the production of feminne space | SURFACE

the production of feminine space

Introduction | Crafting the Space of Privilege

Although crafting space is the charge of the profession of architecture, the profession maintains a subordinate position as a tool of the State. As a tool, architecture is granted authority to reproduce spatial formations. Likewise, authority over the production of female space or space primarily occupied by females does not reside with architects but with the State. The State seeks to maintain dominion over a given population by maintaining social categories promoting différance. “As Derrida puts it in a well-known statement, différance refers to ‘the systematic play of differences, of traces of differences, of spacing by means of which elements are related to each other.’” (Lucy 26) Through an investigation of space as a social object, we can challenge the legitimacy of formations created to exclude the bodies of women or other marginalized groups. If the crafters of space construct categories that reify différance concretely, then are the crafters arranging the built environment, or crafting space of privilege? If the production via construction of privilege is a truer account of the architectural task, then what is the architect’s motivation within this master/slave dialectic? In this arrangement the architect would be considered the slave and the State is master. What is at stake for the profession of architecture? Is différance, as articulated within social systems, fixed or mobile? How can space be neutral if spatial formations are inherently assigned non-neutral typologies, rendering them biased?

I. The Practice of Architecture

Although crafting space is the charge of the profession of architecture, the profession maintains a subordinate position as a tool of the State. “The culture industry claims to serve the consumers’ needs for entertainment, however, it conceals the way that it standardizes these needs, manipulating the consumers to desire what it produces.” (Adorno 12)

A. The Culture Industry

1. Is architecture an industry?

In order to register an understanding of architecture in relation to the concept of industry, we must define the term “industry.” It derives from the Latin word “industria“ which means “diligent activity directed to some purpose,” as well as the French word “industrie” which means “activity” and “a trade or occupation.” With this, we can begin to locate the professional practice and discourse regarding architecture. If the working definition of the term means to engage in a particular activity with some intent then, as a professional or academic endeavour, architecture can be considered an industry.

The professional industry maintains occupation over the physical production of space while the academic industry maintains dominion over the production of the architect as a viable member of the citizenry.

If we incorporate the subversive practices of the State into the working definition of industry with Theodor Adorno’s concept of the “culture industry,” then the industry of architecture as a cultural practice would standardize the needs of its patrons. How does architecture standardize the needs of consumers? By way of the academy, architects are produced using subversive practices. The institution of the academy alleges to teach design and technology using inter-disciplinary discourse. In reality the academy teaches neither design nor technology, but rather imposes modes of representation that serve to construct patterns of thought regarding a history and a future. The depictions used serve as the grounds upon which the produced architect’s identity rests. At these moments of actualization, the identified architect asserts legitimacy. This legitimacy is not grounded in the realization of an inherent creative acumen but rather through the academy. The academy is the location of said standardization regarding the production of the architect within the brotherhood of acceptable citizens.

2. Modernity or standardization?

The practice of architecture welcomes newly conditioned members as tools to maintain a dominant architectural ideology through the standardization of production practices. The practice also standardizes criterion upon which architecture will be criticized and valued. To be labeled a modern building is to be accepted within the realm of culturally produced artifacts. Therefore, the architect as well as the architecture of said practitioners is situated as a concept of modernity.

3. Desiring architecture or the myth of the architect?

The ideal architect is a mythology that engenders status and repute through the mysterious nature of what it is “to be” an architect as Husserl and/or Heidegger would postulate. In other words the illusive identity of the architect occurs in the split that is created by negotiations between the realm of ideas and the realm of objects. The “being” of an architect is thus based upon an association with objects that are independent of the architect. The objective nature of material culture is utilized by the practice of architecture as a means to situate a collective identity within the realm of professionals.

B. Crafting an Identity

1. The academy produces architects, not buildings.

When does one become an architect? When does one become a female? These questions presuppose the existence of social systems and symbolic language that propose legal or gender assignments. I would argue that the systems in question propose assignments because the beings being assigned the value are active. Just as architects engage in the practice of architecture, females engage in the practice of being different than males.

The subversive nature of the academy uses technologies to recruit, rear, program and sanction architecture to legitimize the identity of its members. This manner of production is similar to the manner in which the female body is recruited, reared, programmed and sanctioned as feminine within the citizenry. The female body is granted privilege only in that the subject accepts the cultural customs and traditions that signify the female. If a being of such distinction elects not to engage in the normative practices, then the female will be marginalized and treated as an abject being.

