Psychopolitics: the new urban culture of social control

This article is a reflection on the neoliberal consumer society that neoliberal consumer society, or this “surveillance capitalism”, contributes to shifting moral and disciplinary bodily power (biopolitics), once located in closed systems (spaces of confinement, such as the church, the family, prison, the factory, etc. ) to mental self-surveillance power (psychopolitics), now located in open systems or spaces of flows (social networks, abstract performance targets, temporary work relationships, work via apps and digital platforms, etc). My hypothesis is that, although this new rationality centered on the subjectivization of performance operates in open systems of flows, and supposedly gives the subject greater independence, it does not give the subject more autonomy and freedom; on the contrary, it reinforces the bonds of imprisonment to the logic of performance, hyperactivity and high productive performance that result in various forms of irritation, frustration, tiredness, social suffering, alienation and depression.