These ®rst lines of Arsenij Gulyga's Immanuel Kant: His Life and Thought nicely articulate the dramatic and legendary status Kant's biography has for philosophy ...
Postcolonial Studies, Vol 1, No 2, pp 211± 235, 1998
Postcolonial architectonics ST EPHE N CAIRNS
I W e begin the biography of Kant in the traditional m anner, with a history of the city of his birth. The granite of the city shaped, as it were, the rigorous architecture of his thought, the air of the city breathes in it ¼ 1
These ® rst lines of Arsenij Gulyga’ s Immanuel Kant: His Life and Though t nicely articulate the dram atic and legendary status Kant’ s biography has for philosophy. As m any such biographies note, Kant led a sedentary, `m onoton ous’ and `uniform ’ life as a faculty m ember at the university in the provin cial East Prussian town of KoÈ nigsberg. Never to leave the KoÈ nigsberg area, his life is often portrayed as unfold ing almost exclusively within the realm s of the lecture hall and his study. Yet, by contrast, the `inner life’ of his mind is described as being `wondero usly alive’ , `explosive’ , where `[d]aring ideas cam e into being, gathered strength, clashed with other ideas, yielded groun d or ripened in the strife’ .2 Whereas Kant’ s body stubbornly rem ained rooted in KoÈ nigsberg, his `thoug ht roam ed the continents, pushed beyond the con® nes of the earth, strove to the farthest reaches of the universe’ . 3 Gulyga’ s opening lines encapsulate this elegant equation of inversions in terms of two `architectures’ : one, more literal and made of granite, constitutes the urban realm of the city of KoÈ nigsberg; another, m ore ® gurative and associated with air, breath and mobility, describes the realms of Kant’ s though t. However, this portrayal of Kant’ s biography in terms of twin (contingent and theoretical) `architectures’ is not a casual or convenient invention of a creative biographer. Considering that each element of this image is already articulated in Kant, it represents quite precisely the dutiful mimesis of biography. First, Kant is renowned for his inauguration of a thinking that attem pted to negotiate between the world of granite and a world of airy thoughts. Kant is, in other words, renowned as the ® rst to m ake the very distinction between the contingent and the theoretical into a ground of knowledge, `turning’ , as Dreyfus and Rabinow put it, `the knower ’ s m essy involvement in the factual world of language, life, and labour into the pure groun d of knowledge [¼ ] turning the post hoc into the a priori’ . 4 This is, in effect, to negotiate a m iddle passage between the extremes of rationalism and empiricism . Second, the key m etaphor by which Kant organised this play of the material and the transcendent in his critical philosophy was an architectural one. Stephen Cairns, currently teaches at the University of Melbourne in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning. 1368-8790/98/020211-25 $7.00
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1998 The Institute of Postcolonial Studies
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Kant dramatises the failure of philosophical rationalism and empiricism by likening each to different positions on a `battle-® eld’ in a war fough t over the kingdom of knowledge, a kingdo m ruled by a `Queen’ of metaphysics. Her government, under the administration of the dogm atists, was at ® rst despotic. But inasm uch as the legislation still bore traces of the ancient barbarism , her em pire gradually through internecine wars gave way to complete anarchy; and the sceptics, a species of nom ads, despising all settled modes of life, broke up from time to time all civil society. Happily they were few in number, and were unable to prevent its being established ever anew, although on no uniform and self-consistent plan. 5
For Kant, the stability of philosophy under the old style rule of rationalist dogm atic despotism is seriously disturbed, though never quite overru n, by the incessant raids of untethered and unsettled tribes of empiricist sceptics. The constant philosophical strife described by Kant requires a new `self-consistent plan’ , a plan sim ultaneously to nullify the sceptics’ raids, to eclipse the old order of despotic rationalism , and to refoun d the kingdom of knowledge on non-m etaphysical ground s. Kant sees the various com ponents of his critical philosophy as provid ing such a plan, and he calls the form of this philosophy as a whole `architectonic’ .6 This architectural m etaphor is a traditional philosophical device which Kant elaborates and deploys, ® rst in the Critique of Pure Reason, and later as a principle throug h the critical philosophy in general, to signify a balanced structure which m ediates between the excesses of a weighty, `despotic’ rationalism and ® ckle, `nomadic’ empiricism. In a m ethodological section of his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant opens the discussion with a chapter entitled `T he architectonic of reason’ . He begins as follows: [b]y an architectonic I understand the art of constructing systems. As systematic unity is what ® rst raises ordinary knowledge to the rank of science, that is, m akes a system out of a m ere aggregate of knowledge. 7
For Kant, an `aggregate of knowledge’ refers to empirical sense data, and this sense data, as a consequence of the critiques of empiricist scepticism , can no longer in itself constitute a proper and secure founda tion for knowledge, a knowledge which could be called `science’ . To achieve this authoritative datum , the unruly empirical material m ust be system atised and uni® ed in some way. It is this system atic unity and the `art’ of its `construct[ion]’ which Kant calls the architectonic. That the term s `art’ and `construction’ are employed side-by-side here is important. The architectonic system is not merely a construction, it is not m erely a sum of its parts; in other words, it is not capable of `being derived from empirical criteria arising from scienti® c discoveries’ . 8 In Kantian terms m ere construction of this kind would be `technical’ construction . Rather, the architectonic system , as the art of construction necessarily `anticipates’ or presupposes the end under which the empirical parts are to be subsum ed, and it is this presupposed conception of the architectonic which m akes the analogy between architecture and philosophy in Kant more than a felicitous turn of phrase. Philosophy, in Kant’ s description, is not simply a building satisfying certain 212
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functional, m aterial and organisational requirements, it is an `architecture’ which is deeply implicated in a conceptual logic of design. 9 Indeed, as Mark W igley 10 has shown, such philosophical processes of establishing proper structures of knowledge are almost identical to the architectural process of conceiving and constructing buildings. In both cases a presupposed procedure is followed: this includes site survey, schem atic design, design development, site inspection and construction. In the ® rst place, Kant argues, the site m ust be circumscribed: `[o]u r reason is not like a plane inde® nitely far extended, the lim its of which we know in a general way only’ , rather we must be de® nite about its lim its, its outline must be `determ ined’ , so `we can likewise specify with certainty its volum e and its lim its.’ Kant describes this philosophical `building site’ as being carved out of the `® eld of experience’ , out of the unreliable space of empiricism . W hen com plete, the `architecture’ which occupies the site will describe precisely what we can securely know and what we cannot know. W e will securely know that the space of the ® eld, that is the space beyond the built form , will contain `nothing that can be an object for reason’ .11 Having discovered and accurately described the lim its of the building site, the next task which Kant’ s Critique m ust undertake is the `clearing, as it were, and levelling what has hitherto been waste-ground’ .12 W hat follows is a process of scavenging, a picking over the debris rem aining on the building site whereby useful m aterial is gathered `from the ruins of ancient systems’ , 13 presum ably to be reused if deemed to be sound. What Kant stresses here is that `we should throug h careful inquiries, assure ourselves as to the founda tions of any building that we propose to erect’ ,14 and this is done by a `thorough preparation of the ground ’ .15 Having inspected and prepared the ground , having deem ed it stable enough to take founda tions, the next task of Kant’ s Critique is `to lay down the com plete architectonic plan’ . This plan `guarantee[s]’ `the com pleteness and certainty of the structure in all its parts’ . 16 Again Kant warns that `care’ is always required in this process of knowledge `fabrication’ , and further, that we should always bear in m ind that this is precisely what knowledge consists inÐ careful, secure, grounded fabrications. 17 Care and deliberation is required because `[i]t is, indeed, the com m on fate of hum an reason to com plete its speculative structures as speedily as m ay be, and only afterwards to inquire whether the founda tions are reliable’ .18 The notion of a ground ed, architectonic structure is relatively com m on in philosophy at least since Descartes. 19 The ubiquity of this them atic is such that W igley speaks of philosophy’ s `edi® ce com plex’ , and to goes so far as to characterize the history of philosophy as `a series of substitutions for structure’ .20 But there is architecture and there is architecture. As we have seen, Kant de® nes his architectonic in term s of two other, if not architectures exactly then `modes of life’ which imply distinct architectures. Kant used these architectures of despotism and nom adism interchangeably to fram e the m oderate architecture of his own critical philosophy: as Ernst Cassirer notes, Kant `mocked the m etaphysicians of his day as ª airy architects of intellectual worldsº when they attem pted to go beyond experience’ . 21 In the light of this jibe, however, the biographical excerpt with which I began seems curiously to break its faithful relationship to Kant’ s text; it now begins to 213
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contradict rather than re¯ ect the inner-working s of Kant’ s text. As it is allocated a form ative role in Kant’ s life and thinking, the granite architecture of KoÈ nigsbergÐ read contingent and m aterialÐ is initially privileged in the relationship between Gulyga’ s two `architectures’ . However, ultimately it is the ® gurative `architecture’ of Kant’ s though t which proves to be the organizing principle: as Gulyga puts it (in his Preface) `Kant has no other biography than the history of his though t’ .22 W e can conclude, then, that whatever m ight be said about Kant’ s worldly life, however form ative the architecture of his world m ight be, it rem ains circumscribed by the teleology of `his though t’ . The already attenuated architecture which Kant inhabitedÐ consisting of the limited spaces of lecture hall, study and various parts of KoÈ nigsbergÐ is ultim ately dissolved altogether into the `architecture’ of his though t. In short, as Elias Canetti puts it, Kant is a `head without a world’ .23 Gulyga’ s characterisation of the `architecture’ of Kant’ s though t as som ehow breathing in the air of KoÈ nigsberg com es uncom fortably close to the language with which Kant denigrated his rationalist rivals. The `rigorous architecture of Kant’ s though t’ itself reads uncannily as an `airy architecture of intellectual worlds’ . For all Kant’ s concerns to take the materiality of the world seriously, he becom es known as the quintessential disembodied philosopher, dubbed the `head without a world’ . To take the biographical description seriouslyÐ given that it is a fairly representative, if traditional, view of KantÐ is to suspect that Kant’ s work was not entirely imm une from the impulse to dematerialise architecture either. This is to suggest that Kant succumbs to the generalising impulse of theory and uses the term `architecture’ ® guratively in order to disavow the literal architecture of KoÈ nigsberg. The suspicion rem ains that the architecture metaphor is useful to Kant prim arily for its transcendent qualities, for its capacity to articulate the notion of a systematic plan. As J Hillis Miller notesÐ with regard to what he calls a m ore general `triumph of theory’ Ð in the end we are lead to sense that `Grund in Kant has nothing to do with the groun d Kant walked across every day in KoÈ nigsberg to get from his house to the university’ .24
II Postcolonial studies [are m arked by] a doubl e [¼ ] pedagogical anxiety: a necessary caution against generalizing the contingencies and contours of local circum stance, at the very m om ent at which a transnational, `m igrant’ knowledge of the world is m ost urgently needed. 25
