ABSTRACT
At the most fundamental level, today's languages are residue of ancient episteme. An episteme is a scaffold on which a particular body of knowledge is organized and judgments of its veracity are made. It is reasonable to doubt that ideas related to practical knowledge, on the one hand, and theory, on the other or simply, observation and speculation, necessarily share one episteme even when focused upon the same issue or circumstance. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault argues for disciplinary production in the form of rank. Here Foucault is incisive. Discipline, which entails the organization of people and things by rank, is one of two dominant forms of the exercise of power. Many contemporary architectural discourses, particularly those with phenomenological, technological, sustainability or social justice agendas, refer to buildings themselves as participatory and participating subjects in an attempt to construct meaningful experience.