2. Objects with or without architects?

Buildings, as objects, exist exclusive of the existence of architects just as females exist exclusive of male figures. Wherein the continued existence of females is inextricably linked to males, the connection between architects and built objects is negligible. Though personhood does not depend upon legislation to sanction its legitimacy, the social condition through which personhood exists requires a sanction via legislation. Since the identity of architects, along with the identity of females, is secured only through legislation, both remain unnatural and unstable. The instability of the figures rests within the paradigm of the cursive/recursive split as framed by Barbara Johnson, in the “Feminist Difference.” (Johnson 18-19) The dependency of the recursive subject, i.e. architect or female, can only exist within social systems designed to maintain them as they are. The unnatural occurrence of the dependency only serves to continually illuminate the limitations of the social rank.

3. Architects with or without objects?

The status of architect as a viable entity serves in kind to locate the subject within a given social rank. The subjectivity of the practice serves to deny a more suitable status beyond the existence of objects just as the category of gender serves to deny a suitable existence beyond the limited notion of the female. If privilege is the domain of those who have been sanctioned, then to deny the right or to deny access is an offensive act conducted via social, political and economic practices. Architects, like females, serve as figures of denial that readily mark the territory of deprivation that they are co-signed to occupy.

C. Why Craft Space?

If the primary function of dwelling objects is to protect humans from the physical environment, then all other built objects serve the desires of – not the needs of – humans. The desires of humans are guaranteed culturally and serve to reify the identity of the occupants within and through différance. From an understanding of mimesis we can illustrate how identities of built objects are reified through dwelling occupants. The process through which built objects and dwelling objects become the other, locates identities of others by way of the other. Jean Baudrillard speaks of conceptual density as a product of time in space, which allows beings to locate themselves through objects. Baudrillard claims,“Human beings and objects are indeed bound together in collusion in which the objects take on a certain density, an emotional value – what might be called a ‘Presence.’” (Baudrillard 14) During these moments objects and beings mimic the other, thereby becoming within the space of the object.

1. Bonding buildings and beings.

The emotional value claimed by Baudrillard regarding built objects and humans are similar to the emotive relationship between female and male. Just as humans and built objects operate through a mutual dependency, gendered beings become mutually dependent. The gender dependency operates as recursive/cursive binary in which both the subject and the object serve as co-dependent figures. If this is to be the case, then both figures are mutually dependent revealing the instability of the gender dependency model. Both male and female operate as recursive beings and are thusly able to re-cast their existence unbound to the other. Because the recursive object/being embodies this agency, the exclusivity of doubling or return upon the frame forms a recursive/cursive complementary arrangement from within. The recursive doubling of the figure/ground model can account for marginalized beings, typically marginalized by race, gender and/or sexual categories.

2. The architect as subaltern.

By exploring the doubling of gender figures we can analyze the inter-disciplinary role of architect. If an architect, as a social construct, is read as a liaison operating mutually – not exclusively – within the realm of the built and the imaged, then re-locating identity beyond spatial formations is possible. Spatial formations exist relative to gender categories while architects rely upon objects. Therefore the imaged relieves both the being and the object of the assumed social fixity. Females are rendered co-habitué to male figures that wittingly accept the privileged position within society. If females are able to be what they are to be as figures operating in an imaged reality, then anything that remains for these figures is that which the female is as a cursive or recursive figure. The boundary of the male/female binary locates the male as given which is not an important argument. The argument at hand is what is the female figure beyond the register of the male? Inasmuch as the male is defined in terms of the existence of the female, the female does not have to accept recognition within the same frame of reference. The female can operate as a co-habitué and/or recursive figure that is defined as that which “is.” To be female is not to be in opposition to, but in accordance to that which the collective wills.

Similarly, architects have accepted dependency, relying on built objects because the corporeality of buildings is visible though not culturally valued. This value judgment locating the built object as viable locates the architect without the object as illegitimate. The nature of what it is to be an architect has virtually nothing to do with objects. Just as what it is to be female has very limited import upon male subjects.

