A PARTNERSHIP OF EARTH, LABOUR, AND COSMOPOLITICS

A PARTNERSHIP OF EARTH, LABOUR, AND COSMOPOLITICS

Interpreting Hassan Fathy’s New Gourna through the lens of Cosmopolitics

Introduction

Stengers and Fathy

How can we approach cosmic equity through a moment of hesitation, a rejection of preconceived truths, and embrace collective thinking by making present those whose voices go unheard in society. These are the question raised by Belgian philosopher Isabelle Stengers’ notion of Cosmopolitics, offering a mode of thinking and ecology of practice as a means of resistance to empower unheard and vulnerable political voices. Challenging the role of the science’s authority on objectivity, rationality, and truth1, Stengers sets out to argue for the Cosmopolitics proposal as a learning process rather than a solution. A process that offers a mode of resistance on established knowledge, creating friction in order to slow down our thinking, and a way of living that is a rejection to the flow. Not to be confused with Immanuel Kant’s notion of Cosmopolitics, Isabelle Stenger’s exploration is inherited from Whitehead’s concept of Cosmology, which in turn is derived from Pericles notion of inheritance.

Hassan Fathy’s project of ‘New Gourna’ in 1946 will be explored through the lens of Stenger’s notion of Cosmopolitics, a rural rehabilitiaion project which saw the relocation of an entire village in order to put a stop to the local’s practices of tomb robbing. By applying a Cosmopolitical mode of thinking to Fathy’s project, this essay aims to explore how this cooperative building system acts as rejection to globalisation’s mercantile colonisation of thought, with the utopic aim of approaching cosmic equity. This will be done through the exploration of four main topics consisting of, the notion of the actors, the art of staging, mercantilism of globalisation, and inheritance.

Stengers, Isabelle. Cosmopolitics II. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

Experts, Diplomats, Witnesses & Victims

Isabelle Stengers states that the Cosmopolitical proposal is not intended to provide a solution, nor is it a form of prophetic revelation that puts everything into agreement, but is a mode of thinking and resisting. This prelude thus deconstructs any demarcation of pre-existent truths and order and emphasises the slowing down of reasoning and rejection of authorising ourselves to believe we possess the meaning of what we know.2 As a result, for this collective thinking to occur the participants involved are not to be interpreted as ‘naked’ citizens but each playing a role that is distributed to them, demanding equal say for all peoples of Earth affected by the matter.3 Hence the key participants of this ecology of politics can be abstracted to four key ‘actors’ operating under the cosmos; these actors consist of Experts, Diplomats, Witnesses and victims. The role of the expert is one of those who’s practice is not threatened by the issue under discussion since what they know is accepted and relevant. It is therefore the diplomate’s role to provide a voice for those whose practice, mode of existence, or identity is to be threatened by the decision in question. The victims are those affected by the decision to be made, and oftentimes lack a political voice; And it is therefore the witness’ role to make the victim present, not arguing in their name but conveying what it may feel like to be threatened. The cosmos is thus that which can have no representatives, lacks designation, and refuses to be encompassed by something else, it is the unknown which demands nothing and acts as an operative of equalisation.4 This demand for no representative to talk in the name of another encompasses the Cosmopolitical proposal’s notion of the art of staging. Leading on from the concept of producing protagonists in order to give unheard political voices a platform, is this notion of providing the right artificial staging for victims to be heard for collective thinking. Currently, the authority on knowledge and accepted truths is held by the most powerful political voices, whereby oppressive states export their ideology on to ‘weaker’ political voices to prevent any form of rebellion or resistance to maintain the existing power relations. Stenger argues that if we are to disrupt the traditional decision-making process and lay the full debt of consequences of the decisions before those political voices, one may reach a more equitable decision-making process.

The Art of Staging

2 Stenger, Isabelle. “The Cosmopolitical Proposal.” In Making Thinks Public: Atmosphere of Democracy, Edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, 9941003. London: MIT Press, 2005.

3 Stengers, Isabelle. “Cosmopolitics: Learning to Think with Science, Peoples and Nature.” Lecture presented at the St. Mary’s University: Situating Science Conversation Series, Nova Scotia, March 5, 2012.

