated decision-making processes \parencite[6]{deleuze1992a}. \citeauthorfull{Cheney2011} illustrates the practical consequences of this logic in contemporary, highly digitalised environments:

\begin{quote}

	[M]odulation marks a continuous control over society that speaks to individuals in a sort of coded language, of creating not individuals but endlessly sub-dividable ‘dividuals’ [...] Dividual fragments flow across seemingly open and frictionless networks and into rigid database fields as part of the subsumption implicit in data mining [...] As a user travels across these networks, algorithms can topologically striate her surfing data, allocating certain web artifacts into particular, algorithmically-defined categories like gender. The fact that user X visits the web site CNN.com might suggest that X could be categorized as male. And additional data could then buttress or resignify how X is categorized. As X visits more sites like CNN.com, X’s maleness is statistically reinforced, adding confidence to the measure that X may be male

	\citereset
	— \cite[168-169]{Cheney2011}
\end{quote}

This configuration produces what \citeauthor{mackenzie2021} describe as a \enquote{bundle of elements held together} \parencite[6]{mackenzie2021}, a formation that gradually replaces the individual as the primary unit of governance. Through databases, ubiquitous computation, and statistical inference, these dividual traces are parsed, recomposed, and acted upon, generating personalised evaluations, outputs, and interventions.
The effect is akin to a \enquote{self-deforming cast}: a continuously adjusting apparatus that modulates the subject in motion \parencite[4]{deleuze1992a}. Docility under this new regime is no longer enforced by explicit institutional intentionality operationalised as rigid codes. Instead, control operates by creating spaces that feel open and permissive, as if the individual were free to explore, create, and tangle with possibilities. Yet both their production and their ends are subtly governed by intangible, underlying forces \parencite[75]{hui2015} acting on a much more personal level. Control converges the previously separate spaces of subjectivation into a single, fluid field: \enquote{one no longer leaves an institution behind, and one is never fully done with the spaces that act upon the self} \parencite[6]{deleuze1992a}.
Contrary to disciplinary institutions, which segmented individuals and populations, control societies separate components of individuality \parencite[9]{mackenzie2021}.

% \subsection{3. Immanence and the Extension of Discipline}
As \citeauthorfull{hardt2003} \parencite*{hardt2003} observe, \enquote{the passage to the society of control does not in any way mean the end of discipline. In fact, the immanent exercise of discipline […] is extended even more generally in the society of control} \parencite[also in][83]{galloway2001}. Here, immanence refers to how discipline becomes embedded in circulating processes rather than emanating from fixed institutions, so to say, \enquote{subjectivities are still produced in the social factory} \parencite[149]{hardt1998} but intensified and generalised, going beyond (but not abolishing or replacing, rather extending or coexisting with) the institutions. Control unfolds across different modalities and novelties; in protocols, through feedback loops, on algorithmic infrastructures; governance operates through continuous modulation that conditions how subjects perceive, act, and desire. Yet while Foucault never postulated a stage beyond disciplinary societies, Deleuze’s \textit{Postscript} also offers only a sparse sketch of what comes after enclosure-based institutionalisation, the form remains vague, its contours merely suggested through keywords like \textit{modulation} or \textit{dividuation}.
What Deleuze leaves us with, then, is not a blueprint but a sketch of tendencies whose operative principles demand further analysis.
The challenge, as subsequent debates have often emphasised, is to determine how such a configuration might still allow for critique and resistance. If discipline persists under control in more diffuse and continuous forms, any account of power must also attend to its internal lines of tension and the micropolitical openings through which divergence can emerge.



\section{A Critique of Critical Lack of Critique}\label{sec:crit_res}
If, however, the regime of Power/Knowledge\sidenote{As Foucault \parencite*[see e.g.][]{foucault1980} likes to refer it to emphasise the  the inseparability and interplay of knowledge and power; power is based on knowledge, operates on knowledge, and in turn power also (re)produces knowledge, shapes knowledge.} is indeed getting more and more encircling and
unified through the new capabilities, new technologies of power; is there any
way to diverge, counter-act, open new planes for a different kind of
subjectivation? We are landing at the very foundations of the critical theory;
as an exemplary articulation, Foucault is positioning the relationship between resistance and critique via referring to \citeauthorfull{kant1784}'s \parencite*[]{kant1784} \citetitle{kant1784}\sidenote{\enquote{An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?}}:

