narrative matrices, to sound-tracks and image-tracks (as I write this, I think of La Folie
du Jour by Blanchot, and of the demand for, and impossibility of, narration that is made
evident there. Everything I have been able to write about it, most notably in Parages, is
directly and sometimes, literally concerned—I am aware of this after the fact, thanks to
Tschumi—with the madness of architecture: step, threshold, staircase, labyrinth, hotel,
hospital, wall, enclosure, edges, room, the inhabitation of the uninhabitable. And since all
of this, dealing with the madness of the trait, the spacing of dis-traction, will be published
in English, I also think of that idiomatic manner of referring to the fool, the absent-
minded, the wanderer: the one who is spacy, or spaced out.)
But if it presents neither theory, nor ethics, nor politics, nor narration (‘No, no
narrative, never again’, La Folie du Jour) it gives a place to them all. It writes and signs
in advance—maintenant a divided line on the edge of meaning, before any presentation,
beyond it—the very other, who engages architecture, its discourse, political scenography,
economy and ethics. Pledge but also wager, symbolic order and gamble: these red cubes
are thrown like the dice of architecture. The throw not only programmes a strategy of
events, as I suggested earlier; it anticipates the architecture to come. It runs the risk and
gives us the chance.
NOTES
1 Maintenant, Fr. adv., now; from maintenir, keeping in position, supporting, upholding; from
se maintenir, v. remaining, lasting; from main tenant, the hand that holds. Folie, Fr., n.
madness, delusion, mania; folly; country pleasure-house. In general the French spelling of
the word folie has been kept in this translation, according to Bernard Tschumi’s own usage,
so as to retain the connotation of madness. [Note added by translator.]
2 Trane, Fr., woof, weft, web, thread; also plot, conspiracy; (Phot. Engr.) screen. [Note added
by translator.]
3 Bernard Tschumi, ‘Madness and the Combinative’, Précis V, New York: Columbia
University, 1984.
4 Jacques Derrida, La paraphrase: point, ligne, surface, in Marges, Minuit 1972, Margins,
University of Chicago Press.WHY PETER EISENMAN WRITES SUCH GOOD BOOKS
This title barely conceals a quotation from another, well-known title. It lifts a fragment,
or rather a person. By translating the title ‘Why I write such good books’ (Warum ich so
gute Bücher schreibe) into the third person, by summoning Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo to
bear witness, I take it upon myself to clear Eisenman of all suspicion. It is not he who
speaks, it is I. I who write. I who, using displacements, withdrawals, fragmentations, play
with identities, with persons and their titles, with the integrity of their proper names. Has
one the right to do this? But who will declare the right? And in whose name?
By abusing metonymy as well as pseudonymy, following Nietzsche’s example, I
propose to undertake many things—all at once, or one by one. But I will not reveal them
all, and certainly not to begin with. Without giving away all the leads, the threads, I will
reveal neither the route, nor the connections. Is this not the best condition for writing
good texts? Whoever assumes from a simple reading of my title that I am going to
Jacques Derrida 317