ABSTRACT
Drawing on Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s (2000) account of the shift from a disciplinary society to the society of control, Jodi Dean offers a provocative explanation of contemporary public behavior (2009, p. 65). Given some of the symptoms of the shift described by Hardt and Negri – a dissolution of the nuclear family, unions, schools, neighborhoods, and the rise of virtualities that create fluid, hybrid, and mobile imaginary identities – Dean finds contemporary subjects who increasingly lack self-control, “in part because they lack a strong sense of self that arises through discipline, and … look outside themselves for some authority to impose control” (ibid., p. 66). In short, as material and cultural changes have effectively lessened the skill/need of individuals to self-discipline, they have a compulsion to seek external control for understanding the limits of behavior and identity.
