La folie du jour blanchot pdf

1986 1_

Jacques Derrida "Point de folie - Maintenant I'architecture" Essay accompanying the portfolio

Bernard Tschumi, La Case Vide: La Villette 1985 (london: Architectural Association,

1986), essay trans. Kate Linker

What Jacques Derrida calls his double writing (ecriture double) provokes, on the one hand, an inver!iion of the general cultural domination he everywhere identifies with Western metaphysics and enacts, on the other hand: a new text that, necessarily,

P~ni<:ipClte!iin the very principles it decon~tru_~~s, but participates as an invasion, releasing the dissonance of the inherited order. In his essay on Bernard Tschumi's La Case Vide- the "folio-folie" that presents the conceptual structure of Tschumi's Parc

(de la Villette- Derrida projects onto architecture the same formulation: I' architec­ t ture double disrupts the entire given architectural system and, j~st for a mome,nt, ~ takes over the field.

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Architecture theory had already constructed for itself an account of meaning based on a generalized system an architectural langue - understood as necessary for the production and intelligibility of architectural events-parole, the messages, usages, and effects of the generalized code. But the relationship between langue and parole produces an aporia. The norms and regularities of the language, its structure, are a product of all the prior architectur.a ..1eve.nt.s..; yet e ..ach event is itself made possible by the prior structure. There can be no ~!tginary_~v~N that might have produced the structure - an event comprising, say, a point, a line, and a surface - for such an event is already structurally distributed and arranged. Neither is the structure ever present; there are no full, positive elements of meaning but only differentiation and referral to other elements. A point, for example, can function as a signifier only insofar as it differs from a line and a surface and, moreover, traces those forms, refers

~, 1\ to those forms, which it is not. Thus meaning is not a presence but rather is the effect , of a generalized economy of absences.

Derrida's term for this g~~a.b.s.e!1~J.s_ctL@r:qEf~ (differ­ ence-differing-deferring), which alludes to the undecidability of this altern'ation of structure and event and to the nonoriginary origin of meaning's infinite play. Meaning

;L is not inexhaustible in the sense t. ha.. t ther.e are infinite possible interpretations; rather \ meanings are maintained in tb.f..<;![re!:ttofJ.mrogaoi.ng. An analogous term is ~,

which he uses throughout the following essay. "Differance, then, is a structureaii-d a movement no longer conceivable on the basis of the opposition presence/absence. Differance is the systema!iC;Ql~LQf differences, of the traces of differences, of the spacing by means of which elements-ar; related to each other. This spacing is the simultaneously active and passive ... production of the intervals without which the 'full' terms would not signify, would not function.'" I Deconstruction ordinarily does its work by locating the moment in a text where meaning is supposed to be antecedent to differance, exposing the

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untenable metaphysics of that supposition, and reversing the hierarchy. In the in­ stance of La Case Vide, however, the architecture's complex signifying practice is al­ ready divided against itself; the undecidability of its meanings (though meaning is the wrong word) is built into the architecture and its workings. Such a text cannot be deconstructed, since its repetitions, substitutions, and gaps have already been "marked" by its author and by the architecture. What Derrida shows, then, is the

text's exorbitance- not only its effacements, tracings and retracings, but its excesses, itsburstTngtnrough conceptual repressions.

Derrida graphs the function of architecture as four points, four traits-traces, four corners of a frame: what he elsewhere terms a parergon.' Together, "they translate one and the same postulation: architecture must have a meaning, it must present it and, through it, signify. The signifying or symbolical value of this meaning must direct the structure and syntax, the form and function of architecture. It must direct it from outside, according to a principle (arche), a fundamental or foun­ dation, a transcendence or finality (te/os) whose locations are not themselves archi­ tectural." A parergon of architecture is against, above, and beyond the work of( architecture, but it is not incidental; rather it cooperates in the inside operati~~ of ( architecture from the outside. The logic of the parergon is the logic of th~ment. It must be convoked because of a lack in the work - its internal indetermiri-acy-that it comes to frame. The lack that produces the frame is also produced by the frame, and in the moment, precisely, when the work is considered from the point of view of architecture. Thus, like differance, architecture is never present as an event (not pres­ ent, not even for a moment) but nevertheless can be recovered by a kind of Nachtrag­ lichkeit, a deferred action in which architecture is constructed and maintained for a moment in the work of architecture by what can be called a textual mechanism- a transcription and a translation.3

One example of this textual mechanism is the graft, inserti!!& 4 _____ M

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~J1~!_~i:>_~Q.yrses .intQ.on~.,as. itsjteIat,i!lJ,!_~n~.~~plo!j~!~~P!!I/~re.eetitionslth(It Iset' Eisenman I 531-532ensue. "The invention, in this case, consists in crossing ttie--arcFiHecturalmotif with ~

what is most Singular and most parallel in other writings which are themselves drawn into the said madness, in its plural, meaning photographic, cinematographic, choreo­ graphic, and even mythographic writings .... An architectural writing interprets ... events which are marked by photography or cinematography:' Even the points, lines, and surfaces are here understood as grafts insofar as each system conflicts with and is superimposed on the others.