4 Stengers, “The Cosmopolitical Proposal.”

Isabelle Stengers’ notion of ‘The Idiot’, often referred to as Gaia has affinities to the conceptual character Gilles Deleuze ‘allowed to exist’5 derived from the similarly titled novel by the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky. The idiot acts as a form of resistance to the slowing down of decisionmaking political voices, and thus rejects the situations of emergency presented before them. Not because these emergencies are false, but because no one voice holds universal truths. An example of this includes the taking of decisions in the presence of the victims of the decision, where this making present of the full extent of the consequences may influence the final decision being made. Constituted with this slowing of political voices is Stenger’s encapsulation of the character of the idiot; by which the rejection of situations presented before us is not due to the accuracy of a narrative being true or not, but is a potential to act Cosmopolitically, whereby one’s ethos and behaviour is not dependant on the ‘oikos’.6

Through the act of creating a stage for unheard actors to have a political voice, an allowance for multiple perspectives and collective thinking to transform our decisions is allowed. As outlined in Gilles Deleuze’s notion of Assemblage, it is this coming together of heterogeneous disparate components that produce existence; The coming together of diverse voices, of various ethos and oikos’ of interspecies that is defined as the Cosmopolitical mode of thinking.

Mercantalism and Globalisation

As outlined by Stengers, vulnerable concerned parties do not always have a political voice nor are heard, as they may be disqualified by parties with political authority in fear of hindering an emerging agreement.7 The notion of Mercantilism of imperialist nations holding a positive export over import ratio can be applied to this colonisation of thought. Whereby Colonial nations imbue their ideology on oppressed colonies in order keep their political voices muted and destabilise their platforms for speaking out. This notion of muting of public voices, is proliferated through all aspects of the society affected, whereby local culture and architecture is erased and in place global architectural styles override the once climate and regional features.8

Alongside this notion of globalisation and mercantilism, post-colonial empires have shown a pattern of manufacturing dependency on to their former now liberated colonies. This dependency comes in the shapes of ideology, materiality or culture, whereby in the absence of physical control, commerce (persuasion) is held in an unbalanced tension to those in power to ensure they can remain so.

5 Stengers, “The Cosmopolitical Proposal.”

6 Oikos: The habitat of that being and the way in which that habitat satisfies or opposes the demands associated with the ethos

7 Stengers, “Cosmopolitics: Learning to Think with Science, Peoples and Nature.”

8 Majerska-Pałubicka, Beata. “Architecture Vs. Globalization.” IOP Conference Series. Materials Science and Engineering 960, no. 2 (2020): 22078

Similar to the operations of the imperial economic policy of mercantilism, we can begin to draw connections between this colonisation of thought and globalisation of architecture. A notion that Hassan Fathy subsequently labelled as ‘self colonisation’ and rejected through the embrace of a critically regional architectural language. A form of architectural resistance through the minimisation of importation of ideas and celebrating local knowledge holders.

Inheritance

This celebration of the passing down of local knowledge thus links to Pericles’ notion of Inheritance. Examined by Milan Sturmer’s essay on inheriting Cosmopolitics, the importance of the ‘commercio of thought’9 is emphasised in Stenger’s notion of Cosmopolitics. Whereby we constantly inherit from those that came before us, not as a return to the past but as an act of transformation.10

For Alfred North Whitehead, the notion of Cosmology implied change and novelty; where the universe is a succession of actual occasions that are constantly new, 11 each individual occasion therefore adds through it’s subjective form an original unification of the past.12 The past is thus given power only in so far as it is prehended by new actual entities, therefore in order to inherit, the past must first die. Linking this concept to that of the rejection of absolutism allows us to analyse Cosmopolitics as a constant inheritance and transformation of preconceived notions projected on the self from birth. By thus continually inheriting as a state of transformation, one rejects the notion of an inherit truth and creates space for hesitation, thus slowing down the construction of the world.13

Stürmer, Milan, and Daniel Bella. “Inheriting Cosmopolitics: Pericles, Whitehead, Stengers.” Theory, Culture & Society, 2022.

Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality : an Essay in Cosmology. New York: Macmillan, 1929.

Milan, and Bella, “Inheriting Cosmopolitics: Pericles, Whitehead, Stengers.”

Gourna

Hassan Fathy (1900-1989) was an Egyptian architect who dedicated his career to the notion of ‘rural rehabilitation’. Beginning his jounrey in post-independence Egypt (1922) from the British, Fathy set out to re-embrace a new local vernacular, through a rejection of western ideals, Modernism, and a stringent anti-colonial stance. This was most prominently seen during his time as the director of architecture at the Fine arts faculty in Cairo University, whereby Fathy controversially removed all Western magazines and publications from the university library to promote Arab and local architecture within the school.14