II. Différance

The State seeks to maintain dominion over a given population by maintaining social categories that foster the notion différance. According to Butler, gender performance is only subversive because it is "the kind of effect that resists calculation, which is to say that signification is multiplicitous, that the subject is unable to control it, and so subversion is always occurring and always unpredictable." (Butler 29)

A. Performativity

1. Who is controlling the uncontrollable subversion?

The subject or co-habitué at large is the State. The State does not aggressively suppress the will of the people but chooses instead to utilize the passive technologies of bio-power, as defined by Michel Foucault, to subvert the collective will of the people. The State’s use of bio-power conditions the subjects to believe that culture is natural and universal. By engaging in these practices through the use of institutions marketed as viable and just, the State attempts to craft social roles. Within this framework the limited role of the female continues to evolve and becomes unstable. This instability derives from the manufactured nature of dependency. The role of the female figure must be introduced, learned, accepted and practiced in order to reaffirm the role of the male. What then if the female figure does not accept that which has been introduced? Does not the male figure collapse into that which is beyond or the territory of queer theory? If, as Butler postulates, a vacillation occurs and beings perform while modifying themselves, then the terrain of that which is female is always in question. Can the female be understood if it can only be read through a system that requires it to be continually re-read? The moment of re-reading requires one to re-think that which has been acquired since the last interpretation(s) leading to a re-interpretation of the figure.

The existence of the female figure serves as a commodity of the State, not a commodity of male figures. Lucy Irigary postulates that women are commodities of men whom they serve either as utilitarian objects and/or bearers of value. I posit that female figures are not the commodities of males, but are commodities of the State that in turn diverts authority to males as signifying agents with no right to power or ownership over bodies. This relationship is passively legislated in a manner similar to that which grants pseudo-authority of the built environment to architects who have no right to power or governance. That which is female, as well as that which is architecture, is socially constructed and therefore not dependent upon man but the State. Just as the female is introduced, learned, accepted and practiced, the role of the architect is produced through a similar framework using technologies of bio-power. Just as the female is a commodity of the State, the architect is a commodity of the State. Therefore architects are beholden to the State in order to assume the manufactured identity or non- identity.

The female is female in that she is not male. The duality of the term différance, as introduced by Jacques Derrida, serves to reveal how the female is a multiplicitous condition requiring the female figure to differ in form, as well as to defer to the will of the State through the male figure. The female figure is required to become passive not because of an inherent nature but to adhere to the standardization of roles as mandated by the State as governing body. The production of the female reveals how the architect, as a social actor, defers its identity to objects while accepting the privilege of being different within a consortium of disciplines.

2. Acting like an academic.

The academy is the appropriate location for an architect to wrestle control of his/her identity away from the State. If the discipline of architecture is to form a cursive territory from which the dependence upon objects can be relieved, then the technologies of architecture must be introduced, learned and practiced but accepted as the practice of architecture. The role of the architect as thinker, artist, poet and engineer has been challenged and usurped by State agents. The historical frame from which this challenge may emanate is likely, the “ideal” of the architect as “master builder.” (Van Kijk, Hans 12-13) Through the use of the terms master and builder, the collective notion of craft, through materiality, dislocates the identity of the architect into the realm of handicraft.

Karl Heinrich von Bötticher classifies the conditions of building and design in terms of core form and art form. For Bötticher, core form is represented by the necessities of buildings while the art form is the literal form of the built object. (Boetticher 138-52) This misnomer leads architects within society to consolidate conditions of building or art form with the task of building objects or core form. The task of building artifacts is distinctly different from conceptualizing various scale developmental schemes based upon scaled representational technologies. Architects craft ideas through modes of representation which are sponsored by the academy because those modes of representation have been introduced, learned, accepted and practiced by architects performing the role of instructor within the academy.

3. Acting like a practitioner.

The task of craftsperson is thusly appropriate for architects in practice that perform operations primary to the craft of the developmental scheme. The primary response of the practice is to ensure the health, safety and welfare of the public. These responsibilities are legislated by State agencies and have little, if anything, to do with architecture as defined herein. Practitioners are the primary occupants of the identity of the architect. The dichotomy that exists between the practice and the discipline of architecture serves to legitimize State agents inhabiting the domain of the architecture. Though marginalized by the practice, the academy serves as the primary site of the production of the architects and architecture. Just as the State sanctions the existence of male figures in order to police female figures, the State legitimizes the identity of the architect as practitioner in order to police academic figures.