The graft is included in what Derrida calls "a typology of forms of iteration."4 In La Case Vide it operates along with other forms of iteration like the signature ("the maintenant that I speak of will be this, most irreducible, signature")­ whose "authenticity" paradoxically depends on its reiterability - and the performa­ tive ("the event that I make happen or let happen by marking it"), whose very produc­ tive success depends on its repetition of an already iterable code.s Architecture maintenant is a signing of the architectural contract ("it does not contravene the char­ ter, but rather draws it into another text"), an j!eration_9f.

But Derrida attributes a more generalized disruption to Tschumi's text, for its thematic figure, the point, comes to both describe and arrest the general series to which it belongs and is, therefore, not a theme at all but the arche-theme behind all the thematic effects. This is the point at which the strains to sustain architecture's contract, its promise, its "charter or metaphysical frame" can

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be felt in an uncanny opacity. It is a point of condensation that maintains the perpetual / disruptions and disjunctions, maintains the undecidability of its architecture not in 'polysemousness but in the affirmative power of its infinite generality and unorganiz­

able energy. This is Tschumi's madness (or better, the madness of La Case Vide, for . such a system cannot have an intending author): "it maintains the dis-jointed per se."

of reiteration without exhaustion and, importantly, without keeping in reserve.

A final point. Derrida hints at the nontextual nature of institutions be involved in architecture or deconstruction: "Deconstructions would

did not first measure themselves against institutions in their solid­ their greatest resistance: political structures, levers of economic

the material and phantasmatic apparatuses which connect state, civil society, bureaucracy, cultural power and architectural education." But he does not re­

solve how deconstruction can reckon with the forces of an extratextual institu­ tional

Notes "Point de folie - Maintenant l'architecture" was reprinted in AA Files 12 (Summer 1986).

1. Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981),

P·27· 2. See Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chi­

cago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). 3. According to the Freudian theory of deferred action, precocious sexual stimulation normally

has no psychopathological repercussions at the time of its occurrence, due to the child's

psychical incapacity to comprehend the act of seduction. With the physiological change of

puberty, however, the mnemic-psychical trace - inscribed in the unconscious as if in an un· known language - would be transformed (rewritten, reiterated) as trauma and displaced as

symptom in neurosis.

4. Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs,

trans. David B. Allison (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 192.

5. The promise is the standard case of a performative utterance, which constitutes the very act to which it refers. Derrida points out that for a promise to constitute itself, however, it must

be recognizably a repetition of an iterable model of promising. Ibid., pp. 191-192.

UlRRIDA I 1986 I 571 1 986 Jacques Derrida Point de folie-Maintenant r architecture

Maintenant: 1 this French word will not be translated. Why? For reasons, a whole se­ ries of reasons, which may appear along the way, or even at the end of the road. For here I am undertaking one road or, rather, one course among other possible and concurrent ones: a series of cursive notations through the Folies of Bernard Tschumi, from point to point, and hazardous, discontinuous, aleatory.

Why maintenant? I put away or place in reserve, I set aside the reason to maintain the seal or stamp of this idiom: it would recall the Pare de la Villette in France, and that a pretext gave rise to these Folies. Only a pretext, no doubt, along the way-a station, phase, or in a trajectory. Nevertheless, the pretext was offered in France. In French we say th~t~~hance is offered, but also, do not forget, to offer a resistance.

2 Maintenant, the word will not flutter like the banner of the moment, it will not intro­ duce burning questions: What about architecture today? What are we to think about the current state of architecture? What is new in this domain? For architecture no longer defines a domain. Maintenant: neither a modernist Signal nor even a salute to post-modernity. The posl-S and posters which proliferate (post-structuralism,

(post-modernism, still surrender to the historicist urge. Everything marks an ( era, even the decentering of the subject: It is as ifone again wished

to put a linear succession in order, to periodize, to distinguish between before and after, to limit the risks of reverSibility or repetition, transformation or permutation: an ideology of progress.

