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The Gift of the Open Hand: Le Corbusier Reading Georges Bataille's "La Part Maudite" Author(s): Nadir Lahiji
Source: Journal of Architectural Education (1984-), Vol. 50, No. 1 (Sep., 1996), pp. 50-67 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Association of Collegiate Schools of
Architecture, Inc.
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The Gift of the Open Hand: Le CorbusierReading La PartMaudite GeorgesBataille's

NADIR LAHIJI,Georgia Institute of Technology
Phillip Duboy cites this passage in his article for Le Corbusier, Une Encylopedie.Duboy writes that Le Corbusier penned this commentary on a flight to the new capital of Punjab, Chandigarh.6 He suggests that "this brief reflection" by Le Corbusier is the source for the Open Hand at Chandigarh. Duboy suggests that these remarkssigGAVELE nify the definition of Le Corbusier as a modern hero, the true subBETWEEN SOMETIME 1949 AND 1953, GEORGESBATAILLE Corbusier a copy of his most celebrated book, La Part Maudite, essai ject of modernity that owes its definition to Walter Benjamin. On d'economiegeneral, la consumation (The AccursedShare).' The title the basis of Le Corbusier's reading of Bataille, Duboy suggests that page bears this inscription in Bataille's hand: "'aMonsieur Le one might be tempted to define the modern heroes with what Corbusier,en timoignage d'admiration et de sympathie."("To Mr. Le Jacques Lacan would characterize as "qu 'illustrent des exploits Corbusier, a token of my admiration and sympathy.")2On the last dirisoires dans une situation d'dgarement"("which illustrates the page of this copy, Le Corbusier wrote "19 Nov. 1953," which indi- laughable achievements in a state of bewilderment").7 Whatever cates the date he finished reading the book. Le Corbusier marked the definition of the modern hero we might employ, we would do well text, underlined passages, and wrote commentaries on its two to remember what Walter Benjamin, in his monumental Passagenflyleaves. In spring 1988, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris werk, wrote about the essence of modernity: "To embrace Breton exhibited Le Corbusier's copy of La Part Maudite for the first time. and Le Corbusier-that would be to draw the spirit of contempoTo my knowledge, Le Corbusier never read Marcel Mauss' monumental work, The Gift,3 but here is a gift he received from Georges Bataille, who at the instigation of Alfred Metraux became acquainted with the theory of potlatch outlined by Mauss in Essai sur le don, T 31tIrforme archaique de l'dchange, which Mauss published in 1925.4 Bataille's argument in La Part Maudite owes a debt to Mauss's work. -T Le Corbusier was fascinated by the chapter "Ledon de rivalite ")"(The gift of rivalry:"Potlatch") in La Part Maudite, (le "potlatch I4 PART MA.iDITE where Bataille discussed the idea of the gift. In his overview of Bataille's text, written on the flyleaf, Le Corbusier made these relF."~~: marks about the section "Theorie du potlatch'. l'acquisition du 'rang"'(Theory of "potlatch": The acquisition of rank), with reference to page 92 of his copy of La Part Maudite:
of Le Corbusier (1887(1897-1962) was a contemporary GeorgesBataille He thinkers of the twentieth century. 1965) andone of the mostimportant a copy of his mostcelebratedbook,LaPartMaudite (The gave LeCorbusier Atthe time he reit witha warmdedication. accursedshare)andinscribed on the planning of was aboutto embark ceivedthis gift, LeCorbusier LeCorbusier readthe book;he in India. Onhis wayto India, Chandigarh the same wayhe hadreadhis copyof Homer's readit autobiographically, Le Corbusier's ThusSpakeZarathustra. Nietzsche's TheIliad andFriedrich life. eventin his late intellectual is a significant readingof LaPartMaudite Thisessay reflectson the natureof LeCorbusier's reading.Ittracesthe cirthinkers and between these twoverydifferent cumstancesof the friendship of the ideas andthe confluence speculateson the originof theiraffinities of the giftandpotlatch themtogether.I arguethatthe notions thatbrought fromMarcel in LaPartMaudite, Mauss,are at the origin comingto Bataille in India. of the idea of the OpenHand
l'autre il est roi. La pratique disint&ress'e de la peinture est un inlassable sacrifice, un don du temps, de patience, d'amour, sans aucune contrepartie d'argent (sauf les modernes marchands). C'est semer a tout vent pour inconnus. Un jour avant ou apres la mort, on nous dira merci. C'est trop tard pour tant de traversesv&cues.Mais qu'importe; ce qui importeest la clef du bonheur.5 [Brackets indicate additions to the handwritten text for clarity.-Ed.]
t'q-,l: '41?
( ..... , , , .. . ". ? .
Les 5 volumes [des] oeuvres complktes [de] Corbu offrent, proposent et imposent par adhesion enthousiaste les iddes [de] Corbu. D'un c6td Corbu est assume par les salauds, de
Education, JournalofArchitectural pp. 50-67 ? 1996 ACSA, Inc.
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1. Coverpage of LeCorbusier's copy of LaPartMaudite. Courtesy GeorgeBataille's of Foundation Le Corbusier, Paris.
2. Thehalftitlepage of LeCorbusier's copy LaPartMaudite of GeorgeBataille's bearing of dedication. Bataille's inscription George LeCorbusier, Paris. of Foundation Courtesy
1996 JAE50/1 September
50
rary France like a bow which strikes with knowledge to the heart of the present."8 If we replace Breton with the dissident surrealist Georges Bataille, we have the dialectical opposites of modernity: the modernity of discipline versus the modernity of desire.9 In his modernity of discipline, Le Corbusier made the sun and the body stand on their vertical axes, whereas Georges Bataille, the philosopher of transgression, spent his life subverting this vertical axis, collapsing it into horizontality. Yet, why should Bataille, in an act of verbal potlatch and expenditure of words, give a gift "d'admiration et de sympathie"to Le Corbusier? To which Le Corbusier does Bataille issue this gift: the architect, the painter, the planner, the fellow traveler, or the political comrade? I shall come back to this later in this essay. Let me state here that an unbridgeable abyss would seem to separate Le Corbusier and Georges Bataille; they are two different thinkers. Yet I suggest that we should take "Bataille with Le Corbusier" as twentieth-century contemporaries, in the sense that Jacques Lacan takes "Kant with Sade."10 Bataille reserved enough admiration for Le Corbusier to give him a copy of his La Part Maudite as a gift. Le Corbusier was the first architect to read Georges Bataille's most important work. In fact, Le Corbusier was one of the very few intellectuals who read Bataille's La Part Maudite in its first printing, which sold only fifty copies and did not find a wider audience at the time of its publication." In this respect, one might admit Le Corbusier into the circle of Bataille'sassociates: Michel Leiris, Andre Masson, Antoine Artaud, Maurice Blanchot, and Jacques Lacan, to name only a few. One can speculate that in his reading of Bataille's La Part Maudite, Le Corbusier found a confirmation of his reading of Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustrasome fifty years earlier:He perceived himself in strife as a tragic hero, whose life was spent as a sacrificial "gift"to humanity. If compared with his reading of Nietzsche, Le Corbusier's reading of Bataille when he was in his early sixties may seem to be an incidental event in his later life and works; perhaps one can call this reading posthumous. However, following Duboy, I want to argue that the sources behind the idea of the Open Hand might be found in Le Corbusier's reading of Bataille. Moreover, a reading of Bataille's idea of depense ("expenditure")might shed further light on our interpretation of Le Corbusier's later work. I suggest that La Part Maudite strongly influenced Le Corbusier's Plan of Chandigarh. Particularly, I argue that besides the Nietzschean connection in the main ouverte, which has aptly been brought up by Manfredo Tafuri, one should think of the Open Hand in the light of Bataille'snotion of sacrifice.12 Le Corbusier's reading of Georges Bataille's work was an "autobiographical"one, not unlike his readingof a new translationof Homer's The Iliad some years later, which he attempted to illustrate.13
51
I How did Bataille know Le Corbusier? Where did his "sympathy and admiration" for Le Corbusier lie? Why did Le Corbusier take an interest in ideas exercised by Bataille in La Part Maudite? Until more archival documents surface, any definitive answer to these questions must be postponed. Nevertheless, we can speculate on a convergence of ideas that brought these two thinkers together in the complex years of the thirties in France.'4Part of the answer must be sought in the similarities between Le Corbusier's and Bataille's politics during the thirties.'5 One could presume that Bataille came to know Le Corbusier through the magazine L'EspritNouveau, and later through the journal Minotaure, which was founded in 1933 by Georges Bataille and Andre Masson, dissident surrealistswho gathered together other artists who became disillusioned with Andre Breton. Le Corbusier contributed the article "Louis Soutter, L'inconnue de la soixantaine" to Minotaure 9 in 1936. Bataille's inscription in Le Corbusier's copy of La Part Maudite bears no date, so it is difficult to determine exactly when Bataille gave his book to Le Corbusier, but we can speculate with some certainty that Le Corbusier dealt with the book around and during the time that he began to get involved in the Chandigarh project in India. Albert Mayer and Matthew Nowicki had already established a master plan and sketches of the Capitol area of Chandigarh around 1950. In late 1950, Le Corbusier took over the job after the sudden death of Nowicki while flying over Egypt. Le Corbusier flew to India in February 1951.16 According to Duboy, Le Corbusier wrote his overview of Bataille's work on this flight. In the thirties, Le Corbusier was preoccupied with the idea of planisme, which explains his interest in the section "The Marshall Plan" in the last part of La Part Maudite.17AsAllan Stoekl informs us, Bataille'splaniste tendency come to the surface after the war in La Part Maudite.'8 At the beginning of the fifties, Le Corbusier realized in the Chandigarh plan the ideas of planning that he had put forward in the thirties, but clearly the conception of planning in Chandigarh is radically different from that of planning in the thirties. To demonstrate this, we might turn to two chapters in the first volume of La Part "The Gift of Rivalry: 'Potlatch"' and Maudite. "The Marshall Plan." Le Corbusier paid special attention to these chapters, heavily marking paragraphs and making commentaries.19 Bataille's thoughts on potlatch and the Marshall Plan enabled Le Corbusier to see his role in the Chandigarh plan. The nature of this plan was different from that of Ville Radieusein its fundamental philosophical premises and in its architectural concept. Le Corbusier's readLahiji
ing of the idea of potlatch in La Part Maudite reinforced his philosophical conviction about his gigantic, humanistic mission in the Chandigarh project: a plan for the newly born nation of India in need of its own singular transition to a modern state.20 Let us not forget that Le Corbusier conceived of the plan for Chandigarh in the aftermath of his frustrated attempts at urban planning for the major cities in the West, which forever remained unrealized. In the thirties, Le Corbusier was intensely, aggressively, and internationally involved in putting forward his urbanistic ideas. In the center of all of these projects was a fundamental ideology of central economic planning with authoritarian political control. In addition to his ongoing design and projects, his major activities during this period included publishing Pricision sur un Atatprdsent de l'architectureet de l'urbanismein 1930; launching a number of studies of town planning for cities, including Algiers (Plan Obus, A, B, C, D, E), Paris, Barcelona, and Stockholm; proposing the Ville Radieusein 1933; becoming an active member of the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM); paying his last visit to the Soviet Union in 1930; publishing his Quand les cathddrales dtaient blanchesin 1937; and organizing his exhibitions in the United States and Europe.2' The term planisme, or "technocratism," refers to the main line of debate in France during the thirties. The figures debating this notion contributed to the review Plans, a short-lived journal founded by Philip Lamour in 1931 to which two contemporaries of Bataille, Robert Aron and Arnold Dandieu, contributed. They were connected to the OrdreNouveau, and their political positions had much in common with what Bataille expounded in his brilliant and influential 1933 essay, "The Notion of Expenditure."22 Bataille wrote this essay for the journal La Critique Sociale at the age of thirty-five. He was fifty-two when he published La Part Maudite, which he described in the preface as the fruit of eighteen years of work. Both texts proceed from his discovery of Marcel Mauss' The Gift around the end of the twenties.23 Le Corbusier was on the editorial board of Plans in 1931 and 1932. He regularly participated and actively contributed to this journal.24 He wrote and published eighteen articles on urbanism between January 1931 and July 1932, many of which he later colThe ideas lected and reprinted in section 4 of La Ville Radieuse.25 expounded by Arnaud Dandieu, the leader of Ordre Nouveau and a librarian, like Bataille at the Biblioteque National in Paris, influenced Bataille.26 Dandieu published La RdvolutionNicessairein collaboration with Robert Aron in late 1933, the same year that Bataille published "The Psychological Structure of Fascism" in La Critique Sociale. Dandieu was also a contributor to Bataille's review
1996 JAE50/1 September 52
