Haven't learned anything from 1973 recently? HAH!

The work of French philosopher Georges Bataille has always baffled me, if I am to be totally honest. He is supposed to have had immense influence upon the leading figures of French thought in the post-war era—luminaries like Jacques Lacan, Michel de Certeau and others. As interpreted by friends like the eminent Jeremy Biles (see above), I have found his ideas stimulating. However, Bataille's writings themselves mix economic thought, eroticism, aesthetics and anthropological observations in ways that I always find inscrutable, at best. So, when I happened across Denis Hollier's book Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille, which promises to bring Bataille's writings to bear upon the problem of architecture, I was duly interested.



One important caveat: Hollier's book was written in the early 1970s, and the text is an unmistakable product of that era of high-flying poststructuralist fireworks. However, when read nearly forty years later—and in translation—Hollier's endless indulgences of wordplay, his appeals to the slipperiness of language against meaning and against itself ... well, they feel both turgid and completely unsurprising. So, if you're not in the mood to relive, say, 1974 in Comp Lit at Yale (and I was not), what follows is more or less an account of what the book has to say about architecture and specifically Bataille's antagonism to it.



Hollier begins by noting the anti-architectural trend in French post-war thought, most familiar to us now in the work of Michel Foucault, but also present in that of Bataille. But, where Foucault's privileged instance of panoptic, penal architecture is hidden in the coercive action it inflicts, Bataille's architecture is extroverted—publicly visible as a monument of the ruling order's violent power. Interestingly, Hollier notes that architecture, specifically the thirteenth century Cathedral of Rheims, was the subject of Bataille's earliest publication. Written in the wake of the first world war when the cathedral in this, Bataille's native city, was bombed, the piece is an idealistic vision of how the destroyed building could be recuperated in a kind of spiritual communion.

The main thrust of the book is how Bataille's subsequent thought effectively negates the basic moves of this earliest piece. First, against the idealization proposed in this early essay, Bataille's thinking resonates with his now-famous notion of "informe" (or formless), whereby entities are released from their high-minded trappings and brought back down to earth like a spider crushed on the ground. Secondly, architecture as understood in his Rheims essay was a crystallization of the very orders of stability and systematicity that much of Bataille's work would subsequently combat against. Presumably echoing Bataille, Hollier claims that architectural metaphors in language are hallmarks of ideological programs in societies: "There is [...] no way to describe a system without resorting to the vocabulary of architecture." So Bataille would himself observe, the appearance of architectural forms or motifs in other branches of culture is a sure sign of a prevailing taste for authority.



Yet, what Bataille seems to propose is not an architecture that repudiates this linkage to violence sovereignty. Rather, his opposition (at least as I understood it) was to the concealment of this violence behind architecture. Thus, Bataille contrasts the architecture of the bureaucratic Inca empire wherein sacrifices would be performed secreted away in the bowels of stultifying, deadening buildings with that of the Aztecs. On the tops of specially-constructed pyramids, Bataille claims, subjects would be sacrificed to the sovereign rulers—released from profane, worldliness and liberated into a communal spectacle of sacred violence. Aztec pyramids thus refuse the paralysis of death—the literal stabilization and endless reproduction of social order—performed normally by architecture in its malevolent, bureaucratic forms.

The book then concludes with an extremely long chapter of nearly one hundred pages, entitled "The Caesarean" who major themes are eroticism and the rupturing, spasmodic experiences that Bataille privileges, theorizes and supposedly achieves in his writings. Although architecture is almost entirely absent from this discussion, science very definitely moves into the foreground as the equivalent "bad object." Like architecture, science here is a tool of patriarchal order and what would be called "the rationalization of the world picture." Drawing from Alexandre Koyré, Hollier's account of science is one that negated the grounds of religion and yet put nothing its place. The concluding set of claims returns to the title, making the primal scene of the first "caesarean" as a typological moment where the birth of the ruling order comes at the price of the death of the mother. Because science is the attendant of this imperial power, it is always the instigator of this merciless rationalization.

