A FictoHistorical Theory of the London Underground
Marko Jobst
A Ficto-Historical Theory of the London Underground
Marko Jobst Illustrations by Nic Clear
Contents
P.5 Introduction
P.13 Hypnos, Eros
P.25 Object
P.55 Space
P.89 Image
P.117 Movement
P.149 Machia
P.157 Nic Clear: A note on Underground Drawings Bibliography Acknowledgments
This book addresses the London Underground in the context of architectural histories and theories. It aims to indicate that the subterranean transportation system of London, the first of its kind in the world, remains largely unacknowledged in architectural writing with regard to a number of issues: the status of the Underground station as a novel building type, which is essentially different to that of the railway station; the emergence of modernist approaches to space, manifest on the Underground in an unprecedented form of interiority; a perspectival regime that forecloses the horizon within an interior that corresponds to no immediate, inhabitable context; and the question of movement that brings together the built environment, the technologies of transportation, and the techniques of the body in a highly specific conjunction. It employs a mode of writing that combines fictional storytelling with a theoretical essay. It is written in the first person as a series of research entries and theoretical interpretations offered by an unnamed 5
narrator to his reader in a didactic, yet intimate tone. As the narrative unfolds, the narrator and his reader are revealed to be rewriting and subverting the myth of the labyrinth: instead of a modern-day Ariadne, it is the Theseus-like figure of the perpetual outsider who provides the coil of knowledge and challenges his reader to perform the tauromachia her/himself. The historical, theoretical and philosophical sources used in the interpretation of the Underground form the main body of this one-sided epistolary exchange. The sources are related in a way that suggests first-hand experiences of the research material and familiarity with the authors whose work the narrator discusses. The authors are introduced as the narrator’s former educators, colleagues or acquaintances; some of the material is related as recollections of conversations with the authors, some as exchanges of letters, other sources merely as experiences of reading. The historical, theoretical and philosophical material is thus rendered inextricable from the circumstances of research and the experience of the city and its architecture – in particular, that symbolic temple to research, The British Library – drawing attention to the immanent conditions of the production of thought, while questioning the authority and dissemination of knowledge
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proper to academic discourse. All instances of direct speech couched within the narrator’s discourse represent quotes from the original texts and are, as such, referenced. Each author is given a distinct presence, rather than being folded into a wider network of inherited propositions supporting the book’s ‘argument’. This distinct identity awarded to the sources of historical and theoretical material used – made manifest by turning them into fictional characters – is intended to emphasise their position in relation to the text, whose insights can never be fully explained away by the discursive contributions of the sources used. More often than not, the book’s fictional narrator positions himself against, rather than alongside his sources, even as he builds on their propositions and ‘steals’ from them. Another key aspect is the question of the writerly voice. This is a term routinely employed in literary fiction and creative writing, less so in theory. In its most common manifestation, theory is prone to erasing the voice of the author, or emphasising and bracketing their subjectivity. While theorists can be in possession of distinct styles of thinking (rhythm of articulation, progression of ideas) and can therefore manifest a distinct communicative mode, they
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do not imply the construction of a deliberate, fictitious voice. A Gilles Deleuze of Difference and Repetition is a different one to the Deleuze of Cinema 2: The Time-image, even if a certain style of thinking and quest for philosophical concepts connects these works across the years that separate them; but it is only in the deliberate move into cross-subjectivity and, importantly, fictionalisation of the styles of thought particular to ‘Gilles Deleuze’ and ‘Felix Guattari’ that a distinct voice is created in full, and actively employed in the work of the philosopher and his collaborator, as they indicate in the opening lines of A Thousand Plateaus. What would this book have looked like had it been written as a ‘standard’ work of research, however elastic the definition of the term? Every theme embodied in the four main chapters would have been extended and further sources consulted, situating the Underground within the broader histories of modernity in architecture. As indicated by the end of this particular narrative journey, the ambition is to see the Underground as a unique coming together of some of the key aspects of the discourses of architectural theory, yet show that it subverts its basic premises. On the other hand, as a novel, i.e. a standard work of literary fiction, the book would have needed to pursue the so-called
