Moving Mountains by Architecture+Philosophy

Moving Mountains Fredrik Torisson, PhD-Student LTH School of Architecture

Contents

Introduction

page

Moving Mountains 9 Ecologies of Practice

The Theory Toolbox

Ficto-criticism 29 Container Technologies

Introduction

his booklet comes with certain modifications to the prescribed assignment. Instead of a series of blog posts connected by an introduction and a conclusion, I have taken the liberty of focusing on one longer essay which involves four different theoretical clusters. Such a modification entails advantages as well as drawbacks. The principal advantage is a trans-thematic connection, a cross-fertilisation that happens when the themes are contextualised both in relation to each other, and to the overall linearity of the essay. The principal drawback is that by organising the texts in a larger context, some themes are reduced to peripheral. In order to remedy this, the longer essay is followed a number of individual blog posts, serving the purpose of presenting the shorter texts in their own contexts. My research at the moment concerns utopian imagination and the notion of the utopian function. Utopian imagination addresses the possibility of imagining something ‘other’ from what is. One central utopian paradox is this: how can we imagine something other than what is? Most utopian thinking is primarily a somewhat distorted reflection of what is, either aimed at critique of the existing or the engagement with emerging or disappearing potentiality. Fredric Jameson would argue that it is by definition impossible to imagine something “radically different”, since one of the fundamental definitions of radically different is that we would presumably be unable to imagine it ( Jameson 1995). Others, including Ruth Levitas, posit that utopia cannot only be about critique as negation, but must involve the attempt to imagine a positive ‘other’ (Levitas 2000). 5

This is closely linked with the notion of the utopian function—what does utopian thinking do? Jameson would argue that utopia can always only be a critique of the existing societal order. In extension, one could suggest, as Susan McManus has, that utopia is a deterritorializing agent, and the function of utopia is to undo what is, not to propose any new order – which in extension would per definition become oppressive (McManus 2005). Levitas, on the other hand, would argue that utopian thinking must point out not a totalising solution, but a direction (Levitas 2000). Regardless of whether one understands the utopian function as critique or direct transformation, the utopian function is closely linked with the notion of hope as elaborated by Ernst Bloch (Bloch 1986). Hope is a multi-faceted concept, and as Darren Webb has shown, there are many different forms of hope, ranging from patient to transformative (Webb 2013). Hope, regardless of its form, is primarily transformative (seeking to change something), which is central to either definition of utopian function. The essay explores the possibility of an architecture that produces hope instead of happiness as exemplified in three recent projects.

Bloch, Ernst (1986), The principle of hope (Oxford: Blackwell). Jameson, Fredric (1995), ‘Is Space Political?’, in Cynthia C. Davidson (ed.), Anyplace (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press). Levitas, Ruth (2000), ‘For Utopia: The (limits of the) Utopian function in late capitalist society’, Critical Review of International Social & Political Philosophy, 3 (2/3), 25. McManus, Susan (2005), Fictive theories- towards a deconstructive and utopian political imagination (Studies in European culture and history; New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Webb, Darren (2013), ‘Pedagogies of Hope’, Studies in Philosophy and Education, 32 (4), 397-414. 7

Moving Mountains

reams of mountains where there are none are at once quixotic, megalomaniacal and surprisingly common in architecture. In many ways artificially constructing a mountain is a utopian dream, but it is a project that keeps coming back in different formats. This essay will focus on three such projects: one in Denmark, one on the plains of Brandenburg and one in the Netherlands. These three different mountain projects will serve as a backdrop for a discussion on hope, happiness, and the politics of affect. The first mountain is “Bjerget” (The Mountain), by Danish architects BIG in Ørestad, on the outskirts of Copenhagen. This is a residential building completed in 2008. In terms of living, the focus within the building is privacy. Each flat is equipped with its own private garden, and the idea is that the building should offer complete privacy to its residents. The building is rather peculiar in that the residential units are located on top of the parking garage, which is in fact a very pragmatic solution to the prescribed areas for parking and residences. From a distance, the building does in fact resemble a mountain and even has a stencilled image of Mount Everest on its aluminium façade. The building as such is, however, not the focus of this essay. It is instead the dream of the mountain and the images employed to pre-sell the flats within; the focus is the relationship between the ideal and the real. By now, these visualisations, or “artist’s impressions” are rather dated. However, this text is concentrated on the remarkable similarity between dream and constructed reality. On the one hand, this is very useful: what you see is what you get. On the other hand, one could argue that this similitude indicates a broader tendency in which architecture is construed as images of the ideal, 9