3 Maintenant: if the word still designates what happens, has just happened, promises

aSV\l~!1 asthrO!lg!Lil!cllit~C!ure, this imminence of the (just happens, just happened, is just~bo~t to happen) n~' longer lets itself be inscribed in the ordered sequence of a history: it is not a fashion, a period or an era. The maintenant [just now] does not remain a stranger to history, of course, but the rela­ tion would be different. And if this happens to us, we must be prepared to receive these two words. On the one hand, it does not happen to a constituted us, to a human subjectivity whose essence would be arrested and would then find itself affected by the history of this thing called architecture. We appear to ourselves only through an experience of spacing which is already marked by architecture. What happens through architecture both constructs and instructs this us. The latter finds itself engaged by architecture before it becomes the subject of it: master and pos­ sessor. On the other hand, the imminence of what happens to us maintenant an­ nounces not only an architectural event but, more particularly, a writing of space, a mode of spacing which makes a place for the event. If Tschumi's work indeed describes an architecture of the events it is not only in that it constructs places in

which something should happen or to make the construction itself be, as we say, an event. This is not what is essential. The dimension of the event is subsumed in the very structure of the architectural apparatus: sequence, open series, narrative, the cinematic, dramaturgy, choreography.

4­

]s~~rc~i!ecty~~,< not in the sense of what would finally allow us to arrive at meaning, but

i"'If.'fJ'C,"" to it, to meaning, to the meaning of meaning. And so-and this is the event-what happens to it through an event which, no longer precisely or

falling into the domain of meaning, would be intimately linked to some­ like madness rIa folie].

5 Not madness [Ia folie], the allegorical hypostaSis of Unreason, non-sense, but the madnesses [les We will have to account with this The folies, then, Bernard Tschumi's folies. Henceforth we will speak of them through metonymy and in a metonymically metonymic manner, since, as we will see, this carries itself away, it has no means within itself to stop itself, any more than the number of Folies in the Pare de la Villette. Folies: it is first of all the name, a proper name in a way, and a signature. Tschumi names in this manner the pOint-grid which distributes a non­ finite number of elements in a space which it in fact spaces but does not fill. Meton­ ymy, then, since folies, at designates only a part, a series of parts, precisely the

weave of an ensemble which also includes lines and surfaces, a "sound­ track" and an "image-track." We will return to the function assigned to this multi­ plicity of red points. Here, let us note only that it maintains a metonymic relation to the whole of the Parco Through this proper name, in fact, the folies are a common denominator, the "largest common denominator" of this "programmatic decoIl­ struction." But, in addition, the red point of each folie remains divisible in turn, a point without a point, offered up in its articulated structure to substitutions or combinatory permutations which relate it to other folies as much as to its own parts. Open point and closed point. This double metonymy becomes abyssal when it de­ termines or overdetermines what opens this proper name (the "Folies" of Bernard

to the vast. semantics of the concept of madness, tbe great name or com­ mon dellominator of all that happens to when it leaves itself: alienates and dissociates itself without ever been exposes itself to the outside and spaces itself out in vvhat is not itself: not the semantics but first of all, the asemantics of Folies.

6 The folies, then, tbese folies in every sense-for once we can say that they are not on the road to ruin, the ruin of defeat or nostalgia. do nor amount to the "absence of the work" -that fate of madness In the classical of wh ich lioucauJt speaks. Instead,

make up a work, put into How? How can we think that the work can possibly mointain itself in this madness? How can we think the mainlenant of the architectural work? Through a certain adventme of the we are corning to it, maintenant the work-maintenant is the very instant, t.he point of its implo­ sion. The folies put into a general they draw into it everything that, until maintenant, seems to have architecture meaning. More precisely, every-

that seems to have given architecture over to meanin2. Thev deconstruct first of all, bu I not only. the semantics of architecture.

7 Let us never that there is an architecture of architecture. Down even to its archaic fC)[lI1dation the most fundamental concept of architecture has been constructed. This naturalized architect me is hequeathed to us: we inhahit it, it inhahits us, we think it destined f()I habitation, and i.t is no an object lIS at alL But we must in it an a construction, a monument. It did not fall from the

not even if it informs a scheme of relations to the sky, the tbe human and the divine. This architecture of architecture has a history, it is

historical through and tbrough. Its heritag(' inaugurates the intimacy of our econ­ omy, the law of our hearth (oHws). our familial, religiOUS and "oikonomy," all the of birth and death, stadium, agora, square.

goes right through us [noliS transitl to the point that we forget its very we take it f()[ nature. It is common sense itsel f.

