Involutionary Architecture

Abstract

By focusing on the qualities of a posthumanist architectural practice in
his chapter 4, Andrej Radman continues the analysis of the genetic power of
affective encounters begun by Iris van der Tuin in her opening chapter, and by
Jussi Parikka in his geophilosophical analysis of the emergent consequences
of constitutive relations for the operation of posthuman systems. Radman
argues that the recomposition of what Guattari refers to as ‘architectural
enunciation’ profoundly transforms the role of the architect, who becomes its
relay by assuming the analytic and pragmatic responsibility for the production
not merely of the environment, but of subjectivation itself. Following
Deleuze’s Spinozism, and continuing the affective corporeal emphasis subsequently given to this in work by Brian Massumi, Radman suggests that if to
think differently one has to feel differently, and if the sole purpose of design
is to change us, then architecture is effectively a ‘psychotropic practice’ that
modulates and compels routines of experience.