Documents.27 During 1933, Bataille had episodic relationswith OrdreNouveau.He anonymouslycollaborated with Dandieu and Aron on the chapter "Echangeset Credits"of their Revolution Nicessaire.28 The thirtiesin Francewere times of complexpolitical movementsand debateson syndicalism,communism,Americanism, and fascism. The Ordre Nouveau movement, headed by of Plansin fall 1931 to estabDandieu,joinedwith the participants lish a "genuine federation." It is possiblethatthroughthis European collaboration,Le Corbusierand Dandieu came to know of each other'sideas;and that throughDandieu and Plans,Bataillecould In anycase,we canconcludethat havecome to knowLe Corbusier. in 1949 is rootedin this peBataille's admiration for Le Corbusier ideason urbanism and planningmight riod, when Le Corbusier's have found a sympatheticear in Bataille.Bataille's planismelater bears similaritiesto Le Corbusier's.This helps explain why Le Corbusiertook a specialinterestin La PartMaudite's last chapter on the Marshall Plan.The argumentadvancedby Batailleand the question he confrontedwere of the same natureas the ones that Dandieuand Aron dealtwith between1931 and 1933.29 In La PartMaudite,Batailleattemptsto subvertthe existing and utility, politicaleconomy,which was groundedin rationality In this general and replace it with a "general economy, economy.'"30 unproductiveexpenditure-sacrifice, luxury,war, games, monuments-determines sociallife. As one commentator notes, this notion of generaleconomy "is not the store and the workshop,the bankand the factory, which hold the keyfromwhich the principles of the economycan be deduced.In the blood that spurtsfrom the to the sun in an Aztec ritual,in the open chest of victimssacrificed sumptuousand ruinousfeastsofferedto the courtiersof Versailles by the monarch of divine right, in all these mad dissipationsis found a secret that our restrictedeconomics has coveredup and In the thesisof the generaleconomy,socausedto be forgotten."" cialwealthis not a utilitarian vision,the parsimonious viewpointof which spendsonly when it expectsreturn. an asceticbourgeoisie, of the Rather,society itself is formed in "the modeof expenditure share... this accursed excess,the consumptionof the superfluous, The dominantprosaicvision may be only a recentlyformedprejuwith the reignof the bourgeoisie, usheredin dice contemporaneous and unableto accountfor the realand inelucby the Reformation, tablemovementof wealthin a society,a movementthatsovereignty to the sacredthroughreengageshumanbeings:theirrelationship Some of the themesin La Part ligion, mysticism,art, eroticism.'"32 in "TheNotion of ExpendiMauditehad alreadybeenanticipated of proture": "Humanactivityis not entirelyreducible to processes duction and conservation, and consumptionmust be dividedinto
inthe Fosse's de la Considdration. 3. Le Corbusier of the OpenHand Le Corbusier, photomontage Oeuvre Editions 1965) SPADEM. d'Architecture, complite, 1957-65 (Zurich:
two distinct parts." The first part, Bataille writes, is represented by the minimum productive activity necessary for the conservation of life in a given society; the second part is represented by "so-called unproductive expenditure: luxury, mourning, war, cults, the construction of sumptuary monuments, games, spectacles, arts, perverse sexual activity (i.e., deflected from genital finality)-all these represent activities which, at least in primitive circumstances, have no end beyond themselves.""33 In part 2 of La Part Maudite, in the chapter "Sacrifice or Consumption," Le Corbusier marked and underlined the following passage: Cette consumation inutile est ce qui m'agree,aussit6t levd le souci du lendemain. Et si je consume ainsi sans mesure, je revele a mes semblable ce que je suis intimement: la consumation est la voie par oi communiquent des etres Tout transparait, tout est ouvert et tout est infini, s~'pares. entre ceux qui consument intensement. Mais rien ne compte des lors, la violence se libere et elle se dichaine sans limites, dans la mesure oih la chaleur s'accroit.34 In the left margin of this passage, Le Corbusier wrote the word fusion, which I take to be a reference to the section "Fusion" in "The Poem of the Right Angle." In "The Marshall Plan," Bataille returns to an affirmation of certain planisme that during the thirties had certain associations with forms of authoritarianism, protofascism, and Marxism.35 Planisme was the very essence of a centrally organized society with a political leader. During the Aciphale period in the thirties, Bataille was critical of planisme. As
53
Stoekl observes, Aciphale, a 1936 drawing by Andre Masson, "is a figure that bears death, but at the same time 'he' is a perfectly coherent and traditional 'sacred figure' around which a society, albeit one of conspirators, can be established. ... While the head is clearly missing, the stars (nipples), bowels and death's head (genital) only go to create another face, another 'figure humaine.' Further, the death's head itself has a miniature face. ... The 'acephale,' in other words, has lost a head, a principle of organization and order, only to mutate and develop another, more hypnotic, doubled and doubling (replicating) face."36In Le Corbusier's idea of Ville Radieuse, there was no "acephalic head" as (dis)organizing principle, but rather it was the very "head" at the top of a hierarchy that was the organizing principle. This plan was compatible with Dandieu and Aron's authoritarianism and the imperative of a center. In the chapter "Soviet Industrialization," in La Part Maudite, Bataille wrote, "Rien n'est ferme qui reconnait simplement les . Et c'est de toutes parts et de conditions matirielles de la pensee. toutes fagons que le monde invite l'homme a le changer. Sans doute l'homme de ce cbte-ci n'est pas necessairment appelk a suivre les voies imperieuses de I'URSS. Dans la plus grande mesure il se consume aujourd'hui dans la stdrilit" d'un anticommunisme effray6. " Mais s'il a ses problkmes propres resoudre, il a mieux faire qu'I . detresse que commandent ses maudire aveuglkment, crier une qu'. Qu'il s'efforce de comprende ou mieux contradictions multiplides. qu'il admire la cruelle energie de ceux qui d6foncerent le sol russe, il sera plus proche des taches qui l'attendent. Car c'estde toutesparts et de toutesfafons qu 'un monde en mouvement veut htrechangd.'"37 Le Corbusier circled this paragraph and wrote below it, "Depuis 35 anneesjefais des Plans ... car c'est la pricisiment, mon r6le et mon devoir"("For 35 years I have designed ... because this is precisely my role and my duty"). Later, I will come back to the significance of this remark. Bataille begins "The Marshall Plan"by saying, "Outside of the Soviet world, there is nothing that has the value of an ascendant movement, nothing advances with any vigor. There persists a powerless dissonance of moans, of things already heard, of bold testimony to resolute incomprehension. This disorder is more favorable no doubt to the birth of an authentic self-conciousness than is its opposite, and one might even say that without this powerlessness-and without the tension that is maintained by communism's aggressiveness-consciousness would not be free, would not be alert."38 (This was also underlined Le The Marshall Plan Corbusier.) by passage responded to the threat of Soviet hegemony in an impoverished Europe. It was a plan by which the United States could peacefully enter into competition with the Soviets. After all, "a plan must be
Lahiji
evolved through which a military confrontation is avoided."39The Marshall Plan, according to Bataille, "is the solution to the problem. It is the only way to transfer to Europe the products without which the world's fever would rise."40 (This passage was also underlined by Le Corbusier.) The Marshall Plan was different from the planisme of Dandieu and Aron and from the VilleRadieuse.The end of this plan is a potlatch, a "spending without return" already put forward by Bataille in "The Notion of Expenditure." As opposed to socialist state planning, controlled by an authoritarian "head," the Marshall Plan was "headless" planning. Truman, after Roosevelt, was the "acephalichead." Stoekl points out that this is "'planning without a head' in another sense as well: the 'end' of planning is planlessness. ... Just as the most elaborately conceived planning is inseparable from potlatch, so too the most integrated, nonindividuated consciousness (the consciousness that arises at the end of history, through an impossible 'awareness' of the [non] 'objective' of the Marshall Plan) is indissociable from the nothingness it 'knows.' At this point one can see how Bataille'seconomic project folds back into the secular mystical experience of the Somme atheologique.'"4' Le Corbusier's careful reading of this chapter in marking every page clearly indicates his affirmation of Bataille's thesis, but it is more than an affirmation. I would argue that Le Corbusier found his "headless"Truman in the "acephalic head" of Nehru. At Chandigarh, Le Corbusier transcends the planisme of the thirties and the authoritarianism of VilleRadieuse.The Chandigarh plan is clearly a plan without a head and free of a hierarchical distribution. It is a potlatch of an "excessive"expenditure of space; its structure is a disarticulated and disjunctive (de)composition. In this plan, Le Corbusier frees himself from the anthropomorphic body of Ville Radieuse and authoritarian control and achieves a body (dis)organization akin to Andre Masson's Acephale.In regarding the Chandigarh plan, it would be instructive to read Bataille's article "Architecture,"published in Documents in 1929. This was the first article that Bataille published in Documents'dictionary, which was devoted to architecture. The first paragraphstates:
and state speak to and impose silence upon the crowds. Indeed, monuments obviously inspire good social behavior and often even genuine fear. The fall of the Bastille is symbolic of this state of things. This mass movement is difficult to explain otherwise than by popular hostility towards monuments which are their veritable masters.42
According to Bataille, architecture starts as the soul of the society, a neutral image that later will intervene in the very social order that it symbolizes. In this reversal, to follow Hollier's comments, the relationship between architecture and the society that it expresses is analogically similar to the relationship between Inca civilization and its imperialistic system of state control, also the pre-Colombian Mexicans, or Aztecs, and their sacrifices atop pyramids, which Bataille discussed in "Sacrifices and Wars of the Azthat all important tecs,4" in La Part Maudite. Bataille wrote science of architec"Their were useless: of the Aztecs undertakings ture enabled them to construct pyramids on top of which they imHe continues, "The priests killed their molated human beings.""44 victims on top of the pyramids. They would stretch them over a stone altar and strike them in the chest with an obsidian knife. They would tear out the still-beating heart and raise it thus to the sun. Most of the victims were prisoners of war, which justified the idea of wars as necessaryto the life of the sun: Wars meant consumption, not conquest, and the Mexicans thought that if they ceased the sun would cease to give life.""' Le Corbusier's Chandigarh plan projects an image of expenditure and distribution of wealth and space for a new India by precisely suspending and disrupting the physiognomy of a hierarchical body, which is based not on consumption, but rather on utility and production, such as Le Corbusier symbolized in Ville Radieuse.The expenditure of space in Chandigarh knows no boundry; it is a sacrificial giving of space, returning to the sun its gift of accursed energy. Manfredo Tafuri, the only historian who has drawn on Bataille's writing to interpret Le Corbusier's late work, aptly captured the spirit of the Chandigarh plan. He wrote, "Nothing in fact Architecture is the expression of the true nature of societies, joins together the gigantic volume of the Secretariat,the Parliament, as physiognomy is the expression of the nature of individu- and the High Court of Justice: nothing-neither roads, perspectival als. However, this comparison is applicable, above all, to the allusions, nor formal triangulations-helps the eye to situate itself themphysiognomy of officials (prelates, magistrates, admirals). In with respect to these three 'characters,'which weave among to ear is able human which the from a gather only fact, only society's ideal nature-that of authoritative com- selves discussion mand and prohibition-expresses itself in actual architectural weak and distorted echoes. Indeed, the modeling of the terrain, the constructions. Thus the great monuments rise up like dams, dislocation of level, the mirrors of water, especially the Pool of Reopposing a logic of majesty and authority to all unquiet ele- flection, are all there to accentuate discontinuities and ruptures."46 ments; it is in the form of cathedrals and palaces that church Tafuri also points out, "Interruptions, slippings, and distortions
indeed pervade the language of the later Le Corbusier: at of the forms. Chandigarhthey are essentialto the dramatization The threegreat'desiringobjects'seekto shattertheirown solitude: the Secretariat throughits inclinedrampand the brokenmeshesof its facadegradations; the Parliament throughthe distortionof the geometricsolids that dominate it like hermetictotems; the high Court of Justicethroughthe bendingof the brise-soleil and the giBut takes ant entrance the stairway. interchange placeonly at a distance:tension informsthis dialogueamongsymbolsthat havelost the codes that once gavethem the valueof names.""47 The economy of this plan is analogous to the "solar its energyfor total dipense. In this plan, economy"in squandering the cultureof Schure's"greatinitiates"comes to meet the secular Somme This vision of potlatch mysticismof Bataille's athdologique. culminatesin the mainouverte. This will lead us to the significance of the idea of the gift. With the idea of the gift let us returnto the notion of an "autobiographical reading"of Bataille'sbook by Le Corbusierthat I suggestedat the beginningof this essay. II