8 The concept of architecture is itself an inhabited constructum, a which compre­ hends us even before we could submit it to thought. Certain invariables remain, con­ stant. all the mutations of architecture. Impassable, imperturbabJe, an axiomatic traverses trw whole history of architecture. An axiomatic. that is to say, an

ensemble of fundamental and evaluations. This bierar­ has fixed itself in stone; henceforth, it informs the of social space. VVhat

are tbese invariables;> I will artificial charter of four traits, : let us say, rather, of four translate and the same \ (liTe must have [J meaning, it mLlst present it through it, Signify. The or

ical value of this must direct the structure and syntax, the form and function of arcbitecture. It must direct it from according a principle , a funda­ mental or fClUndatioIl, a transcendence or finality whose locations are not themselves architecturaL The anarclIitec:tural of this semanticism from which,

four points of invariallce derive:

of men other arts)

must be dwelling, the lavl! of oikos, the economy of pi~sence which distinct from the the architectural work seems to have

RRiDA 1986 I 573

been destined for the presence of men and gods. The arrangement, and investment of locations must be measured against this economy. still alludes to it when he bomelessness (Heim[Jtlosigkeit) as the symptom of onto-theology more of modern technology. Behind dw hons

crisis he encourages liS to reflect properly on the real distress poverty and destillltion of dwelling itself (die Not des . Mortals must first learn to cJ\;vell das WiJhnen erst lernen miissen), listen to what calls them to dwe! L This is

a deconstruction, but rather a call repeat the very fundamentals of the architecture that we inhabit that we should Jearn again how to inhabit, the of its meaning. of course, if the folies think through and dislocate this they should not in either to the jll bilat ion of modern technology, or to the maniacal mastery of its powers. That would be a new turn in the same metaphys­ ics. Hence the diffic]] lty of what, Centered and hierarchized. the architectural had to fall in lme the anamnesis of the origin and the of the foundation. Not the time of irs foundation on the ground of the earth, bl.lt also since its

f()umlation, the institution which commemorates the of the heroes or fCJUnding Despite appearances, this religious or political mem . ory, tllis historicism, has not deserted architecture. Modern architecture retains :/ nostalgia for lt IS Its to be a guardian. An hierarchizing nostal­

architecture will matericllize the hierarchy in SlOne or vmod , it is a of the sacred (hieros) and the JJrincipJe (arche), an mhi -hieratics.

subscribes to all

service. This

which is true. that of the coherent a network

on

ory and criticism of architecture, from the most to the most triviaL Such evaluation inscribes the hierarchy in a as well as in the space of a formal distribution of values. But this architectonics of invariable points also

an of what is called Western culture, far its arcbitecture. Hence the contradiction, the double bind or antinomy which at once animates and dis­ nubs this history. On the one hand, this general architectonics effurfs or exceeds the

of it is valid for other arts and of expCl'i­ ence as welL On the other hand, forms its most ymy; it gives it its most solid objective suhstance. By I do not mean logical coherence, which all dimensions of human

in the same network: there is no of architecture without inter or even economiC, religious, political,

cree. Rut I also mean duration, hardness, the mOllumental mi neral or suhsistence, the of tradition. T-Ience the resiswnce: the resistance of mat.erials as much as of consciOllsnesses and uflconsciollses which instale this architecture as last fortress of metaphysics. Resistance and trans­ ference. Any consequent deconstructioIl would he if it did not take account of this resistance and this transference, it would do little if it did not go after architecture as much as architectonics. To go after it: not in order to attack,

,­ or dc-route it, to eriticize or it. Rather, in order to think it in

fact, to detach iLsdf to thought vvhich beyond the lheort~m-alld becomes a work in its turn.

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M(jintenant we ",-ill take the measure the folies of ,vhat otbers would call the immea­ surable hybris of Bernard Tschumi and of what it offers to our thought. These /()lies destabilize meaning, the of the ensemble of this pow­ erful architectonics. They put question, dislocate, destabilize deconstruct the edifIce of this configuration. It will be said that are "madness" in this. For in a

which is without aggression, without the destructive drive that would still a reactive affect within the hierarchy, do battle with the very of

architectural meaning, as it has been bequeathed to us and as we still inhabit it. \Ve should not avoid the issue: if this over what in the West is called do these folies not raze Do they not lead back to the desert of

of architectural where this writing wmdd aesthetic aura, fundamentals, hierarchical

short, in a prose made of abstract, neutral, volumes?

and engage their affirmation be- this ultimatelv annihiiatillQ. secretlv nihilistic renetitiol1 of archi­

maintain, renew and reinscribe architecture. They revive, an energy which was infinitelv anaes­

buried in a common grave this: the charter or metaphYSical frame whose

has just been sketched \vas already, one could say, the end of of ends" the figure of death.

