48 c.

Our new starting-point

in describing the universe must, however, be a fuller classification than we made before. We then distinguished two things; but now a third must be pointed out. For our earlier discourse the two were sufficient: one postulated as model, intelligible and always unchangingly real; second, a copy of this model, which 4') becomes and is visible. A third we did not then distinguish, thinking that the two would suffice: but now, it seems, the argument compels us to attempt to bring to light and describe a form difficult and obscure. What nature must we, then, conceive it to possess part does it play? This, more than anything else: that Receptacle-as it were, the all Becoming. True, as this statement is, it needs in clearer language: and that is b. hard, in particular because to it is necessary to raise a previous difficulty about fire and the things that rank with fire. It is hard to say, with respect to anyone of these, which we ought to call really water rather than fire, or indeed which we should call by any given name rather than by all the names together or by each severally, so as to use language in a sound and trustworthy way. How, then, and in what terms are we to speak of this matter, and what is the prcvi difficulty that may be reasonably In the first place, take when it is compacted, we sec (as ) becoming earth and stones, and this same thing, IS dissolved and dispersed, c. becoming wind and air: air becoming fire by being inflamed; and, by a reverse process, fire, when condensed and extinguished, returning once more to the form of air, and air coming together again and condensing as mist and cloud: and from these, as they are yet more closely compacted, flowing water; and from water once more earth and stones: and thus, as it appears, they transmit in a cycle the process of passing into one another. Since, then, way no one of these d. things ever makes its appearance as , which of them can we steadfastly affirm to be it may be-and not something else, without blushing for ourse ves? It cannot be done; but by far the safest course is to speak of them in the following terms. Whenever we observe a thing perpetually changing-fire, for example-in every case we should speak of fire, not as "this," but as "what is of such and such a quality" nor of water as "this," but always as "what is of such and such a quality"; nor must we speak of anything else as having some permanence, among all the things we indicate by the expressions "this" or "that," imagining we are pointing out some definite thing. For they slip away and do not wait to be described as "that" or "this" or by any phrase that exhibits them as having permanent being. We should not use these expressions of any of them, hut "that which is of a certain quality and has the same sort of quality as it perpetually recurs in the eycle"-that is the description we should usc in the case of each and all of them. In fact, we must give the name

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TRANSCRIPT

ONE 17, 1985

NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER

JACQUES DERRIDA, PETER EISENMAN, JEFFREY KIPNIS, THOMAS LEESER, RENATO RIZZI Thank you for coming, Jacques. Before we begin to discuss our project, I would like you to meet a few people whom I anticipate in our work together. First, allow me to introduce my colleague concern me and in my design methods, and he and I have collaborated Thomas Leeser, an associate and principal design invaluable contributor to my design work. Finally, I says, that I have a who will try to ma in misreading your work Renato Rizzi. Renato shares an interest in the issues on several projects. Second please allow me to introbasis and he is in both as

ur firm. Thomas and I work together on a day-to-day

u to meet Jeffrey Kipnis, a theorist with a strong background

something about Jacques Derrida, though he soon discovered, I have asked him to join us today as a kind of guardian/provocateur,

that the exciting promise of this liaison IS fulfilled. First of all, I would like us to establish a way of program for our collaboration. attitudes expressed in expectations, and You may currently be working with certain ideas which in particular that . Another possibility is for you to set out your us both to try to find a way to synthesize these. a challenge whose physical and identities as

together and to construct a philosophic

would like to propose; alternatively, I could give you a brief Introduction to my recent thinking about architecture, aspect which I see as deriving from certain philosophic expectations, for me to set out my architectural

seems important to me is that we search for a liaison ntcllectual results will reflect the ex and architect. JD Ye , If that is possible.

be exciting for both of us -

t that you strive to dissolve your independent

hen I spoke to Bernard Tschumi he told me that you may already

excited to hear these. JD Only very preliminary ones. Perhaps it would be useful if you would tell me a little about your work and your thoughts on the project. PE This situation is very strange for me, because Bernard Tschurni's La Villette project is, I believe, related to an earlier project of mine. The grid in particular is reminiscent of a scheme that I did some years ago for Cannaregio in Venice; many of my colleagues to work directl 's traditional scale i have also made this association. Bernard's invitation to work a displacement of a cerwith you on a small project for La Villette therefore creates an opportunity for a misreading of a misreading irony. More important, however, is the opportunity situations for example, I've collaborated however, as I have long been critical are doinq to the human figure; cl 'since the Renaissance," the idea of anthropomorphism advent of Modern architecture, with the Ameri

you. I have always attempted to get involved in interdisciWilliam Gass. YOUI'work has a special importance for me. nt with the notion of origin. Architects architecture, has dominated form architectural always relate what and for some four hundred years thought. Even with the Le Corbusier's famous origins such as scale arChitectural. aesnon-closure. nonand has thus

rchitecture really means anthropocentric the human body architectural still governed

take, for example,

Modulor figure. In my own work, I have been mounting a critique of the systematic privileging of anthropocentric and function in traditional architectural aesthetics. You can see the consequences . its size, color, plan, form, and the shape and proportions of the do.or all reflect the classical tr_n the possibilllll'f

of such thinking in the room in which we now sit Traditional dissonance,

thetics takes for granted hierarchy, closure, symmetry and regularity. th hierarchy, and so on. For me, this is no longer tenable. Aesthetics constrained the history of architecture. To take another example, tradi whereas in textual terms that is, in a system of presences and absences -

what you might call textual possibilities, in architecture presence

is solid and absence void,

a void is as much a presence as a solid. Solid and void, For me, this system of presences If this is the operation of both presence and absence,

presence and absence, positive and negative case, then architecture the Greco-Christian

these are all erroneously taken to be synonymous.

represses what I believe you call difference, which requires the simultaneous

has been one of the arenas in which difference IS most repressed. This, to my mind, accounts for its status in

hegemony. Finally, through your work directly, and indirectly through such writers as Susan Handelman and Mark 7

TRANSCRIPT

ONE There were no graven images in the only "was" and "will be." Thus is to come down to a cribetween Hebraic and

Taylor, I have recently begun to consider Hebraic thought and its implications for architecture.

temple, and, as I understand it, the Hebrew language contains no present tense of the verb "to be" tique of the operation of presence in architecture, architectural

Hebraic thought deals more with absence than presence. And if my questioning of the issues in architecture

then it might be interesting to try to construct a relationship

thought. I feel that we are linked by all of this and other issues as well. What I am searching for is a way to turn decon-

struction from a mode of analysis into one of synthesis. I ask myself, "How does one turn Jacques Derrida into a synthesizer? How does one make him make?" This is one of the challenges and possibilities of our work together. JK Jacques' work, which has so powerfully exposed the uncritical operation of a metaphysic tecture, which traditionally is concerned of presence il7D.hi!Qsophy and the pursuit of truth In general, confronts archi::loSt self-evident that t;econfrontatlon say Jacques, that b."';'pe with the built envi_J

with Vitruvian veritas. It

ronment IS a confrontation With presence. Yet I remember once hear pect a secret lurking. My own interest lies in asking why architecture his youth when he decides between architecture and philosophy.

see'

is so resistant to decenten He chooses philosophy,

)n

self-evident, one may susin its theory and in its pracbecause he is projects that

tice. I should also add, as I sit here listening, that I am reminded of the Eupalinos, in which Valery's Socrates relates the moment in if I remember correctly, unable to penetrate the overwhelming

presenceol

was an interest in the role Socrates has in the

stf }Jre of the dialogue

an undefined object to find ItS one truth. JD In fact the only idea I brought today of Plato's Timaeus. PE There are few architectural

can be called "critical" in the philosophic sense ot the term. Tschumi's is one of those few, and must be applauded den must also be a critical project, and we must see It as trans.""}Q exciting JD I am excited and anxious. This is a very difficult sit Nevertheless, ,1for me, as I am operatinqin,two

its place in La Villette; we have a larger obligation, which is foreign elements: architecture

and the English language. When Bernard Tschumi first proposed this project to me, I was petence whatsoever in architecture. I read your texts and examined Fin O'ou THou S,1 I recognized ics is consistent with a general deconstruction many things

I think I understand in a discursive, philo

d.

as such. Our gar-

!J but surprised, as I have no com'fashion what you are saying. When and aesthetor rather an anar-

your critique of origin, anthropomorphism

of architecture itself. Your work seems to propose an anti-architecture,

chitecture, but of course this is not so simple, as what I do is antiarchitectural tectural dimension of the type you were describing. tecture seems to have nothing to do with absence. have a telos of representation, architecture but architecture Anti-architecture,

in the traditional sense of "anti." Yet I have always had design not a reference to architec-

the feeling of being an architect, in a way, when I am writing; I have a vague feeling that the form of whatever I am writing has an architural forms or schemes, but definitely something that has

to.'

'..

but with an architectural

,11

"building." The paradox, of course, is that on the face of it, architexts, he Say:c+1-,8.t temple is a place where God is prea paradox of logocentrism. All other arts unique relationship to representation,

In one

djegger's

sent, but that implies that the temple is an empty place ready to receive God. It is Ulti~.g seems not to depend on it. So, becauR,.:ts

IS more "present" than any other art, but at the same time, being the most "present," it is also the strongest reference to seems to suggest that in architecture we find someincluding the subject of reprethe metaphysics of representation and thus everything linked to representation, ~ '" fundamental condition of architecture

the opposite of presence, namely absence. This odd relationship to representation thing that contradicts sentation. That is why architectu~j.'1 is whether or not the condition more logocentric ,;lich you have s dealt

and at the same time less logocentric than the other arts. PE The question I ask or an artifact of its historic develIn the fifteenth century, Alberti, in presence. The form, the figures, the text and the discourse col labthe rituals about the cathedral.

<lI

opment. Until the fifteenth century, architecture

orated in the Gothic cathedral: the cathedral was

his church for S Andrea in Mantua, overlaid the secular form of the triumphal arch with the sacred form of the classical temple front in a gesture designed to strengthen the image of the power of God with an external reference to power, to the arch of Titus in Rome. In Alberti's use of representation, tecture has developed claimed the opposite I believe, we find the beginnings non-representative of a split between presence and meaning. Since that time, archithough today, we see their reductionist aesthetic, their as a representational an autonomous, art; that is, it has invoked external sources to achieve its meaning. JK The Modernists architecture 8

TRANSCRIPT and then social project as continuations id

1N I·

ONE architecture.

of a representational

PF_: The architecture that Heidegger speaks

I am pursuing is one in which pres-

presence, or at the very least, of presence as dominant over absence. The architecture operate equally, JD Well, you can strategically

insist on absence as a disruption of the system of presence, but at

you have to leave the theme of absence. PE In the work we have been doing, we distinguish between the presence of tile absence of presence, It is through this distinction that we attempt to activate absence and to operate simultanepresence and absence in a critique of the anthropocentric cn:!lltectule tradition, which represses absence. To put it another way, tratexts centers, and its textual it'I speaks of center or presence, What we are trying to do is to create architectural The second, and moreng, anything in the city some consideration IS that I cannot understand nout some compromise of use, PE You have to transcend how, with the uncompromising

ii3-

nterinq. JD My difficulties have two sources, The first has to do with axioms with the client and so on Such forces require use; you have to say, yes, there are certo presence need not determine our work, of those values, JK In other words, the propo-

m is

generate the system of values or be representative

that what is inevitable does not have to govern, does not have to be thematic, PE These concessions Jeff says, thematic, What we should be looking for together is a way to avoid havinq these considerations vou remark that your work is in a sense architectural, must come to the architectural displaCing tendencies architecture JD That is what I me in architecture is that others d Jacques, you aestheticism and functionality I understand that. dimension; it must not exist merely in drawin when I say that I d

ty at
ris 'e

hat you and I will do together must ultimately be d/or writing. What will differentiate our work from Theirs is a flight

the need to make sense in the built condition understand

how the Ideas we are speaking of are engaged in the conflict how unable I am vis-a-vis your work. My training, in its of which we speak than you. My tendencies are all

n-ttr-

the demands of the real, classical extreme, probably towards the anthropocentrism,

