DYSTOPIA AND HABITUS: A CRITIQUE OF ARCHIGRAM
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DYSTOPIA AND HABITUS: A CRITIQUE OF ARCHIGRAM
“Utopia… lies between the possible and the impossible… [It] is not perfectibility neither is it flawless, complete, final, total or ultimate; it does not demand unceasing and undiluted virtue; it heralds, neither salvation nor some form of ultimate emancipation...” 1
1. Claeys, Gregory. 2011. Searching for Utopia: the History of an Idea. 1st ed. London: Thames and Huston.
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DYSTOPIA AND HABITUS: A CRITIQUE OF ARCHIGRAM Utopian Architecture often has an embodied temporal and qualitative aspect whereby its aspirations depend upon the context of its epoch. Different ideas of utopia arise throughout the ages but nevertheless, it must be noted that utopia often cannot exist with dystopia - they are extremes on the same socio-political spectrum. Bourdieu’s concept of Habitus explains how the cultural capital of a given epoch ultimately affect how the masses act and behave and thus their utopian ideals. However, as entrenched as these utopian ideas are in their time, they can often create unforeseeable repercussions. Archigram’s “Instant City” or “A Walking City” imagines a futuristic utopian way of life post the atrocities of WWII. However, a dystopian scenario can arise whereby the placelessness of being and its socialist ideals can pose societal constraints on its individuals. In this essay I will discuss the sensibilities of dystopia / utopia and Habitus through the example of Archigram’s illustrations of the “Instant City” and the “A Walking City”. Archigram was an avant garde group of young British architects who emerged from the Architecture Association (AA) in Britain during the 1960’s. The group consisted of Peter Cook, Ron Herron, Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton and Michael Webb. They garnered fame through their critiques of the architecture world with their proposals of radical change, often tending towards neo-futurism and pro-consumerism. I will particularly dissect my primary concept through Gregory Claerys’ notion of dystopia / utopia and my secondary concept through Pierre Bourdieu’s “Habitus”. Gregory Claeys (18 August 1953 - present) explores the different iterative notions of utopia and dystopia in Part I to Part III of his book: “Dystopia: a natural history: a study of modern despotism, its antecedents, and its literary diffractions ” (published in 2017). Pierre Bourdieu (1 August 1930 23 January 2003) first published his writings on habitus in his book “Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste” (published in 1979).
The images specifically chosen are Archigram’s “Instant City” or “A Walking City” which imagines a futuristic utopian way of life post the atrocities of WWII. Further in the essay, I will explore how the idea of habitus begets or perhaps shapes dominant utopian ideals in their eras - influencing individuals and collectives in different ways creating a feedback loop from past to present.
Fig. 2 “Instant City” - Archigram, 1964 The distinction between utopia and dystopia can be a tenuous one. When one conjures an image of utopia, one may think about lounging on a beach somewhere in the Carribean sipping cocktails, watching the waves and enjoying the sun. Claeys addresses this common fantasy and asserts that while this may seem to be a picture of utopia from one’s perspective, it may not hold true to everyone else in that scenario. In the above scenario, for example, the waiter who serves the cocktails most likely does not share the same sentiment. He or she may, most likely, feel subjugated in this situation. It is, therefore, pertinent to note that dystopia and utopia are not mutually exclusive to one another.
Fig. 1 “A Walking City” - Archigram, 1964
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DYSTOPIA AND HABITUS: A CRITIQUE OF ARCHIGRAM They exist on the same spectrum or plane. Indeed, the origin of the two words enlighten us to their function. The origin of the word utopia comes from the Ancient Greek words: “ou” and “topus” meaning literally “no place”. The word was coined by Sir Thomas More and first mentioned in Western literature when he published his eponymous book “Utopia” in 1516. Meanwhile dystopia originates from the Greek words “dus” and “topus” meaning a diseased, bad or chaotic place. Claeys contends that utopia was a concept used since the beginning of times. In his book “, “Dystopia: a natural history: a study of modern despotism, its antecedents, and its literary diffractions”, he summarises the history of dystopian ideas and fears in the West. Claeys enforces that: “... we need visions of alternatives - even utopias - to delineate which paths suggest the greater and the lesser evils. We need the long view, not the short termism which politics and the desire for ever-more-instant gratification force upon us”2. Forming ideas of utopia is, therefore, a natural coping mechanism for human beings. We need to idealise a utopia and set one as a goal to strive towards. Simultaneously, dystopia serves an equally important but differing purpose. It is used as a mechanism of warn us of possible scenarios that could arise if we potentially did not actively seek out a solution. Through Part I to Part III, he illustrates a multitude of examples of such.