is giving oneself and if one gives oneself it is because one 'owes' oneself-one's person and one's goods-to others.""9This remark would have appealed to Le Corbusier had he read it. Mauss explored the institution of potlatch in the Pacific Northwest in his elaboration of the theory of gift in archaic societies. He wrote, "Theobligation to give is the essenceofthe potlatch."50 The word potlatch comes from Nootka Indian potatsh or patlatsh as a noun and a verb meaning "gift"and "giving."Among some North American Indians of the Pacific Coast, the word means "a gift, a present" and "a tribal feast at which presents are given and received, given by an aspirant to chiefship." It also means "an extravagant giving away or throwing away of possessions to enhance one's prestige or establish one's position."51 We have to go to Mauss for the sociological and ethnographical signification of the idea ofpotlatch. In the introduction to The Gift, he writes: Within these two tribes of the American Northwest and throughout this region there appears what is certainly a type of these "total services," rare but highly developed. We propose to call this form the "potlatch," as moreover, do American authors using the Chinook term, which become part of the everydaylanguage of Whites and Indians from Vancouver to Alaska. The word potlatch essentially means "to feed," to "consume." ... Yet what is noteworthy about these tribes is the principle of rivalry and hostility that prevails in all these practices. They go as far as to fight and kill chiefs and nobles. Moreover, they even go as far as the purely sumptuary destruction of wealth that has been accumulated in order to outdo the rival chief as well as his associates (normally a grandfather, father-in-law, or son-in-law). There is total service in the sense that it is indeed the whole clan that contracts on behalf of all, for all that it possesses and for all that it does, through the person of its chief. But this act of "service"on the part of the chief takes on an extremely marked agonistic character. It is essentially usurious and sumptuary. It is a struggle between nobles to establish a hierarchy amongst themselves from which their clan will benefit at a later date. We propose to reserve the term potlatch for this kind of institution that, with less risk and more accuracy, but also at a greater length, we might call: total serviceofan agonistic type.52
In La PartMaudite,Bataillediscussed the ideaof the gift in a chapter titled"TheGift of Rivalry: Le Corbusier madesome 'Potlatch."' commentaries on this chapter.I mentionedearlierLe and remarks Corbusier'soverview of Bataille'stext written on the flyleaf, to which I want to return here. Le Corbusierwrote, "Lapratique disintiressde de la peintureestun inlassable un dondu temps sacrifice, depatience,d'amour, sansaucunecontrepartie ("Theund'argent." selfishpracticeof paintingis an unflaggingsacrifice, a gift of time, In this remark, patience,and love, expectingno materialreward.") Le Corbusierdrawsa parallelbetweenBataille's notion of dipense and the identity of his own work. Through Bataille'swriting, he sees the truthin his paintingsas a token of the sacrificeof himself. He appropriates Bataille's argumentas his own and sees himselfin its mirror.When Le Corbusier writes"agift of time and patience. "time" and "patience" reward," .. with no material equalthe "gift" itself. BeforeI reflectfurther,let us see how the idea of the gift enteredBataille's Bataille thinking.In "TheNotion of Expenditure," quoted MarcelMauss:"The ideal would be to give a potlatchand not have it returned."48 His readingof Mauss' The Gift enabled Batailleto formulatehis notion of the generaleconomy, as he adFurther, Mauss gives an exact definition for potlatch: "The mits in TheAccursed In TheGift, Mausswrote,"Ifone gives obligation to give is the essenceof the potlatch. ""5 Share. The etymological things and returnsthem, it is becauseone is giving and returning root for the word gift is more complex. Mauss, in a footnote, goes Yet, it is also by giving that one into the meanings of that word in detail. The word gift, he says "is respect'-we still say 'courtesies.'
55 Lahiji
the translation of the Latin dosis, itself a transcription of the Greek 'dose, dose of poison."'54 He goes on, "This etymology presumes that High and Low German dialectics would have preserved a learned name for a thing in common use .... One would need to explain the choice of the word gift for this translation, as well as the converse linguistic taboo that has hung over the meaning of gift for this word in certain Germanic languages. Finally, the Latin, and above all the Greek use of the word dosis,with the meaning of poison, proves that, with the Ancients, too, there was an association of ideas and moral rules of the kind that we are describing."" Furthermore, Mauss says, "We have compared the uncertain meaning of giflwith that of the Latin word venenum.... To this must be added the comparison . . . of venia, venenum, from vanati (Sanskrit, 'to give pleasure'), and gewinnuen, 'to win."'56 Remarkably, this description of the uncertain meaning of the word gift brings it into the association with another equally ambiguous Greek word, pharmakon.57This ambiguity in the meaning of gift is the subject of Jacques Derrida's remarkable essays in Given Time: 1. CounterIn this work, Derrida has taken up the question of the feit Money.58 economic reasoning in the idea of gift, or present, and its relationship to the philosophical category of time in Marcel Mauss' The Gift. In his analysis, Derrida remarks on the "madness" of the giving without restitution in the face of which the economic reasoning of the gift falters. The passage in support of Derrida's reflection on the "madness" of gift in Mauss reads as follow: No less important in the transaction of the Indians is the role played by honor. Nowhere is the individual prestige of a chief and that of his clan so closely linked to what is spent and to the meticulous repayment with interest of gifts that have been accepted, so as to transform those who have obligated you into the obligated ones. Consumption and destruction are here really without limits. In certain kinds of potlatch, one must expend all that one has, keeping nothing back. It is a competition to see who is the richest and also the most madly extravagant. Everything is based upon the principle of antagonism and of rivalry. The political status of individuals in the brotherhoods and clans, and ranks of all kinds are gained in a "warof property," just as they are in real war, or through chance, inheritance, alliance, and marriage. Yet everything is conceived of as if it were a "struggleof wealth." Marriages for one's children and places in the brotherhoods are only won during the potlatch where exchange and reciprocity rule. They are lost in the potlatch as they are lost in war, by gambling or in running and wrestling. In a certain number of
cases, it is not even a question of giving and returning, but of destroying, so as not to want even to appear to desire repayment. Whole boxes of olachen (candlefish) oil or whale oil are burnt, as are houses and thousands of blankets. The most valuable copper objects are broken and thrown into the water, in order to crush and to "flatten" one's rival. . ... In this way one not only promotes oneself, but also one's family, up the social scale. It is therefore a system of law and economics in which considerable wealth is constantly being expended and transformed. One may, if one so desires, call these transfer acts by the name of exchange or even trade and sale; but such trade is noble, replete with etiquette and generosity. At least, when it is carried on in another spirit, with a view to immediate gain, it is the object of very marked scorn.59 The economic reasoning in the notion of the gift lies in its vicious circularity. Derrida writes, "For there to be a gift, there must be no reciprocity, return, exchange, countergift, or debt. If the other gives me backor owesme or has to give me back what I give him or her, there will not have been a gift, whether this restitution is immediate or whether it is programmed by a complex calculation of a long-term deferral or difference."60 Further Derrida continues: If the gift is annulled in the economic odyssey of the circle as soon it appears as gift or as soon as it signifies itself as gift, there is no longer any "logic of the gift," and one may safely say that a consistent discourse on the gift becomes impossible: It misses its object and always speaks, finally, of something else. One can go so far as to say that a work as monumental as Marcel Mauss's The Gift speaks of everything but the gift: It deals with economy, exchange, contract (do ut des), it speaks of raising the stakes, sacrifice, gift and countergiftin short, everything that in the thing itself impels the gift and the annulment of the gift. All the gift supplements (potlatch, transgression and excess, surplus values, the necessity to give or give back more, returns with interest-in short, the whole sacrificialbidding war) are destined to bring about once again the circle in which they are annulled.61 Derrida then concludes, "The gift is not a gift, the gift only to gives the extent it gives time. The difference between a gift and every other operation of pure and simple exchange is that the gift gives time. Therewhere there is gift, there is time. What it gives, the gift is time, but this gift of time is also a demand of time. The thing must not be restituted immediatelyand right away. There must be
time, it must last, there must be waiting-without forgetting."'62 The gift of time, and the patience in or of time, is what Le Corbusier claims that he has given in his paintings. This given time is the gift, precisely because it cannot be restituted immediately, even though Le Corbusier waited for its restitution. In the section "The Theory of Potlatch," Bataille inscribes the idea of the gift in the context of general economy. "We need to give away, or lose or destroy," he says. "But the gift would be senseless (and so we would never decide to give) if it did not take on the meaning of an acquisition. Hence giving must become acquiring a power. Gift-giving has the virtue of a surpassing of the subject who gives, but in exchange for the object given, the subject appropriates the surpassing. He regards his virtue, that which he had the capacLe Corbusier ity for, as an asset, as a power that he now possesses."63 attention to the section "The paid special Acquisition of Rank," which starts with this passage: "Doubtlesspotlatch is not reducibleto the desire to lose, but what it brings to the giver is not the inevitable increaseof returngifts; it is the rank which it conferson the one who has the last word" [Bataille's italics].64 Le Corbusier marked the words rank and inevitable in this passage and marked the rest of the section with numerous underlinings. Bataille in this section defines power as distinct from prestige and glory and says, "It must be said, further, that the identity of the power and the ability to lose is fundamental [Le Corbusier's emphasis]."''65 Bataille continues, "As the surviving practices make clear, rankvaries decisively accordingto an individual's capacity Toward for giving [Le Corbusier's emphasis].'"66 the end of the section, Bataille wrote, "Combat is glorious in that it is always beyond calculation at some moment. But the meaning of warfare and glory is poorly grasped if it is not related in part to the acquisition ofrank througha reckless expenditureof vital resources, ofwhichpotlach is the mostlegibleform [Le Corbusier's emphasis]."-67 Thus, potlatch is a struggle for pure prestige, which is achieved through the generation of what Bataille calls the "propriWe'positive de perte" ("positive property of loss") through which, as Suzanne Guerlac informs us, nonutilitarian values such as honor, rank, or glory are acquired.68 In this regard, the anguish and suffering of Le Corbusier, portrayed in his self-image, lies in the fact that his act of giving has not been restituted, or so he believes. Thus, he acquires rank and pure prestige by the act of potlatch. It is in this belief that he could tout vent pour inconnus. Un jour avant ou remark, "C'est semer "a apres la mort, on nous dira merci." ("This sowing to the wind is for unknown people. One day, before or after my death, they will say thank you.") Perhaps it is in this context that one should judge all the episodes of postwar writings by Le Corbusier, in which we find
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statements of self-deprecation, self-portrayal as a tragic hero, which oftentimes verges on the border of the quixotic comic and risible, autobiographical identification with tragic heroes, self-delusion, and repeated references to himself as a figure unappreciated by the public, none of which have been missed by his critics. To this repertoire one should add this lamenting statement: "Unjour avant ou apres la mort, on nous dira merci." In the light of this reading, all of the elements in Le Corbusier's flyleaf commentary, cited at the beginning of this article, come together. Thus we begin to understand the meaning and character of his autobiographical reading. Le Corbusier saw in his own humanity, art, and mission nothing short of self-sacrifice-that is, he saw his life as potlatch and as a gift to humanity with no returnwhatsoever. When Le Corbusier later reflected on Homer's The Iliad through his twenty-four drawings, in precisely the same fashion he identified himself with the heroes Hector and Paris, combative figures who suffered the violence of life in the face of its abject injustice. He saw in them his own image. However, this is not yet sufficient to advance the claim that Le Corbusier's ultimate self-sacrifice culminated in his idea of la main ouverte,or "Open Hand."