The question remains: what identities exist beyond the State-sponsored recursive figure? The subversion of the signifier as site of authority reveals the grounds upon which the signified accepts a dubious identity. If we question the structure through which the field of the female and the architect are constructed, then we can question the identity of both, independent of the existing frames of reference. Again I return to the female and architect as co-habitués and/or recursive figures that are defined as that which are to be as Julia Kristeva has posited as questionable-subject-in-process.

For the architect, the question seems to rest in the viability of the title labeling those who profess to know independent of built objects. For the female, the question seems to rest in the collective effort to be independent. I would not say that this independence is an independence of dependency because that only leads down the path of feminism and into the realm of power structures that craft social practices. Independence of collective thought can lead to identities that are female and not in opposition to that which the female is. If one of the basic premises of dichotomies were to exist in opposition, then the terrain of co-habitué would seem to be the site of that which is. Just as the architect can retreat to the practice of architecture within the system at hand, the female collective can relocate to grounds upon what it means to be whilst relieving the collective self of the will to attain power. The need to attain power is the domain of the State and not the domain of males therefore an enduring opposition to unwitting male figures would seem futile.

How can I locate a female space when the breath of the feminist movement is lost to reconcile a legible composition without succumbing to fruitless arguments regarding maleness? This is the project that affects many arguments associated with the feminist movement that exists as non-existence. Because feminism is bound to a subversion that demands power, the absence of power undermines the ability to locate that which is female. This prohibition in turn renders the female collective powerless to locate a collective will, presence and/or consortium of spaces, which is what this project seeks to reveal.

B. The production of architects.

The production of architects is entrusted primarily to NCARB, the National Council of Architectural Accreditation Boards. NCARB regulates, certifies and guarantees all professional schools of architecture in the U.S. AIA, American Institute of Architects, regulates, certifies and guarantees members within its body. Likewise IDP, the Intern Development Program, monitors the progress of subjects during a three-year professional indoctrination period. The State utilizes these organizing bodies to produce the ideal citizen or, in this case, the ideal architect. If the charge of these bodies is to enforce the will of the State as the controlling agent within a given territory, then these agencies oversee the production of the architect as well as female space. Adorno’s culture industry posits the standardization of needs and desires. Therefore space, as a derivative of cultural practices is regulated, certified and monitored by the State through these bodies.

If this is a reliable assumption, then the charge of creating female space cannot and will not ever be possessed by an architect based upon a paradigm contingent on gender. How then do architecture and/or feminism begin to locate the space of the female? Or, is this an appropriate question since that which is female has been relegated to a secondary or tertiary status within existing frames of reference? It would seem that the primary supposition is close to relevant in that we are looking at the space of privilege and not an authentic female space.

III. Only with Authority

As a tool of the State, the practice of architecture is granted authority to reproduce spatial formations. Therefore, authority over the production of female space does not reside within the practice of architecture but with the State. Bio-power, is a technology of power used to manage groups Foucault say that, “An explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations.” (Foucault 140)

A. Bio-power

1. Authority to reproduce space is bio-political.

If, as Foucault asserts, bio-politics is a style of government that uses bio-power as a technology to control all aspects of a given population, then spatial formations rest with the State. Subsequently the argument regarding the architect in the production of space becomes: what is the role of the architect? Our presupposition, in order to pose this question, must be that authority to craft space rests within the practice of architecture. If we accept this assumption, then we must assume that the practice is cognizant of the power of dynamics assigned to image objects. Then we could assume that members reared through this system professing a heightened awareness of spatial reorganization would understand how built objects are used as tools to regulate bodies. As experts in the production of space and the occupancy of space, then would architects be aware of the technologies of spatial manipulation that support the State’s efforts at total regulation of bodies within? If practitioners are unwittingly supporting the will of the State, then does that not support the claim that the architects are merely agents of – and not authoring – the craft of spatial practices? The plausibility of these questions would allow for the readdressing of the supposition regarding ‘who’ crafts the space of privilege.

Does the practice of architecture behold any investment in the assignment of spatial privilege? Or is the practice of architecture just comprised of a benevolent lot accepting the privilege assigned to the title of architect? Maybe there exists an internal diversity that allows for collective awareness and dormancy to coexist with or without tension. Perhaps this internal diversity may constitute the site of access from which the practice can become re-situated by the discipline.