However, so Hollier argues through a wide-ranging series of discussions, Bataille's work also suggests a second kind of caesarean—one that would decapitate the father, lop off the king's head in a spectacle of solar radiance evoking the shards of light claimed to be represented by pyramids. This kind of blinding solar vision is that which Bataille variously associates with eating feces, staring into anuses, vulvas and so on. Indeed, in a long digression, Hollier takes us through a range of longue duree fantasies of the pineal gland, what Bataille would call the "pineal eye," and the solar anus as a kind of "third eye" that doesn't look at the orders of the world but only at sacred profanity—staring upward through a ruptured skull at the sun. In a word: win!

Spanish Castle Magic

"Where have you been, Old Ken?" Well, this question is one with which yours truly has been bombarded of late. Sadly, no easy answer lies ready at my disposal. Here and there I have been, learning about recent research on the growth of scientific knowledge in early modern Spain; mixing it up with social scientists in the home of the Liberty Bell; penning curious apercues about early modern iconoclasm; or reading strange scripts in a library designed by Sir Christopher Wren. So, the question where have I been is perhaps best answered in the negative, with an assertion of where I have not been: seated, as I am now, and ready to blog.

Well, perhaps at this point my travels might appear to have produced more of a drought than the fecund informational harvest for which you might pine. But, rest assured that I have managed to squirrel away quite a store of observations and insights, as is only right for a man from a place. So, without further ado, let me take the bull by the horns (an apt enough phrase for an Iberian adventure) and share some Spanish musing with you.



Having flown into Madrid, which we see in the first photograph above, I quickly made my way south east, accompanied by Senor Byron de la Panouse, a famous anthropologist who you will have met from an earlier excursion to Oxford. Our destination? Valencia, home of "the world's most delicious oranges," which are (if I recall correctly) not native to the region but an 18th-19th century import, first grown as decoration. In any case, Valencia (whose cathedral we see photographed above by night) has a well-preserved medieval quarter, complete with a cloth market in the Gothic style.



However, along the city's south-eastern flank - - indeed, in the dry bed of a now-diverted river which once ran between the ancient city and the sea - - is a brand new "City of Science and the Arts" designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.



Although the site is still under construction, Calatrava's buildings are, in the humble opinion of this tourist, something spectacular. For one, they fuse a number of formal elements that refer as much to Valencia's situation along the Mediterranean as to delights of science.

Consider, for example, this massive leviathan of a building, which rise from the brine in the photograph above, its gaping mouth open as if straining a gulp of water with the balleen-like windows. While whales of such size might be slightly out of sorts in the water of the nearby Mediterranean, the building's form certainly evokes the massive skeletons of watery mammals one sees in natural-history galleries such as the Jardin des Plantes of Paris. Vauchement chouette!



References to marine life continues on throughout the complex, as buildings seem to sprout gills, flippers, and herring-bone patterns in their construction.


In case you didn't get enough of that magic, here's a little close up.



Perhaps the most delightful pescatorial reference, though, is the very skin of the complex which is coated - - buildings, water-features, and benches alike - - with broken ceramic tile. As a result, the refracted sunlight produces amazing shimmering effects as its plays across these fish scale-like surfaces.



Always a fan of animals as you know Old Ken to be, you can just imagine my delight as we stumbled across the spectacular fauna of a street festival in the small town of Castello, which lies up the coast from Valencia.



I cannot report exactly what the plot of this little skit was, but a troupe of actors with really amazing costumes had commandeered a town square and treated us to a performance with a bee keeper (who seems to feature in neither of these photographs) attempting to reign in some wily bees. The gigantic, inflatable spider was a welcome, if slightly mysterious, addition. Spanish? Yes. Castle? Well, it was held in the town of Castello. Magic? And how!

