Adventures with the Theory of the Baroque and French Philosophy by Nadir Lahiji

Author:Nadir Lahiji
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781474228534
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

9

Digital Neobaroque and the Hyper-Deleuzeans of Architecture

The recent mutation in the formal structures of contemporary architecture, sanctioned by the institutions of high culture, has been euphorically celebrated as a “New Architecture” and imagined as a sensational break from the immediate past. This aggressive claim to “newness” is largely the invention of champions of Deleuze’s philosophy in architecture. We might call them—unkindly—“hyper-Deleuzeans” and take them to task for misappropriating Deleuze’s concept of the fold, which I discussed previously. In this chapter, I want to return to that particularly problematic practice of directly “applying” philosophy to building theory—a practice at which hyper-Deleuzeans are particularly adept. But first, it is important to clarify who is being targeted in this chapter.

In contrast to the pretentious claim to “newness,” we might classify the recent figurative turn in the “New Architecture” more simply, and truthfully, as a late version of postmodern “neobaroque.” Neobaroque here is meant in a broad sense to designate a large part of contemporary design practice influenced by the imperatives of the culture industry. This is quite different from the way Deleuze used it in The Fold (I will come back to this) and is not meant to indicate a period “style” or as an affirmative art-historical category. Rather, the neobaroque stands for a distorted version of historical Baroque forms. As we will see, much is at stake in being able to make and sustain this distinction.

The neobaroque implies a disorientation, or better, a disorder in the state of contemporary architecture. As a diagnostic term, it signals a pathological state afflicting the “body” of architecture. Psychological diagnostic manuals would refer to it as “body dysmorphic disorder”—a nosological term referring to an “imagined ugliness disorder.”1 In relation to the architectural “body,” this disorder does not of course have any particular clinical causes. It is rather a symptom of a general malady in the state of contemporary culture, a malady that I claim requires psychoanalysis for its interpretation.

In the discourse of the hyper-Deleuzeans, dysmorphic disorder, interestingly enough, was given fashionable and fancy aesthetic-philosophical names. Initially, it was called “formlessness” or informe, borrowing from Bataille, as observed by Rosalind Krauss and Eve-Alain Bois.2 By the time it migrated into architectural discourse, this term, however, had lost most of its critical force. At times, the Kantian sublime was invoked to explain it. Later, the fold or folding were used to give it a philosophical legitimacy, especially by a younger generation of the architects and critics disenchanted with the “older” master narratives and fascinated by Derrida’s philosophy and “critical practice.” This new appreciation of Deleuzeanism in architecture echoed a widespread trend that rejoiced at the fact that Japanese “paper folders,” origami artists, appreciated The Fold much as Australians surfers did.3 Against this background, the term neobaroque, beyond the pathological disorder, takes on special meaning, especially in its claim to the “new” that I want to examine.

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