This charter had come to arrall'U ttw worK, It 1I1100ses on nurms or meanings which were extrinsic, if not accidental. made its attributes into an essence: fi>rrnal beauty, filulitv. utility, Ull<..L1Ul"Ul~1l1, inhahitable valli e, its

tbe services, so many nonarchitectural or meta-architect.ural architecture mailllenant-what J keep referrinQ to ill this

way, using a paleonym, so as to maintain a l11llffied these alien norms on the work, tht~ fillies return architecture, to what archi­ tecture, since the very eve of its origin, should have The m(Jin!cnallt that J speak of will be this, most It does not contravene the but rather draws it into another text, it even subscribes to, and directs others to subscribe to, wllat we will again later, a contract, another play the trait, of attractIon and contraction.

These struction,"

A that I do not make without caution and

Tschumi al ways talks about" deconstruction Irecon­ the folie and the generation of its cube

mal combinations transkmnational relations). What is in question in The Manhattan Tramcripts is the invention of "new relations, in which the traditional components of architecture are broken down and reconstructed other axes." Without nostalgia, the most act of memory. Nothing, here, that nihilistic gesture which would fulfill a certain theme of of values aimed at all unaesthetic, LlIlinllabitable, unusable,

architecture, an architecture left vacallt after the retreat of and men. And the folies-like la folie in·are anything bill anarchic

RRIDA I 1986 I 575

chaos. Yet, witbout proposing a "new order," locate the architectural vvork in another where, at least in its

these external its essential impetus, it will no

Tsclmll1i's "first" concem will no be to space as a function or in view of economic, or teelmo-utilitarian norms, These norms will be taken into

will find themselves sllbordinated rein scribed in one and in a space which they no longer command in tbe final instarlCe. "architecture towards its limits," a will be made for will be destined for a "llse," with its own scientitlc ane! finalitIes. We \'\,UI say more later about its powers "attraction." All of this answers to a program of transbrmations or

which these external norms no hold the final word. will not preSided over the sillce Tschumi has folded them

Yes, f()lded. What is the I

a pmist or integratist obsession. its own the immanence of its ec01l .

it to its inalienahle presence, a presence which, !lon-mimetic and refers to itself. This autonomy of

which would thus to reconcile a formalism and a scman­ tici.sm their extremes, 'Nould fulfill the metaDhvsics it DIetended to dc- construct. The invention, in this case, consists in with what is most and most selves drawn into tbe said madness, in its

and even Transcripls demonstrated (the same is true,

, a narrative mOIltage of great comnlpy which mvtholoQies contracted or efbced rable" monument. An architectural writing of active violent, interpretation) m(Jrked or Marked:

captured, in any case always mobilized in a passage from t() allOlher, from a

writing another, . Neither architecture nor anarchitec· ture: transarchitectme. It bas it out with ofiers its work to users, believers or dwellers, to aesthetes or consumers. Jnstead, it appeals the other to invent, in turn, the event, comign or advanced by an advance made at the other --and mmntenant architecture.

am aware of a murmur: but doesn't event you speak which reinvents architect.ure in a ,cries of onces" which are always

unique ip their isn't it what takes each time not in a church or a temple, or even in a political in them, but rather 05 them, them, tt)I example, each Mass when the of Christ, , when the body the King or of the nation presents or annOUllces itself) Why not, if at

takes place when, for the eucharistic evenl goes [tranlir] church, ici, mCiinrennnl Ihere, now I. or when a date, seal, the trace of the other are

on the body of stone, this time in the movement of its

Bernard Tschumi, Pare

10

Therefore, we can no longer speak of a properly architectural moment, the hieratic impassability of the monument, this hyle-morphic complex that is given once and for alL permitting no trace to appear on its body because it afforded no chance of

permutation or substitutions. In the folies of which we speak, on the contrary, the event undoubtedly undergoes this trial of the monumental moment; however, it inscribes it, as in a series of As its name indicates, an

traverses: voyage, trajectory, translation, transference. Not with the object of a final presentation, a face-to-face with the thing itself, nor in order to complete an odyssey of consciousness, the phenomenology of mind as an architectural step. The route the folies is undoubtedly prescribed, from point to to the extent that the pOint-grid counts on a program of experiences and new

