Forms as the Fordization of communication

This article analyzes bureaucratic forms—the ubiquitous documents issued by official bodies and filled by subjects—as facilitating the Fordization of communication. It assumes that fillable media (registrars, ledgers, etc.) do not merely carry information but also enact social relations. The prominence of forms in the context of modern state bureaucracy has been understood via three theoretical frameworks: as a means of rationalization, as creating subjectivities, and as performative devices. Building on these three (complementary) interpretations, this article offers a fourth framework. Drawing on the homology between the production of goods and the production of communication, and aided by the Marxian critique of the assembly line, it understands forms as facilitating the Fordization of communication between sovereigns and subjects, and as a key technology in rearranging communicative social relations. Most importantly, it depicts the page as a site of struggle over the dominance of communication between the sovereign and subjects, and lays bare the role that Fordization plays in that struggle.