\begin{quote}
	[I]n relation to Aufklärung, critique for Kant will be that which says to knowledge: Do you really know how far you can know? Reason as much as you like, but do you really know how far you can reason without danger? Critique will say, in sum, that our freedom rides less on what we undertake with more or less courage than in the idea we ourselves have of our knowledge and its limits and that, consequently, instead of allowing another to say \enquote{obey,} it is at this moment, when one will have made for oneself a sound idea of one's own knowledge, that one will be able to discover the principle of autonomy, and one will no longer hear the \enquote{obey}; or rather the \enquote{obey} will be founded on autonomy itself. [...] this true courage of knowing that was invoked by Aufklärung, this same courage of knowing [savoir] consists in recognizing the limits of knowledge [connaissance]; and it would be easy to show that for him autonomy is far from being opposed to obedience to sovereigns. But it no less remains that Kant affixed the understanding of knowledge to critique in his enterprise of desubjectification in relation to the game of power and truth, as a primordial task, as a prolegomena to any present and future Aufklärung.

	\citereset
	— \cite[387]{foucault2019}
\end{quote}

Critique, in this sense, is a way of recognising the current limits of human knowledge and the very potentiality of reaching beyond them. As for \citeauthor{kant1784} \parencite*[see][]{kant1784}, it is a means of countering the \enquote{self-imposed immaturity} of humankind, an attempt to introduce autonomy into the process of subjectivation itself. A process of \textit{desubjectification} is internal to any act of
\textit{enlightenment} under Power/Knowledge. However, if control is an increasingly pervasive way of applying discipline, if it is immanent to the processes that produce knowledge, meaning, and subjectivity, then the very space from which critique once operated faces the threat of becoming compromised.
In disciplinary societies, the institutions that governed knowledge still had a discrete formation; although one cannot speak of an exteriority of power, there was nonetheless an \textit{outside} to these institutions, a space between them, as \citeauthorfull{moore2007} (\cite*[]{moore2007}, see above) names it. The configurations that could give rise to critique were more likely to form within this \textit{outside}: although not free from the institutional grasp, a space where critique could still appeal to reason, truth, or moral law, partly beyond the institution. In control societies, however, the fluidity of \glspl{dispositif} means that the partialities from which critique might emerge are scattered across the entire social field with less concentration.
Power and knowledge coincide with the continuous modulation of information through the production of a specific rationality, but also through the \textit{technologies} that can grind the information into the interiority of this specific rationality in an arguably more effective way. Critique risks being absorbed as another signal within the same feedback loop that (re)produces the regime of truth.

Having outlined how control generalises and intensifies disciplinary mechanisms, the question inevitably turns to the \textit{Postscript}'s enigmatic closing section, \textit{Program}.
The notion of Program is often read as a double entendre, as the program of the mechanism of control and as a program for resistance \parencite[see e.g.][7-8]{mackenzie2021}. On the one hand, \citeauthor{deleuze1992a} presents a vague compilation of \citeauthorfull{guattari1995}’s concept of cities from an unpublished screenplay, where access is regulated by codes and computational means \parencite[7]{deleuze1992a}, where behind movement tracking and \textit{machines saying \textbf{NO!}}, by regulating access to facilities, control appears as the implementation of a gated society operating on dividual characteristics (e.g. biometric information on IDs). Deleuze also introduces a form of ressentiment as a consequence (or achievement) of control; both the corporate structure and the personalised ways of modulation put the subjects into a position to desire the continuous articulation of discipline. The never-ending training is now demanded by the subjects of this new societal setting \parencite[7]{deleuze1992a} in order to get ahead of others in the same class. This mechanism can be read similarly to the darkly satirical expression in \citeauthor{burroughs1979}’s \parencite*[]{burroughs1979} \citetitle{burroughs1979}. His character, Dr. Benway, describes a mode of domination that operates not through overt force but by fostering guilt, diffuse anxiety, and the sense that subjection is deserved. Bureaucratic opacity completes the loop: the subject never encounters a clear agent of domination, only impersonal procedures.

\begin{quote}
	I deplore brutality [...] It's not efficient. On the other hand, prolonged mistreatment, short of physical violence, gives rise, when skillfully applied, to anxiety and a feeling of special guilt. A few rules or rather guiding principles are to be borne in mind. The subject must not realize that the mistreatment is a deliberate attack [...] on his personal identity. He must be made to feel that he deserves any treatment he receives because there is something (never specified) horribly wrong with him. The naked need of the control addicts must be decently covered by an arbitrary and intricate bureaucracy so that the subject cannot contact his enemy direct.