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‘character-development’ by transforming propositions into a narrative experience of its protagonist’s journey first and foremost, and burying the research in it, in order to allow the trajectory of the story to come more extensively to the fore. As such, the book remains suspended between these two poles, risking unsatisfaction on both fronts. The key question for its ‘author’ (Marko Jobst), therefore, was one of the effects the reading produces. In what way is it worth the space and time it demands of the reader, compact as it is? It is here, perhaps, that the question of its genre might offer a map for the reader, should they feel the need for one. Otherwise, they can judge it through the way it makes them think, or doesn’t. What would the term ficto-historicism, inherent in the book’s title, presuppose? Such a not-as-yet-extant genre takes for its main reference point fictocriticism, yet pulls away from the notion of critique, stressing the historical aspects of the material instead. It indicates that the resulting mode, or genre, of writing should be understood to base its theoretical propositions primarily in the realms of history and fiction, rather than the traditions of critical theory. But the ‘creation’ of the genre of ficto-criticism is also intended as a provocation: it questions the extent to which modes of writing conducted in the
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context of academic research require formulations of clearly defined and carefully contextualised writing practices – categorically sound, justified in the context of theory (architectural or other) and clearly positioned within the archives of the grand edifice of knowledge. In this sense, the opening quote from an early text by Deleuze provides, perhaps, the best indication of the nature of this book’s writerly practice.
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Hypnos, Eros
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B
ehind the eyes.
‘But I suppose the main way I coped with it at the time was to see the history of philosophy as a sort of buggery or (it comes to the same thing) immaculate conception. I saw myself as taking an author from behind and giving him a child that would be his own offspring, yet monstrous. It was really important for it to be his own child, because the author had to actually say all I had him saying. But the child was bound to be monstrous too, because it resulted from all sorts of shifting, slipping, dislocations, and hidden emissions that I really enjoyed.’ (Deleuze, 1995: 6) Now open. The first one was called the Metropolitan. It was just a line connecting two points, and the year was 1863. Eight days earlier, further to the west, Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation; 13 days later, to the east, Poland, Lithuania and Belarus will rise against Russia. But on January 9, between Paddington and Farringdon Street, a stretch of an underground railway opened, the first cutting gesture in the construction of a world that would reconfigure London, gathering the forces of economy and politics, incorporating the flows of bodies and machinery, permanently altering the city to include this 15
other London, simultaneously part of it and infinitely removed from it. No one realised it at the time, and few are aware of it still, but this was when a new conception of architecture was ushered in by the back door. Its ramifications are only beginning to be felt now, today, as I write to you from The British Library. There are two people sitting next to me, and three on the opposite side of this table. The room is silent, peculiarly so, considering it is filled with what seem to be hundreds. They come here to consult their sources, the authorities they’ve inherited. They venerate and defer. But they cast occasional glances at each other as well, they sigh and stretch their backs. They eat secretly under the tables. Then they train their eyes on paper again, pursue the signs that mark the page. And they write: they produce more words to add to the literary towers already erected, like the one at the centre of this building, a totemic presence with overtones of Babel. They knew their references when they designed this place. Who are they, you might wonder? But don’t ask me, this is your city, and your father’s. Ask him instead, unless it’s too late and your betrayal is written all over your face. As I write this, you are taking a journey on the Underground. You never leave it, not until I enter the