I am less able to do the architecture

which I am trying to critique, I gravitate towards them; they are in my I am Interested in. What is exciting in this circum-

bones, I must constantly work against this sensibility in order to do the architecture could provide a corresponding

td li-

is that you are going to provide the crutch for me to overcome certain resistant values that I constantly face, On the other hand, crutch, in that I am familiar with operating in the realm of the sensible, JD So, I will stop apologizing for not being an architect. JD So, let me go very quickly to the single excited, but at the same time, I was totally, totally empty. I the philosopher Jean-Pierre Vernant, which had to do with in this pro for not being an architect. , , , PE And I Will stop apologizing idea I have, When Tschumi asked me to participate moan I had no Ideas at all, I was in t something I taught twelve years ago of philosophers, In it, Plato discus

clie'ts to eesk 81bin lilt ie. hi3tS eir

of writing a text in h

ing a very enigmatic passage in the Timaeus, a passage which has amazed generations in place, The name for this singularly unique place is chore. In Greek, chora means

in very different senses place in general, the residence, the habitation, the place where we live, the country. It has to do with interval; it is what you open to "give" place to things, or when you open something for things to take place, If I were to summarize very roughly the context in which those three or four pages discussing the cosmos, Cosmos, as you know, means arrangement chora appear, I would say that it is something which is not simply Plato is explaining the birth of Hi me IS as follows: the architectg8d, organized. Platonic Chora IS something Plato cannot Immediately assimilate into his own thought. In the the world as Derniurqe, who gives birth to our visible world, is looking at the p These forms have preceded him, they are already, and while looking at sensible. This is the origin of our sensible world; it is a copy, a representation the eidos, which is eternal and unchanging, Plato says and there is something very strange here -that

the forms which are eternal; Ideas as eternal beings. gives these forms a sensible inscription, they become of these eternal beings. So, we have two kinds of being:

and the becoming world. the sensible. Two kinds of being, one the copy of the other. Now there is something else, the third element, triton genos. This third kind. the chore. To dishave called "metaphors," though I do not think they are metaphors. These

or genos, is neither the eternal eidos nor its sensible copy, but the place in which all those types are inscribed cuss this, Plato has to use what generations of philosophers

TRANSCRIPT

ONE

are the mother, the matrix or the nurse. You can compare, he says, the paradigm with the father, the sensible world with the child or the infant, and chora, this place of inscription, with the mother or nurse. But these are only metaphors, Plato's philosophy coherence. because they are borrowed from the sensible world. So chora is not the mother, nor the nurse who nurtures infants. Chora IS irreducible to everything that gives It is a kind of hybrid being; a kind of being that we can only think of in dreaming. Chora is not exactly the void, though it looks as if it were void, and it's not temporal in the sense of a sensible world. JK But neither can it be eternal in the sense of the eidos JD It's not eter nal either in the sense of the stable presence which is not altered by tirne. So it is something which cannot be assimilated by Plato himself, by what we call Platonic ontology, nor by the Inheritance of Plato, Further, it has nothing to do with topos, though Plato sometimes uses the word tapas a deterrnined.place ,(lnt instead of cbote. Chora is the spacing which is the . ;tiiterpretations of chora, tYPIWhat interand so "givcondition for everything to take place for everything to be inscribed,. ognizable In this text. It IS the place where everything is received as cally reducing chora or projectinq
a

t-etaphor of impression or printing is very strong and recThere have beenl' ',,) Interpretations,

Into chora various systems, Kant's for example, Chora resists -

ests me is that since chora is irreducible to the two positions, the sensible and the intelligible, which tion of Western thought, it is irreducible to all the values to which we are accustomed on, I insist on the fact of this non-anthropomorphism ing" place, In French we say donner lieu. the pla*{ir

ctLe

dominated the entire tradi-

values of origin, anthropomorphism

of chora. Why? Because chora looks as though it were giving something,

receiving or for giving, Chora receives everything or gives place to everything,

yet Plato insists that in fact it has to be a virgin Pl'a6e, and that It has to be totally foreign, totally exterior to anything that it receives, Since it.''" absolutely blank, evorythinq that is printed 00 It is a sense, it does not receive anything - it does not receive wha

aotol"?"Y effaced
eSurface -

It remains ...o ...i9 n to the imprint it receives; so, in f ..re ..... 'feives nor does it give )!Vhat it gives. Everything inscribed in it
it is not even.' PE That's right ,;;1ce, because it has no depth, PE are we going to try physicalto say that you can make chora JK

erases itself immediately, while remaining in it It is thus an impossi

You have presented the outlines of a possible program, which, of course, would need elabor,Now ly to embody this program? JK That would be the height of anthropocentrisrn. But you can make the absence of chora

aren't you saying what it is by saying what it isn't? PE That's itl We can make the absence tradition and irreducible to It; it is something which disrupts this tradiin the labyrinth ..1Jletranslation would be, My concern was to have something '

of chora. The presence of the absence of chora. JD We can go back to the text of chora itself later on, But this text interests me because it IS at the same time Inside the Western philosophical what he wanted place I tried to imagine what the architecturallY.' tion from within, As I was telling this to Tschumi while we werewalkl~g in which something would happen that would be v'

;:"\pparently, it has to b,~'" n,arden, and we will have to come back ;litors can walk, and something should erased. There .znat was happening to them would have

to this why does Tschurni want it to be a garden? This IS a place, an open place in

happen to them as they cross the garden, My , , , I wont say my Idea, , , my dream was m would be a surface sand or water, for instance, On this surface, some forms, representing

w,
c

he was showing me his place and discussing a

some essential relationship with the structure of chora, as if something was printed by reflection and instantaneously

the paradigm, could cast a shadow on the We should

sand, a mirror reflection on the water, or something similar, Then the passage of the visitor could affect the forms in some way which nevertheless leaves no stable trar;:A,PE I think we would have to try to make something which has a general application, avoid materials which so obviousl }lase themselves, or water we might be able to suggest the presence of the absen describing would then be integral with the built environ try to find a program for the presence of the absence we should try stone, If we used stone or wood or concrete

without alluding to a sacred experience, The phenomenon you are absence, But in any case, we need a more specific program for chora of chora and concentrate on making that sensible, How can you be sure, indi-

How do we make it sensible? I don't care if we make a garden or not. I mean, after all, there are any number of gardens, We should Jacques, that I am going to receive your ideas when you write? You have to allow for rnisreadinqs. The possibility of misreading

cates a correct reading, We will have to work in such a way that what we produce can and will be misread, though we Will strive for the correct meaning, JD It will be a very simple scheme, PE One thing which might be useful to talk about is the concept of poesis. 10

TRANSCRIPT architecture

ONE

cannot be chora, but neither can it be merely a text about chota, confining itself to giving information. It way. Traditionally, that has meant classical aesthetics. The difference rests In a certain poetic content. I do not mean that in the classical sense, but perhaps in the

information, in what I call a constructive and architecture

sense Some of your texts are poetic; others indicative. I think ours has to be both. It is not enough that you give us an to embody it. We have to work In continuous exchange. JK When Peter has been most successful, and I believe also of your work, Jacques, has been when he has abandoned that knowledge Further, we invokes the entire root as existing in an at if we can engage' a single goal and given himself up to a process. PE I You cannot know what you are going to which you Intend to critique. What tension between the sensible and not Peter Eisenman. a goal, though I may not achieve it. JK Perhaps goal is the wrong word is that chota is conceived

of desires, the anthropocentrisrns. vable and therefore non-dialectic

which plays on the tension without resolving It, then we have a

to me about the Romeo and Juliet project is that no one person "knows' it -

or myself, all of whom worked on it to some degree. I don't think its content can be known. PE I have about the Romeo and Juliet project called Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors2 which I would like to give you, Jacques. The to me when. after I had given a paper at a theological conference, a very old Anglican canon said to me 'What was that moving eros'?" I replied, "Nol Moving errors," and thus began this people from reading the project, though I do not agree. But I it can be said in retrospect that we were working the beginning no reference. A reference IS coals with the problem of muthos I play on words. Jeff says my texts are calcuto show you the project, because, in a strange function. JD Chora is a bit of fiction, it

. We gave ourselves a fictional set of devices as a working specific architectural tell a story. It IS not a myth. The text on which I have been work-

e opposition between logos and muthos, chora is neither the object of a logos nor the object resumes on the tOPICof the role of being Jewish, in the thought of displacement.] .. I mean, of course, I am Jewish by birth. but my Jewish background and his-

It is a fiction. since it has no reference, but it is not a story It is not an organized story with a beginning and an end. [The

breaks for lunch. Afterwards, the discussion I suppose It has nothing to do with my upbringing

are very poor I am very surprised that my readers have located these traditions. PE The same is true for me. I have no Jewish experience at all, but I think that I sense in your work an innately Hebraic way of thinking. JK The currency of doubt, which the medium of exchange to architecture. ill both your economies, is a He cy. JD There is something specific in the Hebraic tradition many times. George Steiner in a very interesting essay against Hebraic thought. JK A concretization of presence and being That is what so interests PE There is pie, which has been n? PE Representation,

called "The Text, My Homeland,"3 tal transgression because It involves rep

the fact that the temple may have been a transgression

about chora. As you say, it is a non-Platonic

idea. To me, it seems more like a Hebraic notion. JD Many have thought that it is a

element entering Plato's texts from the early Greek materialists. I thought it was a foreign graft within Plato's text. But how is a
l j

possible, anyway? What makes one graft possible and another not? There are two ways of reading it, at least. One would be to s,ay that It's neither sensible nor insensible, but both. It is a participation describe this thing, because, as soon as we describe It we project an ihough he writes only a few lines on the subject. He says chora prep of the two. We have '
i1Cl•.. Into It. That IS (_

guage that can even struggle to ay Heldegger deals with chora, the Cartesian extension of georather than goal-ful-

is his word -

I. j

metric space. JK The only way to work -

it's very much like dreaming

ive yourself into a process while resisting a telos. That Every four years in Venice they have an international archi-

IS the only possibility of making that is not making something, thus letting the outcome be one of wish-fulfillment fillment. PE Let me tell you some more about the Romeo and Juliet project

i).

tectural biennale This year for the third international biennale. there were ten sites proposed as problems. One of these sites was that of the two castles of Romeo and Juliet in Montecchio, outside Venice. At present they are ruins. What interested us was that the story from the site of the castles to Verona, and of Romeo and Juliet was first written about these two castles. The story was transposed 11

TRANSCRIPT

ONE

from the sixteenth century, when it was written, to the thirteenth century. Though we don't know if there IS any historic truth to the story in Verona you can actually visit the 'house of Juliet," the "church where they were married," the 'tomb where they were buried." Hence, the fiction of Romeo and Juliet has taken over the reality. What we wanted to do was to reirnpnnt the castles in what we called a "hyperfiction ~ that IS, a fiction of a fiction; to re-fictionalize the house of Juliet, the church of their marriage and the tomb where they finalconcretization of the narrative dialectic of Romeo and Furthermore, in the early texts of Romeo and at least, that's ly came together in architecture We took the labyrinth to be the architectonic

Juliet between fate and free will ~ when you enter into it, your fate is predetermined. Romeo and Juliet story division. union, and dialectical scalinq relationship. T~eQrogram

Juliet there IS an actual labyrinth. So, through the vehicle of the labyrinth, we attempted to express three structural aspects of the ~here w,~ were when we finished. [A slide presentation anddicscUSSiO_.l-c

el""68.1 JD Rcl what about the question of reality? JK

scaling disequilibriums

into it; in other words, we would have to continue the process into 'real" sf;)

W. "

evolved through our work process -

Romeo and Juliet project an Eisenman's process called ..d

physically to realize

':j'f,CCI.

we would have

10 bulle

Is that possible in building?

