Schwarz
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Yet if we interpret everything in terms of machines and the effects of machines, if everything flows and merges, how are we going to get a grip? Here the diagram plays a fundamental role. Deleuze borrows the concept from Michel Foucault, who employs the word in Surveiller et punir (1975) with respect to panopticism. Foucault observed that the panoptical prison had a function that went beyond that of the building itself and the penitentiary institution, exercising an influence over all of society. Stressing the function of these machines, which produced various behaviours, he discovered this coercive action in workshops, barracks, schools and hospitals, all of which are constructions whose form and function were governed by the principle of the panoptical prison. According to Foucault, the diagram 'Is a functioning, abstracted from any obstacle... or friction [and which] must be detached from any specific use'.9 The diagram is a kind of map that merges with the entire social field or, in any case, with a 'particular human multiplicity'. Deleuze thus describes the diagram as an abstract machine. 'It is defined by its informal functions and matter and in terms of form makes no distinction between content and expression, a discursive formation and a non-discursive formation. It is a machine that is almost blind and mute, even though it makes others see and speak.'10