III
Bataille's "Rotten Sun," published in Documents3 in 1933, was part of an "Hommage 'i Picasso." In the same year in Documents 8, he published "Sacrificial Mutilation and the Severed Ear of Vincent van Gogh."69He devoted another short essay to van Gogh in 1937 called "van Gogh as Prometheus."70In 1931, he wrote "The Solar Anus." In 1928, he wrote his famous The Story ofthe Eye, which he published under the pseudonym Lord Auch; "The Pineal Eye," posthumously published, was probably written in 1928 or 1931. The common theme of these writings is Bataille's conception of the sun, which he later discussed in La Part Maudite in relation to Aztec sacrifices: "The sun himself was in their eyes the expression of For Bataille, "the truth of the sun," Nick Land tells us, sacrifice."71 lies "at the peak of its prodigal glory, . . . the necessity of uselesswaste, where the celestial and the base conspire in the eclipse of rational Land comments on Bataille's "blind sun or blindmoderation.'"72 it matters sun, little," by saying that "an Icarian collapse into the ing sun ... consummates apprehension only by translating it into the register of the intolerable. In the copulation with the sun-which is no more a gratification than a representation-subject and object fuse at the level of their profound consistency, exhibiting in blindness that they were never what they were."73
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In the essay "Rotten Sun," Bataille wrote, "One might add that the sun has also been mythologically expressed by a man slashing his own throat, as well as by an anthropomorphic being deprived of a head.... The myth of Icarus is particularlyexpressive from this point of view: it clearly splits the sun in two-the one that was shining at the moment ofIcarus's elevation, and the one that melted the wax, causing failure and a screaming fall when Icarusgot too close.""4 Picasso, for Bataille, was that contemporary artist who, through decomposition of forms in his painting, achieved the rupture in blinding brilliance that was associatedwith two conceptions of the sun. In the essay on the self-mutilation of van Gogh, Bataille brings the idea of sacrifice to an analysis of self-mutilation. As we have already observed, belonging to the notion of sacrifice in Bataille's work is the word depense.("expenditure")."This word operates in a network of thought that he describes as general or solar economy: the economThis is based on Bataille: "The raics of excess," Nick Land says."5 diation of the sun is distinguished by its unilateral character:it loses Solar economyisfounded itselfwithout reckoning,without counterpart. on us without a return itself The sun this squanders upon principle."76 because "we are ultimately nothing but the effect of the sun." In "The Notion of Expenditure," Bataille took up the notion of sacrifice. In the section entitled "The Principle of Loss,"he wrote, "From the point of view of expenditure, artisticproductions must be divided into two main categories, the first constituted by architecturalconstruction, music, and dance. This category is comprised of real expenditures. Nevertheless, sculpture and painting, not to mention the use of sites for ceremonies and spectacles, introduces even into architecture the principle of the second category, that of symbolicexpenditure. For their part, music and dance can easily be charged with external signification . . . the term poetry, applied to the least degraded and least intellectualized forms of expression of a state of loss, can be considered synonymous with expenditure; it in fact signifies, in the most precise way, creation by means of loss. Its meaning is therefore close to that of sacrifice."'7 Returning to the theme of sacrifice in the essay on van Gogh, Bataille reminds the reader of Areteus, who wrote of sick people in ancient times who tore off their own limbs to pay homage to gods who demanded such a sacrifice. He goes on to say, "There is, in fact, no reason to separate van Gogh's ear or Gaston F.'s finger from Prometheus's famous liver . .. then the tearing out of the liver presents a theme in conformity with the various legends of the 'sacrifice of the god' ... the eagle-god who is confused with the sun by the ancients, the eagle who alone among all beings can contemplate while staring at 'the sun in all its glory,' the Icarian being who goes to seek the fire of the heaven is, however, nothing other than
For Bataille, automutilator, a Vincent van Gogh, a Gaston F.""78 automutilation is the elementary fact of the "alteration"of the person. As Rosalind Krauss reminds us, the sun god in the "Rotten Sun" and the Van Gogh essays embodies waste and destruction; Bataille invented terms like informe,ac~phale,basses,automutilation, and blindness to shake the certainty of paradigms and release the effect of the things unassimilable by us.79 In "van Gogh as Prometheus," Bataille wrote, "For it was no mere bloody ear that van Gogh detached from his own head bearing it off to that 'House' (the troubling, crude, and childish image of the world we represent to others). Van Gogh, who decided by 1882 that it was better to be Prometheus than Jupiter, tore from within himself rather than an ear, nothing less than a SUN." Bataille continues, "Vincent van Gogh belongs not to art history, but to the bloody myth of our existence as humans. He is of that rare company who, in a word spellbound by stability, by sleep, suddenly reached the terrible 'boiling point' without which all that claims to endure becomes insipid, intolerable, declines. For this 'boiling point' has meaning not only for him who attains it, but for all, even though all may notyet perceive that which binds man's savage destiny to radiance, to explosion,to flame, and only thereby to power."80 Eric Michaud comments on this passage, "Bataille grasped the painter's double bond-or perhaps we should say double bind-to radiance and withering, but perhaps he absorbed it too quickly in the sacrificial figure of
Prometheus."81
It is not possible to determine whether Le Corbusier was familiar with the essays Bataille wrote during the thirties, but judging from his underlining of the chapter "Sacrifice and Wars of the Aztec" in La Part Maudite, particularly the section "Sacrifice or Consumption," it is certain that Le Corbusier understood the elements of Bataille's argument on sacrifice. My concern here is the relevance of this understanding for the interpretation of the Open Hand, especially in the light of what Bataille said about sacrifice and its relationship to the work of art. Through the literature on the Open Hand, we are already familiar with the Ruskinian image discussed by Mary Patricia May Sekler, no less the politics of the Open Hand that Stanislaus von Moos takes up. However, we should single out in the complex history of this image the powerful interpretation of the Open Hand in relation to Heideggerian thinking on technology by Manfredo Tafuri.82To this we might append a reading of this image in relation to the notion of sacrifice. In some respects, Le Corbusier's commentary about the spending of his life in the giving of his works and art to humanity, receiving nothing, resembles what van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo about the ambivalence of his self-sacrifice: "I wanted only to give, but not to re-
4. Le Corbusier, Bhakra DamProject. LastWorks, NewYork: Willy Boesiger,ed. Le Corbusier's Praeger,1990, SPADEM. 41
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ceive. Foolish, wrong, exaggerated, proud, rash-for in love one must not only give, but also take; and, receiving it, one must not Of course, van Gogh ultimately exhausted only take but also give."83 himself in self-sacrifice, as demanded by his art. In 1957, Nehru wanted Le Corbusier to "contribute an aesthetic and plastic touch," in celebrating the "gigantic work of technology," the hydroelectric dam at Bhakra in the Himalayas. On the summit of this dam, Le Corbusier intended to place his Open Hand, 17 meters high, 13 meters wide, as "a crowning feature."His main contribution was to be "the design for the balustrade on the top of the dam and the proposal to have his Open Hand monument as a crowning feature .... Le Corbusier had also proposed a platform for spectators 1700' above the spillway as at this point there
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is an excellent view both upstream and downstream. Le Corbusier had been asked to do the planning of the building as well as the landscaping of the dam and the lake area. He had designed a museum and was to have designed a cafeteria, a hotel, a motel, a tourist reception center and sport club.'"84None of these projects materialized, and the posthumously built version of the Open Hand in Chandigarh was modeled after the 1951 version. In the 1959 edition of L Art decoratifd'aujourd'hui,Le Corbusier described the version of the image of the Open Hand at Bhakra.85 The first proposed Hand of "was to be at the far northern and outer 1951 Open placed of the area and to the be surrounded Capitol by edge squared-off water pools of the Fosse and by the sunken public spaces intended for 'debates on public affairs."'86 The posthumous Le CorbusierLast
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Worksand Sketchbooksrecord the early and later versions of the Open Hand; the posthumously constructed "final"design is based Le Corbusier wrote about the image on images in the Last Works.87 of the Open Hand and its unrealized dream shortly before his death: "This open hand, a sign of peace and reconciliation, must rise at Chandigarh. This sign which preoccupies me for a number of years in my subconscious should exist to bear witness to harmony, . . . God and the devil-the forces present. The devil is in the way: the world of 1965 is able to put itself at peace. There is still time to chose, let's equip rather than arm. This sign of the open hand to receive the created riches, to distribute [them] to the peoples of the world, should be the sign of our epoch. Before finding myself one day (later on) in the celestial zones among the stars of the 'Bon Dieu' I would be happy to see at Chandigarh, before the Himalaya which rises up straight on the horizon, this open hand which marks for 'le pare Corbu' a deed, a course traversed."88 the architect's own explanation, a Notwithstanding Bataillean reading of the Open Hand should conceive of this sign as an alteration, analogous with the automutilation of the body of van Gogh. Should we conceive of the Open Hand as Le Corbusier's own severed hand, sacrificed to humanity in an act of potlatch without a return? The Open Hand is an unreturnable gift given by Le Corbusier to people in "misery"who cannot have it, as van Gogh's ear was an unreturnable gift of himself not to be received by anyone, only his painting. As Le Corbusier explained it, the Open Hand is a sign "to receive the created riches, to distribute them to the peoples of the world." Thus, Le Corbusier identifies himself with the Open Hand and, analogously, with the sun. His real gift and self-sacrifice was, as he claimed, his paintings, for which he received nothing in return. The Open Hand is not really an open hand, and it is not just a hand; it is an enigmatic hybrid. It is also a bird-a raven or "Corbu," an autobiographical reference to Le Corbusier himself. The hand is holding "Corbu" while transmuting it and preventing it from its attempting an Icarian flight. This sign, containing the allegory of modernity, parallels Walter Benjamin's Angelus Novus, which was a depiction of Benjamin's self.89The Paul Klee drawing that Benjamin owned and dearly revered depicts the feebled flight of an angel, with open wings, obstructed by the rubble heaped in front of it. This autobiographical image of the new angel in Benjamin's "Thesis on the Philosophy of History" turns into the angel of history. The utopian flight to the future is halted by incessantly looking into the past. In the same manner, Le Corbusier's bird moves from its personal history to a statement about modernity: The bird is held captive by the halting hand. To echo Tafuri's insight in '"Machine et memoire,'"'