One of the characteristics which mark the various form s of postcolonial criticism is an ambivalence with regard to theory.26 A traditional application of theory from some autonomous realm on to a speci® c, locally circum scribed object becom es com plicated in this context. This is a com plication which develops as a consequence of postcolonial criticism’ s attunem ent to the various ways in which certain objects of understanding seem to refuse their ascribed objectstatus, and turn to problem atise the very structures of theory.27 Left at this level, however, this rem ains a generalised form ulation which could 214
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describe any number of contem porary theoretical or m ore traditional philosophical debates. It is striking to note, for instance, the similarities between Kant’ s and Bhabha’ s respective form ulations of this dilem m a: the granite architecture of Kant’ s KoÈ nigsberg resonates with Bhabha’ s `contingencies and contours of local circumstance’ ; and the airy architecture of Kant’ s though t by which he `roamed the continents’ , resonates with Bhabha’ s `transnational, ª m igrantº knowledge of the world’ . Clearly, however, Bhabha’ s excerpt also suggests a num ber of subtle quali® cations with respect to the Kantian form ulation such that, in postcolonial critical terms, the problem atic object of understanding tends to be an object of the non-W est and an object of colonial approp riation, while the structures and ascriptive powers of theory tend to emanate from Western metropolitan centres of power. In short, what might be read as a generalised theoretical unease, is quali® ed by the colonial and neo-colonial relationships between W est and non-West, and by the inequitable and over-determined nature of these relationships. The generic dilemm a brough t about by the play of theory and contingency is recon® gured throug h complex political and econom ic factors signalled, in Bhabha’ s excerpt, by the presence of questions of nationalism and m igrancy alongside the m ore neutral geographical and structural term inology. In postcolonial criticism theory, as a category, is called to account by the contingencies of its objects in quite new and unexpected ways. 28 However, perhaps the most obviou s point around which a postcolonialist ambivalence with theory is generated is the problem atic of culture. Culture infuses the broader econom ic and political questions in the postcolonial critical context, serving as a signi® er of the local, the speci® c and unique. This is not to say that the culture-concept is applied in som e sim ple fashion in postcolonial criticism, as a useful fram ework for the recognition of difference, for exam ple. Rather, culture m ore often serves as a site of investigation, an egregious hinge in the workings of colonialist discourse which calls for close scrutiny. Bhabha enacts this kind of scrutiny with speci® c reference to spatial tropes, as is announ ced in the title of his m ost recent book, The Location of Culture. The title pre® gures one of the central arguments of the book: that anthropology ’ s culture-concept is repressive in the context of difference prim arily because of the speci® c spatiality of certain of its traits. Bhabha argues that despite the sophisticated self-re¯ exivity of contem porary theory `[t]he Other is [still] cited, quoted, fram ed, illum inated, encased in the shot/reverse-shot strategy of a serial enlightenm ent’ .29 The Other loses its power to signify, to negate, to initiate its historic desire, to establish its own institutional and oppositional discourse. How ever impeccably the content of an `other’ culture may be known, however anti-ethnocentrically it is represented, it is its location as the closure of grand theories, the demand that, in analytic term s, it be always the good object of knowledge, the docile body of difference, that reproduces a relation of domination and is the m ost serious indictment of the institutional powers of critical theory.30
Bhabha cites a number of (m ostly contemporary ) exemplars of this theoretical double bind: `Montesquieu’ s Turkish Despot, Barthes’ Japan, Kristeva’ s China, Derrida’ s Nambikwara Indians, Lyotard’ s Cashinahua pagans’ . 31 In each in215
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stance theory’ s identi® able and speci® c proper name is doubled by a culturalist `ethnic’ representative which stands for difference as such; in this doubling theory enacts a `strategy of containm ent where the Other text is forever the exegetical horizon of difference, never the active agent of articulation’ .32 Theory’ s engagem ent with difference, from Montesquieu to Lyotard, is sustained by a consistent culturalist logic which, even at its m ost sophisticated, sustains relations of dom ination established throug h colonialism whereby the other can never be the active agent of articulation. Bhabha describes this logic variously as ® lmic (shot/reverse-shot), aesthetic (fram ed, illuminated), textual (cited, quoted) and geographic (horizon, cultural space). But, underp inning m ost of these mechanism s is an implicit unifying logic we could characterise as spatial. Yet having pointed out the spatial dangers in theory’ s engagem ent with differenceÐ the dangers of locusÐ Bhabha’ s own revisionary project is articulated in term s of a whole raft of spatial terms: for exam ple he aim s `to draw attention to the com m on groun d and lost territory of contem porary critical debates’ within the `lim its of culture’ .33 Bhabha form ulates his project as an avowedly spatial project that all the while attests to the ways in which theory operates spatially to domesticate difference. Clearly then, when spatial terms like `lost territory’ and `com mon ground ’ crop up in his text, Bhabha is implying another kind of spatiality. Clues as to the nature of this other spatiality are offered in Bhabha’ s discussion of the culture-concept. Bhabha characterises anthropological conceptions of culture as being founde d on a certain ambivalence: culture authorises m eaning throug h notions such as `tradition’ , `the m odel’ , `custom ’ , and `m ulticulturalism ’ , each of which signi® es a tolerance towards diversity while simultaneously disguising an impulse to account for difference on a single semiotic plane. This is to say that while `culture’ registers m ultiple criteria for living, such a registration assum es all such criteria to be m utually translatable and knowable. Bhabha suggests, however, that culture’ s authority is not quite as water-tight as we are lead to believe and that the possibility of such a revisionary practice becomes available as a consequence. This practice is conceptually ground ed in the working s of what Bhabha calls `cultural difference’ rather than `cultural diversity’ .34 Bhabha’ s `lost territory’ and `comm on ground ’ are to be found within the ambivalent authorising practices of anthropology ’ s culture, and he calls this other space/territory/groun d `the Third Space’ . None the less, there is a sense in which the spatial term inology used hereÐ despite its intersections with the problem atic of cultureÐ remains strangely unaccountable. Indeed, only when we read `space’ in an overtly linguistic way do things begin to fall into place. In effect, the spatial term s in Bhabha’ s argum ent refer to the slackness between signi® er and signi® ed, so despite appearances to the contrary, it is the languageÐ rather than an architecture or spaceÐ m etaphor which organises Bhabha’ s revision. 35 In the language m etaphor, the Third Space `represents both the general conditions of language and the speci® c implication of the utterance in a perform ative and institutional strategy of which it cannot ª in itselfº be conscious’ . 36 So the Third Space is, on the one hand, the space and tim e between two speakers, `between the I and the You designated in the statement’ ; 37 this space and tim e is non-ge neralisable, 216
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speci® c and contingent. On the other hand, the Third Space is also the `space’ of language as such, the structure which renders meaning com municable between self-conscious subjects; this `space’ is generalisable, non-spe ci® c and abstract. The Third Space refers to lim inal points/m om ents between linguistic and extra-linguistic pre-conditions for meaning and subject-construction. This formulation draws our attention to the spatial and tem poral conditions of the perform ance of meaning, to the ways in which m eaning is constructed, and to the ways in which it m ight be interruptedÐ and indeed interrupts itselfÐ and re-made according to another cast. As if to demonstrate his own ambivalence with regard to theory, Bhabha tests his Third Space thesis by reading speci® c postcolonial scenes in its terms. One such postcolonial scene is the writing of Frantz Fanon, in particular his essay `On national culture’ .38 This is an essay which deals with the speci® c dilem m as for the practice of various artsÐ music, literature, poetry, paintingÐ in the context of decolonization. In it Fanon critiques certain traits com mon to what he calls `nationalist’ art practices and outlines alternative, postcolonial modes of aesthetic practice. For Fanon, the desire to give form to newly proclaimed national identities throug h art cannot rely on an imitation and reprod uction of a m ythic and ideal native past. Rather artists, poets, m usicians, writers `must join the people in that ¯ uctuating movem ent which they are just giving shape to [¼ ] which will be the signal for everything to be called in question [¼ ] it is to this zone of occult instability where the people dwell that we [artists] m ust come’ .39 Bhabha ® nds in Fanon’ s essay, and in this passage in particular, a trope of ¯ uidity working in opposition to one of stasis and unity, and he aligns this opposition with his own distinction between cultural difference and cultural diversity. In this alignment, cultural diversity establishes static, ® xed and binary spatial relations; cultural difference has its spatial corollary in the restless, ¯ uid and mobile characteristics of Fanon’ s `zone of occult instability where the people dwell’ . W hat Bhabha ® nds in Fanon’ s writing is a `cultural practice’ which recognises the indeterminacy of cultural meaning, and as such is able to produc tively theorise an-other `space of enunciation’ in the context of decolonisation. For Bhabha it is the Third Space `though unrepr esentable in itself, which constitutes the discursive conditions of enunciation that ensure that the m eaning and sym bols of culture have no prim ordial unity or ® xity’ .40 Bhabha’ s use of spatial term inology remains plagued by a basic tension, however. Because, he argues, cultural m eaning is not prim ordially given but is m ade, and because that process of m aking is a fundamentally linguistic oneÐ hinged on an arbitrary gap between signi® er and signi® edÐ the prospect of a postcolonial revision and rem aking of cultural m eaning is held out. But it is the sense of a m aterial gap, or m ore precisely a spatial gap in the literal sense of the word, that gives Bhabha’ s argument its force. The postcolonial scene in which Bhabha reads a Third Space is implicitly a richly spatial one: Fanon’ s `zone of occult instability where the people dwell’ suggests a m ode of dwelling not necessarily predicated on being rooted prim ordially, dwelling places of a tenuous and indeterminate form, but material and actual in some way. In this instance, Bhabha’ s argum ent relies on eliding differences between the `space’ of language and the m aterial spaces of postcolonial circumstance. As Bhabha is not particu217
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larly precise in his use of spatial termsÐ to date we have come across `location’ , `territory’ , `horizon’ , `space’ , `structure’ , `zone’ , `dwelling’ Ð he risks employing `space’ as a kind of theoretical catch-all with little speci® c value. This is a risk which Henri Lefebvre identi® es in contem porary theoretical writing more generally. 41 This is not to say that material space and the `spaces’ of representation can be sim ply distinguished in this way, indeed that this Third Space causes certain dif® culties in its representation is precisely because it alludes to a `space’ in which the structures of representation themselves are being re-negotiatedÐ this is a dif® culty to which I will return below. None the less, the lack of precision about extra-linguistic space in Bhabha’ s work waters-down the force of the critical postcolonial principle at stake, namely a contingent m ode of theorising, or in Bhabha’ s words, the intersection of a `transnational ª migrantº knowledge’ with a concern for the `contours of local circum stance’ . 42 Bhabha’ s lack of precision about space, in its extra-linguistic sense, is most explicitly betrayed by his brush with the term `architecture’ . Perhaps the most intriguing and prom inent point at which this extension of a generalised spatial term inology into a m ore speci® c architectural one occurs in the lim inal point between the `Acknowledgm ents’ and the `Introduction’ of Bhabha’ s The Location of Culture collection. It takes the form of a quotation from Fanon’ s Black Skin, W hite Masks. The architecture of this work is rooted in the tem poral. Every human problem must be considered from the standpoint of time. 43
