installed, identified in a continuum. Divisible themselves, these cells also point towards
instants of rupture, discontinuity, disjunction. But simultaneously, or rather, through a
series of mishaps, rhythmed anachromies or aphoristical gaps, the point of folie [Fr. point
de folie =no folie] gathers together what it has just dispersed; it reassembles it as
dispersion. It gathers into a multiplicity of red points. Resemblance and reassembly are
not confined to colour, but the chromographic reminder plays a necessary part in it.
What then, is a point, this point of folie? How does it stop folie? For it suspends it and,
in this movement, brings it to a halt, but as folie. Arrest of folie: point de folie, no or
node-folie, more folie, no more folie, no folie at all. At the same time it settles the
question, but by which decree, which arrest—and which aphoristic justness? What does
the law accomplish? Who accomplishes the law? The law divides and arrests division; it
maintains this point of folie, this chromosomal cell, as the generative principle. How can
we analyse the architectural chromosome, its colour, this labour of division and
individuation which no longer pertains to the domain of biogenetics?
We are getting there, but only after a detour. We must pass through one more point.
PART FOURTEEN
There are strong words in Tschumi’s lexicon. They locate the points of greatest intensity.
These are the words beginning with trans- (transcript, transference, etc.) and, above all,
de- or dis-. These words speak of destabilization, deconstruction, dehiscence and, first of
all, dissociation, disjunction, disruption, difference. An architecture of heterogeneity,
interruption, non-coincidence. But who would ever have built in this manner? Who
would have counted on only the energies in dis- or de-? No work results from a simple
displacement or dislocation. Therefore, invention is needed. A path must be traced for
another writing. Without renouncing the deconstructive affirmation whose necessity we
have tested—indeed, on the contrary, so as to give it new impetus—this writing
maintains the dis-jointed as such; it joins up the dis- by maintaining [maintenant] the
distance; it gathers together the difference. This assembling will be singular. What holds
together does not necessarily take the form of a system; it does not always depend on
architectonics and can disobey the logic of synthesis or the order of syntax. The
maintenant of architecture would be this manoeuvre to inscribe the dis- and make it into a
work in itself. Abiding and maintaining [maintenant], this work does not pour the
difference into concrete; it does not erase the differential trait, nor does it reduce or
embed this track, the distract or abs-tract, in a homogeneous mass (concrete).
Architectonics (or the art of the system) represents only one epoch, says Heidegger, in the
history of the Mitsein. It is only a specific possibility of the assembling. This, then, would
be both the task and the wager, a preoccupation with the impossible: to give dissociation
its due, but to implement it as such in the space of reassembly. A transaction aimed at a
spacing and at a socius of dissociation which, furthermore, would allow the negotiation
of even this, difference, with received norms, the politico-economic powers of
architectonics, the mastery of the maîtres d’oeuvre. This ‘difficulty’ is Tschumi’s
experience. He does not hide it, ‘this is not without difficulty’:
At La Villette, it is a matter of forming, of acting out dissociation (...) This is not
without difficulty. Putting dissociation into form necessitates that the support structure
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