How is it possible to have this built in stone with respect to the different scales? JK It is essential that 'luu always work towards building. We used three narrative scales ~ scales used as text, rather than centrist authority. The three scales were intended to confront the traditional authority of a single, human-derived It. You don't read architecture In the same seqUlr' scale. PE When you write a book, you read It in the same sequence as you wrote as it was designed. That's a very big difference. JK There is an illusion of beginthe

ning and end to a book, though I think it's a false Illusion. JD Well, the nominal structure is there ~ set. Whereas in architecture,

phenomenal structure is all at once. PE In classicism, you findl~"- ·''''''.~jPf structuring something I.n"an experiential way. You can walk .. through a classical plan and understand ItS content because It 'riSlgned to be underst09dln that way. Architecture has two textual dimensions the vertical dimension, which you see from the ou Ide as the facade, and which you never see as a whole. between two forms of realiRomeo and Juliet is all plan ~ there is no treatment of the vertical dimension, yet. JD It is tTjrenCe

t.:(,

ty From where do we perceive this plan where is the ideal spectator'? PE Above ~ as it is shown in the plan. The ideal spectator would learn little more walking in it. JD God's view. PE Yes, God's view. But this has already been done and I want to go further. There is much about it that I find weakwalk-throughs for example, I doubt that you could experience the texts. JK It has always been my contention that of many generations of reading. JK Yes. I am surprised, "project, whether Peter, that you continue to express there should be no expectation of "getting it" in a single walk through. Why not assume that the accumulation produces the reading? JD Even an open-ended the desire for the user to experience the "texts." That propol' front. In any experiential relationship that you might have wi,

. -.'.J1)an originary status a finitude that the whole project intends to conone of its drawings or walking through expect in any normal architectural project in any finite period of time preof Romeo any footing that

some possible realization of it, the entirety of the project destabilizes

relationship. For me that's a sufficient condition. It's not necessary, or even desirable, sent its "real meaning,' whatever that is. PE The only reason we are showing you this project is that in it are the seeds of our first effort at expressing discursive ideas in the realm of the sensible, in a figurative way. In this case, the idea was the transference

and Juliet back to the site through a process. What we are talking about for our project is the attempt to bring into figuration an idea of chora. Had we started with aJQqal in Romeo and Juliet, we probably would not have gotten as far as we did. That is what Jeff is cautioning us about ~ not to

sl }vith

too specific a

to make chora. JD Well, it was not my idea. PE What we must do is to set up the fictional premises necessary to establish a process that is in chora the pre-organization that has to do with the tension between

develop a discourse which we can then begin to figu might lead us to chora JK I agree. And we have a hi that cannot be represented. to architecture Chora cannot be represented,

the sensual and the intellectual. JD And something else. Chora is something that ~ and this may lead to the right thing ~ something except negatively. You may think of negative theology, but this would be as on solidity, or should I say, as much on text wrong, It is nothing sacred or theological ~ it's a space. It is a space that cannot be represented, so it is a challenge to anything solid, as something built." JK Architecture depends as much on signification as on presence. PE The most difficult thing of all is to do something and then discover in it things that were wanted. It's almost like

12

TRANSCRIPT

ONE that? What I would suggest is that we try to find a rnechreading. It is also possible to destaJD In La Villette you cannot make it inaccessiof the human beingcon-

and allowing things to happen. How can we accomplish

a sense. initially destabilizes the work we produce from a traditional architectural functionality. We could, for example, make it in part inaccessible. carl make part of It Inaccessible

JD The concept of the garden is something that contains access, the product of the

oloasure of walking. JK The product of the garden could just as well be the exteriorization

of Eden. PE We have to make a mark. One of the Important things is the presence of the absence of our authorship who watk through It. Its reason for being is to have our signature. I know what my Signature would be In that situation.

s
j

be that I have to help you to find an archi what we have said today. I is, in some way rna vve could begin a regular exchange.

' signature to facilitate your ability to work in this process. ! suggest we d Timaeus. Then I will try to make some drawinqs and send them to i ns as to what you find problematic, though perhaps not in the sense In writing to drawme to propositions if you are expecting

d
?

not be able to do that. PE But you could draw in the sense of responding JD And you could send me discursive

ilt

e
1-

I think should happen now is that you will have time to read more of my writings and we will have time to study the and your writing. JD The pages on chora are found about the middle of I will also send you the text I'm working on now. PE We can get it " That's the most difficult thing, but we have to make a start. a preconceived notion, then I would be back in know what will happ with your text I

book. It's just in the middle, a very small piece d. We have to put something down and say, Are you optimistic? PE Very optimistic. But if I were ... of predicting closure. The way I work and the maybe

e
(-

of precluding pe

vve will work together is You will have to allow of the work. We should u

ethinq will suggest itself, something about your work

aps that will suggest an architectural strategy The text could become PE What about saying: a text of Plato, a text of Derrida and a text of the architectural equiva-

1-

x e
at
of ;s
l-

the Platonic text and yours as starting points. JD I thought of bringing the text, but it's a sort

essay. It has nothing to do with architecture.

With Eisenman? In other words, that there are three levels of discourse. Plato is referring to chora Derrida is analyzing Plato. is missing is my reading and analysis of the Plato and Derrida texts. This would give us two layers to set up something similar to the Romeo and Juliet project. with. JD As you will see from my essay, a major focus of itself. It has a very strange of my ideas is that Socrates i listener. I receive what you're im of narrative within Derridas analysis of Plato and my analysis of Derrida, which could provide the fiotional structure for the work. Then we would i h also had different texts superimposed one upon the other ing of the chora theme in the Timaeus ISthe structure of the within narrative, which relates to the problem of chora. is received, there is a striking analogy

Ih al
3-

playing the role of chora. He is neuter, he is a receiver. He says, "You speak, I am " Since chora is the place where everything

the role and the place of Soorates and the role of fiction in chora, PE What you aro saying is very stimulating. It may provide
,0

with a way. How can we embody that narrative In this project, for example? How do we embody Socrates as receiver? JD The archiof the dialogue has to do with city building. The Egyptians used to say, "Your city will be destroyed." All cities were eventualby floods and fires and so on. JK But it is a pitfall to think that the most architectu part that seems to be explicitly about architecture. Folio V, AA Publications, In fact, that is
I

la is IS at

teresting part of the text will be a tendency merely to illustrate Peter Eisenman, Fin d'Ou THou S,

e work might re at all. er Errors -

text. So, it might be more fruitful to look to where there seems to 1984. 2. Peter Eisenman, Moving Arrows,

An Architecture of Absence, Box 3, AA

1986.3. George Steiner, "The Text My Homeland," 4. For more on the relationship between chora and negative theology, see Jacques Derrida, "Comment de ne parler pas," Psyche, Galilee, 1987, esp. pp. 563-569.

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CHORA Jacques Translated Derrida from the French by Ian McCloud of the philosophers point of view? The mathemati-

in playa form of logic which could be called ~ in contrast to the logic of non-contradiction ambiguous, of the equivocal, of polarity. How can one formulate, of deficit, or even formalize, any term into its opposite left with drawino whilst at the same time keeping this statement structural them both apart, from another and to turn to the linguists,

these see-saw operations, logicians,

up, in conclusion,

might supply him with the tool he lack a logic other than the logic of the logos. own what Plato in ers." that logical of the' is shown in a different appearance The chore. which way

model of a logic which would not be that of binarity, of by the name of chora seems to defy that "logic of derive from that "logic (triton declared nor "intelligible," belongs to a "third genus'

Pierre Vernant. Raisons du my the in Myth and Society in Ancient us designates is neither "sensible" binarity. of the yes or no." Hence it might perhaps

One cannot even say of It that it is neither this nor that or that it is both this and that. The difficulty at times the chore appears and that of participation between the logic of exclusion ~

to be neit~~r this nor that, at times both this and that, but return to this at lengthstems perhaps only in a very Not

and from the constraints And yet, "invisible' (aporotata,

of rhetoric. The chore seems to be allen to the order of the "paradigm, out sensible form, it "participates" prudence of this neqative formulation in the intelligible e shall not be lyinq, adds Timaeus, at least we shall not be of our preliminary logos, but rather

we"

51 b). At

gives reason to ponder.

what is false: is that the discourse It of lucidity to the thought bastard, or even corrupted as confer

essarily telling the truth? Let us recall once more, under the heading does not proceed from the natural or legitimate reasoning (log is moi nothoi). It comes 'as in a dream" (52b) Does such a discourse to place our trust in the alternative a genre logos/mythos?

on the chore. as it is presented, upon it a power of divination.

which could just as well And what if this thought cate-

derive, then, from myth? Shall we gain

of the chora by continuing

aiso for a third genus of discourse? oppositions, which in the first myth

And what if, perhaps allow it to be app certainly,

the case of the chore, this appeal to the third genre was genre? Beyond categories r said? As a token of gratitude and above all beyond and admiration, here then

moment of a detour In order to Signal towards In the form of a question about the opposition and of Ambiguit{; et renversement: genealogy

-Pierre Vernant, to the one who taught us so much and gave us so much pause for but also about the unceasing does not belong, inversion of poles; to the author of Raisons of the logos, or Beyond the retarded how are we to think that which, while going outside of the regularity nevertheless stricto sensu, to myihos?

law its natural and legitimate opposition of this place? oscillation

of logos and mythos, how is one to think tho necessity to think there, as I have JU is not an oscillation or the meta-logic am (neither/nor)'

of that which, while giving place to that very thing which it situates? according between to necessity? The two poles It oscillates first

as to so many others, seems sometimes Is there something of which we have just spoken two types of oscillation to transport the logic, the para-logic

to be itself no longer subject to the Iy said, and to rs, an oscillation participation

the double exclusion

(both ttue and that). But have we the and we have dis-

of this super-oscillation form/formless,

from one set to the other? It concerned icon or mimeme/paradigm),

all types of existent thing (sensible/intelligible, It towards types of discourse is not self-evident. particularly It depends

visible/invisible,

(mythos/logos)

or of relation to what is or is not in general. from types of being to types of discourse the quality of the discourse 15

No doubt such a displacement But on the one hand it is always primarily on the quality of

on a sort of metonymy:

in Plato, to separate

the two problematics

depends

................. ------------------Jacques Derrida the being of which it speaks. The discourse relates to On the other hand, the metonymy question of the genres/types course on genre/type sequence (genos) and on different at the opening like the relation to what which is in general, is authorized by a passing through of the types of discourse. is qualified or disqualified by what it genre, from one genre to the other, from the Now the discourse on the chora is also a disethnos) at present, that of the of being to the question types of type. Later we will get on to genre as gens or people (genos, on which we are dwelling and sensible), a theme which appears of the Timaeus. In the narrow context on the chora, we shall encounter two further genres of genre or types of type. The chora is a triton genos in the view in process of becoming of the two types of being (immutable Iy determined and intelligible/corruptible, with regard to the sexual type: Timaeus speaks of Almost all the about these They speak tranquill

".ntQ!b'7~" and

but it seems to be equalHe does this In of no here on the resources They ask themselves

"nurse" In regard to this subject.

a mode which we shall not be in a hurry to name rhetonc without ever wondering questions about this tradition are all built upon this distinction est difficulty metaphor). getting

!:";3ters of the Timaeus gamble 1 lf1t metaphors, images'I,";n. a reserve of concept which is precisely

of rhetoric which places at their disposal between the sensible and the intelligible

,;::h are very useful but which what The thought of the chora can has the greatlimited to some didactic

no longer get along with _ a distinction, pedagogicy-illustrative, or instrumental

indeed, of which Plato unambiguously of rhetoric

,J

lets it be known that this thought

along with it. This proble~ dime1

IS, here, no mere Side issue. Nor is its importance it and situating it but it is already

(those who speak of metaphor

with regard to the chora often add

We shall be content for the moment with indicating

clear that, just like the chora

and with just as much necessity, itcannot easily be situated, al"······.·.p.~~d residence: it IS... o...e situating than situated, an oppoto a m r s: ..... siuon which must In ItS turn be shielded from some grammatlJ:.,ontologlcal alternatlvEj;. between the active and the passive We shall not speak of metaphor, but not In order to hear, for exafhple, because that the chora is

,"'/IY

a mother, a nurse, a receptaof the myth as and the logos. which we envisAnd this, anothof sense of being. trorr

cle, a bearer of imprints or of gold. It IS perhaps

ItS scope goes beyond

or faf'

I-t of the polarity of metaphorical

sense versus proper sense that the thought of the chora exceeds age would be the following: er consequence, (metaphorical any translation be attempted would with these two polarities, it would

the polarity, no doubt analogous,

Such at least would be the question which we should like here to put to the test of a reading. The consequence Ity in general, whether dialectical or proper), or not. Giving place to oppositions, inalter~9!xbe it would itself not submit to any reversal in carrying beyond

the thought of the chora would trouble the very order of polarity, of polar-

not be because and these negative admittedly,

it would no longer belong to hypotheses,

After these precautions

tl

itself but because

the polarity

,,!zon of sense, nor to that of meaning

j1~11understand

why it i,s.C8?· ..WC left the word cham sheltered

In

as the meaning

A translation,

seems to be always at work, both

the Gr he

/1,) 19uage and from the Greek language

into some other. Let us not regard any of them as sure. Thinking such an experiment is not only out of concern "location,"

and translating

(,ILverse the same experience.