which is no longer in the realm of dream but becomes reality. The ideal is increasingly similar to the real. The question is then this: which of the two is transforming, the real or the ideal? Is the real adapting itself to the ideal, or is it the other way round? When the ideal and the real are identical, we should by all definitions be happy. When there is a gap between the real and the ideal, but the gap is not perceived as insurmountable, there is hope. Happiness and hope are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Here, I use them as opposite ends of a spectrum in order to focus on the (diminishing gap) between the real and the ideal, and the images above constitute but one example. There are many different forms of both hope and happiness, and here I want specifically to focus on one incarnation. The key difference I want to point out is that hope is always focused on transformation. If you recall President Barack Obama’s election campaign in 2008, the word “hope” appeared everywhere, most emblematically in Shepard Fairey’s election poster for that campaign. Hope was here understood as positive transformation, and it did not matter too much that the “hope” was never specified. Perhaps this is even more significant to our time: hope without meaning. Happiness, on the other hand, is not only non-transformative, but actively encourages an opposition to transformation, as change implies the possibility of losing that happiness. When there is no gap between the ideal and the real, the fear of change becomes a principal drive. In her 2010 book “The Promise of Happiness”, which is a diatribe against positive psychology (among other things), Sara Ahmed outlines a world where happiness no longer is associated with hope but with “positive thinking”. Happiness starts to become both a means and an end, as Ahmed puts it: “Happiness becomes, then, a way of maximizing your potential of getting what you want as well as being what you want to get” (Ahmed 2010: 21). It is here that the distinction between the ideal and the real starts to blur significantly, and a realignment of the criteria for happiness becomes feasible, even desirable. According to Ahmed, the promotion of happiness is now so prevalent that it is appropriate to speak of a “happiness turn” in science as well as politics. Architecture concerns itself with happiness in many variations; this essay will focus on happiness as a result of coordinating the ideal with the real. Since happiness is both a means and an end, it makes sense to realign the ideal with the real rather than the other way round. Another aspect is that happiness becomes quantifiable in positive psychology, and as a result, ultimately possible 11

to generate and control. Ahmed suggests that happiness has become the ultimate performance indicator in terms of governance. Happiness is quantified through rather unscientific means: Who really believes that the Danish people are the Earth’s happiest? This realignment of objectives rather than the transformation of reality produces what Ahmed, following Engels, would refer to as a “false consciousness”. Happiness breeds happiness, and thus if happiness is synonymous with success, it becomes both normative and a duty of all. Normative in the sense that the majority model of happiness is imposed by society since the majority defines what makes an individual happy. It also becomes a duty of the individual to be happy since being unhappy becomes immoral. Ahmed, echoing the Savage in Brave New World, suggests that we instead claim the right to be unhappy. Hope is lost and replaced by an ersatzhappiness predicated on an ideal world identical to the one we inhabit. As Margaret Thatcher put it: There is no alternative. Nigel Thrift’s text “Non-representational Theory: space, politics, affect” from 2007 provides both a further analysis of how this conditioning to happiness functions in what he terms the politics of affect, and an operational territory for an architecture, or politics of hope. The notion of affect is, as Thrift points out, used and defined in various ways. Fundamentally, it is concerned with how the body and mind react in that half-second before we consciously feel or think about something, and how this is transmitted between different individuals. Affect has been modified and conditioned in certain ways throughout modernity, according to Thrift. He uses the training of soldiers as a classic example; soldiers are conditioned to act and react in ways which are not natural to human beings, but in ways that are essential for a larger war-machine. Modern technology has, according to Thrift, made all these miniscule reactions from our bodies in that half-second gap measurable — the camera is one example — and through this, affect has become quantifiable. As it becomes quantifiable, it becomes exploitable and ultimately possible to generate and control. Thrift even uses urban design as one of the areas in which this politics of affect is put to effective use, through playing on the affective registers. It should of course be noted that happiness is not the only affect played upon. We could easily add the awe produced in quasireligious temples of desire for certain objects, for instance BMW-Welt in Munich by Coop Himmelb(l)au. However, the fundamental practice at work is a recoding of the relationship between real and ideal through reforming the understanding of the ideal. 12