What is the goal of spatial regulation? Is it, as Jeremy Bentham postulates, the goal of the State utilizing practices of architecture simply, “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind?” Is not the technology of the panopticon ubiquitous in spatial practices? Are these practices and techniques naturalized passively by unwitting practitioners or actively assumed as methodology? In either instance, what is the role of the female architect regarding the use of prescribed modes or prescribed techniques in practice? Does any agency exist for female architects or are female architects just a hapless collective occupying the title as well? More substantively, is the collectivity of female architects an advocate for the female figure?

Since the goal of the State is to regulate all aspects of human life, then to what end does the State seek to regulate a female space? One course of thought regarding the regulation of space would be to survey the bodies that occupy space. As stated by Louis Althusser, the purpose of the State is the production of and continued existence of the State. If the State is the end in-itself, then maintenance of social structures that organize bodies for that purpose reinforces the ubiquitous nature of the State. Methods of surveying bodies through techniques of bio-power serve to reinforce the existence of the State by maintaining that which exists. Because the State exists as the epicenter of power, any existing technologies of bio-power are tools of the State.

2. Mimesis and production of the feminine.

As accepted, the gender dichotomy serves to reinforce the existence of the male figures as purveyors of domination. Through this formation the ideal of the female is rendered subordinate to that which is male. Due to this simplistic arrangement the existence of the female is continually in the process of mimicking that which is accepted as male. Maleness rarely addresses the multiplicity of instances where masculinity can inhabit the terrain of femininity and vice verse. Herein lays a conundrum of femininity regarding the production of that which is not a reconfiguration of the known masculine.

Why then does the collective labeled female seek to mimic forms of that which are known to institute operative forms of domination against it? Perhaps that which is female is limited to perform a reality through terms defined by the State. The same authority that grants privilege to architects may also establish the conditions that determine the existence of the female collective. Just as architects are unwitting actors within the realm of professionals, males operate under a prescription of moral authority legislated with cause. Perhaps the cause is the State, which ultimately prescribes the condition of subservience that is merely the différance of the male.

3. Why is authority merely technical?

If the notion of authorship as a derivative of authority granted serves to commodify spatial practices, then these techniques manage bodies. Architects are allowed to manage the realm of built objects while assuming the province of author. The uses of spatial practices as techniques to manage bodies through space are techniques of bio-power as defined herein. The use of the practice of architecture as a means to control space defines the role of the architect as a creator. If the creators of spatial environments are generators, then the use of commodified spatial environments as technologies of control would render the creator the source a technology of bio-power. Since the source is the State, the architect/author and the State/authority could both be classified as apparatuses within the existing structure.

B. Violent Subversion of the Identity of the Architect.

1. What does it mean to be an architect?

In order to locate identity we must understand the grounds upon which the realm of architecture exists. Meaning for the architect as stated herein has been defined via an association to built objects. However this does not address identity but merely obfuscates the grounds upon which identity may rest. Does this mean that identity as an architect is known, knowable, unknown or unknowable? Or does this align the identity of the architect more closely to that which is the unknowable, unknown, knowable or known female figure?

Maybe the legislated membership locates the known architect as practitioner. The practitioner has been identified by the State as a viable citizen worthy to reproduce spatial environments that reify dominant socio-political ideologies. The practitioner can be readily located while assuming the rights of legislation granted via the title. More difficult to locate is the realm of the unknown. Or, is the unknown identity the collective resigned to a secondary status within the academy? Within the academy architects are trained to engage in the production of dwelling objects and choose to assist in the production of architects not architecture. If the goal of the architect is to conceptualize dwelling objects and the goal of the academy is to produce those who conceive dwelling objects, then would not the unknowable be those beings that reject the singularity of an existence in either the practice or the discipline? Would a practitioner well grounded in the necessities of building (core form) as well as actively engaging in the conditions of producing architects (art form), operate as an unknowable multi- form being? The multi-form existence allows beings to exist within a chasm beyond the practice while not completely being appropriated by the discipline. Is this the domain of the unknowable form, or more appropriately, the being of that which is an architect? In this form the unknowable would be unrecognizable to those existing in singularity as either a practitioner or an academic.

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