This is a crucial quotation in a crucial location in Bhabha’ s book. As we have seen, traditionally such architectural metaphors are deployed in philosophical texts to signify the overarching structure which govern s their contents. 44 As we have seen also, this is a tradition which is, if not inaugurated then certainly fam ously and in¯ uentially articulated, by Kant. In a m etaphorical transference, as Kant articulates it, `the architecture of [a] work’ refers to the orderliness and hierarchy of a text’ s structure of organisation (if this description begins to sound tautological it is precisely because the naturalised status of the architecture m etaphor require its working s be described in yet other architectural term s). But in Fanon’ s case the metaphor is given a speci® c twist. He roots the `architecture’ of his work in a `tem poral’ ground ; the substantial and m aterial groun d the architecture m etaphor presupp oses is replaced with a tem poral one. This altogether more slippery and indeterm inate `groun d’ compromises the basic founda tional, gravitational, tectonic, assem bled, hierarchical logic of the architecture m etaphor, thereby calling into question the traditional authorising role it is expected to play. This is clearly the com plication Bhabha is interested in. It is this spatio-temporal hybrid which produc es the Third Space, or the `zone of occult instability where the people dwell’ Ð that tenuous and indeterm inate dwelling we have already seen in Fanon’ s discussion of native art practices. At this point architecture is explicitly introduced into Bhabha’ s conception of the Third Space, but it is an architecture knowingly displaced and transformed. Yet along with this radical displacement of the architectural m etaphor, there is a suspicion that the metaphor is employed quite traditionally here. The architectural metaphor is deployed precisely where one would expect to ® nd it, 218
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at the threshold to the proper contents of the book; as such it re-af® rm s its traditional role as marker of the borders of proper knowledge and to de® ne secure modes of crossing those borders. This suspicion tends to be con® rmed at each subsequent occurrence of the architectural metaphor in Bhabha’ s text: in his approving description of artist ReneÂe Green’ s disruption of the architectural logic of gallery and museum spaces; and in his critique of Frederic Jam eson’ s excessive reliance on `the metaphor of spatial distance’ . 45 W hat becom es clear is that, for Bhabha, architecture is not a good m etaphor for thinking difference. Indeed, it seem s to be the very architectural quality of theory which is problem atic for postcolonial criticism in its engagem ent with cultural difference. What is it, then, about this particular image of architecture which proves to be problem atic in this context? I would argue that it is precisely those qualities Kant sawÐ and utilised to such great rhetorical effectÐ in the idea of architecture which prove problematic in this postcolonial critical context. This, now traditional, architectural m etaphor works throug h an image of a stable, reliable and uni® ed structure that organises subject±object relations in space; it is, in Kant’ s words, `the art of constructing system s’ , the art of m aking `a system out of a m ere aggregate of knowledge’ , 46 a process which pays careful attention to the development of a plan which `guarantee[s]’ `the com pleteness and certainty of the structure in all its parts’ .47 Such a characterisation allows architecture to signify, in Bhabha’ s work, the dangers that theoretical conceptions of space pose for cultural difference. Architecture, for Bhabha, is a paradigm atic image of theory, and is an image of what postcolonial criticism m ust resist. In the face of this architectonic danger, the language m etaphor seem s altogether m ore useful. For Bhabha, the language metaphor activates a temporality which undermines the authority of architecture’ s spatiality, and in doing so opens up the possibility for imagining less architectural kinds of theory. III The dangers Bhabha reads in the architecture m etaphor are, in som e senses, represented by the kind of airy architecture of the intellect Kant came to be associated with. This `architecture’ which allowed Kant to `roam the continents’ represents a kind of precursor to the spatiality Bhabha reads in theory’ s dom estication of cultural difference. Bhabha’ s `architecture’ , then, is already m etaphoricised by the philosophical tradition and is already attributed a whole series of naturalised characteristics. The difference is that Bhabha deploys this venerable metaphor for his own critical ends: the identi® cation of the dangers of theorising the postcolonial. But what of that other, altogether m ore material architecture? What of the granite architecture of KoÈ nigsberg? W here a m etaphoricised `architecture’ signals the dangers of theory in postcolonial context, could this literal architecture possibly serve as a useful m arker for the `contingencies and contours of local circumstance’ which resist these dangers? As we have seen, Miller expressed the eclipsing of the contingent in the nam e of theory in term s of an all too easy dissociation of the ground in KoÈ nigsberg from the grund in Kant. Miller, however, is imm ediately suspicious of this m anú uvre, and his elaboration of such suspicions usefully informs the questions 219
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I posed above. He argues that topogr aphical term s such as `ground ’ in philosophy and criticism have had their `original spatial and material reference [¼ ] eroded as they have been turned into conceptual term s’ thereby becom ing `subordinated to logical and rational thinking’ .48 As a consequence, such term s tend to operate unprob lem atically as `transparent illustrative metaphors, handy ways of thinking’ . In Bhabha’ s case `architecture’ and `space’ function in this way, albeit negatively, as metaphors illustrating the dangers of theory. Miller argues that this erosion serves a kind of paradoxical `trium ph of theory’ whereby the ubiquity of theoretical tropes in contem porary academ ic discourse of all varieties is shadowed by a sim ultaneous resistance to the implications such tropes m ight have for such discourse. 49 The `trium ph of theory’ he argues is `the covering over of that problem ’ of the distinction between m aterial base and superstructure, it is the `erasure or forgetting of the material base in question’ .50 Miller goes on to describe his project, in his recent book Topograp hies, as exploring the workings in literary and philosophical texts of such term s as `river, stream , mountain, house, path, ® eld, hedge, road, bridge, shore, doorway, cem etery, tom bstone, crypt, tum ulus, bounda ry, horizon’ ; he asks whether such term s `have a function beyond that of m ere setting or metaphorical adornment’ .51 Conversely, however, Miller does not aim to offer up speci® c contingencies as a sim ple circumvention of form al dif® culties with representation; he does not suggest, in other words, that a return to `the m aterial’ Ð as ® gured in various landscape or architectural term inologiesÐ would operate as a bulwark against a supposed rampant textuality. The m ateriality Miller has in m ind rem ains m ediated by language. It stands `for what can never be approached, nam ed, perceived, felt, thought, or in any way encountered as such’ , that none the less `is the hidden agent of all those phenom enal experiences’ . 52 `Materiality’ in this sense invokes a desired m aterial world without ever offering an unm ediated encounter with it. None the less `m ateriality’ nam es a catachrestic 53 class of signi® ers which represent an interruption of the cognitive working s of m eaning and, hence, should be privileged as triggering m oments of (im )possible contact, or at least unease, between world and text. Each topogr aphy and the topony m y encountered in the literary and philosophical texts Miller chooses to read, in different ways `hide an unplaceable place’ , 54 and invokes the dilemm a of m ateriality. The trium ph of theoryÐ as the blithe erasure of the m aterialÐ for Miller is a triumph of thinking over reading. So a resistance to theory, he argues, m ust be enacted throug h a heightened reading practice, a practice he calls an `ethics of reading’ . Such a practice pays close attention to the working s of the m aterial in the phenomenal experience of reading. So, terms such as `river’ , `stream’ , `mountain’ , `house’ , `path’ , `doorway’ , `bound ary’ etc. are important for their orchestration of a unique referential circum stance in the act of reading itself. After all, `[i]n literary study the ® rst material base is the words on the page in the unique, unrepeatable time of an actual act of reading’ .55 In paying close attention to the m ateriality of the text throug h this rigorous reading as `a unique perform ative event’ ,56 Miller aim s to draw attention to mom ents which rem ain just out of reach of cognition.57 The application of an ethics of reading here would be to take an interest in precisely potential resonances between the grund in Kant’ s writing and the groun d in his biography. And for m y purposes, as will 220
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becom e clear below, it would be to take an interest in the convolution of m ateriality and phenom enality latent in the way Kant’ s biography is sketched in term s of a substantial architecture of granite and an airy `architecture’ of thoughts. This would be to explore the catachrestic transposition of literal architecture to ® gurative `architecture’ . But an interesting dif® culty suggests itself the m oment Miller’ s dilemm a of m ateriality and phenom enality is posed in more speci® cally architectural term s. This dif® culty is to do with the way in which Miller, having introduced the possibility of a complex and convoluted relation between m ateriality and phenomenality, seem s to m ove quickly (too quickly) to m anage such possibilities. There is a sense in which the term `reading’ and the materiality of speci® cally literary signi® ersÐ the very `words on the page’ Ð seem to fail to account for architecture’ s own materiality. At one level, this is of course Miller’ s point: language necessarily fails to facilitate an encounter with the material as such. None the less, a m ore speci® c architectural `m ateriality’ seems to rest uneasily with the practice of reading Miller recom mends. This is not to say that Miller does not acknowledge that `[o]ther sorts of cultural study begin with the confro ntation of other forms of material inscription: paintings, artefacts, buildings, bits of barbed wire, or whatever’ .55 But the relationship between reading and these other forms of `m aterial inscription’ is only m entioned, without substantive elaboration, at the very end of his essay. Reading here includes not only written texts but all the signs that surround and penetrate us, all images visual and sonorous, the evidences of history that are always one form or another of signs to be read: docum ents, paintings, ® lms, or `material’ artefacts. Reading is the common ground on which all of us can meet to ® ght out our differences, with the texts and other sign systems to be read laid out on the table between use, so to speak. 59
In this concluding passage, various m aterialities are again acknowledged, but in its brevity the model of literary m ateriality remains privileged. However, embedded within the rhetoric Miller uses to assert this privilege there are a couple of twists which com plicate m atters. The ® rst is to do with what we could call relative powers of signi® cation, and hinges on the deÂtente metaphor with which Miller m akes a case for an ethics of reading. In this passage, Miller sketches an image of a table across which might be strewn all kinds of material `texts’ ; this table is the `com mon ground ’ at which numerous readers could sit to jointly and rigorously `read’ the evidence before them. At ® rst glance, the scene seem s only barely plausible, implying as it does an indiscrim inate tangle of precious parchm ent docum ents, crum bling archaeological artefacts, ® lm reels etc, all com peting for the readers’ attention. But Miller’ s inclusion of `building’ on his list of types of `m aterial inscription’ collapses the metaphor altogether. Far from being accom m odated on this table of evidence, the building accomm odates the table, the texts on it, and the readers seated around it.60 The building has speci® c kinds of m aterial properties which ensure that it necessarily serves as a prior groun d for reading: these might include a weatherproof- roof, dampproof ¯ oors and walls, proper ly insulated windows, lockable doors, stable structural system s, a kitchen in which to prepare refreshm ents, hygienic plum b221