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station, walk through the barriers, and take to the escalators. This is when you surface to roam the streets, content and free. It is part of our arrangement, the necessary precaution if we are to remain unseen until it’s all over and done, whatever the outcome. I can feel your presence in the world below as I walk the streets of London, I feel it when I travel to other places, when I leave this island and cross the seas. You remain on the Underground, inside the tunnels, your journey over once I have returned and gone under. I wake up every morning and wash my face. I eat a piece of fruit, on some days two. I take a shower, brush my teeth, dress and leave this room I temporarily inhabit. It takes me an exact number of minutes to reach the library, including the time it took to walk to and from the station. But I have entered an architectural edifice by then, however cavernous it may seem, I am no longer in the labyrinth your father constructed. And it is from this library, this self-proclaimed temple of knowledge, that I write my missives to you: one more body in a silent crowd, not unlike the multitudes you encounter on the Underground. There is a book in front of me. I open it and lower my eyes. ‘Many a time, Polia,’ it reads, and I can’t
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help but smile at how closely, how deceptively, it resonates with my own voice, ‘I have thought of how the ancient authors dedicated their works aptly to princes and magnanimous men, some for gain, some for favour, and others for praise.’ I look at the faces across the table. ‘But it is for none of these reasons, except perhaps the middle one, that I offer this hypnerotomachia of mine, for I can find no prince more worthy of its dedication than you, my mighty Empress. Your noble station, your incredible beauty,’ the voice incants, ‘your highly regarded virtue and your understanding behaviour, by which you hold first place above any nymph of our age, have inflamed me excessively with a noble love for you: I have burned and am consumed.’ I snort. Then mask it with a cough. ‘O splendor of radiant beauty,’ the voice intones across centuries, as I sit in the silence of the library, ‘ornament of all grace, famed by your glorious looks, receive this small gift, which you have industriously fashioned with golden arrows in this loving heart, and painted and signed with your own angelic image; it belongs to you as its only patron.’ I sigh with impatience. ‘I commit this gift to your wise and intelligent judgement, abandoning the original style and having translated it into the present one at your behest.’ Ha! ‘Thus if any fault appear therein,
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and if you should find any part of it sterile and undeserving of your discriminating approval, the blame is yours, as the best operator and only possessor of the key to my mind and heart.’ I perk up at this. ‘But I cannot think of, nor hope for, any reward of greater value and price than your gracious love, and your kindly favour for this. Farewell’ (Colonna, 2005: 10). What an apt starting point for us, Ari, and an immediate end. Mine will be no glorious outpouring of passion, no obvious eros to be found in this machia; just a series of illegitimate entries and exits, aimed at birthing a monster as much as killing one. As for dream, the hypnos I will invoke is one more recent in meaning: a few tricks only, cannily performed. So the blame is yours if you misinterpret the exchange initiated when you decided to veer from the official narrative. The nameless author of this text (a monk, they say, an architect perhaps, or someone else altogether, unknown to us and lost in time) is correct. The blame is yours. I close the book. I contain the desire to disturb the silence of this room, to shout out your name and mark the beginning thus. Not a cry of love then, but a hypnotic cue: Wake up! And sink deeper into sleep.
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You will dream of the Underground. Of buildings marking its entrances and exits, never complete, their interiors spilling over to seep under the city, no longer buildings but strange initiators of experience instead; you’ll dream of spaces unlike any you’ve encountered before, spaces that unravel yet remain confined still; you will discover the interiority of architecture that matches that of the whole city, and you’ll observe surfaces that reflect your hidden self, from which you peer at my words, frowning. You will encounter images, watch their boundless horizons fold and assume darkness as their only limit; and you’ll recall movement, the ceaseless movement of your body, endlessly repetitive, ever stubbornly new, recognising it for the movement of machines as much as the ripples crossing the faces of those who try not to give themselves away. Wake up now, Ari. Slip under the surface.
