__________Dk Osseo-Asare__________”Architecture” ≡ Ideology

Final paper4201m2_1.18.2005

Throughout this course Hays has probed the central dialectic of architecture that he

outlines in his introduction to the Oppositions Reader: “the essential contradiction

between architecture’s autonomy…and its contingency on…historical forces”1. Rather

than focusing first on the oppositional problematic of autonomy/determinism, my strategy

in approaching this question is to reconsider semiotically the specific “architecture” that

produces this dialectic. A coupled reading of “architecture” through Barthes’ structuralist

myth and Althusser’s Marxist materialistic ideology (base-superstructure) reveals that as

a Western aesthetic, philosophical and technological construct, “architecture” is

inherently tied to the same geo-historical contingency that it seeks to conceal: ultimately,

naturalizing language fails to engender autonomous concept. Textual analysis of Hegel

and Le Corbusier illustrate the signification already latent in Western appropriation of the

term “architecture,” in particular, cultural allegiance to systems of orthogonality and

linearity that are conceived as naturally determined. Lastly, work by Agrest and

Gandelsonas on semiotics in architecture is leveraged to support the claim that because

the very word “architecture” is already structurally and materially situated, its historical

implications preclude any authentic autonomy.

__________Barthes__________Myth

Any discussion of autonomy versus historicity in the realm of architecture demands

analysis of the layered and relational meanings implicit in the word “a-r-c-h-i-t-e-c-t-u-r-e”

itself. Semiotics fundamentally maintains that there can be no natural connection

between this word (“architecture”) and the meanings variously read from it; any meaning

occurs through some registered difference, distinctions that result from a larger

regulating system. Such a system exists as a discourse which allows for myth by means

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of attaching “social usage” (particularity) to “pure matter”—a system, therefore, which

must be considered a “system of communication”2. Relative to Saussure, who argues

for a semiology that functions as a synchronic, rather than diachronic, study of signs,

Barthes insists that mythology springs from a “historical foundation,” i.e. that “myth is a

type of speech chosen by history.”3

Myth succeeds, according to Barthes, because it relocates (obscures) its own historical,

generative condition so as to appear both natural and eternal. This process is possible

given that myth is a second-order semiological system; as the conclusion of a specific

“semiological chain,” myth grows out of a supporting structure of language, emerging as

top-level meta-language. This layering introduces distance: the sign associated with the

initial signifier-signified is redefined as a new signifier (form which anticipates concept).

Barthes positions this secondary signified (form/concept pair) as a causal dichotomy:

this history which drains out of the form will be wholly absorbed by the concept. As for the latter, it is determined, it is at once historical and intentional; it is the motivation which causes the myth to be uttered.4

By displacing historical contingency from the now-empty form and simultaneously

rendering meaning in a divorced concept, myth erases its own fabrication and confirms

its underlying/overarching intention: appropriation. This act of severing form from

meaning, to be replaced solely by associative fragments, is what makes myth deceptive:

driven to having either to unveil or to liquidate the concept, it will naturalize it.We reach here the very principle of myth: it transforms history into

nature…what causes mythical speech to be uttered is perfectly explicit, but is immediately frozen into something natural; it is not read as a motive, but as a reason.5

The “myth-consumer” fails to recognize this manipulative aspect of myth because it is

directly in front of his face. (The Negro-giving-the-French-salute triggers an automatic

response—reaffirming French colonial power as positive, universal, natural.) This is why

certain myths propagate influentially without being recognized as such: ideographic

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language, once appropriated, situates the myth-reader at a disenfranchised vantage

point where he is unable to read into (through) the artificial subtext that envelops him.

First in Writing Degree Zero and reiterated in Myth Today, Barthes extends the totalizing

signification of myth to literature:

I defined writing as the signifier of the literary myth, that is, as a form which is already filled with meaning and which receives from the concept of Literature a new signification.6

Writers, then, are trapped inside this mythical system unless they not only acknowledge

it but refuse it altogether by locating their own texts externally. I will argue for a similar

concept of Architecture (“architecture”) which reinforces a particularized notion of

building as the signifier of architectural myth. This architectural lexis can be tracked

textually as a continuous system of communication, initially formulated by classical

Western authors, canonized in Hegel’s Aesthetics and rearticulated by Le Corbusier at

the advent of the Modernist project. This technical-aesthetic constellation of signs is

incredibly loaded and can be translated in terms of Barthes’ mythical signification.

