Diagrams of Power in Benjamin and Foucault: The Recluse of Architecture

This book explores the relationship between architecture and power in the works of Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault, highlighting the significance of the arcade and panoptic prison as architectural figures pivotal to their discussions of modernity. It argues that the notion of the diagram has emerged in recent architectural writings as a reinstatement of geometry-as-idea, and seeks to redress the emphasis given to form within the cultural philosophy of modernity. The book offers a reading of architecture and urbanism as technologies of power that opens up a productive dialogue between Foucault and Benjamin.

Format: Hardback
Length: 326 pages
Publication date: 06 September 2022
Publisher: Springer Verlag, Singapore

This book explores the relationship between architecture and urbanism, focusing on the role of form in shaping these disciplines. It argues that discussions and critiques in architecture and urbanism should primarily engage with the question of what planning and architecture signify with respect to the forms they take, and how their meanings or content (what is "contained") are considered in relation to form-as-container. While significant critical work has been published in these fields over the past two decades that engages with the writings of Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault, there has been no attention paid to the coincidence in the work of Benjamin and Foucault of an architectural figure that plays a pivotal role in each of their discussions of the emergence of modernity. For Benjamin, this figure is the arcade, while for Foucault, it is the panoptic prison. In Foucault's terms, panopticism is a "diagram of power," while for Benjamin, it would be his understanding of "constellation." In more recent architectural writings, the notion of the diagram has emerged as a key motif. However, and in as much as it supposedly relates to aspects of the work of Foucault, along with Gilles Deleuze, this notion of "diagram" amounts, for the most part, to a thinly veiled reinstatement of geometry-as-idea. This book seeks to redress the emphasis given to form within the cultural philosophy of modernity and, particularly with respect to architecture and urbanism, inflects on the agency of force that opens a reading of their productive capacities as technologies of power. It will be of interest to students and scholars in poststructuralist critical theory, architecture, and urban studies.”

Weight: 688g
Dimension: 235 x 155 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9789811944482
Edition number: 1st ed. 2022