Surveilled and Surveillant Subjects in the Society of Control

Abstract

In our civilization, images are experiencing a mutation from which a use of precise jouissance in parlêtres is being developed. Two treatments of jouissance are revealed: on the one hand, the relation to the surveillance that rules and disciplines bodies and, on the other, an unprecedented use of the imaginary register. The voluntary servitude expressed in the omnivoyeur eye of the epoch and the empire of images direct us toward a spectacle effect, just like toward a movement where the superegoic imperative urges us to act without restraint.