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as
    the ‘‘maturity ofthe times’’ and the unity ofthe entire known
    civilization, but it was challenged in its totality by a completely
    different ethical and ontological axis. In the same way today, given
    that the limits and unresolvable problems ofthe new imperial right
    are fixed, theory and practice can go beyond them, finding once
    again an ontological basis ofantagonism—within Empire, but also
    against and beyond Empire, at the same level oftotality.
    1.2
    B I O P O L I T I C A L P R O D U C T I O N
    The ‘‘police’’ appears as an administration heading the state, to-
    gether with the judiciary, the army, and the exchequer. True. Yet
    in fact, it embraces everything else. Turquet says so: ‘‘It branches
    out into all ofthe people’s conditions, everything they do or under-
    take. Its field comprises the judiciary, finance, and the army.’’ The
    police includes everything.
    Michel Foucault
    From the juridical perspective we have been able to
    glimpse some ofthe elements ofthe ideal genesis ofEmpire, but
    from that perspective alone it would be difficult if not impossible
    to understand how the imperial machine is actually set in motion.
    Juridical concepts and juridical systems always refer to something
    other than themselves. Through the evolution and exercise ofright,
    they point toward the material condition that defines their purchase
    on social reality. Our analysis must now descend to the level of
    that materiality and investigate there the material transformation of
    the paradigm ofrule. We need to discover the means and forces
    ofthe production ofsocial reality along with the subjectivities that
    animate it.
    Biopower in the Society of Control
    In many respects, the work ofMichel Foucault has prepared the
    terrain for such an investigation of the material functioning of
    imperial rule. First ofall, Foucault’s work allows us to recognize a
    historical, epochal passage in social forms from disciplinary society to B I O P O L I T I C A L P R O D U C T I O N
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    the society of control. 1 Disciplinary society is that society in which social command is constructed through a diffuse network of dispositifs
    or apparatuses that produce and regulate customs, habits, and pro-
    ductive practices. Putting this society to work and ensuring obedi-
    ence to its rule and its mechanisms ofinclusion and/or exclusion
    are accomplished through disciplinary institutions (the prison, the
    factory, the asylum, the hospital, the university, the school, and so
    forth) that structure the social terrain and present logics adequate
    to the ‘‘reason’’ of discipline. Disciplinary power rules in effect
    by structuring the parameters and limits ofthought and practice,
    sanctioning and prescribing normal and/or deviant behaviors.
    Foucault generally refers to the ancien re´gime and the classical age
    ofFrench civilization to illustrate the emergence ofdisciplinarity,
    but more generally we could say that the entire first phase of
    capitalist accumulation (in Europe and elsewhere) was conducted
    under this paradigm ofpower. We should understand the society
    ofcontrol, in contrast, as that society (which develops at the far
    edge ofmodernity and opens toward the postmodern) in which
    mechanisms ofcommand become ever more ‘‘democratic,’’ ever
    more immanent to the social field, distributed throughout the brains
    and bodies ofthe citizens. The behaviors ofsocial integration and
    exclusion proper to rule are thus increasingly interiorized within
    the subjects themselves. Power is now exercised through machines
    that directly organize the brains (in communication systems, infor-
    mation networks, etc.) and bodies (in welfare systems, monitored
    activities, etc.) toward a state ofautonomous alienation from the
    sense of life and the desire for creativity. The society of control
    might thus be characterized by an intensification and generalization
    ofthe normalizing apparatuses ofdisciplinarity that internally