The theories of both Hegel and Le Corbusier have already been widely debated; the

immediate goal here is not to contest their tactics, but to identify a consistent trajectory,

which can be deciphered linguistically and metaphorically, and which implicates

“architecture” as historically-located myth. For Barthes myth operates through

naturalization: the “duplicity of myth” derives from replacing historical origins of meaning

with a new signified concept that masquerades as universal. This method is clear when

Hegel describes the “earliest beginnings of architecture”:

Now if we turn to the earliest beginnings of architecture, the first things that can be accepted as its commencement are a hut as a human dwelling and a temple as an enclosure for the god and his community. Next, in order to determine this starting-point more precisely, people have seized on the difference between materials that could be used for building, and it is disputed whether architecture begins in building with wood—the opinion of Vitruvius whom Hirt had in view when he maintained the same—or with stone.7

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Darell Fields has already documented how Hegel’s development of architecture as a

symbolic art follows from exclusion motivated at the level of racialist or regionalist

concerns.8 Relatedly, this passage betrays Hegel’s own cultural biases: Following

trends of Western scholarship, Hegel posits that “architecture” begins with the hut and

the temple. However, by restricting first materials to either wood or stone, he glaringly

ignores “other” constructions such as earth, grass, bamboo, fabric, etc. Le Corbusier

employs parallel language to connect the original hut and temple to already established

(written) Western icons (images) of “architecture” (Rome, Egypt):

You may see, in some archaeological work, the representation of this hut, the representation of this sanctuary: it is the plan of a house, or the plan of a temple. It is the same spirit that one finds again in the Pompeian house. It is the spirit indeed of the Temple of Luxor.…The idea is constant, in full sway from the beginnings.9

Here “beginnings” is appropriated as a generic term and injected with the “idea” that

Western constructs of building are original; the empty forms of hut and the temple are

associated with new signified meaning that is historically placed (“earliest beginnings”)

and culturally-specific (Western ideals of historical civilization).

The historical “beginnings” of architecture already determined, both authors adhere to

the principle of myth and redeploy their newly signified “architecture” according to

naturalizing language of the universal. This procedure is entirely preoccupied with

organizing a coherent semblance of natural spontaneity. Hegel introduces his (version

of) classical architecture:

When architecture acquires the place belonging to it in accordance with its own essential nature, its productions are subservient to an end and a meaning not immanent in itself. It becomes an inorganic surrounding structure, a whole built and ordered according to the laws of gravity. The forms of this whole are subject to what is severely regular, rectilinear, right-angled, circular, to relations depending on specific number and quantity, to inherently limited proportions and fixed conformity to law.10

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Through the deliberate combination of natural laws of gravity and architectural form,

Hegel brackets “true” architecture (that “in accordance with its own essential nature”) as

one which displays particular proportions and orthogonal relationships that are

mandated by natural law. Le Corbusier again adopts identical language to establish the

absolute authority of the right angle:

The laws of gravity seem to resolve for us the conflict of forces and to maintain the universe in equilibrium; as a result of this we have the vertical. The horizon gives us the horizontal, the line of the transcendental plane of immobility. The vertical in conjunction with the horizontal gives us two right angles. There is only one vertical, one horizontal; they are two constants. The right angle is as it were the sum of the forces which keep the world in equilibrium. There is only one right angle; but there is an infinitude of other angles. The right angle, therefore, has superior rights over other angles; it is unique and it is constant. In order to work, man has need of constants. Without them he could not put one foot in front of the other. The right angle is, it may be said, the essential and sufficient instrument of action because it enables us to determine space with an absolute exactness. The right angle is lawful, it is part of our determinism, it is obligatory.11

Suddenly the right angle has been imbued with universal and primary significance. It is

no longer the product of a particular cultural tradition, but instead follows fundamentally

from the laws of gravity and “the forces which keep the world in equilibrium.” Constants

and exactitude are necessary to avoid an immobilized humanity, and the “right

angle” (read: “true” architecture in terms of Hegel) stands as the sole (“unique”) solution

to building: “it is obligatory.” Architecture, like Barthes’ Literature, becomes myth once

“building” has been freed of meaning at the same time that it is linked to a new

architectural signified (orthogonal linearity), divested of its historical constructedness and

cloaked in the universal language of “natural law.”