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ing, etc. And if this observation appears banal, it is precisely because such architectural com ponents tend to refuse to be `read’ as simply signi® cant. Architecture, as W alter Benjamin fam ously notes, `has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consumm ated by a collectivity in a state of distraction’ .61 It is precisely architecture’ s incidental m odes of operation, the distracted reception it engenders which allows it to perform an unacknowledged ground ing function in such scenarios. As such it can never simply signify the way a text might. The second twist in Miller’ s account of materiality is to do with what we could call relative material densities, and hinges on the notion of architecture’ s tactile reception. As Benjamin also points out, architecture’ s incidental m ode of signi® cation is uniquely tactile and optical. `Buildings are approp riated in a twofold m anner: by use and by perceptionÐ or rather, by touch and sight’ , 62 both of which are habitual kinds of approp riation. If architecture’ s everyday functionality already com plicates a close reading practice, then its tactility draws attention to m ore complex and subtle plays of m ateriality and phenomenal form , which com plicate matters further. The reception of architecture is highly contingent on the materiality of its form : air is not plastic is not tim ber is not concrete is not glass is not granite. The point here is that these forms of m ateriality seem to stretch the activity Miller calls reading beyond its proper limits, such that `reading’ itself threatens to become excessively m etaphorical. It is dif® cult to sim ply establish `words on a page’ as a default founda tional m aterial in the face of the m aterial com plexity of an architectural environm ent. Miller’ s even-handed treatment of all such m aterials serves to generalise the possibility of relative powers of signi® cation and relative m aterial densities. His assertion of the prim acy of reading is, ironically, an effacem ent of the uniqueness of other materialities. Still, Miller’ s attention to the m aterial conditions of the produc tion of m eaning complicates familiar and now instinctive uses of spatial and architectural tropes, and although he does not address questions of cultural difference, his attention to the question of m ateriality might usefully supplement Bhabha’ s work. However, there is, in the end, a striking sim ilarity between Miller, Bhabha and, ultim ately, Kant when their own texts engage with spatial or architectural descriptions: both Fanon’ s zone of occult dwelling, and Miller’ s reading room m ight be understood as mom ents in which the possibility of a material architectural space is substituted for a Kantian architectonic. This architecture is characterised, as we have seen, by precisely an attenuated worldly space and an expanded head space (bizarrely ® gured as `head without a world’ ). However, this is not to sim ply dism iss Miller’ s point and to privilege architecture as som e irrefutable bedrock or reliable m aterial base. Architecture is of course discursive, and time and again architectural discourse shows itself to be strangely embarrassed by the excessive m ateriality of its own object, building. Architecture as a textualised superstructure, that is, always struggles to order its relation to building as a material base. The inconsistent elisions between `building’ and `architecture’ m ade in m y discussion above m ake it clear that Miller’ s distinction between m aterial form and its textualised shadow remains relevant here. None the less, architecture’ s distinction from building is negotiated along very speci® c lines. The section which follows will address this 222
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negotiation in more detail by focusing on a patently idealist conception of architecture which is none the less produc ed throug h a careful consideration of m ateriality, both its powers of signi® cation and its relative density. This is a m om ent in architectural theory which is contem poraneous with Kant’ s m obilisation of the architecture m etaphor for his critical philosophical ends; as a consequence the section which follows could be read as a consideration of that other architecture informing Kant’ s work, nam ely `the granite architecture of KoÈ nigsberg’ . IV One of the primary debates in which architectural theory becam e embroiled during the eighteenth century was to do with architecture’ s standing in the broader ® eld of the ® ne arts. In general, this debate turned on the classical aesthetic doctrine of m imesis, and m ore particularly on an empiricist and rationalist distinction between two kinds of m imesis: the copy, an imitation of an `illusionistic resem blance’ of a m aterial model; and the idea, an imitation of a `distilled essence’ of the m odel, usually named `type’ .63 In this distinction, a m aterialist imitation tended to be denigrated as the `mechanical’ copying work of mere craftsm en, and an idealist imitation, characterised by an aspiration to penetrate the deeper essences of form, laid claim to authorise proper aesthetic endeavour of all kinds. 64 Idealist imitation, in its repudiation of the m aterial and embracing of the m etaphysical, was further authorised by the realm s of morality it was thereby deem ed to access. 65 Such theoretical considerations generated an interest in discerning, more precisely than before, the distinctions between the mimetic functionings of the various arts. Perhaps the best known and m ost strident inquiry of this kind was Charles Batteux’ s Les Beaux-Arts Reduites aÁ un MeÃme Principle, published in 1747, in which he attem pted to construct a hierachical `system of the arts’ .66 Batteux’ s prim ary criteria for the organization of this system was the isolation of a single imitative principle by which each of the arts was to be identi® ed; the object of imitation in each case was to be `la belle nature’ , a term which implied not the material form s of nature but a kind of natural essence. The investigation of the `origins’ of each art form in nature was an important m ethodological device in this context, as the `search for origins’ was for Enlightenm ent thinking m ore generally. According to this m ethodology each art would be reduced to its respective prim al and unadulterated state, thereby revealing its singular essences. 67 According to such strict and crude criteria, Batteux designated the following as truly `® ne’ arts: poetry, painting, sculpture, m usic, and dance. As Anthony Vidler points out, only these were deemed to be `arts of pure pleasure’ , the produc tion of pleasure being their only raison d’ eÃtre. `Thus [Batteux’ s ® ne arts] were to be distinguished from the mechanical arts, founde d on pure need, and those arts, which starting from need, developed into pleasurable form s’ .68 This hierarchical criteria for distinction clearly posed a problem for architecture’ s standing in the ® eld of aesthetics. 69 As a discipline which had, to varying degrees, always constructed its distinctiveness by an appeal to function and needÐ even if pleasure was a consequence of thisÐ architecture struggled to 223
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establish for itself a single, pleasure-inducing, imitative principle. Furtherm ore, architecture was unique among the arts in its lack of any obviou s natural m odel to imitate. As a consequence architecture was doomed to occupy a lowly rank in the aesthetic system Batteux foreshadowed. 70 A C Quatrem eÁ re de Quincy, prom inent theorist of French neo-classical art and architecture, was a key ® gure in the formation of an architectural response to this dilem ma. His approach to the question of architecture’ s place in the system of the arts is particularly interesting because it displayed great sensitivity to the underlying institutional and theoretical forces organising the debate, and as such played an important role in the `rescue’ of architecture from its lowly place in the system of the arts. I will outline Quatrem eÁ re’ s approach as it is developed speci® cally in his entry on `Architecture’ , published in 1788 in C J Panckouke’ s EncyclopeÂdie M eÂthodique. 71 Quatrem eÁ re’ s begins this essay with a provisional de® nition. `Architecture: It is the art of building following determ ined propor tions and rules’ .72 It is a de® nition which is disarmingly straightforward and, as the issue of `building’ is adm itted to immediately, it appears not the least bit metaphysical. Indeed this impression is further emphasised in the subsequent paragraph where Quatrem eÁ re draws our attention to the question of utility in architecture. Considered only from the point of view of utility, architecture outweighs all the other arts. It maintains wholesom eness in cities, it watches over the health of men, it assures their property; it only works for the security, tranquillity and good order of civil life.73
QuatremeÁ re claims for architecture a fundamental role in the organisation of civil life, but he does so, in the ® rst instance at least, on the basis of precisely the utilitarian characteristics deem ed to be so dangerous for architecture in the philosophical clim ate of his tim e. Architecture, in this de® nition, is the art associated with the simple security of proper ty and its occupants, it is the art of law and order, of health and hygiene. These m aterial concerns are immediately supplemented by m ore metaphysical quali® cations, however, as Quatrem eÁ re points out architecture’ s af® nity with painting and sculpture on the basis of its ability to preserve m emory, to `survive and resistÐ even in ruinsÐ the ravages of time’ . Architecture is a `[t]rustee of glory, of taste and of the genius of peoples, it bears witness for centuries to com e to the degree of power or the weakness of states’ . 74 At this point Quatrem eÁ re returns to his opening de® nition of architecture in order to qualify it a little m ore precisely. He argues that the description, `the art of building’ , is excessively focused on the object of architecture, building that is, and does not approach a `positive and extensive notion’ . In other words, a m ore theoretical de® nition of architecture is required, a de® nition better able to `extend’ beyond the contingency of the object. Ironically, his reason for this quali® cation is that left simply as `the art of building’ , whether as a term of function or of construction, architecture becom es a term so generalised, so extensive, as to apply to `all time and to all countries’ . Quatrem eÁ re’ s objectionÐ and he relies on etym ological evidence hereÐ is that the art of architecture is `reserved for som e privileged periods and countries’ . 224
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The art of building is found even among the savage people; the art of architecture, on the contrary, can only be the fruit of societies that have been most perfected by civilization, by all moral causes and with the collaboration of all the other arts. Architecture only takes on the form of an art, amongst those peoples where it is found , when they have already attained a certain degree of culture, of opulence and of luxury. It is at this point, then, that menÐ retreating more and more from rural life and work and settling in citiesÐ sought to replace the pleasures of nature, of which they had lost sight, with the enjoyment of the arts, imitators of these pleasures. 75
For Quatrem eÁ re, the civilised, `cultured’ , and settled m odes of life of the city are the essential pre-conditions by which architecture can establish for itself a singular, imitative, pleasure-inducing principle. Savage or rural m odes of life can sustain only natural pleasures, pleasures which rem ain convoluted with the m aterial dem ands of need; as a consequence, it is a m ode of life wholly unsuited to aesthetic produc tion in the strictest, Kantian sense of the term , and can only ever produc e building. Yet, at this point in the discussion, where the status of building and its m aterialities are being considered, are we not returned to QuatremeÁ re’ s ® rst and dangerously utilitarian de® nition of architecture as building with rules? In fact, QuatremeÁ re produc es his theory of architecture by sleight-of-hand: he begins by insisting on architecture’ s utility in its role as guarantor of civil life, and ends by disavowing that utility in his `proof ’ of architecture’ s aesthetic credentials. QuatremeÁ re’ s disarmingly materialist de® nition of architectureÐ as m aintaining `wholesom eness in cities’ , as watching `over the health of m en’ , as assuring `their proper ty’ , as working `for the security, tranquillity and good order of civil life’ Ð is no m ere ruse to set the reader at ease in preparation for the more m etaphysical explanations to come. Rather, it serves as a constitutive guarantor of aesthetic activity as such; as Quatrem eÁ re puts it, `[c]onsidered only from the point of view of utility, architecture outweighs all the other arts’ . Importantly, the sleight-of-hand by which this architectural theory is produced, relies on the term s of `culture’ and `savagery’ , on their relative differences, m utability and interaction: `[t]he art of building is found even among the savage people; the art of architecture, on the contrary, can only be the fruit of societies that have been m ost perfected by civilization’ ; `Architecture only takes on the form of an art, amongst those peoples where it is found , when they have already attained a certain degree of culture’ .76 In short Quatrem eÁ re’ s theory represents an intersection of architecture and a nascent sense of cultural difference. Quatrem eÁ re’ s proof of this argum ent turns on the speculation on origins of architecture, an old them e in architectural theory which is articulated in terms of descriptions of a mythical ® rst dwelling, `the prim itive hut’ . This theory of origins is unique in architectural theory because it is the ® rst to break with a monogen estic tradition to deduce a plurality of origins which QuatremeÁ re describes in term s of three inaugural and unfor m ed `em bryos’ of architectural latency. 77 These three form s `re¯ ect’ , he argues, three distinct `states of m an’ or `ways of life’ represented by the hunting, shepherding, and farming `peoples’ respectively. 78 The lifestyle of `[t]he hunting peoples (which includes the ® sh eaters)’ consisted of short settled periods followed by long 225