A Stroll Around Greenwich

As it has been almost a year since Old Ken moved to Greenwich, I figured it might be a good time to re-acquaint myself with some of my environs. While the saying "no time like the present" might be bandied about for various suspect reasons, in this case it was quite true. For, not only is today gloriously sunny and auspiciously autumnal, but it is the first day of a weekend-long "open house" in London-town. This means that folks are allowed in to places normally closed to the public for free.



Well, I started my stroll down through Greenwich market. If you are ever looking for some over-priced rubbish or something to give as a gift to someone you don't really like, this is the place!

Feeling slightly peckish (that is "hungry" to y'all on the other side of the pond), I got myself a delicious berry smoothie and picked my way through the crowd, stumbling over baby carriages as I went. I am not sure if I have posted any of my rantings about the incredible volume of baby carriages clogging London's sidewalks. I have been told that this is partially because people here use their cars less than in the States, and so if you want to have a day in the city with a small child (or even just to go grocery shopping), the stroller is a must. I am slightly skeptical about this; I think it has more to do with the absolute idolatry of children in this country. But, let us leave this as a topic to detain us another time.


Suffice to say, though, as I left the market I was glad to see a trash can that clearly shared my sentiment about children. For, as you can see, it seems to have eaten the child and then discarded the inedible shell just outside its house.


Could we talk about Greenwich with touching upon the delightful subject of naval history—of "rum, sodomy and the lash," of the proverbial "swapping of the poop deck"? Wait, what were we talking about again? Well, strolling east along the mighty Thames, past Christopher Wren's Naval Hospital toward Woolich, Old Ken happened upon the small Trinity Hospital for the poor. Founded in 1616, the Hospital has a lovely garden as seen above.



Interestingly, the diagonal strip of white gravel inset into the pavement marks the prime meridian as our helpful sign tells us.



In any case, I made my way into the curious Hospital, eager to learn. Although it is small, the interior courtyard is charming. I thought that I might keep my distance from the fountain, having heard that such waterworks are frequently a source of transmission for Legionnaire's disease, which is supposedly spreading like wildfire in Lewisham. But, as I chased the cats around the loggia, I began to work up quite a sweat—a fever, if you will, for which there is only one cure: fountain-bathing!



So, maybe I'm joking about that, but it was a little perambulation around the loggia that brought the most amazing feature of the Hospital: it's shocking proximity to the behemoth that is Woolich power station.



I don't think that the image above quite captures the sheer discrepancy in scale between these two structures. Indeed, Old Ken simply was not able to stand within the confines of the Hospital's spacious garden and take a photograph that encapsulated the entirety of the power station's height. Kinda makes an old duffer like the O.K. scratch his head and wonder what they were thinking.

Big Rock at Ragley Hall

Do you like to go to new places? Well, Old Ken has been to lots of places of late, some new, some old. Needless to say, the whole thing has been such a business that, well, by jing, I just haven't been quite able to keep up with all things blog-wise. But, here I am, back talkin' at you in crystal-clear hi-fi.

The story I want to tell you about at the moment is a little visit I might have made to one of the few remaining private residences built by Robert Hooke, a famous experimental philosopher of the later seventeenth century and—so I'd like to think—someone close to the heart of my admirable namesake, the Right Honorable Sir Kenelm Digby. So my guide book tells me, Bob (as I like to think of Señor Hooke) built Ragley Hall for Lord Conway ca. 1680. As you may discern from the photograph above, Bob is still remembered on the gorgeous site with an appropriate monument: a coffee shop named in his honor. As you'll no doubt recall, Bob was a big fan of the coffee shop, which was something of a novelty in his day; his famous diary is packed with tales of meeting both intellectual luminaries and "friends in low places" at such places as Jonathan's or Garraways and enjoying a good chin-wag over a cup of coffee, chocolate, and even the inestimable cock ale. (Please tune back in for a subsequent blog entry for Sir Kenelm's cock ale recipe, which is soon to be a gift. Wink!)