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Bibliography — Barry Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750–1890 (Oxford University Press, 2000). — Simon Bradley, St. Pancras Station (London: Profile Books, 2007). — Howard Caygill, Walter Benjamin: The Colour of Experience (Routledge, 1998). — Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love in a Dream (London: Thames and Hudson, 2005). — Gilles Deleuze, ‘Letter to a Harsh Critic’ in Negotiations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). — Adrian Forty, Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000). — Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture (London: Thames & Hudson, 2007). — Eric Kluitenberg, Delusive Spaces: Essays on Culture, Media and Technology (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers and Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2008). — J.R.Piggott, Palace of the People (London: Hurst & Company, 2004). — John Rajchman, Constructions (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1998). — Charles Rice, The Emergence of the Interior: Architecture, Modernity, Domesticity (London and New York: Routledge, 2007). — Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles, The University of California Press, 1986). — Penny Sparke, The Modern Interior (London: Reaktion Books, 2008). — Nicholas Temple, Disclosing Horizons: Architecture, Perspective and redemptive space (London and New York: Routledge 2007). — Christian Wolmar, The Subterranean Railway (London: Atlantic Books, 2005).
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A version of one section of ‘Space’ appeared in Architectural Research Quarterly 16/2 2012, as did a part of ‘Hypnos, Eros’ in Log 26, Fall 2012, both under different titles. Special thank you to Cynthia Davidson for supporting that very early experiment in fictional writing; it gave me confidence to proceed. Equally, thank you to Rochus Hinkel for taking this project on, slippery as it is, and for suggesting a way of framing it. Thank you to Iain Borden for encouraging me to pursue my interest in the London Underground first as part of my MSc and then the PhD thesis. Thank you to Hélène Frichot for all the generosity, support, feedback and all the productive conversations over the years. Thank you also to Catharina Gabrielsson, Kim Gurney, Klaske Havik, Anne Kockelkorn, Jérémie McGowan and Robin Wilson for reading a version of ‘Space’ at the Transversal Writing workshop in 2016 and providing supportive and insightful feedback. Thank you to Nic Clear for his wonderful illustrations, which give the book a new dimension, as well as all my colleagues at the University of Greenwich, past and present. Thank you to Tessa McWatt for all the conversations about writing we have had over the years and Jelena Stojkovi for reading versions of the text, as well as being there from the beginning. Thanks to Max Fincher for proofreading the manuscript and Andrej Dolinka for setting it (with stellar speed). Thank you to all the authors whose work I use and abuse here – without them there would have been no book, reliant as it is on the excellence of the material they provided. Thank you also to other authors, whose presence is less overt yet equally important – not least the myriad works by and on Gilles Deleuze. Finally, thank you to my parents for a lifetime (as in: life sentence) of support and, of course, Luke.
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THE PRACTICE OF THEORY AND THE THEORY OF PRACTICE The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic information is available on the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de A Ficto-Historical Theory of the London Underground Marko Jobst © Copyright 2017 by Author and Spurbuchverlag ISBN: 978-3-88778-518-5 Publication © by Spurbuchverlag 1. print run 2017 Am Eichenhügel 4, 96148 Baunach, Germany All rights reserved. No part of the work must in any mode (print, photocopy, microfilm, CD or any other process) be reproduced nor – by application of electronic systems – processed, manifolded nor broadcast without approval of the copyright holder.
AADR – Art Architecture Design Research publishes research with an emphasis on the relationship between critical theory and creative practice. AADR Curatorial Editor: Prof Dr Rochus Urban Hinkel, Stockholm Production: pth-mediaberatung GmbH, Würzburg Graphic Design: Moa Sundkvist, Stockholm
This book offers a vision of the London Underground written in the form of a ficto-historical narrative, which combines history and fiction in the creation of a set of theoretical propositions for London’s subterranean transportation network. Its amateur-scholar protagonist takes the reader on a labyrinthine journey into the world of research, with sources personified and their works appropriated and subverted. The book offers a model for practising writing and research in the context of architectural history and theory. Marko Jobst (PhD) is Architecture Undergraduate Theory Coordinator at The University of Greenwich, London, UK. He has written on the relationship between architectural theory and fiction, and the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze.
www.aadr.info www.spurbuch.de