If it must

for a word or an atom of meaning "site," "'region," "country")

but also for a whole tropologicalls the figures proThis anachronism IS

cal texture, let us not yet call it a system, and for ways of approaching, Whether they concern the word chora itself ("place," posed by Timaeus himself ("moi';~r," pretation. not necessarily, They are led astray l)'2trospective not always, and not only a "nurse," "receptacle,"

In order to name them, the elements of this "tropology." or what tradition the translations remain caught in networks of interwould be able to escape he so rightly puts us on to the "history-of-phi-

"imprint-bearer"),

whose anarchronism Even Heidegger, retrospection2 or of teleological

can always be suspected.

which a vigilant and rigorous interpretation who is nonetheless against which, elsewhere, anachronism,

entirely. We shall try to show that no one escapes speak of "metaphor," losophy." seems to us to Yield to this teleological our guard. And this gesture seems highly significant

one of the only ones never to

for the whole of his questioning

and his relationship

What has just been said of rhetoric, of translation nor finally to approach

could give rise to a misunderstandout-

ing. We must dispel it without delay. We will never claim to propose the mot juste for chora, nor to name it, itself, over and above all the turns and detours of rhetoric, It, itself, for what it will have been, outside of any point of view 16

CHORA perspective. It is this structural of tile Timeous , or better Tropology and anachronism are inevitable. And all we would like to show weaknesses or pro~ as such by the whole history of it "is" the we have to deal it

structul'e which makes them thus inevitable,

makes of them something

other than accidents,

law which seems to me never to have been approached with regard

It would be a matter of a structure the anachrony

and not of some essence of the chore, since the question being, The whole history of interpretations, It is out of the question of this whole, the very possibility

longer has any meaning

to it. The chore, we shall say, is anachronistlc/anachronous, devoted to the Timeeus since Antiquity.

of being. It anachronises

II never exhaust the Immense literature And above all to presuppose What we shall presup

ity or homogeneity Illy organized

of totalizing hypothesis.'

the other hand, and one could still call It a "working by a telos) has an essential by something effect produced

a
h n t~
18

link with the structural like the chora inexhaustible, which the interit, it which by speaking

ment ago and which come

;('1

It would be the inevitable

s not like nothing,

not even like what It would be, itself. Rich, numerous, from all.tb~ marks or impressions of the as information, apparatus, etc,

short, to give form to the meaning of chore. They always consist in giving it form by determining itself from any determination, here of the interpretation

offer itself only by removing what we are putting forward or received,

about mark or impression, he example,

about knowledge

Ch_

to which we said it was

of Plato's text on the chora -

all of that already draws on what or simply brings in

draws on its conceptu

8. 3~

rmeneutic of "chore:

In other words, what we have just put

on the

in the text of Plato, reproduces

urse on the sub] there are interpretations depositing say that it furnishes C,UCIIless broached,

of the chore. And this is true even down to this very sentence are the cut-out figures imprinted And yet, "chore" or substance.

al s.

chemas. The schemata on it the sediment

Into the chore. the forms which mark of their or One cant emot-

which would come to give form to "chore" by leaving on it the schematic of their contribution. by these types of tropological or interpretative Impassive,

s~
l]" ~

seems never to let itself be reached translation "amorphous" Chora is not a subject.

and above all not exhausted

h~

them with the support of a stable substratum rebelli

The herrncneu-

;e
g. m le st

cannot inform, they cannot give form to chore except to la) and still virgin, with a virginity that is radically to them. But if Tima the stable being of a of the

nt that, inaccessible, nst anthropomorphism, ) or place (chora),

it seems to receive these types these names do not designate i.e. of

ce chora IS neither of the order of the eidos nor of the order of mimemes, mselves in it cannot but be declared, i.e., be caught or conceived,

euios

which come to i

which thus is not and does not belong to the two known or rec~ via the anthropoor a subwe but a support

1i~ o~
is )e to n i~ de "chora.

genera of being. schemas

It is not and this non-boinq

of the verb to receive and the verb to give, Chora IS not, is above all not, IS anything or by conceiving, or indeed by letting itself be conceived receptacle, wh as a receptacle, given that this very name is given to It by Plato? It i to learn it to

r~

ich would give place by receiving significance

How could one deny it this cult Indeed, but perhaps said by ciectiomei.

[lot yet thought through what is meant by to receive, the rec it is from chora that we are beginning not to comprehend it, to conceive it. You will already have noti

dectiomehas always or the value the eXls~

to receive from It what its name calls up, To receive now say chora and not, as convention the significance The definite article presupposes received

the chore. or again, as we might have done for the sake of caution, the word, the concept. This is for several reasons, most of which are no doubt already obvious, any of the known or recognized or, If you like, received of a thing, the existent chore to which, via a common noun does not designate ical discourse, i.e. by the ontological

name, it would be easy to refer, But what is said about chora is that types of existent, by philosophnor intelligible. chore is neither sensible

rt-

logos which lays down the law In the Timaeus

17

Jacques Derrida There is chore, one can even ponder over Its physis and its dynemis, there is not; and we will come back later to what this there In giving place or in giving to think; whereby we be content to say prudently: cautions least, of a determined schema, existent, the word would not suffice, they presuppose the common distinctions
IS

or at least ponder these ill a preliminary

way, but what is

can give us to think, this there is which by the way gives nothing of an es gibt. Instead of the chore, shall or the value of chore? These preimply the possibility, individual, at via acts of language, desigtype. But if the signification

It will be risky to see in it the equivalent name, the concept, (word/concept/value,

etc.) which themselves

distinct from another, and acts which aim at it, at it or its meaning, to an order of multiplicities '(!;'ling andescapes

nations or sign postings. tion these presuppositions

All of these acts appeal to generalities. and these distinctions "something' is

genus, species

etc. Now what we can read, it seems of chora in the Tim,,~'l"~'\ is that "something"
p(_\ noun, It IS true, but

which is not a thing, puts in quesfro~.thi~

I say criote and not the cbore. I am stili making a noun out of It. A a word distinct from the thing or the concept. we wanted to protect ourselves? precisely Arent

a,l . ":'Just

order of multiplicities.

like any common noun, to a person, in this against which and of the as they say, chora to a certain attributes

Besides, the proper noun appears,

as always,;~;attributed

case to a woman. Perhaps to a woman, rather to a woman. Doesn't that aggravate mother or a nurse? Isn't the value of receptacle in Greek culture? These obJeetions[)J also associated, reference

the risks of anthropomorphism

these risks run by Plato himself when he seems to "compare. not Without value. However, if chore indeed presents

like passive and VIrgin matter, with the feminine element,

word as proper noun, isn't it only via its apparent

to some (amount of) uniqueness

(and In the Timaeus, more rigor-

ously In a c.ertain passage of the Timaeus which we will apprjj.· does not exist. It does not have the characteristics of an eXls. ontoioqic, passage I.e. those of an intelligible or sensible existent. article should for the moment suspend the determination,

r;.,y

... ff.iater, there is only all. e ch.....a) the referent o. this reference ..... or. f which we mean an e,.yistent that would be receivable in the

There" i~schora but the within invisible

chort" .~~.~ot exist. n

,Jie it) and the reference

The effacement to something

of the which is

quote marks \

a saying of Plato's In a certain

of the Timaeus, without knowing yet what it means and how to determine uniqueness, determined. Deprived

not a thing but which insists, in its so eniqrnatic ing, without giving Itself to be seen, conceived, nothing as its own and that it remains unformed, generality by properly attributing to It properties

lets Itself be called or causes itself to be named Without answerof a real referent, that which in fact resembles This very singular impropriety, which precisely a proper is nothwhich (as its physis and as its dvriemis, Plato's text Will say), that it has not to confuse it in a

name finds itself also called an x which has as its property ing, IS just what chora must, if you like, keep, it is Just which it/she "receives" or whose image it/she receives

formles'i,(arnorphon)

whl"nt

for example

VI.

be kept for it. To that end, it is necessary be those of a dete!'·'!Q".te

an existent of the

of the mother or the nurse will never be attributed

to it/her as a property,

something

fef }'

existent, one of the sxistents

jnder-

and that is why the femininity

01'F,2r own. Which does not mean, howevShe must not receive, the must receive to formalize our approach (to it/her)

er ~ we shall return to this - that it is a case here of mere figures of rhetoric. must not receive, merely let herself be lent the properties not that which she receives. name." as it is often Does it have the singularity of an idiomatic find, in Plato's text, or rather in a particular ples, however privileged? that the appellation should In what regard event To avoid all these confusions, it is convenient,

Chora must not receive for her own sake, so she

(of that) which she receives

paradoxically,

'.8.ge about it/her (*Iauton auten prosrheteon*, 'gulated generality

50b). Not so much to "give her always the same unique or typical? of a schema? In other words, does this regularity or rather one of Its examAnd if it's important chora by other and reap-

to call it/her ill the same manner. Is this "manner" Timeeus, its unique and best formulation

in what sense, will it be said of the Timaeus that is exemplary? of the appellation, included namely of a discourse? in advance

stay the same, rather than the name, will we be able to replace,

relay, translate

names, striving only to preserve the regularity propriations

This question cannot but resound when of it/her or overloading

we know that we are caught in such a scene of reading, which in the course of the centuries

in the immense history of interpretations chore. taking charge

come to buzz and hum around 18

CHORA and reliefs, giving it/her form, Imprinting sediments This interminable It/her with types, in order to produce seems to reproduce material happens With chora itself/herself or intelligible, Everything in It/her new objects or to of

theory of exegeses sensible

what. following

the discourse

i"epperl not with Plato's text but with chore herself/itself must not have any proper determination, Its/her own, must not be identical cham were written or even prescribed of chore "herself ('ltseW) with herself/itself in advance, With Its ceaseless

if one could at all speak thus must not history of the its overitself by

or formal, and therefore as if the yet-to-come and reflected

in advance

reproduced

In a few pages of the

re-launchinqs,

its failures, its superimpositions, itself, and reflects

e since it programs mrninq which annu ay and as if in a dream ns, for all eternity, e constituting
+-."

itself, reproduces

xive history still a history? Unless the concept it. In saying, (Timaeus, someone

of history bears this is what

in short, "this is how one can glimpse what I am saying about fortuitous

Plato, etc.) would have said

of what I say here, will look like. They will resemble in advance, and describes on this over this subject.

a
ld le
Jr -

what I am saying about cham gives a commentary, and the institutions receives, which will be constructed

the law of the whole history of There is nothing

so as to give place to them all the determinations "on' her, on the s of all these interp as support, provokes

he/it does not possess any of them as her/its right up against her subject, she is not reducible determination, of support, but she is to them.

them as properties, what has Just been Inscribed or the present abseil! support or into losophical that appears

she does not possess anything as her own. She "is" nothing other than the sum or the her, on her subject, , even though, nevertheless,

~e
1e

le lin is ler as
th-

at may be and be said ontologically type, or let us say more rigorously of ontological

This absence

which cannot be transany inspecman-

and resists any binary or dialectical

type. This type finds itself both defied and re-launched

to give it place. Even then we shall have to recall later, Insisting on it In a more analytical to give place does not refer to the gesture of a donor-subject, Despite their ti preliminary formalize. character, support

If there IS place or, according a place. The expression

to our idiom, place given, to give place here does not come to the same thing as to make or origin of somethese remarks permit us perhaps or even formalized"? Is the "bastard" perspective. becomes Such logos One

would come to be given to someone. up vernant's saying when h of the phi

1a ch ity
3V-

'he silhouette of a louie" which seems virtually irnpo s of a "form of logic ion returns exists no doubt. but non-contradiction regulated consider way according

Will this "logic" still be logic, "a form of logic" does not derive from the

which must be "formulated, of chore. which obviously

does the thought fr)inscribes

ers," belong for that matter to the space of mythic thought? to mythic thought dialectic speculative mythic thought It Integrates According thought sublated, to only slumber.