(cinema, botanical garden, video workshop, library, skating rink, But the structure of the grid' and of each cube-for these points are

cubes-leaves opportunity for chance, formal invention. combinatory transforma­ -J tion, wandering. opp()rtullity is not given to the inhabitant or the believer, the

user or the architecturaltheorist, but to whoever engages, in turn, in architectural

de La Villette, Paris, mil 1982-1983

11& .. - 11&

I 577

. 2~ ~ri~:)without reservation, whichl~.£llie.sap.l~y"e,I!!iY~ r~.~ing,~he restlessness of a'W1lOle culture and the body's signature. This body would no longer be con­ tent to wulk, circulate, stroll around in a place or on paths, but would transform its

motions by giving rise to it would receive from this other spacing the invention of its gestures.

11 The folie does not stop: either in the hieratic monument, or in the circular path. Nei­ ther impassibility nor pace. Seriality inscribes itself in stone, iron or wood, but this seriality does not stop there. And it had begun earlier. The series of trials (experiments or artist's proofs) that are naively called essays, photographs, models. films or writings (for what is together for a while in this belon£s to the of the folies: folies at work. We can no give them the value

supplementary illustrations, preparatory or pedagogical notes-hors d'oeuvre, in or the equivalent of theatrical rehearsals. No-and thiS is what ap­ pears as the greatest danger to the architectural desire which still inhabits us. The immovable mass of stone, the vertical glass or metal plane that we had taken to be the very object of architecture (die Sache selbst, or "the real thing"), its indisplaceabJe effectivity, is maintcnant in the voluminous text of multiple writings: su­ perimpOSition of a Wunderblock (to a text by Freud-and Tschumi exposes ar­ chitecture to psychoanalysis, introdUCing the theme of the transference, for as well as the schiz), palimpsest grid, supersedimented textuality, bottomless stratig­ raphy that is mobile, light and abyssal, foliated, foliiform. Foliated foliage and folle [mad] not to seek reassurance in any solidity: not in ground or tree, horizontality or verticality, nature or culture, form or foundation or finality. The architect who once wrote with stones now places lithographs in a volume. and Tschumi speaks of them as folios. Something weaves through this foliation whose stratagem, as well as

reminds me of Littre's suspicion. Regarding the second of the word that of the houses bearing their name, the name of "the one who has had them built or of the place in which are located," Littre hazards the follOWing, in the name of etymology: "Usually one sees in this the word madness [folie]. But this becomes uncertain when one finds in the texts from the Middle foleia quae nat ante and domum and folia ]ohannis one suspects that this involves an alteration of the word feuillie or feuillee " The word folie has no common sense any more: it has lost even the reassuring unity of its Tschumi's folies no doubt play OIl this "alteration" and superimpose, against common sense, common meaning, this other meaning, the meaning of the other. of the other language, the madness of this asemantics.

12 When 1 discovered Bernard Tschumi's work, I had to dismiss one easy hY1Potllesis: recourse to the language of deconstruction, to what in it has become to its most insisten t words and to some of its would be an analogi­ cal transposition or even an architectural In any case, impossibility itself For, according to the logic of this hypotheSiS (which quickly became untenable), we could have inquired: What could a de constructive architecture be? That which deconstructive strategies begin or end by destabilizing it, is it not exactly the structural principle of architecture (system, architectonics, structure, foundation, construction, etc.)? the last question led me towards another turn ofinter­

what The Manhattan Transcripts and the Folies of La Villette urge us towards is route of deconstruction in one of its most intense, affirmative and

necessary implementations. Not deconstruction itself, since there never was such a thing; rather, what carries its jolt semantic analysis, critique of discourses

"'~llJA I 1986

; and ideologies. concepts or texts. in the traditional sense of the term. Deconstruc­ tions would be feeble if they were if did not construct. and above all if they did not first measure themselves institutions ill their at the place of their greatest resistance: poJi tical structures. levers of economic the material and phantasmatic apparatuses which connect state, civil society, cultural power and architectural education-a remarkably sensitive dition, those which the arts, from the fine arts to martial arts, science and tech-

the old and new. All these are so many forces which harden or architectural particularly when it the

and involves transactions with the State. This is the case here.

