Architecture in Black: Theory, Space and Appearance by Darell Wayne Fields

Author:Darell Wayne Fields [Fields, Darell Wayne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472567048
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-03-11T22:00:00+00:00

Figure 3.1 Watkin’s and Pevsner’s historical definitions of architecture superimposed on a diagram representing Gates’s black vernacular (by author).

Without considering Watkin’s and Pevsner’s statements in the context of Gates’s pattern of Signification, it would be difficult to understand them as historical homonyms with different concepts: they are, as Gates would define them, perpendicular forms of architecture and its history. As with the homonym represented by signification and Signification, we are dealing with both superimposition and distinction. The superimposition produces the “homonymic” effect while the “structure” apprehends the differences in meaning. In terms of form and technique, Watkin’s definition occupies the same axis as that of Gates’s black vernacular. For Watkin, the “arbitrary nature” of the sign is acknowledged in the “aesthetic” category of his definition of history. Again, he states that this category allows us “to analyze . . . [and] . . . explain the pattern of style and stylistic change, because they show clearly how art history is inevitably shaped by a philosophy of history.” Therefore, “style” as a visual sign in architecture functions similarly to the linguistic sign—both are arbitrary.

As a result of the simultaneity of the visual sign in architecture and the linguistic sign in language, it is necessary to pursue a linguistic system that (1) is structured around the arbitrary nature of linguistic and visual signs, (2) has the capacity to both analyze and construct homonymic effects produced within this relentlessly arbitrary environment, and (3) features “work” produced through acts of repetition and revision at the level of the “original” signifier. This necessity, from within architecture, reveals that we are already operating in the environs of the Signifying Monkey. Here, blackness, as a form of criticism, is understood as being perpendicular to other forms of criticism:

Free of the white person’s gaze, black people created their own unique vernacular structures and relished in the double play that these forms bore to white forms. Repetition and revision are fundamental to black artistic forms, from painting and sculpture to music and language use. [It is important to analyze] the nature and function of Signifyin(g) precisely because it is repetition and revision, or repetition with a signal difference. Whatever is black about black American literature is to be found in this identifiable black Signifyin(g) difference . . . Lest this theory of criticism, however, be thought of as only black . . . the implicit premise of this study is that all texts Signify upon other texts, in motivated and unmotivated ways. Perhaps critics of other literatures will find this theory useful as they attempt to account for the configuration of the texts in their traditions. (Gates, 1988: xxiv–xxv)

Since we are currently dealing with Barthes’s empty, full, and mythical signifiers and Gates’s formalization of a black vernacular, it is interesting to posit a series of hypotheses demonstrating the presence of these ideas in architectural theory. Having just discussed the historical significance of the mythical signifier in the context of architectural history, we move directly toward a demonstration of the filling of an empty signifier in the context of architectural theory.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.