he ve er) ,le al? 'ity mant ler len :tpng cy

to It (i.e., according

still a mytbos? Let us take the time for a long detour. in a teleological I, philosophy and sublates contradiction as such. In serious

the manner in which Hegels it sublates mythic discourse

of this dialectic

that it is and that it is not a logic of non-contraction. as such into the philosopherne. to him, fol or let us rat wakes u offered after Hegel and according

we are also thinking

moment when it enters into after Plato, With Plato. for the in its virtual potenThis teleological fiction. Hegel der Sleep and waking,

path of logic: that is, after having abandoned, consists in a simple unveiling 11,8 my theme anterior explains resembles

its mythic form -

loqic comes to its senses when the concept will have been only a pre-philospheme his "friend Creuzer"

mythological

the making explicit and taking cognizance

of a philosopheme to a dialectical

enveloped Aufhebung.

and promised Symbolik

the time of a story but it is a story of the going outside and his book, logos can emit the pretension
19

of story, outside

of narrative

it3 while defending 1810-1812.

und Mythologie

del' alten

Volker besonders

The mythological

of being a species

of "philosophizing"

(p 108). There are

Jacques Derrida philosophers who have used myths in order to bring philosophemes (ibid) The mythic dimension vonretiiichet} Unverrnogen) than the "abstract to 'express closer to the Imagination If Platos mode of expression.' (Phantasie). But "the content of

myth is thought"

remains formal and exterior.

myths are "beautiful," of thought"

one would be wrong But it is also in part you know Plato The do withsubject,

to think that myths are more "eminent" only to the extent of his "impotence" because what expresses out Parrnenidcs thinks of introductions himself quite otherwise. and myth is "serious,

In truth Plato has I'ecourse to myth

himself in the pure modality

he does so only In the introduction

to the dialogues

and prefaces schema

In gel1elal. When he gets on to the thing Itself, to the principal for example ""orm the simple determinations the mythic the figurative here as mUf'!; c7ncems

Let us think of the Parmenfdes, to myth IS not entirely so

I legel s dialectical the recourse

tions, and not only in so-called that of philosophy seriousness, of seriousness, is measured

Anglo-Saxon

thought, tile opposltl~J'_(:'Neen drift (derive). of ItS terms. character

I.

and an introduction

IS never purely philosophical: of thought

or the symbolic

III which

stili today, It dominates

so many evaluahere With the value

the serious and" here emphasizes

~ r-senous overlaps

as such and of its tudico-mytholoqical fJYthe non-mythic

The value of philosop. \~~lOught. that is to say also its the value, the seriousness. It is appropriate

and Aristotle is his guarantor before

or after having declareci that "the value cf Plato, however, does not reside In myths' p.109), Hegel quotes and translates Aristotle. roaching this problem directly, Hegel translates to dwell on this. Interpreta"peri how great a weight the Aristotelian then, or paraphrases, philosoptueren,

(Ocr wert Platons lieqt ebet nicht in den We know, let us recall this In passing tion of tile Ttmaeus carries men tall tnytikoe sophizomenon

In the history of the Interpretations. ouk extor: meta spoudes

skorjFt'/on

MOhe. ViI.ert,etnstiiich zu handeln those who philosophize to oscillate between tvVCJ interpretations. In a philosophical tence, the incapacity didactic potency successively, to accede to the concept the pedagogic

wi.

the Metaphysics

denen. welche mythisch

1Stes nicht del'

(!i.~,)urse t.o myth. me r.l0jt \AI().r.},~ treating se.riously. Hegel seems text, the function of myth is/.: 'es a sign of philosophical impoindex of dialectic and above all or are only apparalways by this inacin full possession of the philosopherne Simultaneously

as such and to keep to It. at other tim "if

mastery of the serious philosopher In Plato beth this impotence whatever

Hegel seems to recognize of the Signified or essence. evaluation

and this mastery. These two evaluations philosophical

contradictory form, to the content if chora has no fable of a loqico-philosophical cessiblc fy. But

or are so only up to a certain concept,

point. They have this In common: the subordination may be its formal presentation

of myth, as a discursive or mythic passinq coherent,

remains the force of the law, the mastery or the dynasty ol.,R,iscourse if she IS not Philosf
u •

Here one can see the thread of our question contralic.t?"/ but in fact profoundly

{,;,and if, nevertheless,

l~r'a? Apparently

she is neither the object nor the form of a

type, where can she be situated in this is not applwd

to Plato. It derives already from of this evaluation reservation runs through ontology, distinction

ace.

,l; ?Iatcmism.'

Hegel does not read Plato

through Aristotle and unknown to Plato, as If he (Hegel) were deciphering to the author of the Timeeus. A certain program with one reservation The cosmogony of the Timaeus logos is a psychology, a one and this supplementary the subject of everything

a practice wrriJ"e meaning would have remained seems already legible

in this work, as we shall verion all things. Its encyclopedic a theology,

could lodge, shelter, and thereby exceed the said prothe cycle of knowlecige treating

gram. First, the proqram

end must mark the term of a phornen echein (92c) " This a cosmology, a physiology, uated there. By recalling god, and the intelligible opened,

that is "kai de kai telos peri tou pantos nun ede ton logon hemin of all the types of being it Includes

-al or Immortal, human and divine, Visible and invisible things are sitbetween the visible living thing, for example the sensible as a living Visible thing and sension chore have

it in conclusion,

god of which it is the image). The cosmos is the heavens (ouranos) belonging

ble god. It is unique and alone of its race, "monogenic." between the sensible and the intelligible, god an apparently sible god nor to the intelligible

And yet halfway through the cycle, won't the discourse opening,

neither to one nor to the other, hence neither to the cosmos as senan abyss or a chasm? Isn't and the Intelligible can have place and take place?

empty space? Didn't it name a gaping between the sensible 20

starting out from this chasm, "in" it, that the cleavage

CHORA about brirlging counterpmt this chasm named chora close to that chaos which also opens the yawning gulf or form and the pathos of fright. Not In order to install ill its place the security of a for any creature, since her appearance opernnq of Chaos. at I,he origin of the world, a We shall later encounter and all precise of reference. a the to the gaping and bottomless

it the anthropomorphic all eternity opposed

of what Gaia represents

to chore. not to the one in the Timaeus but, outside of all quotation conclusion

the place Urt between the existent and beinq.> the "difference" anned discourse nothingness, nt, nor yet betwe

between the two. not only IJe the abyss and another which would come both to or ot saying that

of the Timeeus seems to cover over the open chasm In the middle of tile book. VVhat on chore. would perhaps between being and the lesser being, nor ever, perall these couples

and myth as but between of a place

re IS Indeed a chasm In the middle ot the book, a sort of abyss "In" which there is an attempt chasm which would be chore, the opening be reflected composition (for these are images which are inscribed of the discourse? to the one which is practiced on places on c (places), n 'in" which everything there), is It siqnificant that a mise en abyme regulates

And that it goes so far as to

late even this mode of thinking political places, a politics

3111111ar without being identical thc consideration

)0-

the edges of the chasm? Is it significant as places assiqncd

affects the forms of a discourse the discourse all or arIve

of places en II to types or

of sites (lieu of Jobs in t

region, territory. country), (lieu of politics,

politics of places tieux, such would be, then, on the guard ians of the it is an analogy whose their own To have nothing that is of the site, tile condition may be. the analogy of children is on the eduAll possible thai IS properly although (18b)

of the Tirneeus, there are considerations division of labor and education. those who are raised as guardians even the gold which is the only thing comparable question contestable One can say the same thing about tho that no one can kn n of natural or and for tho same functions, genitive ago the text had prescribed for the same activities the sense of the subjective nothing and besides of chore with the mother and, a supplementary possesses no property Let us note In passing, of the city Will not have anything

gcld 1101silver. They 'will receive the salary of their rank from those they protect" can be asked, even If one doos not wish to take iI seriously; d insistence, coqmzoas itirnate property

10 it (Sua), isn't this also the situation

WS
by )f a his ato aceriIrodic llin gy, sitble nsiave ensn't

however forrnal on the community

which follows immediately

(18c) and touches

, on marrrage and above all, with the most p must be taken In order to (paidopoiia), any

his own ielia the children who are born (18cby the very milieu of the city.
11'11,0

must be excluded

a Similar education

for men and for women

must

one can stili follow the thread of a lonna! analogy. the said "comwith the nurse, does not assure it/her of any propgenitive: neither the properties of the said has any meaning. Let us consider of a genitrix (she But even the political of child ose lmaqes or their father who

sign of expropriation,

or in the sense of the objective This is eno

at ail), nor the ownership

'Nay IS no more their owner than is the mother of marriages It manifests

perhaps already in a site lieu where the low of the proper no' a relation of abyssal and analogo riddles" or sieves seiomena crosseci with a certain chance, intended naturalness

xivity With what will be said later about chore. about discourse, are described the appa-

(52e, 53a) shaken In order to sort or select the "grain" and the "seed"; the law of the better is Now frorn the first pages of the Timaeus, in a purely political of marriages of lots k!eros (18d-e) in order that the children will be born with the best possiit at once. These formal here, in the first place en

to bring about in secret the arranging

And this does not happen without some drawing

Let us explain

ce?

or these mises en abyme, refined, subtle (too subtle, some will think), are not considered 21

Jacques Derrida premier lieu. as artifices, boldness, or secrets or formal composition: which produce these analogies. the art of Plato the writer! This art interests us and ought of the supposed a program? intentions of the proen abyme on to Shall we say that they constitute forms the explicit A logic whose In this very place ici tneme, and first of all, Independently

to do so more still, but what IS important of a composer, are the constraints of pre-inscription

authority was imposed on Plato? Yes, up to a point only, and this limit appears gram, its structure tial logos, whether and of typographic or mythic, prescription chore. The latter figures the place of inscription it be true, probable program

in the abyss Itself: the being-program theme of the discourse Likewise the being-logical

of all that is marked on the world forms the explicit

of logiC. its essento Plato the law

theme of the Timaeus, as we shall yet have occasion though

1

explain. Thus one cannot calmly, with no further ado, call by the n,al?2p:~:~rogram logic the form which dictates or of such a composition: and logic are apprehended In it,'>/ch, taken this precauti~n with regard to analogies which might seem i ers and authorizes These displacements, from one place to the other to be noticed, and its genelality ders and genera, of sexual difference, is (neither sensible opening nor intelligible, of the generation
le,

::t

It be in dreams,

and put en abyme. Havinq

dent, let us r,ecall therrlii.·., .. J:i?neral trai.t which both gathIn the'same' place (II.\" ~s obVIOUS. too obVIOUS even it is precisely that of the" qenos, of the genus in all gento all these genres of genres but we

has so to speak no other limit than itself of children, "like" a or a nurse, etc.)

of the kinds of being and of that triton genos which chora We have just alluded affinity of birth, nation, etc. Now we're there. Still at the (logos) of Socrates on the politeie and on its betIn passing, transport he uses the word the others in secret to each his of th~Hood,"

have not yet spoken of the genos as race,6 ter government Socrates

group, community

of the Timaeus, there is recalled an earlier conversation, sums it up, and these are the the) the place assiqned Socrates to children: declares you\,ear to keep them under observation

a discourse

'fi.p1,which we have just spoken the "children of praising an'd carry out a further sifl

chora (19a) to designate to another country, place (choran).

continue

l'~(,eration in attributing

After this reminder,

himself incapable

thl~ . ire .and its men. III this he feels himof birth as well as the alien to, namethe genus of

self to be comparable education

to the poets and imitators. And here is the genos or ethonos. Socrates claims to have nothing against the genos). But allowing for the place and the conditions or simulacra. ethnos) will have difficulty privileges in imitating what it has remained

people or the race, the tribe of the poets (poletikon the nation or race of imitators (mime/ikon in actions and words (ergois (ton sophiston ly, that which happens the tribe of the sophists

logois) rather than in spectacles

There is also the genre of

genos). Socrates

sophists is characterized by the absence of a proper Plajf ... economy, a fixed domi ... ile; these pe.oPle have no domesticity, !\1;3 . c no house that is proper to them (oikesis ideas). They ;'~i':om place to place, fr'i'~/nyvn to town. incapable of understanding these men who, being philosophers or at war. Poletikon whom I am speaking of non-place, genos, mimetikon and politicians, sthnos, have (a) place, that is, act

wa.