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periods of travel, and this m eant that purpose-built dwellings were not required. As a consequence `they found it more convenient to hollow out dwellings in the rocks or they pro® ted from those dwellings that nature offered them in her caverns’ .79 This mode of dwelling is a produc t of the `natural laziness’ that follows the itinerant lifestyle; `[i]t is what experience teaches us today’ Quatrem eÁre adds. `The shepherd people’ by contrast `inhabited the plains during a great part of the year, [and] could not use those retreats hollowed out and prepared by the hands of nature in the rocks and mountains’ ; this obliged them `to wander ceaselessly in order to change pastures, thus leading an itinerant life’ . As a consequence `it was necessary for them to have houses that could accom pany them everywhere. Hence the use of tents’ .80 The third way of life which underp ins QuatremeÁ re’ s theory of difference is farm ing. Farm ing `requires a life at once active and sedentary’ ; it is a way of life predicated on the concept of proper ty and dem ands a long-term investm ent in the land such that its bene® ts m ay be reaped. As a consequence, the farm er `needs a house that is at once secure and convenient, healthy, extensive’ , in response to which `the wood cabin with its roof will be built’ . Quatrem eÁ re concludes his outline of the three primitive architecture’ s as follows: [s]uch are the three states of natural life to which the origins of all constructions and the differences of taste which can be discerned amongst the different peoples of the world can be related. 81
These `roug h sketches of nature’ `re¯ ect’ the states of m an. They are generalised architectural principles drawn out of prim itive man’ s instinctual response to different natural forces. The theory of architectural difference is a produc t of the way in which lifestyles as they develop differentially are `engraved’ and `im pressed’ into these embryoni c architectural form s to produc e the cave, tent and hut. Each form contains the potential for a different and unrelated aesthetic expression. With three origins replacing a m ore traditional account of a single origin, Quatrem eÁ re’ s architectural theory could be said to have been opened to a modern culture-concept. Yet, having established an account of what appears to be a purely relative difference, Quatrem eÁ re denigrates the cave and tent m odels in terms of the doctrine of imitation, leaving the timber hut alone as the privileged m odel for architecture. The cave is literally too heavy and offers `too little to imitate’ , it is too complete a m odel, with m inim al potential for change. In other words, it is too much an object of nature and offers no possibilities for art; `in underground constructions there prevails necessarily a monoton y of form s that can transm it to architecture only the perpetual repetition of the sam e parts’ . The tent, on the other hand, is literally too light. Im itation of this m odel can be but vicious and puerile, because the material of the model is too far removed from the one which the copy em ploys; the art must be attenuated and im poverished in this unfavourable imitation which bears no analogy to its model.82 The tents, on their part being easily able to bend to caprice, m ust transm it to the art an always varying incertitude of forms, and inspire it by those peculiarities of
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detail incompatible with the sim plicity and the wisdom of order which is the pride of Greek architecture. 83
The tim ber hut and carpentry `on the other hand, at once solid and lightÐ or, at least able to m ore or less acquire these two qualitiesÐ was the happiest m edium for architecture’ . 84 According to QuatremeÁ re’ s analysis, the idiosyncratic materiality of timber is the `germ ’ for architecture’ s pleasure-giving effects. Timber’ s balanced proper ties are such that it provid es the ideal medium for the construction of stable architectural form s, but tim ber is also suf® ciently unstable to be imitable in other m aterials; its structural stability, none the less, allows a formal m utability, and in this ideal tension lies architecture’ s aesthetic potential. `L et us not doubt it’ Quatrem eÁ re concludes, `it is by this happy deception that m an enjoys in architecture a pleasure of imitation, without which this pleasure would not have arisen which accom panies all the arts and constitutes their charm , pleasure of being half deluded, which makes dear to man the ® ctions and poetry, makes him prefer disguised truth to naked truth’ .85 Only the timber hut then contains the possibilities of an architecture in its proper sense, that is as an art founde d in a singular pleasure-inducing, imitative principle. Having recast the traditional origins of architecture to account for an emerging sense of cultural difference, Quatrem eÁ re m akes two further supplem entary m oves in his rescue mission. First, the principle of imitation of the tim ber primitive hut is supplem ented by a further m odel for the orderly arrangement of the parts of architecture, namely the hum an body. Throug h the example of sculpture, the body is m ade available as a m odel `which m ust have its members, its divisions, its parts subord inated to the whole’ .86 But again, wary of the dangers of an unm ediated m aterialism , QuatremeÁ re insists that this is not a m odel to be copied literally, it should rather serve as an `intellectual copy’ . `The imitation of the hum an body is not a positive imitation, but a ® gurative one. It is never form that architecture approp riates to itself, but the relations, the reasons which are contained there’ .87 The second supplementary move Quatrem eÁre makes is to generalise the source of architectural authority to Nature. `It is not only the cabin [ie the timber prim itive hut] from which [architecture] com es, nor m an on which it is modelled, it is Nature in its entirety which had becom e the type of its imitation. It is the order itself of Nature which has becom e its guiding spirit’ .88 Architecture takes its `skeleton’ from the imitation of carpentry, a skeleton which is `clothed’ `with rational form s’ by the imitation of hum an proportions which give it `movem ent’ . But the imitation of the general conditions of Nature, give architecture its `soul’ , such that it becom es `no longer [an] imitator, but a rival of Nature herself’ . At this point Quatrem eÁ re is able to com plete his defence of architecture: `[s]o this art, in appearance m ore subordi nated to m aterial than the other two (painting and sculpture), is in fact m ore ideal, m ore intellectual, more m etaphysical than they’ . The other arts can only `imitate or rectify’ m odels given in nature, `architecture creates its own’ .89 Without a m odel in nature, without, that is a m odel in any m aterial sense, architecture creates a m odel which embodies the 227
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very principles of Nature, and as such claims its aesthetic authority from the m ost m etaphysical source of all, God. V In one sense Quatrem eÁ re’ s neo-classical architectural theory seem s to provid e evidence of precisely the dangers Bhabha implicitly reads in architecture. QuatremeÁ re’ s elaboration of a plural theory of architectural origins could be read as a deft gesture towards a tolerance of diversity which, by privileging the ideal stability of the tim ber hut, sim ultaneously dom esticates a m ore serious threat of difference. This constitutes a reassertion of the classical tradition in the face of evidence of ram pant and unruly vernaculars, of civilisation in the face of savagery, despotism and barbarism. Further evidence of the danger this image of architecture m ight pose in postcolonial contexts is found if we return to Kant’ s use of it. Kant’ s use of the architecture m etaphor as an image with which to reunite critical philosophy is effective precisely because the image of architecture he conveys is a neo-classical one. It is neo-classical architecture’ s doubled authorisationÐ by an ideal primitive hut de® ned positively in term s of its own m ateriality, tim ber, and negatively as being neither cave or tentÐ which constitutes Kant’ s default image of philosophical unity, systematicity and stability. His image of an authoritative philosophy lies som ewhere between the twin excesses of an unruly `nom adic’ empiricism and an inertia-boun d `despotic’ rationalism ,90 just as an ideal neo-classical architecture lies between the capricious `incertitude’ of the tent and the artless `m onoton y’ of the cave. 91 The image of critical philosophy-a s-architecture carries rhetorical weight because cave and tent conjure such effective images of all that is improper to the civil imagination: the too heavy and too light, the too stable and unstable, the excessively material buildings of savagery and barbarism . This relationship between neo-classical architectural theory, cultural difference, and the produc tion of theory is clearly one which a postcolonial critical sensibility would warn against. This is the kind of danger Bhabha reads in the spatiality of the culture-concept. However, in another sense, there is an interesting excess left in the wake of the various twists and turns Quatrem eÁ re makes in his produc tion of an authoritative and ideal architectural theory, which m ight usefully inform postcolonial critical m ethods. Quatrem eÁ re’ s theory was formed, in part, as a response to the idealist agendas of Enlightenment aesthetics. This entailed locating architecture, on the basis of a discipline-speci® c m imetic principle, in a hierarchical system of the arts. Interestingly, Fanon’ s calling to account of the various arts in his essay `On national culture’ could be read as a gesture which takes precisely this Enlightenment form . However, Fanon ranks the arts, not according to the purity of their pleasure-inducing m imetic principles, but on the basis of their ability to call into being a postcolonial m ode of aesthetic invention. For Fanon, this is to give voice or form to the dynam ic conditions of postcolonial nationhood rather than promote an aesthetic resurrection of a pre-colonial, nativist past. Not surprisingly, given the Enlightenm ent aesthetic hierarchy which informs the aim s of Fanon’ s essay and given architecture’ s awkward place in that hierarchy, 228
POSTCOLONIAL ARCHITECTONICS
architecture is not overtly represented in his list. Yet there is a mom ent when Fanon describes an architectural scene: his description of a `zone of occult instability where the people dwell’ .92 This image, so important for Bhabha’ s conception of a Third Space, offers interesting possibilities when it is readÐ against the grain som ewhatÐ as architectural. W hen Fanon’ s image is juxtaposed against the `puerile’ and architecturally suspect qualities of the tent that Quatrem eÁre describes, for instance, it can become a signi® er for the produc tion of space outside the authoritative structures of proper theory. In architecture’ s m argins, in the wake of QuatremeÁ re’ s theory-produ ction, strange possibilities for the invention of resistances are available. This is to make the m ost of the ® ctive and inventive and deceptive qualities which are at the heart of this theory of architecture. Architecture is a conservative discourse charged with the m aintenance of wholesom eness and good health of civilised life; however, in its conservatism it sustains a unique catachrestic condition which oscillates between m ateriality and phenom enality. Reading throug h Quatrem eÁ re, this represents the possibility of a recon® gured Third Space: a revision of the scene of culture’ s inauguration, not through the language m etaphor per se, but throug h the speci® c dilem mas inherent in the produc tion of building/architecture.