the Chandigarh Open Hand, "a new search for space of the utterable," shatters here the impractical utopia of the VilleRadieuse.Both Benjamin's Angelus Novus and Le Corbusier's Open Hand are the emblems of modern tragedy.9"In this context, perhaps we now understand better Phillip Duboy's equation of Le Corbusier and Walter Benjamin as heroic figures in modernity. The heterogeneous body of the hand transmuted into the bird is a pharmakon." It is the signifier or the signature of Le Corbusier himself-one may say that it is an "acephalic body." In this sense, it is wrong to call the Open Hand a monument in the traditional sense. Rather, it might be conceived as sacrificial body in its "vertiginous fall from the vertical axis of the monument into This is how Bataille understood the horizontal axis of the base.""92 the term monument. It is, moreover, an autobiographical narration of the life of Le Corbusier. In his maturelife, Le Corbusier came to realize what The Limits of Growth, in the Bataillean sense, meant: which corre"But the terrestrialsphere (to be exact, the biosphere), sponds to the space available to life, is the only limit .... It is the The Open size of the terrestrialspace that limits overall growth.""93 Hand is the manifesto of this limitation. It has been pointed out that Le Corbusier, in rereading Thus Spake Zarathustra in 1961, next to the passage "asa Christ added the notation "la main ouverte" like figure, descending to the level of humanity and voluntarily choosing to sacrifice himself in order to bring men the Truth.""94 The Open Hand, on the one hand, is the sign of the culmination of the "excessivewaste," an expenditure and potlatch of Corbu; on the other, it is the "negative"sign of the impossibility of "architecture" in total dipense in the Chandigarh plan, at the same time that it is an indictment of Ville Radieuse in its limited circulation and utilitarian economy. The bird in the Open Hand knows that it cannot fly high. Once again, the bird's inability to fly must be understood in Bataille's dual conception of the sun in relation to the myth of Icarus. The raven ("Corbu" or Le Corbusier) is being held in place and motionless by another Le Corbusier, his severed hand, the sacrificial gift to humanity. Le Corbusier insistently makes us believe that the story of his life is the story of his self-sacrifice for the "sakeof humanity." However, there might be a fundamental difference between Le Corbusier's gift of the Open Hand and that of Vincent van Gogh's gift of his mutilated body, symbolized by the sun in his painting, as interpreted by Bataille. This difference should be sought in the different conception of the sun. Let there be no mistake: An abyss separates Bataille and Le Corbusier, and that is the difference in their conception of the sun. For Le Corbusier, the sun is one pole of the cosmological union of opposites in the duality between masculine and feminine, of which the
in the might tracesome influenceof the void of the horizontality constitutionof the verticalaxis.Le Corbusier readLa PartMaudite during the conception of the Chapel of Ronchamp. It is at work and the Ronchampthat Erosjoins Logos in Le Corbusier's theme of sexualitysurfaces in his architecture. In the secondparagraph of "Architecture" in the criticaldicin Bataille "For that whenever we wrote, matter, tionary Documents, find architecturalconstructionelsewhere than in monuments, whether it be in physiognomy,dress, music, or painting, we can infer a prevailingtaste for human or divine authority. The largescalecompositionsof certainpaintersexpressthe will to constrain the spiritwithin an official ideal. The disappearance of academic pictorialcomposition, on the other hand, opens the path to the expression(and therebythe exaltation)of psychological processes distinctlyat odds with social stability.This, in largepart, explains the strongreactionelicited,for overhalf a century,by the progressive transformation of painting,hithertocharacterized by a sort of concealedarchitectural skeleton."'00 As Denis Hollier points out, this articledoes not concernitselfwith architecture, but rather with its expansion.'0' Bataille wrote a book on Manetin whichhe discussedOlympia, Manet paintedby in 1863. He arguedthat Manet destroyedacademicpaintingand that it is with him that modernitycameinto being. By the destruction of academicpainting, Bataillemeant the destructionof the of the painting,which hithertowas underthe con"architecture" trol of architecture-or, as Holliersays,academic paintingwaslimited to maskinga skeleton.'02 Hollier writes, "In many primitive societies the skeleton marksthe moment of the second death-a deaththat is completed,clean,and properly immutable: thatwhich survives and The as architecskeleton, putrefaction decomposition. whole. Modernpainttural,is the perfectexampleof an articulated ing rediscovers death in its first guise of the human figure's decomposition,an incompletedeath, a mortalwound to form, a rottingcorpseratherthan a skeleton.Rottenpainting."'03 Here we should rememberBataille'sessay on van Gogh, which connectedhis paintingwith the sun and the mutilationof IV the body as a sacrificial is more gift. As Hollier says,everysacrifice or less "transposed" automutilation: not "Moreover, only painting Further of the notion of horizontality takesus deepinto comes into being througha refusalto represent the human body, exploration Bataille's oeuvre,which is outsidethe limit of this essay.However, not only deformsthe body in the imagesprovidedof it, but paintI want to statethat if the notion of the sun in Batailleis lockedinto ing, evenat its origin,was in the most mechanical senseof theword the logic of ddpense, in contrast,the sun in Le Corbusier's the of mutilations thinking reproduction actually practiced upon the is locked into the logic of restrictedeconomy. Nevertheless,we body."'04This shows that, as Rosalind Krauss writes, "The shouldconsiderthe lateworkof Le Corbusier, the Chapel Minotaur,not Narcissus,presidesoverthe birthof an artin which especially at Ronchampand his later paintings,as symptomsin which one representation represents alteration."'05
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moon constitutesthe other pole; it is only a "real" entity. It is real in the sense that it is the real source of life, energy,and light; its was expressed emissionof brightness partlyin the notion of whiteThis as is or sun, wash, Ripolin. such, a positiveelementof life afit no role in can the notion of deathand denegation. firmation; play Such a concept of death would be utterly inconceivable for Le Corbusierand, for that matter, for an architect.The sun for Le was also a sign of the Enlightenment,the sign of clarity Corbusier and clearvision, not a sign of waste and darkness.Le Corbusier's in the absoluteethicaldimensionof verticalconceptionis expressed and the uprightpostureof the humanbody and in the uprightness notion of the right angle, accordingto which architecture became possible.If Le Corbusiertalksaboutthe horizontalaxisor horizon in the rightangle, it is alwaysto subordinate it to the verticalaxis. Le Corbusier's ambivalence andhostilityagainstsurrealists mightlie in this obsessionwith the verticalaxis.In contrast,Bataille precisely writes"inorderto put out the light of the sun.""Bataillespeaksof the verticaland the horizontalas the "twoaxesof terrestrial" life in his essay"The PinealEye."''96 Accordingto John Lecht, "verticality can referto the axisof transcendence, wheretranscendence refers to objectification,conceptualization,representation,distanciation, and, homogeneity,knowledge,history (as written or as narrative) more generally,to the domainof theory,especiallyin the sense of to see. Horizontality,on the other hand, refersto immatheoria: to ritual,difference,horror,silence, nence, and thus, secondarily, to sense)and, moregenerally, heterogeneity, abjection(in Kisteva's the domain of nondiscursive, or practice.'97 Thus in Bataille, horizontality challengesthe verticalityand threatensit. The vertical alwayscontainsthe void of the horizontal.In this valorization of horizontality in Bataille,the sun becomes"aseriesof transpositions: from egg to eye to testicle. The streamsof light become streamsof liquid: urine, tears, sperm, sweat."'"98 Roland Barthes elaborates this chainof metonymyin his interpretation of Bataille's Histoirede l'oeil.99
versusthe poet, rationality versusirrationality, Throughout his life, Le Corbusierinsisted that we should technocrat progress in the light of his paintings.Respond- versusorigin,scienceversusmyth,the machine his architecture understand versusthe hand,calhis archi- culationversus line versus versusmass,the straight intuition,surface ing to his call,we could saythatpainting"contaminated" tecture. Beyond the period of planisme, it was Le Corbusieras the curved,geometricversusfree form. It is a usefullist, the more can be found in Le painter whom Bataille could have admired. The essays that Le easilyappliedbecausemost of thesedistinctions in Corbusier the book The Decorative Art ToCorbusier's commentators 1929 put together writings..... Manyjudicious point out of of to "weaken" of the were the an unconscious the that this two Corbusiers is but even picture attempt oversimplified, beginning day In this book, Le Corbusiershares thosewho rejectit as a generalexplanation of the "skeleton." of his workoften resort architecture architecture.'o6 It to it in explanation of Ronchamp,which is rightlyregarded as an WalterBenjamin's critiqueof nineteenth-century The the commenof extreme most absurd is was only later,in the Chapelof Ronchamp,that the destruction case.""0' extreme, perhaps, The chapelis the culmination tary of Jean Labatut, a Princeton professor,who in 1955 said, the skeletonfinds its manifestation. from Corbusier.""' of Corbusier a liberation and Holier,I wouldcall"rotten of what,afterBataille architecture," "Ronchamp expresses on the critic his own terms Le Corbusier forces and This needs to be to "rotten True, imposes explained. painting." analogous in the of his and of beof the construction of the work, but one duality explanation Chapel Ronchamp painting By the time in La not submit to it the of finished should hadnearly 1953, LeCorbusier practice criticism,especially given reading ganin September first sketchesof the site and his first the contemporary PartMaudite.Le Corbusier's settingfor thoughts.One stillmustgo to Bataille's werein MayandJune 1950. The "de- teaching,which would defy any easyclassification, visit to the site of Ronchamp acknowledging at Ronchamp has troubled his critics. thathe is to a largeextentbehindour contemporary ferred action"of Le Corbusier thinking.After that Michel Foucault, who editedthe first from all, it is not insignificant They haveoften falleninto the sameconfusionas the reporter in 1955, asked, volume of Bataille'sOeuvres calledhim one of the most Tribune the Chicago who, on the site of Ronchamp complktes, of the Chicago Tri- important writersof the twentiethcentury."13 in the nameof the manager "Mr.Le Corbusier, the themeof Evansfurtherelaborates to be a Catholicto build Afterhis commentary, Wasit necessary answer thisquestion: bune, re- sexualityin the building.On the one hand, he writes,"It'slike the Le Corbusier, this chapel?" by this question,arrogantly angered le camp!"'07 JamesStirling,more "sophisticated" body of a woman; Stephen Gardiner,for example reckons that plied, "Foutez-moi this building.... The bodyof the in 1956-a yearafterthe inau- that'sthe onlywayto understand Tribune than the Chicago reporter, On guration of the