nism & the Political Body Leah Kyllo - Chris Sparrow - David Correa / October 29, 2010
The Cave An adaptation of Plato’s Allegory in Clay
Woman The allegory of the cave illustrates how according to Plato, what we see is only a refmection of the archetypical. The signi- fjer is then placed into a dichotomy with the signifjed.
Western Ideology logocentrism Hierarchy of power: It is by looking at the logocentric re- lationship that has been established ordinate subordinate between the concept of Man vs Wom- signifjed signifjer an that is easy to understand the clear positive negative hierarchical bias that is presented to- good evil wards women. presence absence real fjction The dual relationship in which is pre- sented formulates the primacy of one internal accommodation/ form over the other and establishes the nec- (function/ form) essary condition of women as “other” . man woman One of the main issue with establish- ing arguments on the basis of dichoto- mies is that it also further negates the existence of “all others”
Certain aspects of culture, politics and economics, particularly capital- Framing ideologies and markets in this ism have marketed their products and manner negates the existence of all others services by defjning markets based on dichotomies. Heidegger insists that Western phi- Democrats Republicans losophy has consistently privileged Natural Artifjcial that which is, or that which appears, Liberals Conservative and has forgotten to pay any attention Human Cyborg to the condition for that appearance. Straight Gay In other words, presence itself is privi- leged, rather than that which allows The Whore The Virgin presence to be possible at all
The other Ideologies “The enterprise of returning ‘strategically’ , ‘ideally’ , to an origin or to a priority thought to be simple, intact, normal, pure, standard, self-identical, in order then to think in terms of derivation, complication, deteriora- tion, accident, etc. All metaphysicians, from Plato to Rousseau, Descartes to Husserl, have proceeded in this way, conceiving good to be before evil, the positive before the negative, the pure before the impure, the simple before the complex, the essential before the ac- cidental, the imitated before the imitation, etc. And this is not just one metaphysical gesture among others, it is the metaphysical exigency, that which has been the most constant, most profound and most potent” Jaques Derrida “The connection between the sig- nifjer and the signifjed is arbitrary.” --Ferdinand de Saussure
What is the impact of this repressed “others” ? Western Ideology: None If we accept the notion that what we know of Architecture (the writing or signifjer) exists independently of the concept (Archetype, signifjed), the fact that we have projected a male body is only one of many misrepresentation and as such it can not afgect what ar- chitecture is (signifjer) and can be?
Modern Ideology: If the logocentric and anthropomor- phic discourse has been shaping ar- chitecture for so long therefore it has afgected what our preconceptions of what architecture is (the signifjed). In this case all the repressed, the “oth- ers” must start to inform the dis- course of architecture . Will children inform architectural dis- course? will their relationship to body (which difgers from an adult) be ac- counted for?
Post-Modern: The idea of a dichotomy between male and female bodies no longer fjt the discourse, architecture and the city are no longer anthropo- morphized. The “others” appear as multiple sexual, gender, social and economical identities that are em- braced as part the idea of plurality in architecture.
Post-Modernism however is not a co- hesive ideology, other questions on body arise in relation to the emer- gence of the repressed, “other” per- ceptions of relationships to the world need to be analyzed from the perspec- tive of the asexual, the cyborg, the virtual and the socially excluded . All of this discourses need to be heard and understood as their body and ex- istence is fjnally acknowledged.
Feminism in Architecture
the repressed So the question arises as to what this “others” are. The third way of Femi- nism addresses this “other” negated existences as it is not as concerned with just women as it is with the equality among all genders, sexes, sexual orientations and race
endpoints the cyborg the other
“dislocating the hierarchy of interior and exterior (space) that pre-empts vision” --Peter Eisenman Visions Unfolding Eisenman “shattering vision”
sufgrage superfjcial mitigation of domi- nance through apertures in the previously hard boundaries be- tween identities male dominance apertures in boundaries
“Young women, I would say, and please listen, for the peroration is beginning, you are, inmy opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance.” --Virginia Woolf A Room of One’s Own Virginia Woolf
“the cage door had been opened but the canary had refused to fmy out. The conclusion was that the cage door ought never to have been opened, because canaries are made for captivity; the suggestion of an alternative had only confused and saddened them” --Germaine Greer The Female Eunuch Germaine Greer
second wave radical inversion of dominance through strong identifjcation within gender and strong opposition without male dominance female dominance
“Women have very little idea of how much men hate them” --Germaine Greer The Female Eunuch The Female Eunich, cover
essentialism sexuality is essential identity convergence, defjnition universal system (naturalism) identity contrast identity natural system
transition queer theory the natural, universal system of es- sentialism creates multiple “others“ undescribed by this system. Collec- tively, the pressures of these others are the forces of collapse of second wave feminism collapse of identity natural system through the other
existentialism “God is dead” --Jean-Paul Sartre Situations I humanist, local system; each entity choses meaning
structuralism language is a third order which relys on binary opposition to structure society. there is an essence to sexu- ality, however it is not natural but created, and as such is not universal and not concrete the structure of society is creted by society and thus unfjxed
queer theory Homosexuality --Michel Foucault The History of Sexuality “Lesbians are not women” --Monique Wittig The Myth of Woman heterosexual construct homosexual construct
third wave post-structuralism when binary oppositions can be identifjed as dominant or hierarchi- cal, they can begin to dissolve male domiance agender
“Man is dead” --Michel Foucault The Order of Things
c y borg fe m inis m , the c y borg, and architecture
“When Man TM is on the Menu” c y borg b
preconceptions “Like Onco m ouse TM , both of the rabbits in the Logic General as are c y borgs - co m pounds of the organic, tecnical, my thical, te x tual, and politcal -” - Donna Harawa y TM is on the Menu - When Man c y borgs in m edia
fe m inis m ? ?
A C y borg Manifesto: Science, Technolog y , and Socialist Fe m inis m in the Late 20th Centur y “At the center of my ironic faith, my blasphe my , is the i m age of the c y borg.” - Donna Harawa y - C y borg Manifesto Donna Harawa y
c y borg techno-science c y borg m ale fe m ale c y borg construct
blurred boundaries “The c y borg is a creature in a post- gender world; it has no truck with bise x ualit y ,pre-oedipal s ym biosis, unalienated labor, or other seductions to organicwholeness” - Donna Harawa y - C y borg Manifesto “blurred boundaries”
fractured fe m inis m
afnit y
we x ner center Peter Eisen m an: We x ner Center - Colu m bus Ohio
we x ner center Peter Eisen m an: We x ner Center - Colu m bus Ohio
c y borg se m iotics Representation Si m ulation Organis m biotic co m ponent Ph y siolog y co mm unication engineering Reproduction Replication Organic se x role specialization Opti m al genetic strategies Public / private Citizenship Nature / Nurture Fields of Difgerence Se x Genetic Engineering Labour Robotics Mind Artifjcial Intelligence
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