Having a lot to do does not always mean having a lot of power, but having a lot of power always means having a lot to do, and in the modern ear, at least, most of what it has to do is paperwork. The investigation of the psychic life of paperwork must be able to account for how this medium makes everyone, no matter how powerful they may be in reality, feel so powerless.
Ben Kafka. The Demon of Writing: Powers and Failures of Paperwork. Zone Books. 2012. p 17.
On the development of the disciplinary state through paperwork, you can also read this article written by Gregoire Chamayou, on the utopian paperwork machine invented by Jean François Guillauté in 1749.
Guillauté’s dystopian machine is a one of the first models of a new technology of control based upon a principle of a generalized traceability. Its motto is not “I can always see you”, but “I will always keep track of you. I will always know what you have done and where you are now.