In Part I Chapter two of his book “Monstrosity and the Origin of Dystopian Space”, the first appearance of a dystopia occurs with the metaphorical Christian Apocalypse. Humanity has wronged God and coerced Him to punish humanity for its flaws and immorality. God then casts a flood to purge the Earth and begin anew. God attempts to restore a lost sense of utopia but in order to do so needs to bring about the fall of humanity. In Part II Chapter three “The Caveman’s Century”, Claeys continues into the Medieval Age. By then, dystopia took a different face in that of monsters, witches and malevolent spirits. He describes an age paranoid of the terra incognita (or the unknown world) where the concept of the Devil rose to prominence in the culture. The concept of Heaven and Hell held a grip over the minds of the people. In Part II Chapter four “Totalitarianism from Hitler to Pol Pot”, Claeys mentions the rise of the twentieth century totalitarian dystopia. He speaks about the rule of Hitler and Stalin and their quests to create a utopia at the cost of innocent millions of lives. The Nazi regime and the Holocaust are the primary examples used by Claeys. He makes the important distinction of how one side seemed righteously justified in their atrocities and the other side unfairly persecuted to near extinction. For the former, a utopian ideal is pursued at a huge and uncompromising cost while the latter faces a twisted form of dystopia where there their annihilation is justified by factors out of their control like the colour of their eyes, hair, skin and their heritage. The supposed utopian pursuit by the Nazi regime left one of the most devastating moments in human history in the form of Auschwitz and the Gulag. In Part III, Claeys goes on to describe the mounting fear surrounding capitalism and the rise of the machines in society. He recounts that after World War I, there is a rise in the worship of technology and mass production. Tales of capitalist ventures run rampant in the Western World and becomes deeply entwined in the American Dream. Literary authors such as George Orwell in his book “1984” (published in 1949), or Aldous Huxley in his book “Brave New World” (published in 1932) paint the dystopian climate that could come from this new found cultural revelation.
“Humanity, it was feared, was being supplanted by mechanism. After 1945, visions of Apocalypse often involved atomic weapons, Robots, surveillance, and corporate domination also loomed ever larger.”2
Fig. 3 Castle on the Hill The image depicts a castle on a hill of discarded rubbish. It tries to illustrate that Dystopia and Utopia walk hand in hand. A object of luxury and wealth is juxtaposed with a scene of filth, desolation and poverty.
Claeys, Orwell and Huxley pose questions such as: Are we losing our autonomy to an elite few in society, to robots and machines? Are we being enslaved to the system? Has our technological pursuit of utopia
2. Claeys, Gregory. 2017. Dystopia: A Natural History: A Study Of Modern Despotism, Its Antecedents, And Its Literary Diffractions. 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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DYSTOPIA AND HABITUS: A CRITIQUE OF ARCHIGRAM created a monstrosity that ultimately enslaves us instead of liberating us? Claeys postulates that throughout history, our pursuit of utopia has caused unforseen dystopian circumstances to arise or come at the expense of others. In each era, the ideals of utopia changes in response to the current or previous context. Thus utopia and dystopia are cyclical by nature. This cyclical nature of ideas can be aptly explained by Bourdieu’s concept of Habitus. Pierre Bourdieu coined the term “habitus” and first introduced it in his book entitled “Distinction: a social critique of the judgement of place” (published in 1979). Bourdieu asserts that habituses are sets of socialized norms or tendencies that guide behavior and thinking in the collective or the individual. It acts as the driving force which influences identity and agency. The habitus describes how traits are engendered in an individual and influenced by that individual’s conditions of existence. Determining an individual’s inherent disposition and outlook on life. Bourdieu contends that Habitus is attained through socialization. It is like a “fish in water” (fig. 4).
Fig. 4 - Fish in Water The image depicts prehistoric fishes swimming in the desert sky. It refers to the idea of Habitus being a like “fish in water”. Effortlessly and seamlessly thriving in its time. The images tries to conjure the ghosts of these fishes in their home that was once covered in water a long time ago. The metaphor alludes to how an individual’s habitus allows them to take to the world as easily as fish in the ocean - swimming naturally and almost intuitively. Such behaviour, habitus prompts, is already integrated within oneself from an early time. Bourdieu distinguishes three main forms of Habitus: habitus of collective and the individual, the embodied habitus and the habitus as an interplay between the past and present.
