Rethinking Architecture| A reader in cultural theory

(Axel Boer) #1

Jean-François Lyotard


French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard (b. 1924) is the author of one of the key texts
on postmodernism. His work, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge,
commissioned by the Quebec government, challenges many of the assumptions of
modernism. Here Lyotard is concerned with the legitimation of knowledge, especially
scientific knowledge, and observes famously the crisis of legitimation within the
postmodern condition. For Lyotard the principle of the ‘Grand Narrative’ (liberalism,
Christianity, Communism, etc.) has been called into question, and the world should now
be understood in terms of small or local narratives. Knowledge is now legitimated no
longer according to any notion of human emancipation or speculative spirit, but solely
through performative discourses of economics and technology.
Lyotard’s position should not be taken as a criticism of science per se, but rather of
‘techno-science’. Indeed his overall outlook would seem to support more recent
theoretical developments in science such as theories of complexity which break down
traditional epistemologies of science. Likewise his critique of ‘Grand Narratives’ and his
affirmation of the specificity of genres of discourse should not be taken as an espousal of
relativism. Indeed, while earlier on Lyotard had been extremely active politically, much
of his later work was taken up with the problems of political agency and ethical
imperatives. Moreover, he questions the ethical consequences of Heidegger’s position in
his book Heidegger and ‘the jews’, published shortly after revelations were made public
of Heidegger’s political affiliation with the National Socialists. It was not only
Heidegger’s silence which was to be faulted, but the ‘forgetting’ which is inherent in all
thought.
This theme of the totalitarianism potentially sanctioned by Heidegger’s philosophy of
the soil takes on a specifically architectural dimension in the essay ‘Domus and the
Megalopolis’. Here Lyotard exposes the potential violence that underwrites the
domesticated household. In a critique of received attitudes towards the domestic idyll, he
reveals the dark side of the domus. The influence of Freud noticeable elsewhere in much
of Lyotard’s earlier work is again evident here, and Freud’s discussion of the ‘uncanny’
seemingly underpins the essay, where ‘heimlich’ is the figure of both the familiar and the
open, the secret and the repressed. Comparisons might also be made with the work of
Gaston Bachelard, where the cellar is read as the site of the sinister in line with Jung’s
use of it as an architectural metaphor.


DOMUS AND THE MEGALOPOLIS


The representation of a facade. Fairly wide, not necessarily high. Lots of windows and
doors, yet blind. As it does not look at the visitor, so it does not expect the visitor’s look.
What is it turned towards? Not much activity. Let’s suppose that it’s pretty hot outside.
The courtyard is surrounded by walls and farm buildings. A large tree of some kind,

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