The concept of noo-politics offers another potential modality of the present and the quest for happiness. Noo-politics operate as “a power exerted over the life of the mind, including perception, attention and memory” (Hauptmann 2010: 11)— as opposed to Foucault’s concept of bio-politics, which is instead exerted over the life of the body. However, the concept of noo-politics does not replace the concept of bio-politics; according to Maurizio Lazzarato, it is superimposed on top of it, and ultimately commands it. Building on Deleuze’s Control Societies (Deleuze 1995), Lazzarato suggests that noo-politics reorganises and commands other power relations as it is more deterritorialised and more virtual than biopolitics (Lazzarato 2006). Sven-Olov Wallenstein suggests that our minds are “sculpted” through architecture and visual media in general in order to produce certain actions and reaction (Wallenstein 2010), in many ways similar to how Thrift understand the manipulations of affect through the same media. There is thus a double transformation of architecture; one in the expectations where hopes are realigned to reality and ultimately produce happiness (in a bad sense), and another one whereby architecture reflects the majoritarian notion of happiness upon completion. Ultimately, noo-politics could be regarded as a means of production of subjectivity, which, according to Guattari, was the primary mode of production of Integrated World Capitalism (Guattari 2008). If freedom of choice is reduced to selecting between a set number of alternatives, any oppositional struggle is reduced to an act of holding up a distorted mirror, (which remains a mirror, no matter how alternative it may appear). Opposition and power engage in a perpetual cycle of detournement and recuperation. Lazzarato puts it like this: “To confine the outside, to confine the virtual, means neutralising the power of invention and codifying repetition so as to drain it of all power of variation, thereby reducing it to a simple reproduction” (Lazzarato 2006: 176). Here, the outside is that which is other, the alternatives beyond the perpetual distorted mirror. What is left is a system forever reflecting itself. That is not to say that this is one uniform world. Instead, noopolitics operates on the level of desires, producing publics, identified by their choice. The notion of class is no longer relevant in the society of control; however, other forms of segmentarity define territories based on (among other things) desires as formulated by the attempted confinement of any outside. The field of architecture itself is, as always, highly complicit in this realignment. If we dream no further than the possible, we are invariably reproducing what is over and over again, thereby empowering the dominant 13

ideology even further. Architecture has always been fond of images of happiness and contentment, and invariably equates happiness with beauty. Alain de Botton’s book, “The Architecture of Happiness” from 2006 is an illustrative example. To equate beauty with happiness is to abandon hope in a Panglossian embrace of happiness in the form of contentment. In many ways, architecture is akin to positive psychology. Instead of attempting to change the world, the virtuous architect soldiers on with his or her given lot and attempts to create images of happiness through a strange confusion of happiness and beauty. Perhaps instead it would be viable to outline an architecture of discontentment, an architecture of hope instead of happiness. At this point it is essential to elaborate on the rather wide notion of “hope”. There are many different modes of hope. Darren Webb has proposed at least five different forms of hope including patient hope, critical hope, sound hope, resolute hope and transformative hope (Webb 2013). Webb understands hope as “a socially mediated human capacity with varying affective, cognitive and behavioural dimensions” (398). The two modes of hope on which this essay will focus are critical hope and transformative hope. Critical hope seeks to open up the future through resisting what is. This mode of hope concerns resisting the current doxai in the hope that what follows it will be better; it is in other words a mode of hope that aims to open up the future by overcoming the power structures of the present. It concerns itself more with negation of what is than with the formulation of what is to come. Transformative hope is anti-deterministic in that it sees the future as malleable, and seeks to provide a positive other, a positive alternative (Webb 2013). This positive alternative is by no means a totalitarian utopia, but is importantly “other” than what is, aiming to break out of the segmentarity imposed by the dominant ideology and its institutions. An architecture of hope would then operate in the noo-political registers, within the politics of affect. Sven-Olov Wallenstein as well as Jeffrey Kipnis suggest that architecture could work with sensation rather than negation as a critical modality (Kipnis 2005; Wallenstein 2010). Kipnis posits that negation has been at the heart of architectural resistance, and that in order to become relevant, architecture must go beyond simple negation and produce something other — something, he suggests, akin to the soundtrack in a film. The soundtrack aims directly at the register of affect: “New affects as resistance; new affects that construct new audiences, the always necessary, albeit never sufficient, precursor to new alliances, and eventually new regimes” (Kipnis 2005: 108). I would like 14