The first form of habitus acts as a multi influencing factor in the collective and in the individual. While the notion of people behaving on their own is true, the individual also displays similarity to the mass he or she belongs to. Habitus of class argues that social classes in society tend towards similar lifestyle dispositions and goals. Habitus is class seems to suggest “a degree of uniformity”3. Such that “...the subject is not the instantaneous ego of a sort of singular cognito, but the individual trace of an entire collective history”4. Bourdieu infers that one may not seem as autonomous as one expects. Rather, his or her own habitus acts as a “compilation of collective and individual trajectories”3 which define how they act and behave. Thus, habitus is a multi-dimensional concept . On the other hand, Bourdieu concedes that no individual is a carbon copy of another. He states that “... just as no two individual histories are identical so no two individual habituses are identical.”5. They, therefore possess qualities which align them with their collective but they are formed based on their own unique life experiences. Furthermore, habitus is also claimed as a form of becoming. Not only is habitus limited to how to body acts in the social world but it includes “...the social world... in the body”6. Thus habitus acts as a form of embodiment for the individual. The habitus embodiment is expressed in ways such as “...standing, speaking, walking and thereby of feeling and thinking”7. How one gestures, speaks and the movement of one’s body in space is influenced by the culture one has espoused in oneself. Habitus is like:
“...a socialised body. A structured body, a body which has incorporated the immanent structures of a world or of a particular sector of that world - a field - and which structures the perception of that world as well as action in that world.”8 hrough unconscious learned behaviour or imitation of one’s surroundings, one adopts the body language akin to that of his or her collective. Habitus is constantly being modified. The third form of habitus that Bourdieu describes is a habitus that acts as an interplay between the past and present. An individual’s habitus is pliable, able to be changed depending on what’s going on in their lives. Habitus can be a product of early childhood experiences; it is largely shaped by “socialization within the family and it is continually being restructured by individuals’ encounters with the outside world”3. It can be said that habitus ultimately reflects one’s social position and
3. Reay, Diane. “’It’s All Becoming a Habitus’: Beyond the Habitual Use of Habitus in Educational Research.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 25, no. 4 (2004): 43144. www.jstor.org/stable/4128669. 4. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Matthew Adamson. 1990. In Other Words: Essays Towards A Reflexive Sociology. 1st ed. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 5. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Richard Nice. 1995. Sociology In Question: Theory, Culture And Society. 1st ed. London: Sage Publications. 6. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline Of A Theory Of Practice. 1st ed. New York: Cambridge University Press. 7. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Richard Nice. 2014. The Logic Of Practice. 1st ed. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press. 8. Bourdieu, Pierre. 2004. Practical Reason. 1st ed. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press.
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DYSTOPIA AND HABITUS: A CRITIQUE OF ARCHIGRAM and becomes the generator of responses one adopts when exposed to their social conditions. Bourdieu claims that:
“ The habitus acquired in the family is at the basis of the structuring of school experiences… the habitus transformed by the action of the school itself diversified, is in turn at the basis of all subsequent experiences… and so on, from restructuring to restructuring”9. Therefore habitus is an ever pervasive concept. The amalgam of these different forms of habituses ultimately influence an individual and determine his or her views. Even being received on a larger scale, it affects predominant thought of its times and shifts thought in fields such as the Arts, humanities and even mass culture itself.
Fig. 5 Mirror within a mirror The image refers to a quote from Pierre Bourdieu which goes as follows, “the world encompasses me (me comprend) but I comprehend it (je le comprends) precisely because it comprises me. It is because this world has produced me, because it has produced the categories of thought that I apply to it, that it appears to me as self-evident.”
As universal as it is, it is, therefore, unsurprising to note that utopia / dystopia and habitus does not only pertain to social behaviours. Parallels can be drawn in the realm of Architecture and architectural thought. Similarly to how ideas naturally give way to other emerging ideas through ages, movements in Architecture also act in a cyclical manner. Demanding change at particular instances in time. It is at this point of the essay, I will explore the concept of dystopia and habitus in relation to the Archigram’s “Instant City” and “A Walking City”.