	\citereset
	— Dr. Benway \parencite[17]{burroughs1979}
\end{quote}

Dr. Benway reads like a caricaturised product of the diagnosis \citeauthor{horkheimer2017} \parencite*[]{horkheimer2017} introduced in \citetitle{horkheimer2017}\sidenote{\enquote{Dialectic of Enlightenment}}, namely the transformation of reason into an instrument of domination (or the instrumentality of reason itself). His clinical rationality serves no emancipatory end, only following a strict claim for \textit{positive science}\sidenote{Derived from how Dr. Benway describes \textit{pure science} himself:
	\begin{quote}
		\scriptsize Balderdash, my boy... We're scientists. ...Pure scientists. Disinterested research and damned be him who cries 'Hold, too much !' Such people are no better than party poops.

		\citereset
		— Dr. Benway \parencite[66]{burroughs1979}
	\end{quote}
} leading to some grotesque and cruel practices throughout \citeauthor{burroughs1979}' novels. However, as absurd as his introduction of the concept is, the ressentiment in control societies is precisely not just a more personalised correction of the subjectivity, but also the subject's wish to intensify the process in a competition with other members of the society.

On the other hand, in the sense of program as a program for resistance, something more unusual is taking place. \citeauthor{deleuze1992a} acknowledges the necessity of resistance and even suggests that collective formations such as unions may still retain strategic relevance \parencite[7]{deleuze1992a}, yet his analysis of the socio-technological machinery of control never develops into a prescriptive framework for how resistance could operate under these conditions. This ambiguity is surprising considering resistance is acknowledged as necessary, yet it is left without a concrete form. If control reorganises power into flexible, adaptive, and self-modulating forms, then resistance cannot rely on the same operational nature that was effective within the rigid enclosures of disciplinary institutions. The problem is not merely that control is pervasive; it transforms the terrain on which struggle unfolds. This gap has prompted later theorists to reconsider the question of resistance; \citeauthor{hardt1998} \parencite*[]{hardt1998}, for example, draws attention to how control operates within the broader dynamics of global imperialism, \citeauthor{galloway2004} \parencite*[]{galloway2004} frames control as a protocol-driven environment that can only be challenged by intervening in its technical operations, \citeauthor{mackenzie2021} \parencite*[]{mackenzie2021} emphasise the need for counter-sequential practices that interrupt the patterned chains through which power operates (see Section~\ref{sec:postinstitutional}), while also stressing the role of critique in the Kantian sense of enabling an exit from an increasingly enclosing regime of truth (see below). A common theme between those works is that they agree on the immanence of the resistance to some degree; resistance is no longer imagined as a force standing outside power but as something that must take shape within the same infrastructures that organise contemporary forms of subjectivation, a theme that is either missing or not very well developed in the \textit{Postscript}.


\citeauthor{deleuze1992a}'s previous works, however, especially the ones in collaboration with \citeauthor{guattari1995} (see  \citetitle{deleuze1983} \cite*[]{deleuze1983} and \citetitle{deleuze1987} \cite*[]{deleuze1987}), are often read as pieces of theory that put resistance in the centre, since their concepts like \enquote{lines of flight}\sidenote{The Deleuzoguattarian term line of flight (ligne de fuite) refer to the formation that diverges from the established status-quo's grip, a path that enables parts of a system to break away, reconfigure, or deterritorialise existing structures of power, meaning, or order; \enquote{an infinitesimal possibility of escape} \parencite[]{fournier2014}. A claim \enquote{that social formations are defined not by their internal contradictions, but by what escapes them} \parencite[14]{thornton2018}.} and movements of \enquote{deterritorialisation}\sidenote{Deterritorialisation is the process through which an established social or symbolic order (a territory) and its relations are altered, unbound, displaced. It \enquote{is the movement by which 'one' leaves the territory. It is the operation of the line of flight} \parencite[672]{deleuze1987}.} are introduced as ontologically primary formations (\cite[278–280]{smith2016d}, see also Chapter~\ref{cha:conjunctive} where Deleuze's work together with Guattari becomes especially relevant).
By contrast, in Foucault’s trajectory, the question of resistance emerges only late in his work, after his long elaboration of power’s ubiquitous and constitutive nature. There are accounts in his later writings where Foucault insists that resistance must arise from within the very network of power relations that enclose and constitute subjects, and he even asserts its primacy and centrality to every power structure. Yet, as \citeauthorfull{smith2016d} \parencite*[see][266]{smith2016d} notes, this move is fraught with ambiguities: Foucault's resistance often appears reactive, secondary, and thus struggles to maintain an active, transformative quality as Deleuze also reflects on:

\begin{quote}
	It seems to me then that Michel [Foucault] encounters a problem which hasn't at all the same status for me. For if the systems of power are in some way constitutive, the only thing that can go against them are phenomena of \enquote{resistance}, and the question bears on the status of these phenomena. [...] There is no problem for me in the status of phenomena of resistance: since the lines of flight are the primary determinations, since desire makes the social field function, it is rather the systems of power which, at the same time, find themselves produced by these assemblages [...] lines of flight, which is to say assemblages of desire, are not created by marginal elements [...] I thus have no need of a status of phenomena of resistance[.]