to add: new hope to a discipline entrenched in negation or complicity to the capitalist society. New affects would, in other words, offer new hope, but in order to offer any hope whatsoever, this architecture must depart from the cycle of detournement and recuperation and offer something other. Further, Thrift perceives the affective as a potential territory of resistance where positive experimentation and hope have a place in attempting to reform society. Thrift proposes an agenda aimed at “a navigation of feeling which goes beyond the simple romanticism of somehow maximizing individual emotions” (Thrift 2007: 188). He goes on to suggest that this must involve several moments. Firstly, “it needs to be placed within a set of disciplinary exercises” (ibid), involving “various forms of channelling and ‘repression’ ” (ibid). Secondly, it will involve “expressive exploration” after Guattari, which involves attempting to form alternatives and subsequently testing these for validity. This is then, thirdly, combined with “a politics of hope” after Ernst Bloch. And hope will invariably involve a discrepancy between the actual-real and the ideal. This discrepancy could perhaps be referred to as the virtual, or the Not-Yet, and it involves a flash of belief that transformation is possible and that there are in fact alternatives. An architecture of hope would address hope in this register, by obscuring the border between the real and the virtual only to violently pull the two apart again and demonstrate both the gap between the two as well as keeping that blurred moment of potentiality lingering, not as a possibility of actuality but as one of hope—in some ways reminiscent of Walter Benjamin’s notion of the dialectical image, but one oriented towards the future that produces a flash of hope rather than a flash of critical understanding (Benjamin 1999). One such project, I would like to argue, is the second mountain of this essay: the Berg in Berlin. Jacob Tigges and Mila envisioned in 2009 the construction of a 1000m tall mountain at the defunct airport of Tempelhof in Berlin. The Berg is famously impossible to construct. The newspaper Tagesspiegel calculated that the construction of the mountain would require 47 000 trucks to deliver 20 tonnes of construction debris daily for a period of over five years to achieve the enormous mass necessary. And then there’s the question of whether the notoriously unstable ground could take such an enormous weight. Even so, the traffic of trucks would clog the Berlin traffic apparatus for years, release untold amounts of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere and create endless problems for the city and the planet. The project could be understood as a critical utopia, an impossible prescription, in the tradition of photomontage as Walter Benjamin and John Heartfield used the medium 15