here again the situation, the relation to place

M jj j'lns
Socrates'

of gesture and speech, what remains'! strategy Socrates

in the city

ton sophiston

genos, after this enule4:Lcion and politicians

Well, then, you, to

now, you who are also a genos (1ge),

and who belong to the genre of those who have (a) place, who take itself operates from a sort that he is, a little like the pretends to rank himself the belongSocrates In simulating not to say alarming. In starting by declaring

place, by nature and by education. poets, the imitators and the

You are thus both philosophers incapable for example, to of describing

'lOS

and that is what makes it very disconcerting, to belong to the

the philosopher-politicians, of true citizens, philosophers

among those who feign. He ing to a place and to a community, thus pretends economy

those whose genos consists in affecting

and politicians.

to "yours"

to belong to the genus of those who of it in truth, these people

to belong to the genus of those who have (a) place, a place and an denounces this genos to which he pretends Therefore to belong. He claims to them, I have no place, they are wanderers. I, who resemble

that are their own. But In saying this, Socrates

speak the truth on the subject is enunciated

I have no place. But this truth, namely that they and I, if we seem to belong to the same genos, are Without a place of our own, by me, since it is a truth, from your place, you who are on the side of the true logos, of philosophy and politics, address you from your place in order to say to you that I have no place since I am like those who make their trade out of resem-

22

CHORA the Imitatms, and the sophists. the non-piace 01 this withdrawal, ~;ccrates regularly tile simulacrum pharmakko/ by themselves the genus of those who have no place. You alone have place and can say The duplicity of this sell-excluOnly to the proper place, as a political effectivity, place and as a habitation.

in truth, and that is why I am going to give you back the word plays on the belonging

authorizes tho truth of the logos, that is, also its political associates iscourse to the thing itself, to the matter, pragma) (among whom Socrates they exclude themsel or pretend to do ce (lieu) where attai as a general and points already. the sense occupied political place by someone, for a momcnt y themselves, because

its pragmatiC and praxical (praxique) the truth of its logos (eftecergon). The specialists of the

With the logos to a proper place which guarantees and of its action (praxis, as does Socrates

affects to rank himself do not even have to be excludhere in giving back the word. They the word was already But if it is Chora from space. polysemy of the word they quite simply have no room (pas de place). There IS (pandeches) place, is of course not yet posed. to abstract position

oken of and dealt with, the agora. Although For on the one hand the ordered by opposition

place of total receptacle The note is given

or more generally invested, -

of invested

space

country, inhabited

place, marked place, rank, post, assigned even as a ge we shall corne to it ic discourse, of treating

territory or region.

Will always already be occupied, this IS what Heidegger

ace, and even when it is distinouished it as an empty or geometric of Socrates

takes place In it. Whence the difficulty f Socrates,

will say of it, as that w if not th m or affects to p

rep ares" the Cartesian rom errancy (depuis to be, into the bargain,

space, the extensio of the res enensa. in this pi'ecise place If Socrates (of i'ertencei from a mobile or non-marked Why neutralized? himself to them, he says he poets and other imitators In a third genus

the discourse

n1e 1e

case from a spa

lusion which happens

neutralized.

nclude himself among those whose genus is to have no place, he does not assimilate Hence he holds hirnself in a third genus, nor that of the philosopher-politicians
Ii already

In a way, neither that of the sophists,

eof of ty, dity to ke

Jrt

(to whom he speaks proposing

only to listen to them)

neutral space of a place without place, a place where everything a discourse preamble of the sophists' type would be so

is marked but which would be "in itself" unmarked. isn't that at most,

resemble what others, later, those very ones to whom he gives the word, will call chore? A mere resemblance, as to misuse it. But to misuse a resemblance, the reasons for resemblance on the pream it is Timaeus. There IS no serious philosophy in introductions, only mythology as such. We are in the pre-

. In these preambles, However, in a singular

uestion of chora, at least not of the one that gives place to the measure of the cosgives place, on the threshold to a treatment of place, to an who will be brought to treat of it later. And this assignation places of places obeys a criterion rdinq to a schema analogous self ail the types, all the genand that of the men of action himself before them. But In of all that will on he's offered. The

mode, the very place of the preamble

of their place to interlocutors taken Into account,

he elf Iges an to m, vn.

3.

the place of the genos with regard to the proper place. Now such a staging (mise en scene), which has never, it seems, this count, distributes the marked places and the unmarked en chore. Socrates whom he p to whom he a himself as a receptive one which will later order the discourse men of their word, philosophers nencetorth oechestal" be inscribed. He declares himself, effaces a moment to resemble himself while ettacinq addressee,

both those of the men of image and simulacrum and politicians himself, he situates himself or institutes words kosmos and endechomenon

let us say as a receptacle to receive everything ep'auta

himself to be ready and all set for that, disposed are not far away: "pareimi

te oun de kekosmemenos of meditating

kai panton hetoimotatos

(20c). Once more the question

returns: what does receive mean? What does dechomai

mean? It is not so much a of such and such an

rn-

in the form of 'what does x mean?" It is not so much a question

on the meaning

23

Jacques Derrida expression, as of remarking the fold of an immense difficulty: or pure sensibility the relationship, so ancient, so traditional, so determinant, between

the question of sense and the sensible and that of receptivity before the intuitus derivativus figibie meaning or perception Oechomai, has always include, in finite being in general,

in general. The Kantian moment has some privilege as receptivity, the intuitive or perceptive an irreducible receptivity,

here but even relation to intel-

have been determined

It is true a fortiori for sensory intuition (a deposit. a salary, a preas is here the case for in of and We are still in a system glimpse a beyond In any case he puts himIrreplaceable

which will determine

the relation of chora to everything for example the gift of hospitality,

which is not herself and which she receives to be its addressee, Socrates (20b-c)

(it/she is pandeches, sent), to welcome, Socrates, exchange

51 a), plays on a whole gamut of senses and connotations to gather, or even to expect, of which he becomes or the hospitality the welcoming,

to receive or accept

in a scene of gift and counter-gift the discourses

rea ];;(8,

of Jt.Q~) discourses,

says he is ready to receive

grateful addressee

of gift and debt, When we get on to chora as pandeches, the debt. Socrates unplaceable self in its/her place, which is not Just a place

beyon.ICeJnthropomorphy but perhaps place

we sh17w"(haps

is not chora but he would look a lot like it/her if it/she were someone or among others,

sol;('; Irg

itself, the irreplaceable,

place from which he receives the word(s) of those before whom he effaces himself but who receive them from him does not occupy
I

for he it is who makes them talk like this, Socrates the Timaeus and elsewhere, that Socrates displacements he answers to himself, this one here, is don't only affect names, The staging

this undiscoverable

place but it is the one from which, in more abyssal than ever substitutions, exposed

ne. For as chora he must be called In the same way, And as it is not certain something, the play of the proper names becomes to a setting of di)~2~~ses WI./ under these names? The permutations,

what is place? To what and to whom does it give place? What .~.p,})lace unfolds '}(~'llng or not, of which the origin or the first enunciatron comes at times the feeling of dizziness. they explicitly stitute the philosopheme appears

to be 2f1vvaysrelayed, Their

as such, and the mise en abyme, the putting en abyme IS there given to be reflected affect myth, the propositions of the Timaeus all seem ordered

mf

of a narrative type, reported IS sometimes We no longer know whence

,if ';rnenslon

on what edges, up against the inside face of what wall

chaos, chasms,

en-o-re. When it would conof

by a double motif. In its very duplicity, from Plato to Hegel.

of the my theme such as we saw it being installed, play/seriousness whenl····/i)

1, On the one hand, myth seriousness, which 59c) myths and

derives from play, Hence it will not be taken seriously. Aristotle and makes the same use of the opposition 2, But on the other hand, in the order of becoming do with the probable, on the subject is probable reasonably probable gives the game its seriousness (toneikotonmython), and the seriousness

Thus Plato warns Aristotle, (paidia/spoude),

he gets in ahead of the serious objection in the name of philosophical

~,nnot lay claim to a firm and stable logos, when one must make it is rigor These tWClt"f';)pti,fs are necessarily and nl jc;ult to discourse
v\! ".-; the form (Idean)

then myth is the done thing (de ri

J~':

its play. It's not forbidden one abandons reasonings propositions

l:

interwoven, (dialogisasthai, of probable

of bodies when one seeks only probability, In these moments of recreation, 59d)

One can then make d

on the subject of eternal beings, one seeks what without remorse, one can moderately is an image, a semblance, (29b-d) of this type. The mythic discourse plays with the the myth is The We are obligby the hierar-

on the subject of becoming enjoy the game (paidia, image because the

One can then take pleasure there (hedonen) The Timaeus multiplies the CQ,"'1)9"

world is itself (an) image, The sensory becoming formed probable encyclopedia myth

an image of this image. The ed to accept 72d-e). In this domain the of the sensible

fogos which relates to these ima~es, to these iC~,nic If the cosmic-ontologic

(to"",JI:,A,:9. mython) and not to seek any further (29d, see also 44d, 48d, 57d, Itself as a "probable myth," a tale ordered of the Image in the course of becoming on chore? It is indeed Inscribed or precedes, of myth-logic 24 and of the eternal being, how can a logical and on

b' pi

in the image of the eternal paradigm ,must

which he contemplates.

be of the same nature: merely probable

of the Timaeus presents

chized opposition one inscribe achronic.

and the intelligible,

therein or situate therein the discourse too, the constitutive

there for a moment but it also has a bearin an order that is moreover and of the discourse

ing on a place of inscription anachronistic

of which it is clearly said that It exceeds oppositions

as such, of the mythic discourse

CHORA IJY resembling being an oneiric and bastard reasoning this discourse reminds us of a sort of myth within the neither to senon being, which the

In tile general myth. But on the other hand, in giving to be thought that which belongs neither to becoming lelos.The nor to eternity, the discourse and appears thus to be heterogeneous to myth at least to my tho-logic,

on chora is no longer a discourse

to this philosopheme to us here

abyss does not open all at once, at the moment when the general theme of chora and the as if is important

the middle of the book, It all seems to happen just as if -

In motifs, whieh we would call Iypomorphic, )these are so many tricks for approaching

antieipate

there tile

ys ready to receive the imprint, or else on the imprint and the seal the enigma of chora. First occurrence. of the old Egyptian priest a series of fictional relays which we shall analyze later, the speech

smce the most ancient been eapable to childish of expressing

times (ek palaiou)

(
0

d so too IS even your own history, the history survive the frequent catastrophes die In their in of written archives, you have recourse

You don't know where your present city eomes from, for these themselve myths" 23b). Since you h

itlng (23e). Deprived s seen to be entrusted

ng, you need myth. This exchange

is not Without some for-

not only to a writing but to the writing of

ity. It must thus be made other twice over in order to be saved, and it is Indeed a quesof saving a memory (23a) by writing on the walls of temples. enoiher
ties.
3.