__________Althusser__________Ideology

Althusser demands that we consider any general problem of social relations (or

architectural autonomy/determinism) by assuming unyieldingly the point of view of

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reproduction. Drawing on Marx, he asserts that production requires reproduction of its

own conditions (material means) of production, specifically:

1. the productive forces, 2. the existing relations of production.12

Ultimately this internal reproduction includes that of production-oriented “know-

how” (across generations) and a macro-reproduction of ideological hegemony. The

Marxist theory of the State is an architectural paradigm: society as edifice. The base

(infrastructure) supports a superstructure of “relative autonomy” that nevertheless

informs the supporting base. The State exists solely as the manifestation of State power

and the locus of class struggle; under capitalist production, the State functions as a

repressive apparatus (“machine”) that enables the ruling classes to exploit workers.13

This concentration of State power within the State apparatus is doubly enforced: the

(Repressive) State Apparatus (the government, army, police, courts, prisons) functions

“by violence,” while the Ideological State Apparatus (churches, schools, political parties,

trade unions, mass media, cultural establishment) functions “by ideology.”

Here Althusser builds on Marx’s understanding of ideology, detailing a more

comprehensive imaginary/material binary which relates to Barthes’ myth and begins to

explain “architecture” as a material practice. Althusser paraphrases Marx’s definition of

ideology as: “the system of the ideas and representations which dominate the mind of a

man or a social group.”14 To this premise he adds a dual thesis:

I. Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence15

II. Ideology has a material existence.16

Althusser suggests that ideology is a relational illusion projected onto the real (physical)

world. Consequently, ideology does not exist in an “ideal” or “spiritual” realm, but is

intrinsically tied to material production. If man subscribes to some idea (“imaginary

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relationship”), that belief is evidenced in his actions; that is, he will “inscribe his own

ideas as a free subject in the actions of his material practice.”17 The original idea

inspired by ideology is reflected in material practices that are themselves reincorporated

into the motivating ideological apparatus. Herein the Marxist conception of materialist

ideology becomes hugely relevant to the discussion of architecture: for at the same time

that Althusser maintains that “there is no practice except by and in ideology,” he

concedes that “there is no ideology except by the subject and for subjects.”18 By

privileging the subject, the rituals of material ideological apparatuses introduce what

Althusser calls “obviousness.”19 In his own terms, Althusser has arrived at the same

point of inflection that Barthes attributes to the dialectic of myth. The deliberate

constructedness of both myth and ideology can recede into the background such that it

positively infers meaning (signification) that the subject recognizes—but which he

misreads as inherent and natural—“That’s obvious!...That’s true!”20 When reading

“architecture,” we can understand (through layered associations) “rectilinearity,” without

ever realizing we are consuming an architectural ideology founded in the myth of

Western classical architectural traditions as universally original.

__________”Architecture”__________Linearity

“Architecture” and “rectilinearity”: This loaded pair exemplifies Western domination of the

material process of reproduction signified by the word “architecture.” Because that same

word, “architecture,” stands now distanced from the political traces that mark its history

and geography (which Barthes finds in the “isoglosses of a myth”21)—the resulting myth

of architecture reveals the agenda of a State apparatus extended into the broader

collective of Western Civilization. The destruction of memory is synonymous with a shift

from exclusive cultural experience, embedded in the word, to a new essentialized

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pseudo-reality which pretends the word has meaning in and of itself. The “West” as

“machine” here operates intentionally to consolidate power: on the one hand, armies and

bureaucracies subjugate and colonize; on the other hand, “architecture” acts within the

equally repressive ideological apparatus to conquer (claim) all construction of the

physical. Just as Barthes explains how bourgeois ex-nomination occurs when the

hegemony of bourgeois ideology is complete,22 the “joint-stock company” of the West

succeeds when “Western architecture” (linearity) subsumes “architecture.”

