Unleashing the Collective Phantoms

Continuing Autonomedia's goals of liberatory art, this book is an exploration of the relationship of art to power and to liberation, of how things and systems can begin by offering us options, and then become part of how we are controlled. Discussing topics from cartography to the Trilateral Commission, language to the Keynesian welfare state, semiotic democracy to Verichips (the first FDA-approved human-implantable radio-frequency identification microchip), this book pans widely to arrive at a tentative pro-democratic optimism. "It's all very well to feel optimistic about governmentality theory, and to talk about power rising from below. But the question of what exactly happens on the way up can no longer be overlooked."