building-wrote a piece that characterized buildingis womanly,accordingto the criticalunderstanding." is a sensein whichthe actualact of construcbelievingthat there is the otherhand,"There Ronchampas "the crisisof rationalism,"'0" thereis exactly nothing in this buildingto satisfyintellect.Since then, criticshave tion is verymale.Afterall, this is hardlysurprising; a synthewould Evans "What about in conceivable structural and of this what continues, analysis expect.""'3 symbolic you indulged every into with sis? Corbusier was it has been almost alwaysmakingthings oppositions,presentcompared everything.'09 building; in so them as that a critic as Robin an as Evans, completeoppositions, attempt ing somethingcouldhappen. Recently, insightful The worldis divided,and for the firsttime in the criticism That is the whole logic of this enterprise. to bringout the themeof sexuality admitsthatoutmodeddualistictermsno longerplay when the sun rises,the starsgo out. Butwe'renot talkingaboutthat of Ronchamp, he resists thisgenreof now. We're just talking about good and bad architecture.Good a rolein contemporary thought.Nevertheless, an is male;bad is female,dangerous,too subjective.It is criticism and constructs contemporary argument about architecture in and the on the same between male female based belongs,not cloudyskiesof the norththatfemalearchitecture duality Ronchamp in with of "While skies of the its the clear Evans formsthatwe knowin Le Corbusier's south, writes, rationality precision.""''4 writing. seems to be turning thesearchaic dualisms playno directpartin contemporary thought, Furtherhe writes, "A dangerousarchitecture male in female into a human affairs and the that still a do dramatize 115 preserve." fully province tendency prevails they All these but of the of commentaries are our use is madealmostinescapable helpful, they arelodgedin language: oppothrough and habit of the metaphysical enables us to denythisbut makes the framework siteof a manis a woman.Language thinkingof duality. He continues,"Just look at thewayin whichour One crucialquestionshould be asked,which has remainedunaneasier." affirmation in a religious buildsurface career is facilitated of Le Corbusier's Why does the themeof sexuality by pittingoppo- swered: understanding in "mature does the in Le oeuvre? it Corbusier's the interversus functionalism one another: sitesagainst Why emerge ing symbolism, national versus regional, the autocrat versus the populist, the work,"what we call late Corbu?I want to suggest that it is only
through the psychoanalyticalnotion of the deferred action or thatthe actionof LeCorbusier at Ronchamp canbe nachtriaglichkiet, discussed this notion in "Fromthe Hisexplained.SigmundFreud
tory of an Infantile Neurosis," the famous Wolf Man case history."'6
Jacques Lacan first drew attention to this important notion in Freud."'7 In TheLanguage and J.-B. J. Laplanche of Psychoanalysis, Pontalisdefine deferred actionas "Atermfrequently used by Freud in connectionwith his view of psychical and causality: temporality experiences,impressionsand memory-traces may be revisedat a laterdate to fit in with freshexperiences or with the attainmentof a new stage of development.They may in that event be endowed not only with a new meaning but also with psychical effectiveness.""" At its most elementarylevel, Ned Lukacher writes, "deferredaction is a mode of temporal spacing through which the of a laterevent triggers randomness the memoryof an earlier event or image,which might neverhave come to consciousness had the laterevent neveroccurred.""' Deferredactionundermines the notion of linearcausalityin one temporaldirection.Latereventsbecome the causeof earlier eventsand earlier events,becomethe effect of laterevents.We becomewhatwe areonly in deferred action;the and and psychical temporality causality, experiences memorytraces, are revisedat a laterdate to fit in with the attainmentof a new deneverrests;it is neverset once and for all. velopment.Subjectivity Le Corbusierat Ronchamp reconstructsand anticipatesa traumaticevent: His body is more than a modularsystem.Excess in the body is morethan the body itself.It is herethatLe Corbusier rediscovers his own sexedbody. He challenged anybodyto find the modularsystemin Ronchamp,which was supposedlyits male eleSome researchers andcommentators ment, as RobinEvansdeclares. havetriedto "defeat" Le Corbusier in undertaking the challengeto find the hidden modularin the body of the building. They have laboredhard and triumphantly,found some here and there, but perhapsthey fell into the trapset up by the old magician.Perhaps in this searcha point was missed. It is here specifically,and only here, that one should seek the relationshipbetween the sexuality and the religiousecstasyas two interdependent of transcategories One should not look for the male element (the rational gression. modular)in the otherwisefemalebody of the building.Rather,one should seek to locate the transgressive potlatchof violent pleasure in the sacredecstasyof the building-Le Corbusier's own experience of "eroticsovereignty."'20On Bataille'snotion of eroticism, MicheleH. Richmanwrites,"Eroticism is the ultimated'pense, the sacrifice of self in the most completegestureof communication."'' In the act of the sacrifice of rationality (the hidden modular),there looms a larger sacrifice. Le Corbusier is sacrificing his maleidentity
63
himselfin and, in a self-indulgentact, recognizesand experiences the ecstasyandjouissance of his sovereignd'pense. The "danger" in femininecharacter is Ronchampis not only that the "dangerous" Rather,dangerresidesin the threateningthe "malearchitecture." of the prin"surplus resultingfromthe renunciation enjoyment"'122 ciple of reasonand the law of utility in eroticecstasy,in the sacred experience.This is not only beyond the realityprinciple,but also overand beyondthe pleasure of "malearchitecture." Paraprinciple could only attainthe summitof this ecstasy doxically,Le Corbusier in a religiousbuilding.This is why Le Corbusier repliedimpolitely to the ChicagoTribune whose questionsuggestedthe dereporter, nial of his enjoymentof this deeplysacredexperience on the dayof the inauguration of Ronchamp,much less his eroticecstasy. I suggestthatit is thejouissance of transgression'23 (heretranslatedas "religious with trans(here ecstasy"), coupled "heterology" lated as the "science of the sacred" in Bataille),that bringsforward the elementsof Bataillein Le Corbusier and makesthem contemwith each other. The of "Le Corbusier with Bataille," porary story I suggest,is the site of Ronchamp.At Ronchamp,Le Corbusier's lawof the l'angle droit(the "law" in the Lacanian sense)becomesthe of a to Le Corbusier's of Ernst right passage jouissance. earlyreading Renan'sViedeJuses turnsto meet his eroticside. Paradoxically, Le Corbusier could eroticizethe chapelonly throughreligiousecstasy. In this "dangerous" dies of the "littledeath" building,Le Corbusier in laughter. The deathof the skeletonin the structure of the buildas the "second death" in the disavowal Le is, fact, ing by Corbusier of the uprightbody. The Chapel of Ronchampis Le Corbusier's of sovereignty and transgression. It is at laughterin the experience that the void of and baseness Ronchamp repressed horizontality to threatenthe verticalaxis. appears V ForGeorgeBataille and Le Corbusier, artbeginsin the sacred. They both agreedthat the verticalaxissymbolizes humanity's pretension towardspirituality andthe ethical.Whereas for Bataille the matrix of the sacredis in the violence and the horizontality of basses, for Le Corbusier the matrixof the scaredresidesin moraluprightness and in the rightangle.This is the pointthatseparates andconverticality, nectsthesetwo contemporaries: On the one sidestandsLeCorbusier, who is for architecture, and on the otherside standsBataille, who is architecture." the sceneof thisoppositionis not as However, "against screens. simpleas it sounds;thissceneis stainedby manyintervening Afterall, Bataille was an admirer of Le Corbusier.
Lahqt
We might conclude that Bataille's admiration for Le is returned fascination Corbusier to him by Le Corbusier's with La PartMaudite.Le Corbusier,a thinker,dazzledby the sun, would affirmwhat GeorgesBataillesaid, "I will speak brieflyabout the most generalconditionof life, dwellingon one crucially important The fact:Solarenergyis the sourceof life'sexuberant development. origin and essenceof our wealth are given in the radiationof the sun, which dispensesenergy-wealth-without any return.The sun giveswithout ever receiving.Men were consciousof this long beforeastrophysics measuredthe ceaselessprodigality; they saw it ripen the harvestsand they associatedits splendorwith the act of someonewho giveswithout receiving."'24 nevergave Le Corbusier Bataillegavea gift to Le Corbusier; in orbitof he himself the in this found back. Instead, gift, anything solarenergywith Bataille.
Works of Corbuhaveput forward, The 5 volumesof Complete proposed,and assertedLe Corbusier'sideaswith an enthusiaticfollowing. From one camp, Corbu has been acceptedby assholes,and from the other, he is king. The unselfishpractice of paintingis an unflaggingsacrifice,a gift of time, patience,and love, expectingno materialreward(except for modern merchants).This sowing to the wind is for unknown people. One day, beforeor aftermy death, they will say thankyou. It is too is the key to happiness. late for so many setbacksin life. No matter;what matters
Notes
The researchfor this essaywas completed at Fondation Le Corbusierin Parisin the summerof 1991. I thankMme EvelynTrehin, directorof the foundato me. I also tion, who facilitatedmy research by makingthe documentsavailable thank Daniel Friedmanfor his intellectualsupportthroughoutthe writingof this essayand for the painfultaskof readingearlydraftswith an editor'seye. I dedicate life this essayto the memoryof ManfredoTafuri,whose readingof Le Corbusier's and work influencedit. la consumation d'economie 1. GeorgesBataille,La PartMaudite,essai general, is the LesEditionMinuit, 1949). This volume,which is on "Consumption," (Paris: into work on the generaleconomy that has been translated first of a three-volume Share(New York:Zone Books, 1991). In Accursed Englishby RobertHurleyas The the 1976 Frencheditionof the firstvolume,Bataille's essay,"Lanotion de depense," of this essay,"TheNotion of Expendihas been included.The Englishtranslation WritSelected in Allan Stoekl, ed., Georges Bataille,Visions ture,"appears of Excess, Universityof MinnesotaPress,1985), pp. 116-29. ings,1927-1939 (Minneapolis: makesit difficultto determine 2. The dedicationbearsno dateand therefore the exactdate when Batailleofferedhis book to Le Corbusier.The only reference the offeringof the book to Le Corbusieris the that I have come acrossregarding CenUneEncylopedie shortcommentary (Paris: by Phillip Duboy in Le Corbusier, tre GeorgesPompidou, 1987), p. 67. Le Corbusier's copy of the book is kept in FondationLe Corbusierin Paris. Sociin Archaic 3. MarcelMauss,TheGift:TheFormandReason for Exchange W.W. Norton, 1990). trans.W.D. Halls,forward eties, by MaryDouglas(NewYork: and the World: From 'The Notion of Expendi4. See Jean Piel, "Bataille in LeslieAnne Boldt-Irons,ed., On Bataille:Critical ture' to TheAccursed Share," (Albany:StateUniversityof New YorkPress,1995), pp. 95-106. Essays 14. For Bataille's relation to the thirties, see Jean-Michel Besnier, "Georges handwrittenremarks. of Le Corbusier's 5. [The followingis the translation at best, and is open to furtherinterpre- Bataille in the 1930s: A Politics of the Impossible," French Yale Studies 78 (1990): The passageis ellipticaland self-referential varientreadings 169-80. Also see Michel Surya, GeorgesBataille, la mort l'oeuvre (Paris: Librairie tations.In addition,becauseof the natureof handwritten passages, could easilybe readas assom, etc.-Ed.] are possible.For example,assume Siguier, 1987).