13 One does not declare war, Another strategy weaves itself between hostilities and ne­ gotiations. 1:,ken in its strictest, if not most sense. the grid of folies introduces

crosses a channeL It is tbe

of

furthermore. such

does not move through an texture; it weaves this texture. it invents the structure of a text, of what one would call in a "fab­ ric." Fabric in English recalls fahrique, a French noun with an entirely different mean­ ing, which some decisionmakers proposed substituting for tbe title of

tillie" Architect-weaver. He

holds out a net, A weave A network-stratagerr

the threads of a chain,

of matrices or cells whose transformations will never let themselves be calmed, stabilized, identified in a continuum, Divisible themselves, these cells also point towards instant.s of rupture, disjunction, But simultane­

or rather anachromies or aphoristical

gaps, t.he point of point de folie = no together wbat it has dispersion. It cathers into a multiplicitv red

Resemblance and chromoarallhic reminder

a necessary part in it. What then, is a point, this of folie? How does it stop folie)

For it suspends it in this movement, brings it to a halt. but as folie. Arrest of folie: point ddolie. no or more folie, llO more folie, no f()lie at alL At the same time it

settles the question, but which decree. which arrest-and whicll ness? What does the law ri(Tomnlish) Who accomDlishes the law? The law divides (md

arrests division; How can we the architectural chromosome, its color, this lahor of

divisiO!l and individuation which no lom'er pertains to the domain of

We are

through one more

14

after a detour. We must pass

non-coincidence. Bm who would ever have built in this

manner) Wbo would have counted on only the in dis- or de-) No work results " from a simple displacement or dislocation, invention is needed, A path

1986 579

Without tbe deconstructive affirma­ tion whose we have tested Oil lhe contrary so as to giye it new impetus- tllis maintains the dis-jointed per se; it joins up the dis~ maintaining (mointenont) the distance; it gathers the difference. This assembling will be ,ingular, What holds together does !lot t.ake the {

would be both the task and the wager, preoccupa· dissociation its due. but to imnlement it per se in the

dissociation with re­

ceived norms, tbe economic powers of architectonic, the mastery of the moltres d'oeuvre, Tbis "dif1iculty" is Tschumi's experience, He does not hide it, "this is not without "At La Villette, it is a matter of f()rming, of acting out dissoclation, , , , This is !lot without difficulty. Putting dissociation into form necessi­ tates that tbe support structure (the Pare, the institution) be structured a reassem­

system, The red of folies is tbe focus of this dissociated space," and the Combinative." Precis 11; Columbia University. New York,

15 A fi')rce joins up and holds together the per se. Its effect upon the dis is not externaL The dis-joint itself IIlointenont architecture that arrests the madness in its dislocation. It is not only 0 point: an open multiplicity of red resists its

metonymy. These points mil!ht fral'menr. but would not define frapment still

understand how it also knot the point of lolie schi:! and madness,

without

order to must analyze tile double bind whose

what can bind a double bind to

On the one hand, the concentrates, folds back towards itself the greatest force of attraction, contmcting lines towards the center, Wholly self-

within a which is also autonomous, it fascinates and what could be called its

same time. which would "reassemble"

magnet seems

attraction through its very punctuality, the of instantaneous IIlainlenant to­ wards whicb everything converges aIld where it seems to indi\-iduate but also from the fact that, in stopping madness, it constitut('s t he point of transaction with the architecture \vhic11 it in turn deconstructs or divides, A discontinuous series of

ofiolie the attractions of the Pare, useful or economic Of investments, services

their program, Bound energy and semantic Hellce, the distinction and tbe transaction between what Tschumi terms the

and deviation of the folies. Each point is a it of the text or of the grid, But the maintains hOlh the

rupture (lnd the relation to the other, which is itself structured as both attraction and

DERRIDA 1986 I 581

interruption, interference and difference: a relation without relation. What is con­ tracted here passes a "mad" contract between the socius and dissociation. And this without dialectic, without the Aufhebung whose process Hegel explains to us and which can always reappropriate such a maintenant: the point negates space and, in this spatial negation of itself, generates the line in which it maintains itself by cancelling itself (als sich aufhebend). the line would be the truth of the point, the surface the truth of the line, time the truth of space and, finally, the maintenant the truth of the

