My project is oriented towards decontrol. I write and theorize on the nature of control, as well as hopefully implement tactics in resistance to control machines. Control is the collective totality of structures, institutions, and practices which interlock to form a larger system of hegemony. This includes obvious forms of repression, such as police and prisons, but also less obvious forms such as domestication and recuperation. The control system is vast and ever present. There are no aspects of life which it does not touch. Unlike older and cruder forms, it is not merely an external authority. Control is a social discourse inscribed and conditioned within individuals, who then replicate and perpetuate it. We are all in on the plot, we are all victims and victimizers. When I write, I attempt to tease out some view of how these systems function. For this reason the text must be decentered, expansive. The subject matter is diverse, but this theme reads through all of it.
It is difficult to find techniques of resistance. Many popular resistance strategies involve self-sacrifice, which merely perpetuates ideologies of the totality. Many other resistance strategies, such as protest and organizing, perpetuate hegemonic structures. These become alternative management strategies, loyal oppositions, which can step in to save authoritarian structures. This leaves tactics based on the affinity group principle and autonomous insurrectionary actions. The affinity principle is difficult to realize because anti-authoritarian community is so weak and many individuals are so far gone that they function as unconscious agents. Autonomous insurrectionary actions can be problematic because many of the effective ones are taken from the realm of military action. Thus, they may ultimately put bystanders in danger. This is problematic.
Clearly, at this point, I stand suffering from false consciousness.
But, if we were able to decide that rather than a direct conflict it could be possible to adopt an alternative strategy—an asymmetrical war of every everyday life, guerrilla ontology. On the macro level the totality is impossible to confront. But on the micro level there are nearly an infinite number of chances for resistance and refusal. Structures of control are embedded all through our daily lives. Rather than create a social program, resistance could come in the form of becoming a glitch in the cybernetic system. If the totality is ever present, then sites of resistance are rendered ever present too. As the system of control is spread over the entire world the localized control structure is rendered weak and fragile. As each of these are interlocking, when the part is damaged, so is the whole.