on the secondflyleafof his copy and is preceded This commentary appears by the mark"P 92," which is the referenceto page 92, Les Edition Minuit, 1949. wrotethis commenthat Le Corbusier by suggesting PhillipDuboy cites the passage See Duboy, tarywhile he wasreadingthe book on the flightto Punjab,Chandigarh. Le Corbusier. 6. Ibid., p. 67. de L.C. Devient alorsune source 7. Duboy writes,"Cette'petitereflection' en memetempsqu'ellele ddfinitcomme evidentde la Main Ouvertede Chandigarh, hero moderne. 'Le vrai sujet de la modernite. Cela signifie que pour vivre la voilaune bonnedefinitionde LeCourbusier, il fautune nature modernite, hdroique': " Maisala lecturede Bataille que l'on doit WalterBenjaminentreles deux guerres. on seraitplut6t tente de le ddfinir,avec et aux reflectionsqu'en tire Le Courbusier desexploitsddrisoires commeun de cesherosmodernes, Lacan, 'qu'illustrent Jacques dan une situationd'dgarement."' ("This'smallreflection'by Le Corbusieris thus at the sametime thatit defineshim a sourceof the Open Handin Chandigarh, clearly Whichmeans,in orderto live as a modernhero.'The veritable subjectof modernity. in modernity, one must have a heroic nature':This is an apt definition of Le Corbusier,which we owe to Walter Benjaminbetweenthe Wars. But, in reading one would rathertend to deBatailleand in the reflectiondrawnby Le Corbusier, the fine him, afterJacquesLacan,as one of these modernheroes:'whichillustrates Ibid. in a stateof bewilderment."') achievements laughable in theMod8. Cited in Anthony Vidler, TheArchitectural Uncanny: Essays MA: MIT Press, 1992), p. 151. ern Unhomely (Cambridge, of modernityto Hal Foster in his Compulsive 9. I owe this categorization MA: MIT Press,1993). See chap. 6. Beauty(Cambridge, Editionsdu Seuil, avecSade,"in Ecrits 10. SeeJacquesLacan,"Kant (Paris: A Selection, trans.Alan 1966), vol. 2, pp. 119-50. The Englishtranslation,Ecrits: Sheridan(New York:W.W. Norton, 1977), did not includethis essay.For an English translationof this essay,see "Kantwith Sade,"trans.JamesB. Swenson,Jr., with extensiveannotations,in October 51 (Winter 1989): 119-48. Studies 11. See Allan Stoekl,ed., "On Bataille," specialissueof YaleFrench 78(1990): 2. et memoire': The City in the Work of 12. See ManfredoTafuri, "'Machine Le Corbusier,"in H. Allen Brooks, ed., Le Corbusier (Princeton,NJ: Princeton UniversityPress,1987), pp. 203-18. until his death. He 13. The readingof TheIliadpreoccupiedLe Corbusier his newlytranslated had plannedto reillustrate copy, which containedthe drawings of John Flaxman,the eighteenth-century draftsman,but time did not allow him, and he completed no more than twenty-fourdrawings.For the analysisof these drawings, see Mogens Krustrup,Le Corbusier, L'lliade Dessins (Copenhague: Le Corbusier's DrawBorgen,1986). Also, Nadir Lahijiand David Leatherbarrow, ingsof theIliad, forthcoming.
64
15. See Francis Marmande, GeorgesBataille politique (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1985). 16. For more details of Le Corbusier'sinvolvement in Chandigarh,see von Moos, "ThePoliticsof the Open Hand:Notes on Le Corbusierand Stanislaus Nehru at Chandigarh,"in Russell Walden, ed., The Open Hand: Essayson Le Corbusier (Cambridge,MA: MIT Press,1977), pp. 412-57. 17. For my reflectionon planismeand the MarshallPlan, I have benefited from the illuminating article by Allan Stoekl, "Truman'sApotheosis: Bataille, in YaleFrenchStudies and Headlessness," 78 (1990): 181-205. In dis'Planisme,' to Le Corbusier in two passages on which Stoeklmakesreferences cussingplanisme, with Le I have basedmy conjecturein tracingthe origin of Bataille's acquaintance Corbusier's activitiesin the thirties. 18. Ibid. on the flyleafof Le Corbusier's 19. In the handwrittencommentaries copy to the chapteron potlatch. In the chapteron the of the book, there are references MarshallPlan, Le Corbusiermarkedand underlinednumerouspassages. 20. See von Moos, "The Politics of the Open Hand. 21. For a summaryof Le Corbusier'surban planning, see Tim Benton, in Le Corbusier: Architect exhibitioncatalog(London:Art "Urbanism," of Century, Council of GreatBritain, 1987). 22. Stoekl, "Truman's "182. For an extendeddiscussionon the Apotheosis, Loubetdel Bayle, LesNon-Conformistes desAnnies OrdreNouveau, see Jean-Louis 30 (Paris:Seuil, 1969). and the World." 23. See Piel, "Bataille 24. See MaryMcLeod,"Bibliography: Plans,1-13 (1931-1932); Plans(bi19/20 Plans, 1-4 (1930)," Oppositions monthly), 1-8 (1932); Bulletindesgroupes alsopartici1980): 185-206. As McLeodinformsus, Le Corbusier (Winter/Spring (1933-1935). Both of these journals pated in anothersyndicalistjournal,Prdlude significantlycontributedto the propagationof the ideas on urbanismthat were a Nouveau."LeCorbusier continuationof the earlierL 'Esprit himselfwas anxiousto Nouveau.In fact, he pursuethe urbanstudiesthat he had commencedin L 'Esprit proposedthat Plansassumethe remainingfinancialholdingsof the earlier journal" (p. 186). 25. Ibid., p. 185. 26. Stoekl, "Truman's Apotheosis," p. 183. 27. Ibid. 28. See Surya, GeorgesBataille, p. 486. Surya further informs us that "Bataille ne fit cependantpas partid' Ordre Nouveau.La seule collaboration qui ait evoqu&e (parPierrePrevost.Entretiens)est anonyme:Batailleauraitfourniles dtd dl'ments d'dlaboration du chapitre "Echanges et Credits" du ivre manifeste d'Arnaud Dandieu et Robert Aron, La Revolutionnicessaire.Ce qui, a lire ce chapitre,paraiten effet evident:la plupartdes themes d'analysede "Lanotion de depense" s'y retrouvent. Il ne semble cependant pas que Bataille ait redige ce chapitre.De meme qu'il ne semblepas, pour singuliereque soit cette collaboration anonymeet totalementdesintdressee, qu'elle ait eu de suite. Bataillene fit en tout howeverdid not take part in cas jamaismention de tout cela"(p. 183). ("Bataille OrdreNouveau.The only collaborationwhich has been recalled(in conversation with PierrePrevost)is anonymous:Bataillewould haveprovidedelementsof some elaborationsin the chapter"Exchangesand Credits"in the book La Revolution by ArnaudDandieuand RobertAron. In readingthis chapter,it becomes ndcessaire evident that a numberof themes in the analysisof "The Notion of Expenditure" are found there. It howeverdoes not seem that Bataillewrote this chapter.")
29. Ibid., p. 198. 30. See Jean-Joseph Goux, "General Economics and Postmodern Capital-
ism," YaleFrenchStudies78 (1990): 206-24. For my summaryof TheAccursed Share,I have followed Goux's essay.For a philosophicaldiscussionof the idea of general economy in Bataille, see JacquesDerrida, "FromRestrictedto General in Writing trans.and and Difference, Economy:A Hegelianismwithout Reserve," with an introductionby Alan Bass (Chicago:Universityof Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 251-77. Economiesand PostmodernCapitalism," 31. Goux, "General p. 207. 32. Ibid. 33. Bataille,"The Notion of Expenditure," p. 118. 34. "This uselessconsumption is what suits me, once my concern for the morrow is removed.And if I thus consume immoderately,I revealto my fellow bebeings that which I am intimately: Consumptionis the way in which separate shows through,everythingis open and infinite beings communicate.Everything tween those who consumeintensely.But nothing counts then;violence is released and it breaksforthwithout limits, as the heat increases." Bataille,La PartMaudite, Share,pp. 58-59. Le Corbusiermarkedthe footnote repp. 75-76; TheAccursed lated to the passageafter the word sipards, which reads:"J'insiste sur une donnie fondamentale: la separation desetresest limiteeh l'ordrereel.C'est seulementsi j'en resteal'ordredes choses Elle esten effet rdelle, maisce qui que la separationestrdele. est reelest extirieur. 'Tous les hommes,intimement,n'en sont qu'un."'("Iwish to a basicfact:The separation of beingsis limitedto the realorder.It is only emphasize if I remainattachedto the orderof things that the separation is real.It is in fact real, but what is realis external. 'Intimately,all men areone."') 35. See Stoekl, "Truman's Apotheosis." 36. Ibid., p. 198. Also for the Aciphale figurein Bataille,see Allan Stoekl's "TheDeathof Aciphaleand the Will to Change:Nietzschein the Text of Bataille," 6 (1979):43-67. Glyph, 37. "Nothingis closed to anyonewho simply recognizesthe materialconditions of thought. On all sidesand in everyway, the world invites man to change it. Doubtlessman on this side is not necessarily boundto follow the imperiousways of the USSR. For the most part,he is exhaustinghimselfin the sterilityof a fearful anti-communism.But if he has his own problemsto solve, he has more important than to complainof a distresscausedby his things to do than blindlyanathematize, manifold contradictions. Let him try to understand,or betteryet, let him admire the cruel energyof those who broke the Russianground;he will be closer to the tasks that awaithim. For, on all sidesand in everyway,a worldin motionwantsto be changed." Bataille,La PartMaudite, p. 222; TheAccursed Share,p. 168. 38. Stoekl, "Truman's Apotheosis,"p. 169. 39. Ibid., p. 201. 40. Bataille, TheAccursed Share,p. 175. 41. Stoekl, "Truman's Apotheosis," p. 203. 42. See the Englishtranslationby Dominic Facciniin October 60 (Spring 1992): 25-26. 43. I have followed Hollier's interpretationof this passagein his Against Architecture MA: MIT Press,1989), pp. 47-58. (Cambridge, 44. Bataille, TheAccursed Share,p. 46. 45. Ibid., p. 49. 46. Tafuri, "Machineet Mdmoire,"'"p. 213. 47. Ibid., pp. 213-14. 48. Bataille,"The Notion of Expenditure," p. 122. 49. Mauss, The Gift,p. 46. 50. Ibid., p. 39.