last century. As such, the Berg was primarily a critical project, opposing of the lack of visions on behalf of the urban plans for the site. It was a project designed as a “placeholder” until something adequately visionary came along. Initially, the Berg was one image in a sea of other computer-generated visualisations of probable and less probable future scenarios. What sets the Berg apart from these was the subsequent inscription into the collective memory that followed. It was as a placeholder that the Berg took on a different dimension; it became an inscription in the collective memory as much as a prescription, what could be referred to as a prescriptive inscription. Through a “critical mythography”, the Berg started appearing on postcards as well as on the walls in a number of bars and shops. The manufactured proofs of this virtual collective memory were disseminated across the city, and still remain plentiful years afterwards. The Berg is an architecture of sensation, providing a positive, if impossible, alternative. The focus here is not primarily on the intention of its creator, but rather what the project communicates, and how. In its second phase, displayed as images of a dream, the project produces a peculiar sensation. Recognition is followed by the realisation that it is not real, that it never will be. Yet it produces a certain discontentment with the perceived lack of visions in present political reality and a certain amount of hope for a future where things could be different. To a great extent it was similar to Fairey’s poster for the Barack Obama campaign. It induced a form of non-prescriptive hope, hope that it is possible, the world could be a better place; in other words, it introduced a utopian hope. This is, however, non-prescriptive hope based on critical hope (in that it criticises the present societal order) more than transformative hope. The hidden quality of these images, along with the postcards, produces a mystery for the uninitiated in a way that a simple image never could. It is the artefacts that make the affectual register come alive in this utopian architectural project. Through hiding and disseminating the project in a rather subversive way, the Berg distinguishes itself from other critical utopian projects in architecture such as those by Superstudio or Archizoom. It is through this praxis that they manage to enter into the “politics of affect”. The sensation of “finding” the mountain in different locations produces its affect of hope. However, “The Berg” turned out to be not as impervious to the practice of recuperation, and before long, similar projects began turning up in places 17

that, like Berlin, were not home to mountains. One such capitalisation on the concept of the impossible mountain and, more importantly, the publicity it generated, was a Dutch proposal for a € 400 000 000 000 mountain of their own, designed by Hoffers Krüger. This is the third mountain. Not only do the dreams of this mountain look remarkably similar to its Berlin counterpart, but the impact which the project had in media is almost identical. According to its creators, the project is in fact a serious proposal for a Dutch mountain in order to accommodate winter sports. It is a recuperation not only of imagery, but of the entire mythography; yet in this case it is a mythography without criticality. It is an appropriation of “The Berg” for entirely different purposes, and the sensations it produces are not of hope, but of the exploitation of hope.

Bibliography Ahmed, Sara (2010), The Promise of Happiness (Durham NC: Duke University Press). Benjamin, Walter (1999), The Arcades Project (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press). Deleuze, Gilles (1995), ‘Societies of Control’, Negotiations: 1972-1990 (New York: Columbia University Press). Guattari, Félix (2008), The Three Ecologies (Bloomsbury: Continuum). Hauptmann, Deborah (2010), ‘Introduction: Architecture & Mind in the Age of Communication and Information’, in D. Hauptmann and W. Neidich (eds.), Cognitive Architecture: From Bio-politics to Noo-politics ; Architecture & Mind in the Age of Communication and Information (Delft: 010 Publishers). Kipnis, Jeffrey (2005), ‘Is Resistance Futile?’, Log, 5, 105-09. Lazzarato, Maurizio (2006), ‘The Concepts of Life and the Living in the Societies of Control’, in Martin Fuglsang and Bent Meier Sørensen (eds.), Deleuze and the social (Deleuze connections; Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Thrift, Nigel (2007), Non-representational theory : space, politics, affect (New York, NY Routledge). Wallenstein, Sven-Olov (2010), ‘Noopolitics, Life and Architecture’, in D. Hauptmann and W. Neidich (eds.), Cognitive Architecture: From Biopolitics to Noo-politics ; Architecture & Mind in the Age of Communication and Information (Delft: 010 Publishers). Webb, Darren (2013), ‘Pedagogies of Hope’, Studies in Philosophy and Education, 32 (4), 397-414.

Conceptual Cluster 3:

Ecologies of Practice

“There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds, and it is characteristic of the system that basic error propagates itself. It branches out like a rooted parasite through the tissues of life, and everything gets into a rather peculiar mess. When you narrow down your epistemology and act on the premise “What interests me is me, or my organization, or my species”, you chop off consideration of other loops of the loop structure.” (Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Minds)

he first half of the first sentence above is used as the opening for Guattari’s The Three Ecologies. Bateson’s cybernetic ideals presumably provided inspiration for Guattari’s three ecologies. There are however fundamental differences. In Cybernetics, the world is constructed around feedback loops in a giant system, and this system strives towards balance. It is a holistic structure encompassing all material aspects of the world, but it is fundamentally a system that focuses on nature (and to a great extent ignores culture) and universalism. While Guattari adopted the notion of ecologies and the interrelated systems, he strove to overcome this technocratic and, in the eyes of Guattari, potentially fatal division between “nature” and “culture”. Instead, it expands the notion of ecologies beyond that of the environment (the material world), and incorporates both subjectivity and social relations. The resulting approach, which he dubs ecosophy, is described as an “ethico-political articulation”. Guattari outlines three ecological registers that form corner stones of ecosophical thinking: the environmental, the ecology of social relations, and the 23