	\citereset
	— \cite[]{deleuze1997}
\end{quote}

Foucault’s definition of resistance as an external phenomenon that occurs under certain conditions defines the phenomenon itself as prone to being easily reabsorbed into the structures it contests.  In \acrfull{dg}’s project, by contrast, power is inseparable from the investments of desire that compose social formations; resistance is therefore not exceptional or secondary but emanates from the same pillars that constitute the foundation of the power structure itself. The elements that consolidate a power formation are also those through which it can diverge, mutate, or collapse.
Rather than locating an origin of resistance, therefore, \gls{dg} are concerned with understanding how immanent flows are formed into diverging, deterritorialising processes.
Looking through their lens, a critical question emerges for the analysis of control: if \textit{lines of flight} are indeed primary, if the formation of power is directly bound to the investments of desire that also constitute the forces of its deterritorialisation, and if Deleuzian and Deleuzoguattarian literature is so strongly characterised by its emphasis on resistance, then \textit{why do lines of flight not emerge directly from the new formations of power in control societies}? Shouldn't the control as a novel formation also immediately cause new flows of deterritorialisation?
And if it indeed does so, do these processes open any formulation of subjectivation against, through, or beyond control?  \citeauthorfull{Krasmann2017} \parencite*{Krasmann2017} points out the issue and hardship in relation to the connection between the subject and power:

\begin{quote}
	Power brings the subject into being, but power does not exist independent of its enactment. It is immanent and only takes shape at a point of resistance. The subject is such a point of resistance that recasts, redirects and sometimes reverts power. Subjectivation, however, always involves wrestling with oneself; it is governing the self and self-government: the subject is bound to power as it is to him- or herself. How then to conceive of a political subject as a fold of power as well as a \enquote{line of flight}? How to imagine a challenge to the current regime of visibility?

	\citereset
	— \cite[18]{Krasmann2017}
\end{quote}


\citeauthor{Krasmann2017}’s insight displays the core difficulty in analysing contemporary forms of power. As the biopolitical mechanisms in the form described by \citeauthor{foucault1995} and extended by \citeauthor{deleuze1992a} operate ever more closely upon the subject, the process of subjectivation becomes the very centre of power’s formation. This proximity also renders resistance inseparable from the capacity to evade subjectification; the possibility of opening a line of flight becomes an irreducibly micropolitical task. Building such resistance, therefore, requires attention both to the machinery that produces subjectivity and to the practices of self-formation through which subjects participate in their own constitution. Where can we look for answers that Deleuze’s \textit{Postscript} leaves unresolved then?  Where does subjectivation emerge today, when ubiquitous computing, surveillance, and granular knowledge of bodies shape the conditions of experience from the outset? Who or what can diverge from these \glspl{dispositif} of subjectivation, and what forms can such divergence take? Should we once again look toward artistic or creative practices as potential sites of transformation? And how does this problem relate to generative systems such as \glspl{llm}, which increasingly participate in the production of meaning? Is their generativity merely reproductive, or does it contain possibilities that have yet to be explored?

So, what role remains for critical theory in a society of control? Can critique, conceived as \enquote{a source of understanding what we should resist, and how we should resist it} \parencite[121]{mackenzie2018}, forge new paths beyond Deleuze’s minimalist frame? \citeauthorfull{rouvroy2012} \parencite*[13–14]{rouvroy2012} reflects on it in the context of what she calls \enquote{algorithmic governmentality}: \enquote{here, algorithmic regimes operate in a mode that bypasses confrontations with subjects, operating through infra-individual data and supra-individual profiles while masquerading as objective governance}. As she notes, the experimental procedures of modern science are replaced by \enquote{real-time, pre-emptive production of algorithmic reality}. This rationality assumes that data contains an objective truth that can be extracted with the right tools, and if it does not, the issue is framed as a lack of sufficient data. Although \citeauthor{rouvroy2012} focuses primarily on decision-making architectures that are increasingly delegated to algorithmic processes, her diagnosis extends to contemporary \gls{genai} systems. Current tendencies in \gls{genai} development orient models toward ever-larger architectures and ever-expanding datasets in the pursuit of improved approximation to truth. Rouvroy’s account, therefore, brings us back to the pressing question with a new look: in a pre-emptive and micropolitical process of subjectification, where knowledge is extracted directly from data and prediction precedes interpretation, is critique still possible at all? Should we give up on it for good? One can read \citeauthorfull{mackenzie2018}'s reflection as a response:

