[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

RE: [microsound] compassion for hard work




From: "Gunnar Garness" <ggarness@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

I DO believe in clear communication. When
something can be said simply and concisely in complete sentences why not say
it that way? Your response makes all the sense in the world to me and I
would not argue with you on any of your points with the exception of the
interdisciplinary debate. :) My point was that the casual use of
theoretical jargon in a hastily written message which already misuses words
AND which is missing simple things like verbs does not make communication
any easier. Did we not take English 101 as part of our core classes before
we moved on to Postmodern Theory? (sarcasm) I realize English is not the
native language of everyone on this list but we are trying to communicate
here, are we not?

That's right. And one has a responsibility to be clear to the particular audience that one is addressing. I'm aware of the irritation embedded within this comment. Something along the lines of "let's not try to be flashy and clever in making list comments using lots of theoretical jargon that few people will understand." But let's not forget that the demand for plain English has also always been an imperial gesture as well. The demand registered by A.J. Ayer against Martin Heidegger, a philosopher he had no interest in trying to understand. "Plain English" indeed sometimes works as a demand, but the writer also has an equally important demand: "take the time to read closely." In a time where the political right and conservative academics get their kicks in calling relatively new ideas obtuse, obscure, incapable of plain English prose, and moribund, without usually bothering to read much more than a page or two at most, when one aligns one's own rhetoric in the same way, one comes dangerously close to anti-intellectual stupidity. As far as the grammar mistakes etc, let's just employ the old philosophical principle of charity and get off our high horses. These are posts not final drafts.


I speak with "authority" since I am an architect and I began my education in
a time when literary theory was very "fashionably" being transposed to the
discipline of architecture. What does Derrida have to do with buildings?
His ideas were developed in response to certain notions about reading and
writing.

You don't speak as an "authority" any more than I do. You speak as a person with "experience" and that's all. What doesn't Derrida have to do with architecture? In your previous post you contrasted in a very facile and obscure way "deconstruction" with "construction" as if to say they were opposite. This is a pretty limited reading of deconstruction. The fact that Derrida's writings had to do with "writing" as such does not limit the application. To demand such a limit is to commit the "intentional fallacy," the mistake that the field of purview of any discourse is always limited to the intentions that the author had in writing. Viewing architecture as a matter of "building" buildings is also a very limited view of architecture. Architecture is a concept as well as a practice. It was the concept that got picked up by the architectural theorists which had an influence practices of design.

We (the architects) then said..."but you can READ a building,
right? And hey, wouldn't it be cool if we "dislocated" people's
expectations of a how you use a building by cutting holes in floors or
"challenging" their notions of an entrance by shifting, and fracturing the
forms" The basics of what it means to build were ignored (and subsequently
not taught to students) for novel ideas about form that were supposed to add
so much needed meaning. What it "means" when the structure has decayed and
fallen apart in five years because the "craft" of architecture was
unfashionable is anyone's guess.

This has to do with the pedagogy of your program and the purposes for undertaking the subject more than the relevance of Derrida to architecture. As far as the "craft" of architecture and buildings falling down, I could be snide at this point and say that given the state modern design in many quarters, it's just as well.



However, the same "knee jerk" criticism you make towards me can be pointed
at you when you use such loaded phrases as "We needn't hang on GLOOMILY to
boundaries RIGIDLY imposed for a few centuries." (my emphasis) I am not
talking about hanging on to the past but about rediscovering it and drawing
from it with a contemporary mindset. I am certainly not conservative but I
do have to acknowledge that there is a lot to learn from the tradition of
architecture. And then we can take that knowledge and transpose it into our
present in a form that is appropriate TODAY. Drawing from other disciplines
is a great development of our time but not when it is at the expense of the
basics which we are often flippantly willing to forget. And that IS for the
good of each of our disciplines. See?

See? The best thing that we can do for most disciplines in universities is change the "basics" by doing away with the current structure which stodgily maintains turf boundaries and refuses novel and creative syntheses. The current structure was imposed in the 17th century, and in the humanities it forces specializations in century packages and the like. Shakespeare read Menander but Menander isn't included in the English curriculum because it's Italian, you know. This is just one example of "disciplinary" stupidity and I could certainly spend the rest of this beautiful afternoon regaling you with more. In the field of philosophy, disciplinary practices have almost completely wiped out opportunities for work in continental European thought in Anglo-American universities all in the name of "plain English prose" and "common sense." Only literary studies and certain of the social sciences seem to have a moderately more open mind. Psychology meanwhile is still goose stepping behind behaviorism to a large extent, and so I would stay the state of our disciplines and their "good" is a very sorry one indeed, which makes me worry even more about their "basics."

As for architecture, I assume you've read Mark Wigley and Hollier's book on Bataille called "Against Architecture"?
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com.