ecology of human subjectivity. The common principle of the three ecologies is “each of the existential Territories with which they confront us is not given as an in-itself, closed in on itself, but instead as a for-itself that is precarious, finite, finitized, singular, singularized, capable of bifurcating into stratified and deathly repetitions or of opening up processually from a praxis that enables it to be made ‘habitable’ by a human project.” The current dominant ideology, referred to by Guattari as Integrated World Capitalism (IWC) is currently producing a dis-equilibrium that ultimately threatens human existence according to Guattari. Attempts to address this dis-equilibrium are invariably undertaken within a single ecology (for example, cybernetics focuses solely on balancing the environment, not on human subjectivity or social relations). IWC is however so integrated in our world, social relations and subjectivity – it is in fact monopolising the production of subjectivity, which leads to homogeneity – that any appropriate response to the capitalist system will have to be transversal, that is, cutting across all three ecologies in order to confront capitalism. In the place of the holistic universal solution of the cybernetic discourse, Guattari is interested in the micropolitics, as opposed to macropolitics. Guattari’s social ecosophy “will consist in developing specific practices that will modify and reinvent the ways in which we live as couples or in the family, in an urban context or at work, etc.” He calls for experimentation, on a micro-social as well as institutional levels for inventing alternatives, for exploring the potential of heterogeneity and the production of subjectivity. The production of subjectivity is central to Guattari’s ecosophical thinking. One of the most problematic and fundamental problems created by IWC, as Guattari understands it, is that it has shifted its focus from the production of goods to the production of sign, syntax, and ultimately subjectivity. Guattari suggests that ecosophy will “target the means of production of subjectivity, that is, of knowledge, culture, sensibility and sociability”. Since capitalism is everywhere, it cannot be resisted from the outside – there is no longer any outside – but must instead be confronted in the cultivation of multitude, of dissensus (as opposed to consensus), and the “singular production of existence”. Guattari propagates micropolitical and microsocial practices resisting homogenization through engaging in processes of heterogenesis (processes of continuous resingularization). “I am not proposing a ready-made model of society here, but simply the acceptance of a complete range of ecosophical components 24

so as to institute, in particular, new systems of valorization.” These systems of valorization go beyond the “abstract labour-time” and “expected capitalist profit”. Instead of replacing one system with another, Guattari advocates “new poles of valorization”. Ecosophy aims to become “a multifaceted movement, deploying agencies and dispositives that will simultaneously analyse and produce subjectivity”. However, in order to evade the perpetual cycles of crises, we need to articulate: “a nascent subjectivity; a constantly mutating socius; an environment in the process of being reinvented”. The way to do so is through the application of transversal tools to install subjectivity in all three ecologies.

Conceptual Cluster 4:

The Theory Toolbox

he three texts analyse the relationship between theory and practice from various perspectives. In extension, it brings up questions as to what is theory and what constitutes practice? In the conversation between Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault they discuss a new relationship between theory and practice. This relationship is “partial and fragmentary”, rather than one being the application of the other. To Deleuze, theory is invariably local, related to a limited field, and subsequently applied in another sphere. Deleuze uses the “relay” to explain how he understands theory and practice are interrelated: “practice is a set of relays from one theoretical point to another, and theory is a relay from one practice to another. No theory can develop without eventually encountering a wall, and practice is necessary for piercing this wall”. Deleuze brings up Foucault’s analysis of penal institutions, where at one point it became necessary for the prisoners to be heard, a form of practice which informed the theory, as a relay to another set of theory rather than as a simple affirmation or application of theory. “The emphasis was altogether different: a system of relays within a larger sphere, within a multiplicity of parts that are both theoretical and practical”. This new relationship between theory and practice is thereby ultimately one where “representation no longer exists; there is only action — theoretical action and practical action, which serve as relays and form networks”. This shift can be compared with Marx proposed in his theses on Feuerbach: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it” (Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, no. 11). Foucault suggests that “theory does not express, translate or serve to apply practice: it is practice”. To Foucault, theory is a “regional system” of the struggle against power. 27

