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

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.
,Grant Vetter teaches philosophy at the School of Science and Architecture in Southern California. He is a board member of FAR (Foundation for Art Resources) which has produced lectures and exhibitions about critical issues in art production since 1977.He lives in Los Angeles.
,Vetter's work is a timely inquiry into the dynamics of power associated with techno-panopticism.Grant Vetter's book is remarkable not only for its brilliant mapping of neo-Panoptic architectures and the evolution of intensive controls over life and social energies, but for its deep and sustained meditation on the historical relevance and potential of Feng Shui as a creative and practical mode of resistance.Confronting cartographies of subjectivation, Vetter presents an exciting and timely series of meditations on the development and implications of surveillance architectures. Guiding tlc+