But, let us not allow such digressions to take us away from Ragley Hall itself, which truly is a stunning building. Now, the photograph above shows the eastern face of the house—a view that requires a little imaginative intervention if we want to see it the way that it would have been built in Hooke's day. For, the portico and the twin ceremonial staircases leading into the Great Hall, which you see at the very center of the photograph above, were mid-eighteenth century additions.


Similarly, the loggia attached to the western face of the house (visible as the recessed, shadowed space in the photos above and below) seems to the Old Ken's mind to have been a subsequent addition. Upon what grounds would such an assessment have been ventured? Well, more qualified as an experimental philosopher than an architectural historian as I know myself to be, the loggia seems to give the house something of an edentate look. When in shade, as seen here, the open space of the loggia compromises the verticality of the house and makes it almost look as though it could be levitating.


Comparing with the dark, heavy decoration surviving from Hooke's period inside the house, which I was sadly unable to photograph, one wonders whether this lighter, airy effect might have been closer in spirit to the wonderfully bizarre rococo fantasies played out across the Great Hall than Bob's baroque inclinations.

But enough of such fancies. I'd like you to appreciate the beauty of the house from a distance, which really did feel like a kind of island amidst the rolling farmland of Warwickshire. Baroque or not baroque, I think we can all agree that this is some seriously big rockin' from Mr. Bob!

Rosicrucian Fun

Are you a Rosicrucian? Would you like to be one? These questions might sound a little random, but I pose them to you as a way of thinking about the resistance (especially in the Arabic-speaking world) to the Red Cross. Now, the two might be entirely unconnected. But, as Old Ken was thinking about this interesting convergence between a major humanitarian organization and the followers of the mysterious Christian Rosencreutz—or the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, a secret society supposedly begun in the early 17th century in central Europe as a Protestant resistance movement to the encroachment of Catholic power—I thought of St. George. Famous as a dragon slayer (see below), St. George is also the patron of another occult society, the Order of the Garter. Curiously, as anyone who watches English football will know, the flag of St. George is a red cross on a white background.



So where is Old Ken going with all of this? Well, nowhere in particular. But I did recently visit a curious hunting lodge built to house the "chemical bride" of one of the original Rosicrucian players, Prince Frederick, Elector of the Palatine. Daughter of James I, Elizabeth Stuart ("the Winter Queen") lived a life of impoverished exile at the Hague after the disastrous Battle of the White Mountain in 1620 when Catholic powers retook Prague igniting the Thirty Years War.



With her husband dead and her children (most notably the dashing Prince Rupert) off adventuring in the European wars, the Winter Queen was sustained by her devoted admirer, William Craven. Supposedly, it was for her that the eccentric Craven built the odd lodge you see in the pictures here—a lonely house in the hills of Berkshire called Ashdown House.



Well, such was the story told to Old Ken by a tour guide at Ashdown. I think the truth of the matter might be a little stranger still. For, consider the architecture house: a full quarter of the interior space is occupied with a period stairway that leads all the way up to the balustraded look-out on the roof. There is little of the formal reception area, banqueting facilities or interconnected rooms that would have been appropriate for the home of the Winter Queen.








Yet, just a few miles away lies the great chalk horse of Berkshire—the outlines of a massive horse carved into a steep hillside in prehistoric times (whose circular eye is visible in the middle ground of the photograph below).



More curiously still, the small hillock visible in the center of the picture (nearly kissing the golden rape-seed fields in the distance, with a whitened patch and a worn footpath leading from it) is traditionally known as Dragon Hill. For it was here, legend tells us, that St. George smote the dragon. Clearly, then, Ashdown House was no house for the Queen but some sort of observatory wherein like-minded Rosicrucians could gather and await the return of St. George (or the dragon) upon the nearby hill. As I like to say: proof!