51. All etymologies are from the Oxford English Dictionary unless otherwise indicated.
65
Lahiji
52. Mauss, TheGift,pp. 6-7 53. Ibid., p. 39. 54. Ibid., p. 152. 55. Ibid., pp. 151-52. 56. Ibid., p. 152. 57. See JacquesDerrida, Dissemination (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Derridareadsin Oeuvres of Marcel Press,1981). In the chapter"Plato's Pharmacy," and quotes, "Moreover, all these Mauss, publishedin 1969, the entry "Gift-gift" ideasare double-faced.In other Indo-European languages,it is the notion of poison which is not certain. Kluge and the etymologistsare right in comparingthe in English, potio, "Poison,"series with gift, gift ["gift,"which means "present" means"poison" or "married" in other Germanlanguages.--Trans.].One can also readwith interestthe lively discussionby Aulus-Gellius(12) on the ambiguityof the Greekpharmakon and the Latin venenum" (p. 133). Derridarelatesthe meaning of pharmakon (poison and remedy) to scapegoatand sacrifice,which comes close to Bataille'sinterpretation of gift relatedto his notion of sacrifice. 58. See JacquesDerrida, Given Time: I Counterfeit Money,trans. Peggy Kamuf(Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress, 1992). 59. Mauss, TheGift,p. 37. 60. Derrida,Given Time,p. 12. 61. Ibid., p. 24. 62. Ibid., p. 41. 63. Bataille, TheAccursed Share,p. 69. 64. Ibid., p. 71. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid. 67. Ibid. 68. See Suzanne Guerlac, "'Recognition by a Woman!: A Reading of Bataille'sL'Eroticisme" YaleFrench Studies 78 (1990):90-105. 69. The Englishtranslationof these articlesis includedin Stoekl, ed., VisionsofExcess, pp. 57-58, 61-72. of this essay,see October 70. For the Englishtranslation 36 (1986):58-60. 71. Bataille, TheAccursed Share,p. 46. 72. See Nick Land, The Thirst Batailleand Virufor Annihilation:Georges lentNihilism (AnEssay in Aesthetic (London:Routledge, 1992), p. 30. Religion), 73. Ibid., p. 31. 74. GeorgesBataille,"RottenSun,"in Stoekl,ed., Visions of Excess, pp. 5758. 75. Land, Thirstfor Annihilation, p. 33. 76. Cited in Land, Thirst for Annihilation, p. 33. 77. Ibid., p. 120. 78. GeorgesBataille,"Sacrificial Mutilationand the SeveredEarof Vincent van Gogh,"in Stoekl, ed., Visions ofExcess, p. 70. 79. See RosalindKrauss,"Antivision,"October 36 (1986):42-86; see also "No More Play"in TheOriginality and Other Modernist of theAvant-Garde Myths MA: MIT Press,1985), pp. 147-54. (Cambridge, 80. Bataille,"VanGogh as Prometheus," 36 (1986), pp. 58-59. October, 81. See EricMichaud,"VanGogh, or the Insufficiency of Sacrifice," October,49 (Summer1989): 25-39. 82. For a comprehensive interpretation of the Open Hand, see Mary PatriciaMay Sekler, "LeCorbusier,Ruskin, the Tree, and the Open Hand," in Walden,ed., TheOpenHand,pp. 42-95; andvon Mooss, "ThePoliticsof the Open
Hand." My analysis of the Open Hand is indebted to Tafuri's interpretation: see Tafuri, "Machine et mimoire."
83. Quoted in Michaud,"VanGogh,"p. 31. 84. See U.E. Chowdhury,"The Bhakra-Dam in the HimalayaMountains of India," in Willy Boesiger, ed., Le Corbusier Last Works (New York:Praeger, 1979), pp. 158-59. 85. See Le Corbusier,LArt dicoratifd'aujourd'hui (Paris:EditionsVincent Freal, 1959). The imageof the Open Hand appearsin the prefaceof this edition, which regrettably was omitted from MIT Press'sEnglishedition of the book: The MA: MIT Press, 1987). For more information DecoratifArt of Today (Cambridge, on this, see Hdl~neLipstadtand HarveyMendelsohn,"Philosophy,History,and ManfredoTafuriand 'Unsurpassed Lesson'of Le Corbusier," AsAutobiography: 22 (1994): 58-103. semblage 86. Lipstadtand Mendelsohn,"Philosophy, History,and Autobiography," p. 92. 87. See Boesiger,ed., Le Corbusier Last Works; and Le Corbusier,Sketch4 vols. (Cambridge, Hisbooks, MA, and New York:MIT Pressand Architecture tory Foundation, 1981), vol. 3 (1954-57) and vol. 4 (1957-64). 88. Walden, TheOpenHand, p. 83. 89. See Gershom Scholem, "WalterBenjamin and his Angel," in Gary Critical and Recollection MA: Smith, ed., On Walter Essays Benjamin: (Cambridge, MIT Press, 1988), pp. 121-45. 90. See Tafuri,in "lMachine et Mtmoire. 91. See note 57 above for the meaningof pharmakon. 92. See Krauss,"Antivision." 93. Bataille, TheAccursed Share,p. 29. 94. Sekler,"LeCorbusier, Ruskin,the Tree, and the Open Hand,"n. 86, p. 92. and the Projectof Writing, or the 'Case' 95. See John Lecht, "Surrealism of Bataille,"in Carolyn Bailey Gill, ed., Bataille: Writingthe Sacred(London: Routledge, 1995), p. 124. 96. GeorgesBataille,"ThePinealEye,"in Stoekl,ed., Visions ofExcess, pp. and the Projectof Writing." 79-90. Also see Lecht, "Surrealism and the Projectof Writing,"pp. 120-21. Although 97. Lecht, "Surrealism Lecht uses the differencebetween the vertical and the horizontal to distinguish Bataillefrom Breton and his company, I use this distinction to separateBataille from Le Corbusier. 98. Ibid., pp 125-26. 99. Roland Barthes, "The Metaphor of the Eye," in Critical Essays NorthwesternUniversityPress, 1972), pp. 239-48. (Evanston: 100. Bataille,"Architecture," 60 (Spring 1992): 25. October, 101. Hollier,Against Architecture, p. 51. 102. Ibid., p. 52. 103. Ibid. 104. Ibid., p. 79. 105. Krauss,"No More Play,"p. 83. 106. See WalterBenjamin,Paris,Capitale le livredes duXIXSikcle, passages, traduitde l'allemandparJean Lacoste(Paris:Leseditions du cerf, 1989). Also see SusanBuck-Morss,TheDialectics and theArcades ofSeeing:Walter Benjamin Project MA: MIT Press,1989). (Cambridge, 107. Le Corbusierin 1956 at Camp Martinanecdotallywrote, "Tendays beforethe consecration[of the Chapelof Ronchamp]some journalists and photoghad brokenthe rules.They virtuallymachinedgunnedme with theirflashraphers
cameras. I told the workmen near me: 'if these people don't get out of here immediately take them by the shoulders and...' One of these fellows who had pursued me in front of the altar of pilgrimage outside, called to me 'Mister Le
66
Corbusier,in the name of the managerof the ChicagoTribune, answerthis quesI replied'Foutez-moi tion: Was it necessary to be a catholicto build this chapel?' le the hell out of See Le The Chapelat Corbusier, here!"] ["Get bloody camp!"' (New York:Praeger,1957), n.p. Ronchamp 108. "It may be considered that the Ronchamp chapelbeing a 'pureexpression of poetry'and the symbolof an ancientritual,shouldnot therefore be criticized of the modernmovement. thatthis is a prodhowever, by the rationale Remembering, uct of Europe's it is important toconsider whether thisbuilding should architect, greatest thecourse architecture. The sensational influence of modern impactof the chapelon the visitoris significantly not sustained for anygreatlengthof time andwhentheemotions subside thereis littleto appeal to theintellect, and nothing to analyze orstimulate curiosLe Corbusier's ity [emphasisadded]."JamesStirling,"Ronchamp, Chapeland the Crisisof Rationalism," Architectural Review 711 (Mar.1956) 161. Stirling is suspicious if Ronchamp shouldinfluencethe courseof modernarchitecture for the veryfactthat the buildingdoes not manifest He thereby couldonly put Le anyaspectof modernity. Corbusier betweenthe oppositepoles of rationality and emotion,and fromthis concludethat thereis nothingfor satisfaction of the intellectin this building. 109. See, especially,Daniele Pauly'sdetailed analysisin "The Chapel of CreativeProcess," in Allen Brooks,ed., Ronchampas an Exampleof Le Corbusier's Le Corbusier (Princeton,NJ: PrincetonUniversityPress,1987), pp. 127-36. 110. See Robin Evans, The ProjectiveCast: Architectureand Its Three Geometries (Cambridge,MA: MIT Press, 1995), pp. 276-77. Also see Robin and the SexualIdentityof Architecture," Columbia Evans,"LeCorbusier Documents and Theory3 (1993): 149-8 1. ofArchitecture Cast,p. 277. 111. Cited in Evans,Projective 112. Michel Foucault,ed., GeorgesBataille:Oeuvres vol. 1, PreCompl/tes, mier Ecrits, 1922-1940. (Paris:Gallimard,1970).
113. SeeEvans,"LeCorbusier andtheSexual of Architecture," Identity p. 157. 114. Ibid., p. 161. 115. Ibid., p. 170. 116. SigmundFreud,"Fromthe History of an InfantileNeurosis"(1918), in JamesStrachy, Editionof theComplete Works ed., Standard Psychological ofSigmund Freud (London:HogarthPress,1961), vol. 17, pp. 7-122. Alsosee MurielGardiner, ed., The Wolf-Man (New York:Noonday Press,1991). by the Wolf-Man 117. See J. Laplancheand J.-B. Pontalis, TheLanguage of Psychoanalysis, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith(New York:W.W. Norton, 1973), p. 111. 118. Ibid. 119. Ned Lukacher,Primal Scenes: Literature, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis (Ithaca:CornellUniversityPress,1986), p. 35. 120. For the notion of sovereigntyin Bataille,see Michele H. Richman, Bataille(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1982). ReadingGeorges 121. Ibid., p. 75. 122. For the Lacanian notion of the surplusenjoyment,see SlavojZiZek, TheSublimeObject ofldeology(London:Verso, 1989). 123. I have borrowedthe termjouissance from the Lacanian psychoanalysis. This term cannot be translated into English.At best, it has to be translated as or "religious "orgasm" ecstasy."Lacanhimselflinks the two in his mentioningof Bernini'sstatue of Saint Theresa."TheJouissanceof Transgression," in JacquesAlain Miller, ed., TheSeminaroflacquesLacan,Book7, TheEthicsofPsychoanalysis, 1959-1960, trans. Dennis Porter (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992), pp. 191-204. Also see Catherine Clement, The Livesand Legends ofJacquesLacan, trans.ArthureGoldammer(New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 1983). 124. Bataille, TheAccursed Share,p. 28.
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The Gift of the Open Hand: Le Corbusier Reading Georges Bataille's "La Part Maudite" Author(s): Nadir Lahiji

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1425288 . Accessed: 12/04/2014 22:09

The Gift of the Open Hand: Le CorbusierReading La PartMaudite GeorgesBataille's

1. Coverpage of LeCorbusier's copy of LaPartMaudite. Courtesy GeorgeBataille's of Foundation Le Corbusier, Paris.

1996 JAE50/1 September

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1996 JAE50/1 September

1996 JAE50/1 September

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