Notes 1
2
3 4
5
6
7 8 9
Arsenij Gulyga, Immanuel Kant: His Life and Thought, trans. Marijan Despalatovic, Boston: BikhaÈ user Inc., 1987, p. 1. Gulyga, p. 1. As Howard Caygill points out `[t]he opposition between Kant’ s quiet life and explosive thought, between his provincial surroundings in the East Prussian city of KoÈ nigsberg and the world-historic signi® cance of his writings, have become the stuff of philosophical legend’ ; Howard Caygill, A Kant Dictionary, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995, p. 7. Or, as another commentator puts it, `[a] sketch of Immanuel Kant’ s life takes very little space’ yet `[s]o in¯ uential have been his publications [¼ ] that, like Plato before him, no one after him could do philosophy without taking him into account’ ; Roger J Sullivan, `Introduction’ The M etaphysics of M orals, Immanuel Kant, trans. Mary Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p vii. Gulyga, p 1. Hubert L Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, M ichel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983, p 32. Immanuel Kant, Immanuel Kant’ s Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Sm ith, London: MacMillan, 1933, p 8. John Sallis (Spacings of Reason and Imagination in the texts of Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), Claudia Brodsky (`Architecture & architectonics: the art of reason in Kant’ s Critique’ , The Princeton Journal, Thematic Studies in Architecture, 3 1988, pp 103±18), M ark Wigley (The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida’ s Haunt, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993) and Kojin Karatani (Architecture as M etaphor: Language, Number, M oney, ed. Michael Speaks, trans. Sabu Kohso, Cambridge, MA, M IT Press, 1995) provide particularly useful accounts of this Kantian metaphor. For Brodsky, `architecture is [¼ ] the form of the three Critiques themselves, the form in which Kant’ s critical system is housed’ (Brodsky, p 12). She argues that this image of the architectonic gives philosophy an `objective shape’ (Brodsky, p 14), and enables cognition itself. Kant, p 653. Caygill, p 84. The complex development of the term `design’ , from disegno, is best outlined by Erwin Panofsky in his Idea: A Concept in Art Theory, trans. J S Peake, Columbia, South Carolina: Harper & Row, 1968. The role of a certain conception of drawing (disegno) in the formation of design as a foundational architectural skill is important in this regard; see HeÂleÁne Lipstadt, `Architectural publications, competitions and exhibitions’ , in Architecture and its Image: Four Centuries of Architectural Representation: W orks From the Collection
229
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19
20
21
22 23 24 25 26
of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Eve Blau and Edward Kaufman (eds), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989. See Mark Wigley, The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida’ s Haunt, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993. Kant, pp 607±608. Kant, p 14. Kant. p 655. Kant, p 46. Kant, p 608. Kant, p 60. Kant, p 46. Kant, p 47. It is interesting to note that, besides the philosophical role the image of architecture had to play, the term `architectonic’ was deployed to buttress philosophy’ s institutional standing. As Caygill notes in Kant’ s philosophy, the term `architectonic’ was employed as a defence `against the discrete science (and faculties) of law, theology and medicine as well as the emergent natural sciences’ (Caygill, pp 84±85). Kant is clearly attuned to the conservative institutional, as well as the philosophical possibilities of the architectonic image. Caygill notes in his Introduction that `[t]he University of KoÈ nigsberg was organized in terms of the four traditional faculties, the three ª higher facultiesº of theology, law and medicine, and the fourth or ª lower facultyº of philosophy. [¼ ] Because its curriculum was not adapted to the demands of a profession, it was possible to extend the range of subjects covered by philosophy to include not only subjects such as physics and geography which were ignored by the higher faculties, but even those of religion, jurisprudence and medicine which were their protected domains’ (Caygill, p 13). So there was a certain discursive mobilityÐ which Kant found interesting and which he exploitedÐ available to philosophy as it lay outside the `protected domains’ of theology, law and medicine. Yet Kant’ s construction of an architectonic of philosophy, Caygill argues, was driven by a desire to see philosophy carve out a legitimate place of its own within the protected domain of the higher faculties. `For Heidegger, the tradition of metaphysics has always understood itself as a kind of building, even before it started explicitly describing itself in these terms when Rene Descartes depicted philosophy as the construction of an edi® ce, a sound structure erected on stable, well-grounded foundations, a description that would then be institutionalised, most conspicuously by the writings of Kant. Heidegger argues that Kant’ s explicit attempt to lay the foundations for a building is the necessary task of all metaphysics’ (Wigley, p 9). Caygill (p 84) gives a brief outline of the deployments of the architecture metaphor in philosophy. Wigley, p 10. Another explicitly `architectonic’ passage occurs in a section of Kant’ s ® rst Critique entitled `Transcendental Doctrine of Method’ . `If we look upon the sum of all knowledge of pure speculative reason as an edi® ce for which we have at least the idea within ourselves, it can be said that in the Transcendental Doctrine of Elements we have made an estimate of the materials, and have determined for what sort of edi® ce and for what height and strength of building they suf® ce. We have found, indeed, that although we had contemplated building a tower which should reach the heavens, the supply of materials suf® ces only for a dwelling-house, just suf® ciently commodious for our business on the level of experience, and just suf® ciently high to allow our overlooking it. The bold undertaking that we had designed is thus bound to fail through lack of materialÐ not to mention the babel of tongues, which inevitably gives rise to disputes among the workers in regard to the plan to be followed, and which must end by scattering them over all the world, leaving each to erect a separate building for himself, according to his own design. At present, however, we are concerned not so much with the materials as with the plan; and inasmuch as we have been warned not to venture at random upon a blind project which may be altogether beyond our capacities, and yet cannot well abstain from building a secure home for ourselves, we must plan our building in conformity with the material which is given to us, and which is also at the same time appropriate to our needs’ (Kant, p 573). Ernst Cassirer, Rousseau± Kant± Goethe: Tw o Essays, trans. Paul Gutmann, Oskar Kristeller and John Herman Randall Jr, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945, pp 19±20. Gulyga, p xi. Cited in Caygill, p 7. J Hillis Miller, Topographies, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995, p 7. Homi K Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London: Routledge, 1994, p 214. By `theory’ I mean both the more traditional and contemporary senses of the term. On the one hand `theory’ is traditionally understood as denoting autonomous deductive reasoning (Kantian speculation) as distinct from the realm of practice or lived life, as `the term to mean a system of concepts that aims to give a global explanation to an area of knowledge’ (Wlad Godzich, `Foreword: the tiger on the paper mat’ in The Resistance to Theory, Paul de Man, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1986, p xiii). On the other hand `theory’ is also, in the words of Jonathon Culler `the nickname for an unbounded corpus of works’ `that succeed in challenging and reorienting thinking in domains other than those to which they ostensible belong because their analyses of language, mind, history, or culture offer novel and persuasive accounts of signi® cation, make strange the familiar and perhaps persuade readers to conceive of their own thinking and
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27
28
29 30 31
32 33
the institutions to which it relates in new ways’ (Jonathon Culler, `Introduction: what’ s the point of theory’ in The Point of Theory: Practices of Cultural Analysis, M ieke Bal and Inge E Boer (eds), Am sterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1994, p 13. Bhabha grapples with theory in both of these senses. By `postcolonial criticism’ I mean that ® eld commonly known as postcolonial studies, postcolonial theory, or postcolonialism. Given that I intend to explore the role of `theory’ in this ® eld, I have used the tag `criticism ’ (rather than `theory’ ) in this context simply to avoid confusion. The generality of this ambivalence with theory in postcolonial criticism is evidenced by its prominence, as a theme, in the introductions to recent anthologies and readers on postcolonial criticism. See, for example, Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (eds), Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, and Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Grif® ths and Helen Tif® n (ed), A Postcolonial Reader, London: Routledge, 1995. In Williams and Chrisman the tensions between theory and speci® city, between abstraction and materiality are developed with reference to Adorno, Horkheimer and Spivak. `Part of the problem lies in the assumption that theoretical ª purityº is possible; part of the problem lies in the assumption that ª purityº , even if possible, is politically desirable. For Adorno and Horkheimer, for instance, these assumptions would be a major shortcoming in the operations of post-structuralism and some post-colonial theory. Such operations repeat the very way in which traditional philosophy (Enlightenment or otherwise) cuts itself off from a self-re¯ ective consideration of its relationship to material and political power, deluding itself as to its pure and autonomous status, and thereby becomes all the more readily an instrument and mirror of social domination’ (Williams and Chrisman, pp 10±11). Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak could also be called on in this context. Her `strategic essentialism’ , to cite a well-known example, is understood as the deployment of a locally productive, yet theoretically problematic mechanism. She makes her theoretical ambivalence clear in her discussion of the French post-structuralist theoretical battery she employs: `I think my present work is to show how in fact the limits of the theories of interpretation that I am working with are revealed through the encounter of what can be de® ned as ª non-W estern materialº ’ (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, The Post-colonial Critic, Sarah Harasym (ed), London, Routledge, 1990, p 8). Elaborating on this question of the delimitation of theory she emphasises that this cross-cultural encounter is `an encounter with the materiality of that other of the West’ (Spivak, The Post-Colonial Critic, p 11). In other words, the limits of theory are disclosed by this encounter not simply on account of its dialectical structure but by the other’ s materiality. The other, in its materiality, makes demands on theory by refusing its ascribed role as the docile object of subsumption and knowledge. But, postcolonial criticism does not resist theory outright, rather it relies on it to produce strategies of resistance. This ambivalence with regard to theory is demonstrated, for example, in Spivak’ s discussion of the `heterogeneous production of [non-Western] sexed subjects’ (Spivak, The Post-Colonial Critic, p 10). Her interest in the heterogeneity and speci® city of the issue leads her to support the `stand against the discourses of essentialism, universalism as it comes in terms of the universalÐ of classical German philosophy or the universal as the white upper-class male ¼ etc.’ Spivak immediately quali® es this: `[b]ut strategically we cannot’ (Spivak, The Post-Colonial Critic, p 11). She goes on to argue that the simple `celebration’ of heterogeneity here is not an option if the project is to address the question of `the place of women’ s desire’ in general. `Strategy works through a persistent (de)constructive critique of the theoretical. ª Strategyº is an embattled concept-metaphor and unlike ª theoryº , its antecedents are not disinterested and universal. ª Usually, an arti® ce or trick designed to outwit or surprise the enemyº (Oxford English Dictionary)’ (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Outside in the Teaching M achine (London: Routledge, 1993, p 3). Bhabha, p 31. Bhabha, p 31. Bhabha, p 31. Bhabha’ s argument here, and the way it is put, recalls Spivak’ s critique of Kristeva’ s treatment of `China’ , and concomitantly, of the group of French theorists associated with her and their treatment of `otherness’ . `French theorists such as Derrida, Lyotard, Deleuze, and the like, have at one time or another been interested in reaching out to all that is not the West, because they have, in one way or another, questioned the millennially cherished excellences of Western metaphysics: the sovereignty of the subject’ s intention, the power of predication and so on’ (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, `French feminism in an international frame’ , Yale French Studies, p 62 (1981, p 157). `[Kristeva’ s] question, in the face of those silent [peasant Chinese] women, is about her own identity rather than theirs: ª Who is speaking, then, before the stare of the peasants at Huxian?º (p 15). This too might be a characteristic of the group of thinkers to whom I have, most generally attached her. In spite of their occasional interest in touching the other of the West, of metaphysics, of capitalism, their repeated question is obsessively self-centered: if we are not what of® cial history and philosophy say we are, who then are we (not), how are we (not)?’ (Spivak, `French feminism’ , pp 158±159). In referring to this point in a later context, Spivak characterises this, generally French post-structuralist engagement with otherness as a kind of Western `management of a crisis’ (Spivak, The Post-Colonial Critic, p 8). Bhabha, p 31. Bhabha, p 34.
231
STEPHEN CAIRNS 34
35
36 37 38 39 40
41
42 43 44
Cultural diversity pre-supposes `cultural contents and customs’ , it operates with a `time-frame of relativism [which] gives rise to liberal notions of multiculturalism, cultural exchange or the culture of humanity’ (Bhabha, p 34). `Cultural diversity is also the representation of a radical rhetoric of the separation of totalized cultures that live unsullied by the intertextuality of their historical locations, safe in the Utopianism of a mythic memory of a unique collective identity’ (Bhabha, p 34). The multi-cultural identities offered under cultural diversity are none the less, securely circumscribed within the horizons of proper conceptions of knowledge. The culture-concept is relied upon in the colonial context for its ability to generate, for the coloniser, ratios of difference, part-whole relationships, holistic schemas, and `dialectical assemblages’ (Bhabha, p 128) out of phenomena which, on ® rst view, had seemed irretrievably fragmentary and non-sensical. This sense-making enterprise seeks to establish an authentic ground for `the experience of other cultures’ (Bhabha, p 126). Cultural difference is an occupation of the moment of contact which produces culture. But, as I have suggested, Bhabha aims to resist the subsequent formation of uni® ed cultures and to hold this moment open such that it might extend the possibilities for the production of other forms of agency and identity. Bhabha’ s cultural difference is a postcolonialist revision of anthropology’ s culture-concept such that it is reconceived as a `process of the enunciation of culture as ª knowledgeableº , authoritative, adequate to the construction of systems of cultural identi® cation’ (Bhabha, p 34). In short, cultural difference is `is a process of signi® cation through which statements of culture or on culture differentiate, discriminate and authorize the production of ® elds of force, reference, applicability and capacity’ (Bhabha, p 34). Cultural difference resists the authoritative naming strategies of the culture-concept, and proceeds by investigating the ambivalences around the moment and point of contact in cross-cultural engagements where such strategies are ® rst implemented. As it seeks out signs of ambivalence in the authorization of anthropological culture, cultural difference is necessarily a parasite on the scene of culture. `To provide a social imaginary that is based on the articulation of differential, even disjunctive, moments of history and culture, contemporary critics resort to the peculiar temporality of the language metaphor. It is as if the arbitrariness of the sign, the indeterminacy of writing, the splitting of the subject of enunciation, these theoretical concepts, produce the most useful descriptions of the formation ª postmodernº cultural subjects’ (Bhabha, p 176). This is a theme developed also by Robert Young who argues that `[h]istorically [¼ ] comparatively little attention has been give to the mechanics of the intricate processes of cultural contact, intrusion, fusion and disjunction. In archaeology, for example, the models have been ones of diffusion, assimilation or isolation, not of interaction or counteraction. [¼ ] Otherwise, the most productive paradigms have been taken from language’ (Robert Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race, London: Routledge, 1995, p 5). Bhabha, p 36. Bhabha, p 34. Frantz Fanon, The W retched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967. Fanon cited in Bhabha (p 35) (Bhabha’ s emphasis). Bhabha, p 37. `Fanon’ s vision of revolutionary cultural and political change as a ª ¯ uctuating movementº of occult instability could not be articulated as cultural practice without an acknowledgment of this indeterminate space of the subject(s) enunciation’ (Bhabha, p 37). In contemporary theory `[w]e are forever hearing about the space of this and/or the space of that: about literary space, ideological spaces, the space of the dream, psychoanalytic topologies, and so on and so forth’ (Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1991, p 3). Lefebvre’ s scolding is relevant here; but his solution to this lack of rigour in contemporary theoretical dealings with `space’ seems less so as it relies directly on older paradigms of speculative philosophical unity which Bhabha and other postcolonial critics are railing against. `The theory we need [¼ ] might well be called, by analogy, ª unitary theoryº : the aim being to discover or construct a theoretical unity between ª ® eldsº which are apprehended separately [¼ ]’ (Lefebvre, p 11). Bhabha, p 214. Fanon cited in Bhabha 1994, frontispiece. The systematicity of the architecture metaphor also operates at a more intimate level, as the following example shows. `In Compagnon, Barthes, or Derrida, quotations are also associated with architectural metaphorical terms: the judas, the oeil de boeuf, designate spying devices in architectural constructions. Citations are thus the eyes of the text, the eyes that allow it to look out of its structure without having to open the door to the outside, and without being seen looking. [¼ ] As a technological apparatus, the spy in the door allows you to decide whether you are there or not there and for whom’ (Claudette Sartiliot, Citation and M odernity: Derrida, Joyce, and Brecht, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993, p 27). Simon Varey’ s Space and the Eighteenth-Century English Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) and Philippe Hamon’ s Expositions: Literature and Architecture in Nineteenth-Century France (trans. Katia Sainson-Frank and Lisa Maguire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992) are interesting explorations of this notion in more literary contexts (I’ m grateful to Michael Dutton for drawing my attention to Hamon’ s book).