\begin{quote}
	The very conditions of control that shape our contemporary forms of governmentality are also those that enable immanent forms of resistance to control, because there is always the potential to switch around the direction of the ‘IF...THEN...’ functions in order to forge new connections. Even more importantly, though, there is always the potential to stall and disrupt these functions in the name of a ‘what if’; the process of singularisation that accompanies the disruption of the algorithms themselves. [...] What is the art of resistance, today? It is the ability to disrupt the algorithmic flow of contemporary governmentality by connecting signs that don’t function algorithmically; that is, subtracting the unique in the algorithm in order to form collective assemblages of ‘what if’ rather than ‘IF...THEN...’.

	\citereset
	— \cite[129-130]{mackenzie2018}
\end{quote}

\citeauthor{mackenzie2018} begins by insisting that critique must always be rethought in relation to contemporary forms of power; critique has a history, and it must adapt as each new social formation emerges. If critique seems impossible, it very well may be that the paths leading to the critique should be re-examined and reconfigured. For this purpose, his analysis turns to the strict definition of algorithms as \enquote{a self-contained step-by-step set of operations to be performed} \parencite[125]{mackenzie2018}, in order to frame how contemporary computational logics condition the possibilities of political action. To develop a specific contrast among approaches towards critique, \citeauthor{mackenzie2018} draws on \citeauthorfull{badiou2009}’s criticism of Deleuze inspired politics. \citeauthor{badiou2009} charges \gls{dg} with promoting a connectivist, rhizomatic\sidenote{A rhizome is \gls{dg}’s concept for a non-hierarchical, non-linear form of organisation in which elements connect in multiple, shifting ways. Unlike tree-like or arboreal models based on roots, origins, and hierarchy, the rhizome figures thought, social formations, and practices as open, proliferating networks defined by connection, heterogeneity, multiplicity, rupture, and transformation (see \cite[622]{buchanan2018} for a short explanation and \cite{deleuze1987} for \gls{dg}’s introduction of the concept).} politics that mirrors the fluidity of neoliberal capitalism rather than resisting it. Yet, as \citeauthor{mackenzie2018} argues, the formalism of \citeauthor{badiou2009}’s own approach is structured around an \enquote{IF…[event], THEN…[action]} schema that ends up resonating with the algorithmic logic it seeks to oppose \parencite[126]{mackenzie2018}. In attempting to prescribe a politics grounded in fidelity to the event, Badiou risks reducing resistance to an algorithmic procedure: finite in scope, conditionally triggered, and ultimately compatible with the very computational regime he critiques. Referring to \citeauthorfull{lazzarato2014}’s \parencite*[see][]{lazzarato2014} notion of the sign\sidenote{Emanating from linguistics, signs as signifying elements are generalised by \citeauthorfull{lazzarato2014}, who extends the concept beyond language to the semiotic operations of machines, objects, codes, and diagrams. As he writes, \enquote{signs (machines, objects, diagrams, etc.) constitute the focal points of proto-enunciation and proto-subjectivity} because \enquote{they suggest, enable, solicit, instigate, encourage, and prevent certain actions, thoughts, affects or promote others}. More importantly, \enquote{through asignifying semiotics, machines communicate directly with other machines, entailing often unforeseeable and incalculable diagrammatic effects on the real} \parencite[97]{lazzarato2014}. As \citeauthor{mackenzie2018} elaborates:
	\begin{quote}
		\scriptsize The sign can in principle take any ‘computable’ form: it may be a
		number, but it could just as legitimately be a visual symbol, a bodily
		gesture, a click on a keyboard, a smell; even a user’s attentiveness or not
		to parts of a screen.