The living memory must be exiled to the graphic space. But the techno-graphie superiority of the all men in all by another But the

place,

whieh is also another

eity and another

political

-lone the less subordinated by vmting (gegrammena) Ilighly significant least. ItS admiration, you prefer Ie is Ie
~-

for all that to the serviee of the Greek logos: you Greeks, "you surpassed and are admired" (24d). The memory of a people history of cultures The Egyptian Interpreter is supposed writing, inspected, appropriated

as befits the scions and the pupils of the gods. Numerous and great were your exploits and those of your city; as the history of colonization. to have appropriated

e
h

even by another culture: a well known phenomeno here its dep mory is deposited. , its subordination. hypomnesia, of the priest -

to a depot on the shores of a people which declares, the culture of in Greek, for on these monuments: Thot or Hermes,

:)
IS

masters who now depend For this discourse

on this secretariat's or Egyptian on the dialectic

is uttered here and interpreted

Will we ever know who is holding this discourse Second occurrence. of the mythological Foundation, precisely,

of the master and the slave and on the two mempriest told him on the Critias repeats a tale Solon and Critias, Critias who himthem by Still mor a conve recisely

So Critias reports a tale of Solon who himself reports the tale which an Egyptian in the memory of the Athenians. reported
.h

had already told the night before and in the course of . i a conversation which had been reeounted of the talk which the latter childhood! So here is a tale-telling neard from Solon the account . destined them to perpetual

n between

en he was a child by his ancestor or the oral tradition

d, Irin

d in Egypt with the old priest, the same one who which, by depriving about oral tale-tellings, a chain of oral traditions reflecting

to him In short why all the Greeks are at the mercy of oral tale-telling, those who are subject to it explain to themselves themselves but thanks to the mediation

Ir1d

show someone else, coming from a country of writing, explains to them. amongst and accomplice, superior and inferior, the

why they are doomed to orality. So many Greek children, then, ancestors, children and grandehildren,
of someone other, at onee foreigner/stranger

In

25

Jacques Derrida mythopoetics of oral tale-telling. everythinq inscribed everything, But once again, this will not make us forget (since it is written') III this case, namely the Titneeus, and IS therein addressed in this theory of receptions Socrates, In each other to the point where one often wonders it, the young Critias recounts that all this IS written in that

place which receives before us, receives IS taking up speech In the Bude edition), said yesterday Ings that are mutually

to the one who, as we do, and who

At the end of these tales of tales, after these recountwhe is after all holding this discourse, how he remembers all this, A tale about the possibility (here that of Rivaud, it: "This is why, as herrnocrates that the things we learned s~;;r~~f~~l~t~:~~ letters (haste living of

and who is receiving modifying

of the tale a proposition

about origin, memory and writing, As I most often do, I quote a current translation It or mentioning the Greek word only where our context requires to them whatfl~r,E';'!fi;mbered'

on going out from here, I recounted

then, on leaving then, on leaving them, think-

ing about it all night. all the rest of it came back to me too. How tru :nd~~i\d~r~(~\~;/~ ~:~~0~7e :~t::e::~~a~~I~:I~iln~:a~:~:~;e~~:ySL~~;i:s masaim) If anything hoion erikeumete the intervening of it escaped me I had then so much pleasure, emmona moi gegonen),(26b-c), .served Childhood me so kindly, while I never ceased to question anekplytou graphes memory, the originary is thus said to be would be

,i,,,;( as they say (to legomenon),

;~ir\:~~~·~a::~~t~o~l:c~;,}~~~;~e~:)v:~r

so much childish joy in hearing it, and the cld man taught In me, as if painted with indelible natural, to be more durably inscribed In the space of so-called IS supposed spontaneous

him, that this story has remained

in this way than

times. Effacement

ngure for the middle (milieu)

Derrida plays cn this word with its suggestion

ha.If-way place 'something that is only half place mi-lieu - ??I'I!"·"··,·,,;,,,,.t fO.' space and for tim...,' ..t would affect only second or secI e. I ondary impressions, average or mediated, The originary imp '(~,in would be inettaceab]e. once it has been engraved in the Virgin wax, Now what is re.presented older, because ertheless aternporal, by a virgin was, which is stili virgin, absolutely infant even, achronic necessary fictive,
if
{. ~

precI

$. '-"""',,~....

... 'pany possible receives them

impression,

always

than everything

that seems to affect It In order to take form suspended

;n,I:

and which IS nevthat it does not

and for the same reason always younger,

and anachronistic,

so indeterminate

even Justify the name and the form of wax? Let us leave this question (au il ya lieu de) for renaming of the tales, becomes chore. But it was already content In truth, each narrative or narrative fabulous, of rec •.

until the moment when there will be grounds of this schema with the very content it doesn't matter for the moment There is nothing but receptacles or harbe

to show the homology legendary or mythic,

in ItS turn the content of a different (hypodoche),

tale, Each tale is thus the receptacle

of another.

of narrative receptacles, bonng/lodgmg obvious)

receptacles

~;~s Let us not forget .:

r.~,cePtacle, place of reception

IS the most insistent deter~

l/;l

(let us not sayesl)>'11iiClI,

of chore. But if Chora is a receptacle, of what she receives

If it/she gives place to all the storie but which

for reasons Which must already

;~)Iogic or mythic, that can be recount-

ed on the subject chora a probable dialogue

and even of what she resembles

11\"Lcittakes place In her chora herself, so Let us take it up again speaks at first of a the fictive model fiction in a sense who, as we (like it even everything

to speak, does not become

the object of any tete, whether true or fabled

Though it IS not a true logos, no more is the word on entitled Timaeus, someone makes of the included of receiving

myth either, a story that is reported

and in which another story will take place in its turn of the dialogue A structure
'3

from farther back. In that fiction which IS the written ensemble which IS said to place 'last night" (chthes, in a of an Ideal city (17c) which

17a), This second container,

fiction (F2) has a content.

of inclusion everything

capable

let us say its receptacle, and therefore

Socrates

have noted, figures as a general addressee, ourselves, even here), affects to interrupt . This impression there this mythopoetic regarding more forcefully Well, let me tell you now furthermore, in painting hypographes,

string of events. But this is only in order to re-launch this State (politeia) which we have described, some beautiful

what sort of feelliving thmgs

ing I felt about it.

is like the one which one would feel on seeing somewhere or even really alive, but holding themselves and carry out in reality some of the exercises

(zoia kala), either represented

at rest: one would feel the

desire to see them start moving by themselves

for which their bodies seem to be

26

CHORA I feei, too, with regard to the State whose plan wc have run through: given to its citizens, become I would like to hear it told that these or in its neqotiations once again representation, with regard the descripa by dis-

Statc kceps up, are also sct against other States. That it marches, of tile training and education States' (19b-c). Desire of Socrates,

as it should, to battle, that durmq the war to give life, to see life

either In its operations

of the one who receives everything animated,

to a graphe, to see a zoography of the livinq a State's movement of the potiteet? By showing

in other words a pictural

This desire is also political How would one set In motion, i.e. set walking/marching, the city in relation with other cities. One Will thus describe If. Thanks to a second graphic possibility iictioti d one to the extent that it describes the image it
IS

by words,

of going outside econo ,

one Will go outside of the first In Itself. internal itself the description an exposition/expoto see the they of the by definitien -

was more dead, less living than th its domestic

of was makes the graphic

to the living and mobile real but Into a better image, a living Image of this livinq and mobile ioninq that is internal to the test of the clty8 themselves in movement, Socrates war. In all the senses of the word, At the moment when he asks that one should at last get out of this graphic points at, without hallucination or the mimetic or of the p con to describe political hallucination

naming them, poets and sophists

out of the simulacrum that they are always outside, of the genos ton sophiston

reality. Paradoxically. of the politi-

Without a place of their own an

with no fixed abode, that these members incapable of speaking

genos remain powerless, at he too is incapable

the test of war. At the same time, affecting Socrates IJe capable of praising of gOing outside, in order to give life and movement

to rank himself on

by himself and of himFor rne, there

to the city (I know myself well enough to know that in movement). he declares of the poets."( simulacrum, 19d)) A supplementary that he does not

as one should these rnen and their City (in war, m negotiation,

about that. But I have formed the same opinion on the subject is net content to side for a moment With the men of the zooqraphic " a structure tile scenes interlock a series of receptacles Ie It;0 In

genes or their ethnos. This confers on the play between the text and the theme, between what is done and what without an indivisible origin. In this theater of of the withou Th of topology without bottom, how can one Isolate a thesis or a theme bc to misrecognize In general, including or violently deny the structure that of the topoi of rhetoric, and to think

be attributed .mderstood

calmly to

phy-of-Plato"? questions ., to understand. abstraction. and abstraction

scene, to regard as resolved what it means to rec of Plato, of the ontology so speaking, merely an inevitable and deployed extractec.i by artifice, rnisprison has been supercharged nor illegitimate

It's a little early. Should one henceforth

forbid oneself to speak of be no errol of pnnOnce this abstracand

of Plato, or even of Platonism?

Not at all, arid there would probably

in

Platonism would mean, in these conditions, over all the folds of the text. d Platonism or

the thesis or the theme which ruses, overdeterrrunations,

a
el 3e ve

from the text, torn out of the written fiction of "Plato" This will to do so under its abstraction,

it will be extended

which it will come to cover up and dissimulate. since one can be recommended its arbitrary text of Plato. It works and presents call It as it's called, that's because dominating, according situation,

phy of Plato, which is neither at work in the heteroand arbitrary If it is not Illegitimate

ain force of thetie abstraction

itself precisely violence,

e of philosophy.
consists

in making the law, up to a point and for a let us say for breviheritage. "Platonism" reasons, but

to a mode which is precisely even though history depends

all of philosophy,

other motifs of thought which are also at work in on this philosophical

gs ne ::Je

text tor example those which interest us here in a pnvileged another historical

way, and starting from another situation -

most often in its concept

certainly one of the effects of the text signed by Plato, for a long time the dominant 27

effect and for necessary

Jacques Derrida this effect IS always turned back against the text. It must be possible disposal plement at a given moment a greater lucidity or new instruments. a different relation must be possible. them too quickly up by the question In order not to determine a new experience, say, for example, to analyze this violent reversion. experience, through Not that we have at Our a new situation. of chore. To later. relation) without cornbe to set oneself up of Heideqqer

Prior to this technology

or this methodology.

I leave these three words (situation, new questions

and ill order to announce of the meaning

this reading

situation or topology

of being, experience

of being or relation to being, would perhaps of being in its Heideggerian are also addressed

too quickly in the space opened a propos of the Heideggerian and to their very horizon

type. Now it will appear

interpretation

of chora, that our questions andlnterest.i~J':is

to certain decisions

to what forms the horizon of the question

~!,.!JJ<2 meaning

of being and ot its epochs

The violent reverwithout limit which provisional-

sion of which we have just spoken is always interested I here call the text. In constructing philosophy or ontology), the latter is neutralized continue

naturally at work in.thls ensemble a given mome1i'wt, or dissimulate. some potential

Itself In being posed In Its dom-./I"l,(ormat in it, numbed, to maintain self-destructed disorder, a certain

that of the Platonic thesis, and some heteroand above all a genis not only an exam-

Fu'WaIIY. partially, incoherence ventriloquism

ly. The forces that are thus inhibited geneity in the organization ple of this movement, philosophy

of the theses. They introduce

parasitism

into it, and clandestinity, It commands

eral tone of denial which one can learn to perceive the first "in' the whole always be" would henceforth

by exercising ty of philosophy.

one's ear or ones eye on it. "Platonism" It, it commands

this whole history. As such, a

Hence the necessity

to continue to try to think what takes place in Plato, with us re.~turnto : the Tim.a.eus. At the point we have = there? Whq.holds the discourse there? To whom but that remains still too indeIn one another, the one as to cut up the conversation of the ideal petit-

Plato, what is shown there, W.h. is hidden, so as to win there at now reached, how can we recognize the present of the tale? • is the speech addressed? terminate, by definition. Stili to socr.ates At this point. then, three instances of the other

cjj···'.q.tC'se ..Let there

ivrrpresented

we have already insist'B'd on this Singular dISS'~')~';y; of textual fiction are mutual'j).,-iJded

content given form in the receptacle of the evening before (The Republic,

the Timaeus itself, a unit(y) that is already difficult

Politsia? This debate is well known),

its present resume the description and politics, Incapable

sie. But this is merely to begin. In front of the dead picture (tableau that one pass on to life, to movement mimetikon interlocutors ethnos, the poietikongenos, as a different and the to sophislo(l

mort, a purl on tableau vivant - ir), Socrates thus demands those things that the of. He addresses his right and like Socrates,

and to reality, in order to speak at last of philosophy genos are, somewhat Wil'.·);,')

genos and this apostrophe

them speak while acco.... rding to them the necessary

cO.mpeten.cc tor that.In ettacinq himself and in ceadet.iaA1YC word, Souatessci course of his addressees, whose listener and receiver he affects to become. Throu. Will it be they, Socrates' ipate in the two orders, assiqned the young Critias accepts tions (ek palaias dition, the young Oritias (said he) had with Solon, a conversation Egyptian addressees? philosophy Or Socrates, and politics their addressee? (hama amphoteron physei

.... '.· ..... '.(~.I,soto induce and to •.. ,0; mouths henceforth.