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46 47 48 49 50
51
52
53
In his `Introduction’ Bhabha discusses the articulation of architectural themes in the context of the work of artist ReneÂe Green. Bhabha points out her interest in the liminal spaces within the architecture of the gallery in which a speci® c work of hers is housed (none the less), as a way of making `a metaphor of the museum building itself, rather than simply using the gallery space’ (Bhabha, p 3). This is a project overtly critical of an architectural-gallery-museum logic. Bhabha uses the term `architectural’ (Bhabha, p 3) to describe the project, but encloses the term in inverted commas. He is alluding, that is, to a common-sensical `architectural’ which must be carefully quali® ed in the context of postcolonial criticism. The dangers of an unsheathed `architecture’ are implicit here. The most prolonged engagement with the architecture metaphor occurs in an article entitled `How newness enters the world: Postmodern space, postcolonial times and the trials of cultural translation’ (Bhabha, pp 212±235). Interestingly, it is in this context that Bhabha most clearly articulates the notion of a pedagogical anxiety in postcolonial studies with which I began this section. The spatial interest of the article develops via a reading of Jameson’ s `Secondary Elaborations’ essay which concludes his Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991) collection. For Bhabha, Jameson’ s argument here exempli® es an unproblematically theoretical engagement with culture. `Jameson perceives a new international culture in the perplexed passing of modernity into postmodernity, emphasizing the transnational attenuation of ª localº space’ (Bhabha, p 216). For Bhabha this is a `turning of the globe into a theoretical project’ , and as we have seen this implies a global conception of space which represses a more complex spatio-temporal hybrid on which the radical contingency of the subject is founded. At this point in his reading Bhabha employs the architecture metaphor quite traditionally by writing of `[t]he architecture of Jameson’ s argument’ (Bhabha, p 216). Later, with reference to Jameson’ s account of the construction of subjectivity in this globalised context, `architecture’ is employed again: `the architecture of the new historical subject’ (Bhabha, p 217). This is no coincidence. The critique of a certain theoretical conception of space (a global space) and of an account of contemporary subjectivity, is developed in terms of the architecture metaphor. Jameson’ s demand for a `global analysis of culture’ (Bhabha, p 216) is understood as an architectural demand. Architecture is further implicated in this article as the Bonaventure HotelÐ that now canonical ® gure of `postmodern space’ Ð is brought into play (Bhabha, p 218). Bhabha argues that the insistent spatial mode of analysis Jameson employs, exempli® ed for him by the Bonaventure Hotel, diffuses more radical possibilities of a Third Space `by turning social differences into cultural ª distance’ , and converting interstitial, con¯ ictual temporalities, that may be neither developmental nor linear (not ª up and down a temporal scaleº ), into the topoi of spatial separation. Through the metaphor of spatial distance, Jameson steadfastly maintains the ª frameº , if not the face, of the subject-centred perceptual apparatus’ (Bhabha, p 219). Kant, p 653. Kant, p 60. Miller, Topographies, p 7. Miller, `The triumph of theory’ , pp 285±286. Miller, `The triumph of theory’ , p 288. As we have seen, the same could be said of Kant’ s biography where the materiality of his worldly life is subsumed to the ends of celebrating `the life of his thought’ , where the granite architecture of his home town is so neatly and surreptitiously transmogri® ed into the airy ® gurative `architecture’ of thought. Miller, Topographies, p 7. Much of Miller’ s `topographical’ work is informed by Derrida’ s reading of metaphor, and his assertion that metaphor is never simply a handy way of thinking. Metaphor, for Derrida, `is never innocent. It orients research and ® xes results. When the spatial model is hit upon, when it functions, critical re¯ ection rests within it’ (Jacques Derrida, W riting and Difference, trans. Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978, p 17). Miller, `The triumph of theory’ , p 289. Miller carefully distinguishes `materiality’ from `phenomenality’ . `We have no dif® culty getting direct access to phenomenality. We live within it. Consciousness is phenomenality. But since, as Hegel saw, consciousness speaks, so that consciousness is linguistic through and throughÐ always, already, from the startÐ we are forbidden ever to have direct access to what the word materiality names or nicknames. We can know the material only through names or other signs’ (Miller, ª The triumph of theory’ , p. 289). By the `material’ Miller means `the base of the particular texts or other signi® cant material for which the theory purports to account. The awkward synecdochic relation of example to concept in literary theory is one version of this structure. [¼ ] The material base is also the somatic symptoms, the body that may become the locus of a sign of a sign system, the substance on which something is written’ (Miller, `The triumph of theory’ , p 288). `A catachresis is a ® gurative name that is not ® gurative, because it does not substitute for any literal word that is given or could be givenÐ for example, leg of a table, face of a mountain, eye of a storm’ (M iller, `The Triumph of Theory’ , p 289). `Catachresis is not divergence from a literal meaningÐ in the sense of opposition to a word’ s proper meaningÐ but rather its and its word’ s extension to a place where there is no other sign (as in ª leg of a chairº or ª wing of a buildingº ), which extension then itself becomes a necessary norm. Catachresis can thus be viewed either as the extension of literal language toward tropes, or as the entry of a trope (close to but more ª basicº than metaphor) into ª literalº language’ (Alex Preminger and
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T V F Brogan (ed), The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, p 410). Miller, Topographies, p 7. Miller, `The Triumph of Theory’ , p 288. Miller, Topographies, p 7. The material refers, for Miller, to `the ª one time onlyº of each act of reading, [which] emphasize[s] what is accidental, unpredictable, contingent, and radically inaugural in each act or reading’ (M iller, `The Triumph of Theory’ , p 288). Miller, `The Triumph of Theory’ , p 288. Miller, `The Triumph of Theory’ , p 291. As Wigley might add here, `the discourse is within the spatial metaphor rather than the metaphor is within the discourse. It is orchestrated by what it thinks it employs’ (W igley, p 17). Indeed `Derrida’ s work would go on to repeatedly demonstrate that metaphysics constitutes itself with the very metaphors it claims to have abandoned as ª mereº metaphors’ (Wigley, p 18). Walter Benjamin, `The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ in Illuminations, Walter Benjamin, trans. Harry Zohn, Hannah Arendt (ed), New York: Schocken Books, 1969, p 239. Benjamin, p 240. Anthony Vidler, `The hut and the body: the ª natureº of architecture from Laugier to QuatremeÁ re de Quincy’ , Lotus International, 33, 1981, p 105. Mark Gelentner calls this a distinction between `normative idealism’ and `metaphysical idealism’ (Sources of Architectural Form: A Critical History of W estern Design Theory, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, p 168). He warns that as both conceptions of imitation were often combined indiscriminately in much Enlightenment writing on aesthetics, it is dif® cult to discuss each term in isolation. Nikolaus Pevsner, Academies of Art Past and Present, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940, p 149. Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz (History of Aesthetics, vol 1±3, trans. Adam Czerniawski and Ann Czerniawski et al., The Hague: Mouton, 1970) suggests that the beginnings of modern aesthetics can be located in Batteux’ s SysteÁ me des beaux-arts published in 1747 (Tatarkiewicz, vol 1, p 4). See also Tatarkiewicz (vol 3, p 416) on Batteux’ s system. As Vidler notes, `[t]o the philosophe, ª originsº was a manifestly ® ctional place or time, a quasi-scienti® c hypothesisÐ the philosophes called it a ª modelº Ð that would serve to base each science and art on its own principles. Founded in nature, the natural states of man, society, language, the arts would all ® nd their procedures clari® ed, their true forms revealed, and their moral virtues displayed in their origins. The genealogy of knowledge, ª the origin and generation of ideasº , would provide a sure guide to the ® liation of the different branches of learning [¼ ]’ (Vidler, `The hut and the body’ , p 103). Vidler, `The hut and the body’ , p 111. Wolfgang Herrmann sums up architecture’ s dilemma in this theoretical context as follows: `[i]t was a postulate accepted since the days of Greek philosophy that art should imitate nature. But with architecture this was not as self-evident as with the other branches. On the other hand, if it was desired that architecture should count as a ® ne artÐ for a long time its singular structure combining practical and mathematical with aesthetic elements had set it apartÐ then it had in some way to be proved that architecture too was based on the fundamental principle of the imitation of nature. In a very general way this imitation was thought to consist in the harmonious, orderly and symmetrical way in which buildings were arranged, thus re¯ ecting these basic attributes of nature. This notion, widely held during the Renaissance, remained alive for many centuries; but it may have seemed too vague and unde® ned when compared to the imitative function of the other arts so that more speci® c theories had been advanced’ (Wolfgang Herrmann, Laugier and Eighteenth Century French Theory, London: A Zwemmer, 1962, pp 43±44). Vidler, `The hut and the body’ , p 111. Antoine-Chrysostome QuatremeÁ re de Quincy, `Extracts from the EncyclopeÂdie M eÂthodique d’ Architecture’ , 9H, 7, 1984, pp 25±40. QuatremeÁ re, p 27. QuatremeÁ re, p 27. QuatremeÁ re, p 27. QuatremeÁ re, p 27. QuatremeÁ re, p 27. Sylvia Lavin, QuatremeÁ re de Quincy and the Invention of a M odern Language of Architecture, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1992, p 64. QuatremeÁ re, p 28. QuatremeÁ re, p 28. QuatremeÁ re, p 28. QuatremeÁ re, p 28. QuatremeÁ re, p 29.
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QuatremeÁ re, p 29. QuatremeÁ re, pp 28±29. QuatremeÁ re, p 30. `Man fears as much the truth as the lie: he wishes to be seduced but not deceived. It is on this understanding of his soul that the arts, those amiable and veracious liars, founded all their empire’ (QuatremeÁ re, p 30). The principle of imitation is not a literal one, but an ideal one. `Yes, without doubt, it is the principles contained in the rustic hut which independently of all the proofs of its existence, render it unshakeable, and make it triumph against any attack’ (QuatremeÁre, p 31). QuatremeÁ re, p 32. QuatremeÁ re, p 32. `They felt that if in all cases they acquired [¼ ] an exclusive authority without limit, the art would languish under the fetters that it had been given. It was without doubt, only up to the Greeks to discern the degree of liberty which was agreeable to architecture, and gave to it this happy constitution, equally far from the licence of Asia and the despotism of Egypt’ (QuatremeÁ re, p 32). The three `primitive types’ (QuatremeÁre, p 37) differ because only one contains the potential to establish a `system of the art’ (QuatremeÁ re, p 37). This is the regulatory set of rules, rules which regulate rather than enslaving the aesthetics of architecture, this is the system of the art. As a consequence of this system, a system of nature, it is not the primitive hut itself which is imitated. And this system was only `revealed’ (QuatremeÁ re, p 38) to the Greeks, and subsequently to `all cultivated people’ (QuatremeÁre, p 37). As a consequence `all the nations of Asia and Egypt must remain eternally in the fetters of an imitation without art, or an art without imitation. Only Greece was successful in breaking the bonds which had held back in a protracted infancy the faculty of imitating’ (QuatremeÁre, p 38). QuatremeÁ re, p 33. QuatremeÁ re, p 33. Kant, p 8. QuatremeÁ re, p 29. Fanon, p 35.
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