week 5

Question 1

Reality beyond representation

Answer 1

performative phenomenon that captures, modifies, reorganizes , distributes powers of transformation

• encourages forms of interactivity (voting, chatting, messaging) = enhances audience performance
• functions as a promise ‘‘this can happen to you, as well’’

Question 2

6 types of transformation

Answer 2

1. celebrities to ordinary people
2. ordinary people to celebrities
3. style overhauls
4. seduction training
5. corporeal alterations
6. life overhaul

Question 3

disciplinary society

control society

Answer 3

one becomes a docile of constant surveillance –>
continuous visibility across space and time, short0term regulations of movement and acts via modulation (control)
- TV game shows as a symptom of control society = businesses run through deep level of modulation through challenges, competitions
- subjects and objects lose their interiors to become variables that can be modified in their relations to each other
- variables are plugged into a social software or reality program consisting of the most interpersonal and intimate relationships

Question 4

dividual

post-individual mode of being

Answer 4

micro capacities to divide and distribute itself in continuous variation, simultaneous movements between new open systems

subjects are broken down into a variety of capacities, then recomposed with others in permanent fluctuation

Question 5

3 traits of RTV

Answer 5

1. interchangeability: subjects are replaceable and interchangeable
   - replacing eliminated people with new people, rejected people discuss episodes of them –> de-subjectification
   - capital techniques of labor market: organizing dynamics of its experiments decompose into a variety of fluctuating skills and capacities that are reconnected with others
2. testing the limits of the subject
   - testing the subjects limits
   - shift from disciplinary to control societies: housed in enclosed spaces and bounded institutions
3. phase transition: the pranked subject: prank shows breaking down the limits of subjectivity –> creating disruption in everyday life in order to test the capacities of the pranked subject
   - limits tested: patience, fear reactions, sexual desire, romantic loyalty, hospitality

Question 6

civic functions
citizenship by Toby Miller
Do-good programs

Answer 6

civic function - official citizenship training, journalistic inquiry and exposition and radical interrogation

citizenship - a pull between selfish demands by consumer economy and selfless requirements of the political order

• -> as the line between consumerism and public politics collapse another definition
  citizenship: actualization of the self through consumer culture, the execution of compassion and ethical responsibility to others

do-good programs - reality TV programs that ‘‘give back’’ and ‘‘help’’ people

Question 7

the panopticon

Answer 7

people think they are always under surveillance

Question 8

Michel Foucault philosophy on control society

Answer 8

power can be produced by different institutions not only the state; power is housed in a set of institutions with internal rules and procedures
- government has knowledge and power over population with rules, regulations, tactics, strategies, calculations, reflections and programs that use the conduct the conduct of society

discipline through closed environments entail the analysis of madness and sexuality; e.g., with homosexuality: religious sin, economic threat, pathology
notion of disciplinary power: power

Question 9

societies of control

3 types of control

Answer 9

freedom and control are interconnected
; form of discipline –> network of systems; technological advancements; control is not discipline: people are free, but controlled without seeing the control
1. state control
2. discipline through institutions
3. discipline through physical boundaries/confined spaces

Question 10

what neoliberalism proposes about panopticon/control society

Answer 10

• well-being can be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedom and skills, characterized by strong private property rights, free market, free trade
• flex subject/preferred citizen: seek solutions and work on themselves, transform themselves, constantly finding opportunities for learning, becoming more flexible for change/transformation

Question 11

role of media in control society (institutions, neoliberalism, us)

Answer 11

• design your own life (DYOW TV): premised on self improvement
• citizenship training
• reality is modifiable
• choose what to consume: which external consumption choices bring happiness