The ambition of Rural Rehabilitation thus encompassed raising the standards of living in rural mass housing through cooperative building techniques, and exploiting the local materiality to create earth architecture. Local inhabitants were thus given agency by cooperating in the construction of their own homes, and the use of mud bricks allowed for essentially no fiscal material costs of construction. A system ascribed by Fathy as a partnership of labour and earth, balanced on cooperation. Fathy observed the construction techniques of Ancient Egypt to redevelop a forgotten construction methodology, without the need for timber or steel in the structure, nor formwork to create the dome roofs, relying solely on earth, straw and water to create bricks. This was embraced at the time due to the rising costs of material importations during the Second World War, supporting Fathy’s rejection of globalisation and Western reliance through a local vernacular. Illustrated by Fathy as “a way of building that was a natural growth in the landscape... a vision for architecture before the Fall: before money, greed, snobbery had severed architecture from its true roots in nature.”15

Philosophy History

Along the ancient Thebes cemeteries above Pharaonic tombs sat the poverty-stricken town of Old Gourna in Luxor. The local inhabitants had found a natural vocation of tomb robbing and illegal trading of historic artefacts which emerged in the late 19th century . This came to a climax when an entire large ancient rock face was carved and stolen, which the department of antiquities believed was done by the inhabitants of Gourna.16

14 Damluji, Salmá Samar, Hassan. Fathy, and Viola Bertini. Hassan Fathy : Earth & Utopia. London: Laurence King, 2018.

15 Fathy, Hassan. Architecture for the Poor An Experiment in Rural Egypt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

16 Salmá Samar, Hassan Fathy : Earth & Utopia.

Thus stepping in, the Egyptian government in 1945 commissioned by the Department of Antiquities decided to relocate the seven thousand inhabitants of Old Gourna to a new village. Fathy’s promise of a low cost housing system, that was climatically appropriate and site specific, enticed the government to engage Fathy in the designing of this new village. The land was thus expropriated, and the entire settlement was forcefully relocated outside the archaeological site. Naturally hostile to the move, the department formed a committee group consisting of Gourna’s mayor, sheikhs, 17 archaeological superintended and Fathy to appease the local’s concerns and cooperate in the design of ‘New Gourna’. Fathy took this chance to implement his newly developed cooperative building system, intending to use New Gourna as a model village to be prototyped and repeated all over rural Egypt to improve public housing living conditions. This cooperative building method however extended beyond merely the construction process, whereby Fathy incorporated participatory planning to involve the inhabitants in all decision making throughout the process. In-depth analysis of the social dynamics, structures and existing hierarchies were done by Fathy to avoid regarding the people of Gourna as anonymous entities.18

By allowing the inhabitants to construct the dwellings themselves, and interviewing each household to understand their individual needs, each home had an identifying character whilst still meeting the needs of the community. The form and planning of the village took notions from a variety of sources including buildings of Upper Egypt, Nubia, Islamic and medieval Cairo, as well as Pharaonic in place of the original unplanned development of Old Gourna. The designs of the dwellings were thus unfamiliar to the locals with many items imported out of context, the most detrimental being the domed roofs.

Representation

Hassan Fathy carried this notion of creating a new local vernacular beyond the physical built fabric of the buildings, and into the architecture’s modes of illustrations and representation. This was part of Fathy’s overall mission to create a new local language, a way of embracing the local identity and rejecting what he called ‘self-colonisation’.

Technical drawings are bordered by narrative illustrations, incorporating symbols and metaphors from pharaonic wall carvings, as well as two dimensional representations fusing plans and elevations together. Plans often had the North point illustrated by an ibis representing the god Thoth, with it’s wings extended out pointing East and West and it’s beak travelling North. Representational local elements such as Mount Luxor and lakes stood in the background of

Sheikhs: Honorific title for a chief of tribe or religious elder

Salmá Samar, Hassan Fathy : Earth & Utopia.

sections and elevations not intended to be literal nor to scale, but as a way of siting the project within the environment. Gods and Pharaohs often stood at the edge of drawings, such as the God Thoth and Hathor which historically represented preservation of the country from plagues and illnesses, as well as fertility, balance and justice. Native planting such as Sycamore trees are often drawn in elevation on plans, whereby the drawings float between axonometric projection and plan, a reflection Pharaonic carvings and hieroglyphs, which can be read in various directions.

The use of these narratives and symbols held a twofold importance for Fathy. Firstly, the spiritual and symbolic representations of the Gods protecting what is to be built, symbolised a prayer of sorts imbued in the architectural representation for the prosperity of the village. Secondly, Fathy understood the villagers philosophy, one deeply embedded in a spiritual outlook of the world and a rejection of the absolutism of science, dating from the times of the ancient farmers worshiping the Nile flooding seasons. The use of this local metaphorical language thus assisted the inhabitants in creating a sense of familiarity, easing the hostile relocation of their homes through communicating on a common ground in a visual language they recognised, opposed to foreign traditional architectural documentation. Weaving a narrative between the logics and poetics of the space, as well as the site and it’s contextual history.