Both Foucault and Deleuze agree that theory is inherently opposed to power [which would suggest that power is opposed to theory?]. Power is here understood as something enigmatic elusive, incomprehensible in totality, only perceivable in its expression, as Foucault puts it: “everywhere that power exists, it is being exercised”, the problem is that in most instances, it is masked, hidden and it is the task of theory to expose these hidden power relations. In Eyal Weizman’s text “Lethal Theory”, critical theory is applied to question the power of the military doxa, a set of beliefs that are dangerously rigid – both to the soldiers themselves and civilians – as Naveh puts it: “we employ critical theory in order to critique the military institution itself ”. If power is understood to be opposed to theory (an e contrario interpretation of the relationship between power and theory elaborated by Foucault and Deleuze), the question becomes: how does the introduction of theory into a system (the military) opposed to theory transform this system? On the surface, the answer is very literal; theory is employed to break down actual walls according to Weizman. Yet, by questioning the military logic, (critical) theory, in extension, must on a different level question power, and how it is exercised. Despite claims of the opposite, “this theory is not married to its socialist ideals” (Weizman), one could argue that making a military establishment start to think rather than recognise, will ultimately transform not only its operational tactics, but also its own subjectivity, and its relation to power.

Conceptual Cluster 9:

Ficto-Criticism

eleuze’s essay ‘Literature and Life’ outlines the philosopher’s principles with regard to literature, its construction and principles. As chance would have it, I have recently been looking at the concept of ‘transcendental empiricism’ as Deleuze explicates it in his first book ‘Empiricism and Subjectivity’, where he analyses David Hume’s empiricism. It strikes me that there is a great similarity between the texts, and it could perhaps be useful to elaborate somewhat on these. In ‘Empiricism and Subjectivity’, Deleuze suggests, building on Hume, that the subject is formed ‘within the given’, as opposed to transcendental idealism with claims of universality. However, Deleuze’s reading of Hume focuses on the invention and belief that would be impossible if we are only the sum of our experiences, and how this can be accounted for by a subject constituted within the given. Invention and belief are thus transcendental qualities, Hume according to Deleuze, saw these as natural, and the question is how they can at the same time be within the given and transcendental. According to Deleuze’s reading, Hume suggested that the subject’s capability of invention and belief is defined by how the mind organises and connects the impressions that constitute the basis of subjectivity. This means that the notion of subjectivity arises in the relations between the images (as a poor metaphor of the way the mind remembers experience) rather than any universal idea(l)s. This, in turn, suggests that each mind becomes individual and unique, as even if two subjectivities share the same experiences, they will organise them differently. 29

Deleuze uses the concept of association to explain how subjects are formed. From association, the mind constructs habits, and these habits form beliefs, based on habits. In ’Literature and Life’, Deleuze posits that writing is not about recounting memories or fantasies, instead ‘the life of things’ is revealed in the syntax, in the arrangement or relations of words. Instead, the writer invents a different people, ‘literature begins only when a third person is born in us that strips us of the power to say “I”’ (p. 3). The production of this other person who does not belong to us, but instead comes to life through language, through syntax, through the invention of a people, this is the task of the fabulating function. There is a similarity here in the formation of a subjectivity in the mind’s relations between the different images, and the literary becomings produced in the relations between words rather than of and by the words themselves: “Syntactic creation or style—this is the becoming of language” (p.5). Subsequently, Deleuze states that ‘The creation of words or neologisms is worth nothing apart from the effects of syntax in which they are developed’ (p. 5). Again, one could potentially argue that there are distinct similarities between how a subject in formed in the mind within the given (or the words and neologisms?) and the relationship between these, their arrangement, or syntax, or, ‘the aim of literature: it is the passage of life within language that constitutes ideas’ (p. 5). To an extent, Joyce would perhaps be close to the ideals Deleuze brings forth, partly because of the rather famous quote: “I’ve been working hard on [Ulysses] all day,” said Joyce. Does that mean that you have written a great deal?” I said.   Two sentences,” said Joyce. I looked sideways but Joyce was not smiling. I thought of Flaubert. “You’ve been seeking the mot juste?” I said.   No,” said Joyce. “I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence.” Joyce is furthermore perhaps one of the most interesting writers within the genre of ficto-criticism, in his take on the structure of Homer’s Odyssey set in everyday Dublin. To Deleuze, the creation of a style or syntax is tantamount to the creation of a language, and Deleuze suggests it is the responsibility of each writer to develop his or her own language. This language becomes almost like a synthetic subjectivity, and it is perhaps here we can find a connection back to the becoming, and to the notion of coming to life, of being born.