		\citereset
		— \cite[125]{mackenzie2018}
	\end{quote}
} the fundamental operative units of algorithmic systems that pre-structure the
social plane, \citeauthor{mackenzie2018} \parencite*[see][126–127]{mackenzie2018} emphasises that resistance cannot follow the same procedural structure through which signs are formed in a regime. Algorithmic structures are strict and finite, whereas rhizomatics is a process-oriented way of binding signs in an infinite number of ways, which is what ensures that its emergence stays immanent and cannot be simply captured or subsumed by algorithmic governmentality \parencite[see][127-130]{mackenzie2018}. Rhizomatic composition thus enables an immanent critique that works through recomposing the very signs of control in ways that the system cannot fully anticipate or normalise. It is a way of keeping critique alive by opening new planes through connections that do not conform to the same pathways as control, which constitutes the precursor for resistance in \citeauthor{mackenzie2018}’s account.


Building on this foundation, he reminds us that \enquote{[c]ritique can no longer be conditioned by the reflexive subject able to determine the proper limits of the known, nor the transgressive subject able to go beyond the limits of the disciplines that establish what is known} \parencite[130]{mackenzie2018}. Rather, critique in post-disciplinary societies is about \enquote{opening up the possibilities} of divergence, alternative forms of subjectivation, connection, and collectivity; it must \enquote{embrace the processes implicit in algorithmic governmentality} \parencite[130]{mackenzie2018}. It is mainly, therefore, \citeauthor{mackenzie2018} turns to \citeauthor{guattari1995a}'s exploration on art and aesthetics \parencite[see][]{guattari1995a}, the artist is first and foremost not an agent idly waiting to be activated by an event, nor her exploration follows \enquote{IFs} and \enquote{THENs}. Artistic activity is for \citeauthor{guattari1995a} a rupture, an unframing that enables the creation of new individual and collective subjectivities. \citeauthor{guattari1995a}'s artistic subject is an agent of process in exploration of new planes, of imagining, of generating new ideas \parencite[see][129]{mackenzie2018}, therefore, not just non-confirming with the algorithmic procedures but also more likely to bind the immanent partialities towards a push outside of it:
\begin{quote}
	[I]n rupture with signification and denotation - ordinary  aesthetic categorisations lose a large part of their relevance. Reference to \enquote{free figuration,} \enquote{abstraction,} or \enquote{conceptualism} hardly matters! What is important is to know if a work  leads effectively to a mutant production of enunciation. The  focus of artistic activity always remains a surplus-value of subjectivity or, in other terms, the bringing to light of a negentropy  at the heart of the banality of the environment - the consistency of subjectivity only being maintained by self-renewal through a minimal, individual or collective, resingularisation.

	\citereset
	— \cite[133]{guattari1995a}
\end{quote}

\citeauthor{guattari1995a} releases the artistic activity from the common
associations; it is much less about
appealing to some conventional aesthetic categorisations, and much more about
a reconfiguration of \textit{signs} in a way that it doesn't function
algorithmically and forming the collective \glspl{assemblage} that built around what  \citeauthor{mackenzie2018} \parencite*[130]{mackenzie2018} calls \enquote{what if}. Rupture in artistic pursuit is (not necessarily) a decomposition, rather an individual and collective reformation. And new subjectivations are not an external further pursuit; it is the other way around, the formation of new subjectivations generates artistic creation as a surplus.
After all, from his perspective, the artist must \enquote{detach and deterritorialise a segment of the real in such a way as to make it play the role of a partial enunciator} \parencite[131]{guattari1995a}.


The specific presentation of \citeauthor{guattari1995a}’s artistic activity, with its emphasis on the reconfiguration of signs and the rupture of algorithmic processes, offers a concrete way of approaching resistance in control societies that most secondary literature lacks. Namely, the tendency to invoke lines of flight without specifying how such divergence might be technically or materially enacted within contemporary formations of \glspl{dispositif}. In this context, \citeauthor{mackenzie2018} delivers one of the most comprehensive accounts by both charting the connection between resistance and critique and framing their immanence to the contemporary infrastructures of power. Yet his reading rests on a characterisation of \enquote{algorithmic governmentality} as grounded in conditional and finite operations, a sequential logic that he, alongside \citeauthor{rouvroy2012}, introduces without necessarily examining its current technical plausibility. Although their abstraction is mostly metaphorical, this becomes increasingly difficult to sustain once we consider the specifics of contemporary generative systems. It is a matter of debate whether the operation of these systems should be simply abstracted as \enquote{IF…THEN…} chains: their procedures are distributed, probabilistic, open-ended, and rooted in statistical inference rather than symbolic rule execution, and such simplifications might create significant gaps in generalisation. Even if this abstraction holds as a loose metaphor, it risks telling only one side of the story; these models generate outputs in a continuous, flexible, and seemingly unbounded manner. It is also not entirely clear why the forms of resistance and critique cannot resemble the operational machinery of the control's \glspl{dispositif}. Nevertheless, under such conditions, the immanent operation of critique and resistance, whether through a reconfiguration of signs or an interruption, could require the reconfiguration of the generative conditions themselves, a task that cannot be approached without analysing their underlying architectures. Furthermore, although the contrast between \citeauthor{badiou2009} and the Deleuzoguattarian perspective establishes an important analytical frame, it remains unresolved whether divergence from the procedural pathways through which control operates can itself be taken as resistance, or whether following those pathways necessarily forecloses a possibility for divergence. This specific part of the argumentation calls not only for a close reading of the technical mechanisms at work, but also for an analysis of the institutional transformations that these mechanisms participate in, leading to even more questions than it reflects on.