Hassan Fathy, New Gourna Site Plan, n.d. Gouache

Present State

The project itself was never fully realised, as roughly 100 out of 900 of the dwellings were built financial and political complications grew, in addition to the growing resident’s opposition to the project.19 The site was flooded twice from the nearby canal by the agitated residents refusing to be relocated. Today, the dwellings that remain are in a state of disrepair yet are still inhabited by a small community which has a strong affinity to the homes; Some of which are residents of Old Gourna that agreed to move whilst others are families that moved into the vacant home over the years.

Hassan Fathy, could be summed up as a character of contradiction, one driven by utopian ideals and principles yet failing to engage with those principles in his own life. This is seen throughout his career whereby his admiration for the rural Falah was challenged by his distaste for their way of life and poverty. Fathy’s rejection of Western architecture and ideals were contrasted by his studies abroad and upper class educated upbringing. Whilst dedicating his career to serve the rural low income Fallah, Fathy sums up his view of rural life in his own words as a “picture of the country as a paradise, but a paradise darkened above by clouds of flies.”20 This sub-conscious antipathy is illustrated in a story told by Fathy during the New Gourna project, where upon being invited by one of the local farmers to share dinner and tea at his house, Fathy initially accepts but was soon disgusted by the unsanitary conditions of the food, thus curtly rejecting the humble offer. These two contrasting pictures are not only grasped in Fathy’s lifestyle but are diluted into his projects, his aspirations of becoming one with the villagers is obstructed by his inability to entirely delve into their lifestyle and understand the minute aspects of their culture. This ignorance of the minute details is most infamously seen in Fathy’s use of the domes in the dwellings, which was traditionally associated with tombs, the residents thus refusing to sleep beneath a dome which represented their death.

The project can therefore not be classified as a success nor a failure. As Fathy’s aspirations were thwarted by bureaucracies and his trust in the established system, the project has gone on to influence a wide range of regional architects in Egypt and abroad, whereby his work is still admired today by architects hoping to save New Gourna. The utopian aim of giving voices to the ‘peasants’ was too ambitious for the bureaucracies’ need for pragmatic mass housing.

Earth, Labour, and Cosmopolitics

Distributing Actors

Thus by unpacking this tale of the New Gourna relocation, we can overlay Stenger’s notions of the Expert, Diplomat, Witness and Victim into the narrative. The department of planning and it’s associated bureacruacies can therefore be attributed the role of the expert; Whereby regardless of the success or failure of Fathy’s rural rehabilitation project, they maintain their position of authority unaffected. If anything, the success of a mode of local building system which eliminates the consumerist nature of the process would be a threat to their power and existence, leaving their role without value. Irrespective of the success in playing his role, Hassan Fathy as the project architect undertook the role of acting as the diplomat. Self assigned with the task of acting as the mediator between the state’s goal of creating low income housing and his personal charge to engage in a cooperative building system, Fathy gave a voice to the local inhabitants. The inhabitants of Gourna are therefore the victims in this narrative, those that preferred to be left alone regardless of whether the decision affected them, whilst being the most vulnerable to the decisions of those in power. All roles simultaenously operating under the Cosmos, which encapsulated the earth architecture, the site, it’s history, and shared knowledge.

Prehension

Hassan Fathy’s use of the earth architecture as an extension of the landscape can be interpreted as a mode of inheritance, not a return to the past but as an act of transformation. The inherited ancient construction processes are continually prehended by the present, where the creating of each individual earth brick acts as an original unification of the past. The inheritance of an ancient construction technique, dating back 3,400 years to the ancient vaults of the Ramesseum, is thus observed, inherited, and transformed into a contemporary context. It is through this notion of inheritance that Fathy was able to reject the colonisation of thought through the repeat of a climatically inappropriate globalist architecture. In way of this inheritance of the local heritage and rejecting Modernism, New Gourna embraces a critically regionalist approach to design. Later explored in Kenneth Frampton’s “Towards a Critical Regionalism”, one begins to question what it means to be modern, 21 and the concept of ‘self colonisation’ associated with ambitions to imitate western architecture out of context. The material culture of earth brick construction thus imbeds the narratives, histories and stories of the people and space within the built fabric of the homes. Where traditional villages are generally built over time by the inhabitants and

21 Frampton, Kenneth. “Towards a Critical Regionalism.” In Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, 16-30. New York: New Press, 2002.

passed down intergenerationally, the time scope allocated for Gourna’s relocation meant that the tradition wouldn’t be possible. The earth construction therefore attained to offset that loss of pracitce through a direct connection to the site, environment, and material culture associated with rural settlements’ use of mud brick.