Conceptual Cluster 7:

Container Technologies

”What capitalist modernity has done – and this is perhaps its greates sin – is to convince us that the achievement of happiness is a purely private and individual affair. In that sense, capitalist modernity represents the privatization of hope within a system of atomized plenitude.” (Thompson 2012: 38)

eter Sloterdijk argues in the article ”Cell Block, Egospheres, Self-Container” (2007) that the apartment has become one of the prolific spaces of the 20th century. He goes even further and posits that the apartment, the atomic living unit, is formative of the society we inhabit, and a cell where the individual ”devotes himself to the cultivation of his relationship o himself” (90). Sloterdijk contrasts this with the monk who, although he inhabited a cell was instead focused on the unity of man with God, whereas in the studio apartment, man focuses on the unity with him [or her]self. This is an atomisation of the lifeworld, where families and other ancient living patterns are shattered and where the dogma is that each individual must have an individual living unit (room or apartment). These ”lifeworld atoms” are then connected in isolated form to what used to be called a neighbourhood, but which now only consists of the principle of co-isolation, of sharing nothing but the dividing walls. ”At night, as he lay beside his sleeping wife, he would often wake from an uneasy dream into the suffocating bedroom, conscious of each of the 999 other apartments pressing on him through the walls and ceiling, forcing the air from his chest.” (Ballard 2012) 33

Society is these days so integrated in capsule thinking that we, in the urban context, only know how to relate to each other as we would within singular capsule. For instance, Times square, NYC, is an extension of a living room— that is, people sit around, watch TV and actively engage with each other, defining a common ground through the television programmes on offer. It is in other words a format of connecting to your fellow man through a private ritual, the rituals of our capsules, as opposed to those of public behaviour, something which has admittedly been in decline from quite some time. A similar form of public capsule would be Superkilen, a newly opened public space in Copenhagen. Contrary to common design logic, Superkilen is equipped with what could be argued as conversation pieces, objects trouvés, objects gathered from around the world of the inhabitants of the local neighbourhood that supposedly will forge a new identity, a local identity. The conversation pieces are more or less the equivalent of any such identity creating objects that one collects on one’s mantelpiece. The conclusion here is that instead of the empty heart of public space, to allude to Claude Lefort, we are creating a public built around everyday monuments, monuments that eventually become normative, that creates a public united by objects, or media. Space becomes secondary, and the public becomes another capsule. This would in extension indicate an expansion of the scale of the capsules, although the public capsules are not delineated per se, they become territorial through their intended programme, through the functional programme they are inscribed with. As such, they become spaces that instead of providing a public sphere invite into a larger private sphere, with private protocol. One could then ask, whether this extended private sphere in the end will not evolve into a new public, a new public sphere. The social has in the end entirely has encompassed the political. The private has engulfed the public. Ballard, J.G. (2012), High-Rise: A Novel (Liveright). Sloterdijk, Peter (2007), ‘Cell Block, Egospheres, Self-Container’, Log, (10), 89-108. Thompson, Peter (2012), ‘What Is Concrete about Ernst Bloch’s ‘Concrete Utopia’?’, in Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Keith Tester (eds.), Utopia : social theory and the future (Farnham ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate), 33-46. 35