\section{Towards a (Post-)Institutional Subjectification}
\label{sec:postinstitutional}

Framing critique and resistance on a new institutional transformation based on
the technical aspects leads to a further discussion. If the institutional walls are breaking down and new technologies of power are taking over, the question becomes how the (post-)institutional framework of control societies can be read through the novel \gls{ai} infrastructures. Can this framework account for the ways \gls{ai} models govern, generate, and recombine information, and can it be linked, extended, or read in accordance with the architectures that increasingly mediate meaning-making? Algorithmic infrastructures imagined as barriers block flows, deny access, and enforce boundaries, but returning to \citeauthor{deleuze1992a}’s provocation in the \textit{Postscript}, the question \enquote{how can there be control if nothing is forbidden?} \parencite[2]{brusseau2020} is ever more relevant today. Contemporary growth of artificial models is much less about the control of access or prohibitions and much more about predictive analytics and pre-emptive adjustments.

While Deleuze’s account remains foundational, its transliteral readings have led to an overstatement of the technological aspects and machinery, rendering control as a fully de-institutionalised form of power. Although from a temporal point of view, \citeauthor{mackenzie2018}’s earlier account appeared too early to engage with more sophisticated algorithmic systems and contemporary \gls{ai} implementations, his later work with Robert Porter \parencite[see][]{mackenzie2021} leans precisely into this issue. They emphasise that the transition from discipline to control must not be understood as the disappearance of institutions but as their transformation \parencite[1–3]{mackenzie2021}.
\citeauthor{mackenzie2021} \parencite*[12–15]{mackenzie2021},
drawing on \citeauthorfull{goffman1990}’s \parencite[see][]{goffman1990} notion of \enquote{total institutions}, characterise contemporary algorithmic formations as \enquote{totalizing institutions}: disaggregated, permeable, and increasingly technical forms of authority that sequence dividuals across institutional domains.
Here, totalisation does not mark a return to enclosed spaces but refers to the continual organisation of dividuated components into malleable sequences through which institutional power now operates. While this formulation underscores the ongoing institutional character of control societies, it does not introduce conceptual commitments beyond what this chapter has already established. Building on this institutional analysis, however, \enquote{counter-sequencing} is introduced as a practical mode of resistance, specifically, as \enquote{the activity of reordering the power diagram of the totalizing institution in ways that destabilize its functioning} \parencite[23]{mackenzie2021}. Rather than limiting critique to a process-oriented examination of algorithmic operations or to exposing the potentially infinite chains of signification constrained by procedural logics, counter-sequencing intervenes at the level of institutional ordering itself; an effort to reconfigure the arrangements that support and stabilise algorithmic governmentality. While counter-sequencing may involve nothing more than the disruption of a computational function, it can equally consist in \textit{injecting} an alternative operational instruction that reorients the logic of a system, computational or otherwise. Such interruption does not promise an emancipatory or \enquote{positive} political outcome in advance; instead, it locates critical potential within the institutional logic of control, where even modest disruptions to its sequenced flows can open space for revaluation. As \citeauthor{mackenzie2021} emphasise, the political value of counter-sequencing arises from its situated revaluation, not from any pre-given normative trajectory.