“Instant City” and “A Walking City” was introduced in 1964 during the cusp of a bohemian movement in Art and Architecture. The drawing conveys a very technological ideal future post the destruction of World War II. The collection of drawings depict collages of pop art juxtaposed with high tech machinery. In many of their collages, they proposal is an assembly of transportable structures that can be disassembled and reassembled. Their rise coincided with the strong belief that the Architecture world needed to innovate and keep apace with the technological advancements of the time. Archigram sought to create a technological utopia which would capitalise on the pioneering technological advancements whilst simultaneously trying to emancipate people from the status quo and its mundanity. The “Instant City” is a concoction of pop art, hyper-media stimulation and pleasure-seeking that could be used to tour provincial towns. In the “Instant City visits Bournemouth”, several hot air balloons float above a coastal scene dropping various screens. The screens (as depicted as pop art collages) depict various movie stars and fashion icons of the 60’s. Some screens become billboards along a winding path down to the beach while another bigger screen is deployed on the beach sand acting as an impromptu movie screen. A crowd of people is seen gathering around and more people seem enticed by the spontaneous arrival of the “Instant City” and walk towards the beach. In the distance, hot air balloons appear to descend, with people alighting. An inflatable object is being blown up which the onlooker assumes is a portable architectural space of events. In another one of Archigram’s image entitled: “A Walking City”, set in a future New York, giant robots would walk over water and land connecting with other giant machines to create one big hub just like a city. Both concepts are placed in the distant future where the world has been ravaged by war. In “A Walking City”, Herron paints a scenario where the citizens of the world needed a refuge. His suggestion was designed to be a simple way to survive on the surface whilst avoiding the nuclear damage but also deconstructing the regular way of life. By creating moving cities, Herron proposed that these mobile giants could bring resources and urban development to wherever necessary. Archigram’s “Instant City” and the “A Walking City” were the utopian answer to much about the problems afflicting the Architecture world at the time. The habitus of that era is expressed in the strong desire to incorporate technology in Architecture. In an era where huge technological advancements were made in airplanes, trains and spaceships, Archigram sets out to rectify the Architecture world and envision it among the forefront alongside these other fields. One would be able to argue that Bourdieu’s concept
9. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loïc J. D Wacquant. n.d. An Invitation To Reflexive Sociology. 1st ed. Chicago, Ill.: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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DYSTOPIA AND HABITUS: A CRITIQUE OF ARCHIGRAM of the past and present habitus comes to play at this point in time. It seems that, in Archigram’s case, the context of their times - with the advancements in technology, catalysed their motive to change their industry. It is unsurprising to find that others felt the same and resonated so much with Archigram. People could imagine that life could indeed be rebuilt in form of a technological and social utopia. In their pro-consumeristic, and neo-futuristic ideals, Archigram urged their audience to just throw out the old traditions and begin afresh. Although, its portrayal of their utopia seems whimsical solution and far flung from much realism, Archigram contends that walking bodies of architecture can be an answer to the scarcity of resources or resource conservation in the backdrop of the devastation of World War II. Advancements in technology can be employed to encourage the sharing of resources. Why couldn’t architecture be mobile? Why do people have to be confined to one particular region of the planet? Events, attractions and even architecture can tour around instead of being in one place. In doing so, they could reshape a culture where resources are shared uniformly amongst everyone. However, the technological utopia that Archigram imagined may spawn darker and more sinister complications. As Claeys asserts dystopia and utopia exist on the same spectrum. Like the example of the cocktail waiter on the beach, while it may seem idealistic and utopian on one side, the sentiment may not be shared by all. Parallels of Archigram’s ideals can be drawn with to an Orwellian or Huxleyan dystopia. The idealistic images portrayed by Archigram blurs the line between human and nonhuman. In the “Instant City”, the environment produced by Archigram was like a playground. Entertainment and events could be dropped into a town from a zeppelin or hot air balloon above. In this scenario, Hedonism and pleasure run rampant. The itinerant nature of these walking cities can create a sense of placelessness. One may even suspect that overall there is something inhuman about how technology has infiltrated and overtaken our lives - creating a dystopia. Indeed, the technological utopia conjured by Archigram came in response to balant need for the architecture world to keep apace. The change imagined could be seen as fundamentally destroying the fabric of being. Bourdieu’s idea of habitus would be under assault. A sense of place is fundamentally entwined with the habitus. According to Bourdieu. The people around you shape who you act and the values you adopt. The core values of Archigram’s world come in the form of technology worship, hedonism and excess. One would question: to what extent would technology dominate our lives in such a scenario? What would the itinerant nature of living do to our cultural identity and sense of belonging? What sort of purpose would amount from
ever-present pleasure seeking and hedonistic indulgence? One would seriously assess whether this cultural climate is adequate to exist in let alone raise the next generation in. Therefore Archigram’s intention is misplaced. Their endeavours to liberate and innovate can impinge upon the very fabric of humanity. Ultimately, dystopia and utopia exist on the same spectrum. While a set of utopian ideals can prove to be beneficial to one party it may infringe on the freedoms or values of another. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus can inform how these ideals are created within a collective or the individual. Habitus affects in a multitude of ways and forms. Shaping our outlook, identity and affecting our agency. Archigram’s “Instant City” and “A Walking City” demonstrate both these concepts well. The values held by Archigram are generated from the habitus of their time. They sought to address the needs and fallibility of their contemporaries and try to construct a technological utopia. However, the actuality of doing so, may raise a series of compilations that contradict their utopian aims. “Instant City” and “A Walking City” evoke a sense of placelessness, hedonism and excess which can erode the very fundamental aspects of the human condition and our habituses.
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