The inheritance of the ancient forgotten earth construction held significance in two key areas. Firstly the pragmatic low cost of construction that would allow for the inhabitants to build their own homes. Secondly from a Cosmopolitical point of view as a form of revolt, a revolt against modernism and globalisation’s manufacturing of a dependence on materiality, knowledge and style; Embracing critical regionalism, self-dependency, and the material culture of the site.

Fathy saw the role of the architect as that of guiding the process of social transformation rather than the decision maker, involving the families in every decision and construction stage.22 Through the implementation of this cooperative building, Fathy is absorbed into the art of staging, fulfilling his role as a diplomat to provide a platform for vulnerable unheard voices. This mode of construction not only creates affinity between the residents and their own dwellings, but the residents are given back agency through the construction of their own village, creating order out of the chaos.

This is further supported by Fathy’s process of designing the dwelling primarily in plan to allow for the elevation to be altered by each individual family. This giving back of agency and ownership to the inhabitants, activates an old owner-designer-craftsperson triad, breaking down roles of authority and clear distinctions of territory.

Cooperative Staging Mercantalism of Globalisation

Hassan Fathy’s revolutionary ambitions of a cooperative building system contradicted by his continuation of operating under the post-Colonial bureaucratic system was consequently the start of the project’s downfall. Capitalism and Western knowledge perpetuated dependency rather than develop local production relations and capacities. Where in order to maintain diplomatic relations and achieve what it is to be ‘Modern’, self-colonisation is upheld to maintain this manufactured dependency on the coloniser, to mimic western architectural styles and conventions. The project was thus doomed to fail, for a success of a local building system would be a direct threat to consumerism and existing systems of power within the built environment.

Samar, Hassan Fathy : Earth & Utopia.

Hassan Fathy, New Gourna Houses, 1946. 46.8 x 58cm Gouache

This notion of cooperative building and inheritance of ancient construction techniques therefore encapsulates this rejection of globalisation’s colonisation of thought and mercantile grip on regional architecture. Fathy’s is quoted depicting the rural Nubian villages that inspired his critically regionalist style as “whose architecture had been preserved for centuries uncontaminated by foreign influences.”23 A process of decolonisation through the partnership of earth and labour.

Representation

Along with the decolonisation of architectural style and construction method, Hassan Fathy extends this notion into his approach of architectural representations seen his Gouache paintings. The architectural representations and illustrated narratives that play out on the drawings thus take the project out of the realm of concrete reality and place it in the spiritual and other worldly. Linking to the Stenger’s notion of the rejection of the absolutism of science in the Cosmopolitical proposal, this absolutism is abandoned in the intentional lack of notation and dimensioning seen in Fathy’s plans and elevations. Whereby Fathy relied on the knowledge of the local skilled labourers, quoted saying “the structure dictates the shapes and the material impose the scale,”24 taking elements such as form and scale out of the precision of calculations and into the laws of nature. By challenging the accepted notions of Modernism’s scientific rationalism, this visual symbolism embodies a post structuralist logic, embracing the unknown, spiritual, de-territorial approach to architectural representation. Deconstructing boundaries of what a plan and elevation drawing is, extracting order from the chaos, a fluid relationship between the spiritual and the physical.

Conclusion

Isabelle Stengers Cosmopolitical proposal allows for the re-interpretation of Hassan Fathy’s New Gourna project from a new lens. One that takes the focus off the physical built form of the village and places attention on its representation. Through it’s rejection of traditional architectural representation and globalisation’s mercantile grip on thought, Fathy was able to not create, but amplify the already existing vernacular language. Re-embracing and inheriting ancient construction knowledge and symbols allowed for collective thinking. This is done by breaking down the barriers between the architect, builder, and resident, allowing for agency through the physical construction of one’s own home, as well as designing in plan to promote fluidity in the dwelling’s elevation.

When interpreting the project of New Gourna therefore, the argument becomes less about whether this cooperative building system was a success or failure based on the physical fabric; But rather whether the project was able to slow down decision making, and act as a resistance to powerful political voices. The ‘failure’ of New Gourna in relocating it’s inhabitants might then be interpreted as a Cosmopolitical success, whereby equality is approached through this making of the victims ‘present’. A mode that makes decision making as difficult as possible, allowing for a moment of hesitation, and a step closer to cosmic equity.