This mistaken identification, in terms of interpreting Western (architectural) history and

knowledge as universal, is also the basis for Mario Gandelsonas’ criticism of Peter

Eisenman and his attempts to transfer Chomsky’s linguistic model of “deep” and

“surface” structure into the realm of architecture. Cross-referencing projects by

Scamozzi and Terragni, which he calls syntactic (extra-cultural), against Palladio and Le

Corbusier, which he labels semantic (culturally-based), Eisenman offers his own

architecture syntactically as “conceptual.” However, his self-imposed restriction to

purely linear, planar and volumetric transformations fails to extricate his architecture

from what is in actuality a collapsed semantic/syntactic system. Although Eisenman

tries to eliminate materiality, Gandelsonas embraces it—at the expense of the

“autonomous concept”—and discovers that “linear is not a line but a type of relationship”:

The term linear cannot be autonomous as an intuition or imaginary formation…When Eisenman speaks about linear, he presupposes that the architect has an inbuilt conception of linearity. But this conception is nothing but an intuition linked to the particular concept…This notion of universal intuition has the complementary function of erasing the fact that architectural knowledge is owned and produced by a limited sect for the service of a certain social class…The exclusion of culture implied by the notion of the universal can only reinforce the ideological machinery built over centuries by the histories of art and architecture…23

Here Gandelsonas suggests the vulnerability of the myth of architecture. Barthes has

already explained that myth survives because as metalanguage it exploits the

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semiological structures that support it. Thus, when Gandelsonas isolates that in reading

Eisenman (and so, metonymically, the “Western architect”) the “conception” of linearity is

“nothing,” except a concept made to appear intuitive, he exposes that (Western)

architecture functions repressively by means of “erasing” its own cultural exclusion.

Because Eisenman refuses to recognize that “linear” is non-universal, he places himself

inside “architecture” as ideology, and confirms, through the material practice of

ideological recognition (“interpellation”), Althusser’s thesis that “individuals are always-

already subjects.”24 The transformational power of architectural ideology is clearly

evident: it delineates the boundaries of the physical world through the categorical

superimposition of its own conceptual framework—we all become subjects trapped

within a new mega-reality that is both self-referential and self-replicating.

Although perhaps we have not yet occupied the space outside, we can speak at last of

liberation from the ideological myth of architecture. Textual analysis of Hegel and Le

Corbusier’s naturalizing of Western constructs of orthogonal/orthographic (“logic” vis-à-

vis “linearity”) as globally universal, relative to Gandelsonas’ critique of Eisenman’s

limited “conceptual architecture,” has demonstrated the gross materialist underpinnings

of “architecture” as a biased communicative system and motivated repressive apparatus.

However, the final continuation of the dual arguments put forward by Barthes and

Althusser postulates the potential of Revolution. Language that is remade political—so

as to deny the hegemony of myth—becomes a method for supervening mythical

signification. Such revolutionary language resists mythical appropriation as natural and

thereby contests the currency of (pseudo-)reality’s fabricated image. Because myth

must transpire at the level of metalanguage, it can be forestalled by a linguistic base that

admits its own conceptual metrics. For the simple reason that “ideology never says, “I

am ideological,”25 the critical maneuver in order to break free from ideology is to declare,

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“I am in ideology.” At the same time that the term “architecture” is loaded with

signification that disallows autonomy from cultural and historical determinism,

uncovering the strata of associative relationships that constitute the architectural—in

particular, naming each demasked language-object in succession—should ultimately

overthrow the hermetically-sealed ideological state apparatus that is the West and

restore in its place a more transparent material dialectic.

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__________Notes

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1 Michael Hayes, “The Oppositions of Autonomy and History,” Oppositions Reader (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998), ix.2 Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1972), 109.3 Ibid., 110.4 Ibid., 118.5 Ibid., 129.6 Ibid., 134.7 G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics vol. II, tr. T. M. Knox (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1991), 631.8 Darell Fields, Architecture in Black (New Brunswick, NJ: The Athlone Press, 2000). Although Fields focuses critically on the influence of the black subject in Hegel’s system of aesthetic theory, this observation reveals dialectically the presence of racial motivations and geo-national allegiance.9 Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, tr. Frederick Etchells (New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1986), 69-70.10 Hegel, Aesthetics, 660.11 Le Corbusier, The City of To-Morrow and Its Planning, tr. Frederick Etchells (New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1987), 20-21.12 Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Toward an Investigation),” in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, tr. Ben Brewster (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 128.13 Ibid., 137.14 Ibid., 158.15 Ibid., 162.16 Ibid., 165.17 Ibid., 168.18 Ibid., 170.19 Ibid., 171-172.20 Ibid., 172.21 Barthes, Mythologies, 149.22 Ibid., 138.23 Mario Gandelsonas (with Diana Agrest?), “Linguistics in Architecture,” Casabella 374 (February 1973); from ed. Michael Hays, Architecture Theory Since 1968 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 120-121.24 Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, 175.25 Ibid., 175.