Yet, despite its conceptual promise, counter-sequencing remains only minimally developed; \citeauthor{mackenzie2021} gesture toward its relevance for contemporary algorithmic and institutional formations, but they do not elaborate on how such reordering might be practised within infrastructures shaped by \gls{genai}. This is particularly striking because counter-sequencing appears far more directly applicable to the institutionalities and technical architectures examined throughout this chapter than the other discussed so far. The absence of a fuller account leaves open a question that becomes central for the present study: how can such interventions be understood once institutional sequencing is entwined with generative, anticipatory, and continuously recalibrating systems?
It is at this point that the argument must widen again to its broader terrain, for this chapter has established several relevant points so far. The increasing
convergence of the biopower to a pervasive micropolitical machinery in control
societies put the
subjectivation into the core of its formation and simultaneously rendered processes subjectivation the
main ground for critique and resistance.
If power and knowledge form a bi-equivocal relation, then any practice that opens new spaces of knowledge production immediately intervenes in processes of subjectivation and becomes entangled with the organisation of power itself. In this sense, critique cannot be reduced to a separate process, nor resistance to an exceptional intervention. They converge as a single immanent operation that acts where subjectivation is enacted. For this reason, taking a step further from \citeauthor{mackenzie2018}’s reading of critique as a precursor of resistance, I refer to this constellation as \textbf{Resistance/Critique}. Every attempt to open new planes of knowledge and meaning production not only reconfigures the conditions under which subjectivation takes place; it also generates new sites through which resistance can operate. Conversely, every interruption within existing sequences of power, however minor, creates further trajectories for thought, experimentation, and knowledge.


It becomes apparent that positioning Resistance/Critique in control societies inherently requires a methodological reorientation as well. It is no longer sufficient to speak of power in general; we must attend to the concrete \glspl{dispositif} that composes the present. Understanding the machinery of contemporary control is essential to understanding the procedures of subjectivation. Although, as discussed above, it is in the literature not very well argued if and why Resistance/Critique should necessarily operate on a completely different procedural logic, this step is primary for any movement towards thinking about different forms of subjectivation.
Moreover, as discussed earlier in this chapter, control presupposes not only technologies of modulation but also particular affective economies in which individuals strive to inhabit certain modes of subjecthood. Such dynamics build a form of ressentiment into the micropolitical condition. In this environment, the question of Resistance/Critique becomes inseparable from the question of cognitive entanglement with the infrastructures that \textit{make} meaning. One must examine not only how power acts upon subjects but also how subjects participate in the reproduction of power by adopting its orientations. From this point on, every activity and every \gls{assemblage} that reconfigures signs, as in the example of artistic pursuit, becomes particularly important for thinking human–machine interaction in the age of \gls{ai}. To develop these claims further, the analysis now turns to the concrete terrain in which they unfold. These operations can be expressed as follows:


\begin{itemize}
	\item[First] to examine whether, and in what sense, the historical development and technical architecture of \gls{genai} models correspond to the (post-)institutional formations of control; in particular, the infrastructures through which meaning, behaviour, and subjectification are governed.

	\item[Second] to assess how current debates and critical analyses of these models can be reframed when read through the technical account developed in this study, especially with regard to training processes, representational logics, and model behaviour.

	\item[Third] to explore how resistance and critique might be (re-)configured under these conditions; whether they take shape as divergences, interruptions, or as emerging modes of subjectivation immanent to the very operations of \gls{genai}.

\end{itemize}

\section{Chapter 2 Summary}

This chapter traced the transition from disciplinary societies to control societies and analysed how this shift reorganises the production of subjectivity. Drawing on \citeauthorfull{deleuze1992a} \parencite*{deleuze1992a}, it showed how enclosed institutions give way to diffuse and anticipatory mechanisms of modulation, increasingly mediated by computational infrastructures. These systems operate through continuous feedback, prediction, and dividuation, extending biopolitical mechanisms into a pervasive micropolitical machinery. The chapter revisited the genealogy of subjectivation to establish why, under these conditions, subjectivity becomes the central terrain on which power is exercised and contested, and why the analysis of subjectivation remains crucial for understanding contemporary \glspl{dispositif} of control.

The chapter then examined the longstanding problem of critique and resistance within this environment. Through engagements with contemporary theorists including \citeauthor{rouvroy2012} \parencite*{rouvroy2012}, \citeauthor{galloway2004} \parencite*{galloway2004}, and \citeauthor{mackenzie2018} \parencite*{mackenzie2018}, it highlighted the unresolved tension between the immanence of resistance and the increasing difficulty of articulating it under algorithmic forms of governance. Although the \textit{Postscript} hints at the necessity of resistance, it leaves its concrete mechanisms undeveloped. Later work, especially \citeauthor{mackenzie2021} \parencite*{mackenzie2021}, introduced the concepts of totalising institutions and counter-sequencing, which together offer a preliminary framework for understanding how intervention might occur within computational infrastructures. These reflections culminated in proposing \textbf{Resistance/Critique} as a single immanent operation that emerges within the very procedures through which subjectivation is produced.
