The Birth of Sensory Power: Doing Things with Words, Numbers and Neurons

This book examines the transformation of historical forms of power and the emergence of new polities and citizen-subjects produced by a new form of power – sensory power – in the 21st century. Engin Isin highlights how sensory power, driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning, transforms historical forms of power (sovereign, disciplinary and regulative), reconfigures cities, states, and empires, and engenders the autopoietic subject. Drawing from thinkers like Spinoza, Nietzsche, Deleuze, and Foucault, and reworking their theories of power with Austin and Derrida, the book offers a critical perspective on these changes.