Architecture is the expression of the very being of a society, just as the human face is the expression of an individual's true being. It is, however, mainly to the visages of official persons (prelates, magistrates, admirals) that this comparison pertains. In truth, only the ideal beings of a society, those who have the authority to order and prohibit, can strictly speaking be expressed in architectural form. And so, the great monuments raise themselves before us like levees, countering all troubling elements with the logic of majesty and authority: it is in the guise of cathedrals and palaces that the Church and State speak to and impose silence upon the masses. It is clear, in fact, that these monuments inspire social compliance and often, real fear. The storming of the Bastille exemplifies this state of affairs: it is difficult to explain the motivation of the crowd other than through the peoples' animosity toward the monuments that are their true masters.1
–Georges Bataille, Critical Dictionary, 1929
In the last letter, I used the word architecture to describe the entire process of building from conception to material. To follow Bataille’s definition of architecture, I’ll have to make a distinction this week between architecture and building. For Bataille, architecture is the ideological prologue to material building. The extension of human technology over the surface of the earth is building; but that building is guided by architecture. Borrowing from Denis Hollier, we might think of architecture as a building’s “plan,” not the orthographic drawing but a conceptual framework that shapes future form. This conception of architecture leads to a bind. Is it possible to build without architecture? And, more specifically, is it possible to build against the major ideology of a specific society (for us, global capital)? For Bataille, the answer is simple: no. He writes, “mathematical order imposed on stone is really the culmination of the...passage from the simian to the human form.”2 Evolutionary progress has forever cursed us with the forethought that becomes the architectural “plan.”
Bataille’s definition of architecture spirals the reader into inactive abjection. All building requires forethought which produces form which materializes ideologies. Contemporary writers and architects interested in Bataille’s work, like formlessfinder, crop Bataille’s definition of architecture to allow for production against the grain of mass ideology. Formlessfinder finds Bataille’s view of architecture “myopic”3 for its constraint to form and uses Bataille’s own definition of the formless to define a critical practice. I’m sympathetic to how their re-reading of the Critical Dictionary opens the possibility of architectural production in forms critical to mass ideology (and also a huge fan of the work), but equally interested in following Bataille into total abjection.
Returning to the last essay, the nonhuman, and The Accursed Share, I quoted Bataille’s argument that the extension of labor and technology is a specifically human trait. I also attempted to contest the possibility of re-orienting that trait toward the ends of the nonhuman earth. By complicating formlessfinder’s redefinition of Bataille with the nonhuman, we might say that formlessfinder is limited to the production of a micro-form legible only to the human, same as the examples that I listed last week (myself included). This is not related to the particulars of any of the projects, but is the result of production itself. “Production”-based architectures will always further the extension of the human into the nonhuman earth, based solely on the fact that production necessarily radiates outward from the human.
Sticking with the abject, we might find an altogether more antagonistic approach to architecture, where Bataille’s rereading of the causes behind the storming of the Bastille may be the most salient practice of architecture we have left. In fact, I would argue that the revolutionaries’ failure to disassemble the Bastille forced its reinscription within the Reign of Terror (architecture often produces its own use). Understanding architecture as an inevitably anthropocentric imposition on the nonhuman earth allows us to see the dismantling of particular architectures to be as valuable (or more) than the production of the new for both human and nonhuman ends. Architecture theorist Jill Stoner writes, “Opportunities for minor architectures emerge when the soul of a society is understood as more than a singularity, when—though a major soul constructs—minor souls await opportunities to de(con)struct.”4 While Stoner’s minor architecture can be used to develop micro-form in the same vein as formlessfinder, its emphasis on destruction opens space for a de-formal architectural practice, one focused on the tactical removal of form from particular environments.
There is no reality in which we can remove the past whole cloth and produce a new world without the exhaustion of the earth’s natural resources. But the continued extension of the human world is also not a possible future. The inscription of production within the ideology of contemporary architecture is so ingrained that the mantra of Lacaton & Vassal (the recent Pritzker prize winners) “never demolish” is held up as a paragon of sustainability, when, taken literally, it naturalizes the eternal extension of the human world. Against this, the negative can become positive, destruction can create potential (for the earth and world), and architecture can work against its previous incarnations, some of which we may have to recognize as beyond saving. I’m going to continue these themes and introduce Stoner’s “Myth of Nature” in the next letter which will tackle some specific ideas about destruction through a potential studio project.
Georges Bataille, “The Critical Dictionary,” trans. Dominic Faccini, in October Vol. 60 (1992), 25.
Ibid., 25.
Formlessfinder, “Statement,” https://www.formlessfinder.com/statement.
Jill Stoner, Toward a Minor Architecture, (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2012) 6–7.