The Architecture of Control: A Contribution to the Critique of the Science of Apparatuses

Through six meditations on the ideology of architecture, Grant Vetter is able to give us an entirely new set of coordinates for understanding social control in the twenty-first century. Moving between historical precedents in the east and the west, Vetter's work reveals a hybrid order of architectural power that acts on subjectivity from within rather than without. Whether characterized as a process of indo-colonization, social ionization or a sub-atomizing social physics, Vetter's account of architectural subjectivation requires a complete rethinking of power/knowledge as invested in producing perfected subjects rather than normative ones. This new paradigm can be described as a sovereign power in as much as it acts directly on the body through enterrogatory discipline, inferrogatory infomatics, modulated (in)dividualism, auto-affective attunement and incentivizing injunctions. As a critical rejoinder to the discourse of Panopticism, The Architecture of Control is essential reading for everyone who is interested in new modes of resistance to the designs of biopower and imperial democracy.
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