(Encyclopedie, §256-257). Here I permit myself to refer to my text, "Ousia et gramme" ("La paraphrase: ligne, " in Marges [Minuit, 1972], [University of Chicago Press]). Under the same name, the maintenant I sneak of would

mark the interruption of this dialectic. But on the other hand, if dissociation does not happen to the

point from outside, it is because the point is both divisible and indivisible. It appears atomic, and thus has the function and individualizing form of the point according only to a point of view, according to the perspective of the serial ensemble which it punctuates, and subtends without ever its simple support. As it is seen, and seen from it simultaneously scans and interrupts, maintains and divides, puts color and rhythm into the spacing of the grid. But this point of view does not see, it is blind to what happens in the folie. For if we consider it absolutely, abstracted from the ensemble and in itself (it is also destined to abstract, distract or subtract itself), the point is not a point any more; it no has the atomic indivisi­

that is bestowed on tile geometrical point. Opened inside to a void that play to the it constructs/deconstruct;; itself like a cu be given over to formal combination. The articulated pieces separate, compose and recompose.

articulating that are more than pieces-pieces of a

game, theatre pieces, pieces of an "a-partment" piece, roomJ at once places and spaces of movement-the dis-joint forms that are destined for events: in order for them

to take

16 For it was necessary to speak of promise and pledge, of promise as affirmation, the promise that provides the privileged example of a p.E19r1P3.ti~.[iJ!Il&. More than an example: the very condition of such writing. Without accepting what would be retained as presuppositions hy theories of performative language and acts-re­

here by an architectural pragmatics (for example, the value of presence, of tile maintenant as present)-and without being able to discuss it here, let us focus on this single trait: the provocation of the event I speak of ("I promise," for example), that I describe or trace; tile event that I make happen or let happen hy marking it. The mark or trait must be emphasized so as to remove this performativity from the heQeJmc)IlY of and of what is called human speech. The performative mark spaces is the event of spacing. The red points space, maintaining architecture in the dissociation of spacing. But this maintenant does not only maintain a past and a tradition; it does not ensure a syntheSiS. It maintains the interruption, in other words, the relation to the other per se. To the other in the magnetic field of attraction, of the "common

( denominator" or "hearth," to other points of rupture as well, but first of all to the ') Other: the one through whom the promised event will happen or will not. For he is ( called, only called to countersign the pledge [gage]. the engagement or the wager.

This Other never presents itself; he is not present, maintenant. He can he represented what is too quickly referred to as Power, the politico-economic decisionmakers,

users, representatives of domains of cultural domination, and here, in particular, of a philosophy of architecture. This Other will be anyone, not yet [point encore] a suhject, ego or conscience and not a man l'homme]; anyone who comes and answers to

the promise, who first answers for the the to-come of an event which would maintain spacing, the maintenant in dissociation, the relation to the other per se. Not the hand being held [main tenue] but the hand outstretched [main tendue] above the

7

Overlaid by the entire history of architecture and laid open to the hazards of a future that cannot he anticipated, this other architecture, this architecture of the other, is nothing that exists. It is not a present, the memory of a past present, the purchase or pre-comprehension of a future present. It presents neither a constative theory nor a

nor an ethics of architecture. Not even a narrative, although it opens this space to all narrative matrices to sound-tracks and image-tracks (as I write this, I think of La folie du jour by Blanchot, and of the demand for, and impOSSibility narra­ tion that is made evident there. Everything I have been ahle to write ahout it, most notahly in Pamgcs, is directly and sometimes literally concerned-I am aware of this after the fact, thanks to Tschumi-with the madness of architecture: step, threshold, staircase labyrinth, hotel, hospital, wall, enclosure, edges, room, the inhabitation of the uninhabitable. And since all of this, dealing with tbe madness of the trait, the spacing of "dis-traction," will be published in English, I also think of that idiomatic manner of referring to the fool, the absent-minded, the wanderer: the one who is spacy,

But if it presents neither theory, nor ethics, nor politics, nor \f t1' narration ("No, no narrative never again," La folie du jour) it gives a place to them all. ! ' It writes and signs in advance-maintenant a divided line on the edge of 1111:<1.I..'"1);:, before any presentation, beyond it-the very who engages architecture, its discourse, political scenography, economy and ethics. Pledge but also wager, sym­ bolic order and gamhle: these red cubes are thrown like the dice of architecture. The throw not only programs a strategy of events, as I suggested earlier; it anticipates the architecture to come. It runs the risk and gives us the chance.

Notes I. Maintenant, Fr., adv., now; from maintenir, v., maintaining, in position, supporting,

upholding; from se maintenir, v., remaining, lasting; from main tenant, the hand that holds. Folie, Fr., n., madness, delusion, mania; folly; country pleasure-house.