Mole and Serpent

Near the end of the Postscript, Deleuze offered a zoological metaphor alongside the surfing image: the mole of disciplinary societies and the serpent of control societies. The mole burrows; it creates enclosed tunnels, moves through bounded passages, inhabits a world defined by walls of earth. Its body is adapted to enclosure — short powerful limbs for digging, small eyes suited to darkness, a form shaped by and for the spaces it creates. The serpent does not burrow. It undulates — moving across surfaces without creating enclosures, adapting its body to any terrain, contracting and expanding in continuous modulation. The mole is the animal of the factory worker, the student, the prisoner; the serpent is the animal of the gig worker, the platform user, the developer surfing the river of intelligence.