Epoch ReadingField NotesOne-pager 040

The enclosures were molds; control is a modulation — and in the societies of control you are never finished with anything.Gilles Deleuze · Postscript on the Societies of Control · 1990 · OCTOBER 59, MIT Press, pp. 3–7

Five pages that call the present from 1990. Foucault’s disciplinary society — family, school, barracks, factory, hospital, prison, each a closed mold you passed through and started over inside — is already gone; what replaces it is Burroughs’s “control”: a sieve whose mesh transmutes point to point, perpetual training in place of the school, the password in place of the signature, floating exchange rates in place of minted gold, the serpent in place of the mole. Read in one Monday sitting around the desk, 11:37 A.M. to a 4:07 P.M. seal, and argued with on every page: the enclosure chain read as the treadmill of life, the corporation’s new soul read against stock valuation, the modulation run straight onto private equity — his question about the “private equity gentrification slop” answered in the decode with the 2021 NBER nursing-home study — and the whole machine closed with a coinage of his own about the rat in the serpent’s belly.

“Started 08/31/26 @ 11:37 A.M.”4 pages, every page inked08 · 31 · 2026
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Where the margins reached

the treadmill of life backpack · trapper keeper any variable, any “mold” PE · the self-eating serpent Jackson’s specie vs the Fed Flock cameras DELEUZE 1990
Book → Self Book → World
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The lines he pulled

“Enclosures are molds, distinct castings, but controls are a modulation, like a self-deforming cast that will continuously change from one moment to the other, or like a sieve whose mesh will transmute from point to point.”

p.2 · his (A) beside it: “Here the casting slightly changes but the factors the modulation is considering impacts each class of workers differently.”

“In the disciplinary societies one was always starting again (from school to the barracks, from the barracks to the factory), while in the societies of control one is never finished with anything.”

p.2, starred · tagged with his Jist operator, the declared thesis-placement of the read.

“We are taught that corporations have a soul, which is the most terrifying news in the world.”

p.3, inside his bracketed span · his (C): “As if stock valuation too contributes the the corporate/collective soul — the indetity as well here” (his hand, unsmoothed).

“Man is no longer man enclosed, but man in debt.”

p.3 · underlined on the page where the mole gives way to the serpent.
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The read, page by page

p.1
  1. ✦The start stamp, top margin: “Started 08/31/26 @ 11:37 A.M.” · the @ circled.
  2. AClosed meaning as treadmill of life runs despite your volition you cannot turn back to these things · at the family → school → barracks → factory → prison chain.
  3. BEach stage shortening by half in terms of dominance/time in Place · at Napoleon’s large-scale conversion and the society we “already no longer were.”
  4. Ccould this be Foucault unwittingly making the new era of all the private equity gentrification slop (?) · at the boxed Burroughs “control” passage — the (?) answered in the decode: wrong thinker in the naming sense, exact forecast in every other one.
  5. DE.g PE operated nursing homes w/ poor elderly abuse stats · tied to (C) by his own arrow, at “mechanisms of control that are equal to the harshest of confinements.”
p.2
  1. AHere the casting slightly changes but the factors the modulation is considering impacts each class of workers differently · at molds-versus-modulation and the salary in “perpetual metastability.”
  2. BThe Jist · his thesis-placement, at the starred never-finished-with-anything paragraph — then the lived proof in the same hand: “I agree; Wearing my back pack/tech stack w/ trapper keeper rain day; wearing clothes I hate; assigned/ usual parking.”
  3. Crace/gender/any variable can be plugged into any “mold” for this math · at the signature-versus-code poles, Deleuze’s mass/individual math generalized into a set formula.
p.3
  1. ASuch as American inflation/ dollar dropping goes now [one word unresolved, flagged in the decode] to FED entirely versus Andrew Jackson Species era crisis/ debate on approach · inside the boxed minted-money-versus-floating-rates passage.
  2. BOne has solid confines/ goals/ clear limits of those goals; whereas the other like a serpent (& PE as a whole) will swallow its own tail · at the mole and the serpent — with his closed loop drawn beside it: “E.g. cycle Degration of schools → untrained workers → lack of taxes,” the arrows curling back on themselves.
  3. CAs if stock valuation too contributes the the corporate/collective soul — the indetity as well here · at marketing as the corporation’s soul, “the most terrifying news in the world.”
p.4
  1. AThe overflow of poop in the serpants tail it must swallow · at the three-quarters of humanity “too poor for debt, too numerous for confinement.”
  2. BFlock cameras · at “the computer that tracks each person’s position — licit or illicit” — the license-plate-reader network as the live universal modulation.
  3. ✳The Dot.com bubble = for profit prisons, hospitals, universities · his star note at the corporate-system close, “universities” underlined.
  4. →LOL · his amusement flag at “capable of threatening the joys of marketing?”
  5. ✦The done stamp: “08/31/26 Done @ 4:07 P.M.” · the @ circled, sealed the same sitting it started.

Structure is scaffold; every quoted line is his, verbatim from the annotated pages. Letters are per-page comment order. Uncertain reads keep their flags from the decode, and nothing is smoothed — his spellings ship as inked.

The summary · his ink, marked “1, Sentence”
“The rat running inside of the serpents belly has a hard time of telling when too much has been chewed to the point of choking.”
1, Sentence · OCTOBER 59, pp. 3–7 · sealed “08/31/26 Done @ 4:07 P.M.”