.program the diSwho Will speak'? particSo tra-

In genos ot those"'i;,'IO by nature and by education kai traphei metachon

20a), sees itself thus being to old oral tradiwhich he scriptures

the word by the one who excludes akoes, 20d). I

himself from their genos and pretends

to belong to the genos of the simulators. repeated an old and iii-determined

to recount a tale which he had already told the night before, on the road, according course of this tale which. the night before, already tale which ;(,'.)co(JldOritias, his ancestor, in the cours.,fiiCh the latter relatesin

had himselt told of a conversation his turn a conversation according to Egyptian

which he had with an

priest and In the course of which the latte~c'!'i",:jS

In his turn the origin of Athens

Now it is in this last tale (the first one in the series of narrative the reference though ing the Greeks, who have remained it did not have the correct came -- hence as an exemplary children,

events, the last one to be reported

in this telling of tel lings) that of a city which,

to Egyptian writing returns. In the course of this first-last tale, the most mythic in its form, its a matter of remindof what the childhood nonetheless of Athens was. Now Athens is a figuration usage of writing, paradigm served as a model to the Egyptian city from which the priest

In the place from which in short he advances

this tale. That place, which seems to

28

CHORA the tale. thus has another fiction, itself written, place, Athens, as its model So it's Athens
01

Its people

who, as the apparent or inspirers, catastrophe everything still its of writing refer-

of the tale, would thus be, according an oriqin older than itself. In the center, between the space of the zoographic Indeed. when Oritias announced subject of what an Egyptian Gaunilon, which was not reported

to the priest himself,

its utterers,

producers

let us never forget that, there is developed

thus a theory or a procession In truth

F3 and F4, is a sort of reversal,

an apparent

is that we think we're passing then at last into reality, exiting from the simulacrum. fiction. We can gauge the ironic ingenuity that Socrates to hi priest e is getting hore on passing over to serious things and going beyond the inanimate

needs in order to contold him Solon by this the argument

painting to get on to real events at last. exploits accomplished

ready to recount what his grandfather therefore, I would say, mimicking

nfided to him about "the marvelous de hen meglston),

an event which must have been real, or else it would not have been the greatest au legels. And goes on to ask at once what is this exploit, this effeca tale, something said, something one IS content to talk about (au s. and about which Solon thus heard tell. We at happens'? Let us note first that the essenCritiases. Now who is Solon? He IS hastily prehe would have to the

crates in his enthusiasm, only as a fiction. but as a high fact really accomplished

(ontos) by the city, III olden really accomplished by two generations

at last of a fact (ergon) veritably, poet of genius If the urgent call of politics

corne to us flam Solon's mouth, himself quoted

im the leisure to devote himself to his genius, more the firmness of the theses and themes. or the "politics"

out poets, after the "realist" turn which the text pretended It accentuates between the m - contents of Identifiable back, entrusted or bastard, t and the textual fiction, between the "philosophy" and transmissible meanings

which is here assostill undeFrom one

like the identity of a knowledge (legomenon)

~ and on the other hand subject.

(cierive) which takes the form of a myth, in any case or a "saying" to a responsibility that IS forever adjourned.

whose origin appears a discourse

without a fixed and determinable which, as is said in the Phaedrus,

next, the author gets farther and farther away. So the mythic saying resembles It is distinouished from the philosophic (lieu) of any site e louie commands for It and about it. This familial schema by which on \ive can still say this. derives from that tertium SUitable "comparison" and although is proposed s a discourse

Without a legitimate must have a father

Will be round again at work at the moment anten hoion titherien, 49a) prepe/) the receptacle (Sud) As a nurse. to a moth-

amely chora. On the one hand, the latter would be the hypodochen all that is attributed to compare to it. On the other hand, a little further on. And yet to follow this couple, for cou which chora

birth" (pasos einai geneseos to us "And it is convenient nature between

(proseikasai

to a father, and the intermediary words, with the paradigmatic so that which the intelligible "mother" because IS supposedly

the two to a child (ekgonon)" she does not b I

it no longer has the place of the nurse but that of the mother, chora does not pair off with the father, model. She is a third gender/genus, paradigm forms with the sen to an oppositional r looks like a father/son therefore one of these determinations (genos gynalkon)9 beside

apart. And since it's only a figure, a

she is not more of a mother than a nurse, is no more tha is a unique individual. She does not belong to the "race of women" relation with all that which, which keeps a dissyrnmetrical be considered

. This triton genos is not a genos, and first of all Chora marks a place apart, to herself, seems to can no or looks 'in herself," or In addition

a couple with her. In the couple outside of the couple, as an Origin Pre-originary, of a present that is past. Before signifies no temporal

this strange mother who gives place without engendering, anteriority. The relation of independence, the non-relation

before and outside of all generation,

she no longer even has the meaning

29

Jacques Derrida more like that of the interval or the spacing chore, conducted steps backwards. by a bastard reasoning of the viewpoint of what is lodged regression in it to be received in it. And yet the discourse on

that is without a legitimate by movements

father (logismoi

tim nottioi. 52b), is Inaugurated

by a new

return to the origin. a new raising of the stakes in the analytic Its proper time IS articulated With farther back. Thus According you must again, immediately (prosekousan (palin)

The whole of the Timaeus thus scans to the rhythm of back the things already dealt you have to introduce into Hence

which resume from even farther

to that, If you want to say really (ontos) how the World was born cause (kai to tes planomenes go backwards, take up again, for these same phenomena,

the tale the species of the wanderinq

eidos aftias) and the nature of ItS proper movement. an appropriate beginning. elementary

new beginning for these We will not go prlrlciples, i.e.,

heteran archen) and, as we have done ill what we h~I(1~,5tudied hitherto, begin again at the beginning,

facts yet again (nun auto pen tau/on palm arkteon aparches back, as IS stated immediately take up again everything behind the opposition only to probable to "divide further" after, to first principles that we were able to consider (ten toneikoton/ogondynamin (48e) 'Now

48all

,/;;'e Will not begin again,atH~e (stoicbeie toupalti.· .. go back behi •.

';'~I,

or elements ~dl,1J:llngs hitherto as tne onqin

'.T'Je'we

must go furthel' onward, will be made At that time Let of phi-

of the paradigm

and its copy. And when, in order to do this, It is announced us divide this new beginning . Now, we must discover can be translated and coun"tcl,'ne and require. It nonetheless more amply than
OUI'

that recourse first beginning.

affirmations

or again to ton eikoton dogma, 48d-e), it is in order to propose also a third kind (tnton alia genos hemin de/oteon) discourse

the principle

we had distinguished

two forms (duo eide) by oppositions of principle

us take things up again from farther back, losophy which proceeds bastard, a pre-Origin which deprives For if it is admittedly strange difficulty engendered bold stroke consists us of this assurance

thus: let us go back behind the assured same time an impurl):8,~ilosophical which '}'~";SimpIY
~)!'iiJ

A'

origin as on a normal couple, We must go back towards

II;

discourse,

threatened, The The nor

hybrid, These traits are not negative, not true, merely probable,

They do rot diSCredit a discourse

be Inferior to philosophy,

for all that teils what IS nee

Oil the subject of necessity the true and the necessary which is neither generative a role analogous

of this whole text lies indeed in the distinction

between these two modalities

here in going back behind the origin, or also the birth. towards a necessity (intelligible and sensible). The discourse

and which carries philosophy.v'precedes" plays for that which philosophy

(prim to time that passes or eternal time) and "I'eceives' on chora thus plays for philosophy

the effect. here to that to the par-

the image of oppositions which chora "herself'

speak directly about that which they approach, two, neither one nor the other. Philosophy "receptacle," or ItS "imprint-bearer," a homology own. Once again

~~;r:

sPOja~§.of' namely, the cosmos formed or given form according .,i;!"B~~~~.~~esebr~j~l~r:~ea,C;: ..

r~c~e~l::~~:r;~:r~:tmbOesa~:~t ;~:hbe~ :;~~~s:e::f~, cannot

'.:.;.:;'~:e~.

~~:.t~gu(~i;. c~~::~~,.d. ;:~~~~n~ The dream IS between the its nurse," ItS

In the mode of Vigilance or of truth (t;",')probable) speak philosophically of that Whld'-, -ooks

like ItS "mother.

As such, it speaks only of the father and the son. as if the father engendered in order to think chore, it IS necessary the analogy is declared: namely the birth of the cosmos, Just as the origin of the Athenians that which is formal about it, precisely

it all on his to them

or analogy that is at least fermal

to go back to a beginmust be recalled for architectural,

ninq that is older than the beginning frorn beyond their own textual (histological) and Phaedrus a well-composed to work on, our materials passing to announce cause (necessary

a concern

. composition,I.8);.",.c.,es.ented as such a little further on. It recall.s the organicist motif of the logos must look like a II . Timaeus: "Thus now, like the builders (tektosin). we have, ready

l'

(hy/e

material, wood

raw ITI2,1c;:;:,"lal.word that Plato never used to qualify chore, let that be said in a interpretation of chora as matter the knotting JO) these are the species (palin ep'archen) of of the web (sunyphanthenal) of reaand let

the problem

posed by the Aristotelian

cause, divine cause -

JO) With them, we must complete

soning (logos) which remains for us to do. Let us go back, then, once more, briefly, to the beginning us return rapidly to the very point from where we arrived here, And let us try to give as an end (teleuten) a head (kephalen) which agrees with the beginning

to our story (toi mythoi)

in order to crown With it that which comes before (69a), 1. We shall go back 30

CHORA of Ihe most sensitive the intel'pretations table and conclude

IS

ones of our problernatic,

often and at length, In particular and separated

when we sketch a history or of their aporias

01'

of chore or rather when we try to describe by a general interpretation of comparison In what it necessarily

the law of their paradoxes

moment only that In these two works which, In the French language te these values of metaphor, posed, in particular to an intelligible particular meaning),

by an Interval of 70 years, meta-interon is a sense-

of all the past interpretations, or of imaqe is never questioned

the metahnquistic

for what it is. No question (metaphor for the

borrows frorn a certain Platonic tradition

which would render it little suited to provide .296), of "metaphors"

a rnetalanguage brought

of a text as strange as if, against Zeller, he gy of trle Timaeus, metaphor

ssages of the Timaeus on chora. Rivaud speaks thus of a 'crowd and of "images' back to an 'idea, 308). ("The Luc to to "see only metaphors in Le probleme du devenir in Platos torrnulations.vL'{p

et la notion de metiere, Ch. V, 1905) the operatory recourse

of the dream used by Plato to illustrate to classify all the said metaphors

his description'

(Le memo et l'eutre dans la what he calls 'the onto. This (deterrnining two sequences of

du Timee de Platon, 1974, p. 197, cf also pp 206,207) and proposes

He even systematizes project

at the moment of determining It describes)

the spatial milieu" (we shall corne back later to this title and~_e nature' of the 'spatial milieu') poses a eonsiderable language
IS

problem, artisanal

f6F Plato only speaks of the spatial milieu by using activity .. (p. 208, ef. also pp. 211, 212, 214, 217, comparison, or Image It is often inevitable. to them too. But there is as such, must becorne a The appar-

which

escapes I relations,

any tech and the the us

ality. That is why we shall first analyze words metaphor,

not a que

of criticizinq

rCdSO!lS which we shall seems, INhere the relevance of "Platonic" oppositions

plain here. It will sornetimes of this rhetorical It is precisely (intelligible/sensible, but that the opposition In his at length in the last nnectedness

happen that we Will have recourse

code rneets a limit and must be questioned the point where the concepts being as eidos/lmage,

and cease to be rnerely operatory. of metaphors carticular

of this rhetoric appear to be constructed

etc.) from which chore eseapes.

(or also of my themes in general) signifies in fact a parenthesis

in these plaees not only that the proper meaning can only the proper and the figurative this work loses its value. 2. He does of the Timaeus (des i.e., In essence Might not tion to MetaphYSICS. Let us do no more than quote here (The reference to this passage and of the "on," of the co-appearance by which, for the scarcely by extension suspected

via these detours, in a brief passage,

of the "paremphainon" the transformation "space'

it must at the same time indicate that on the baSIS of Platonic philosophy, of being as "idea,' place (Ortes) ("tapas"), mean that which separates, is prepared (vorbereitet) and of the "chore," is substituted deviates from any particular (Raum) defined by G. Kahn, upon all the B, 2b, Verhaltnis (Ausdehnung) Among

thing, that which is effaced.

that which thus admits something all the questions zur Religion,

and "makes spaee" for it (Platzmacht)? Vorlesungen Welke 18, Suhrkamp,

pp 5L-51, French translation der Philosophie, and Jean-Pierre

tor us by this text and its context, the most serious Will no do

.s implied by this "is prepared"

der Philosophie la matis des Grecs, p

ubet die Geschichte

p. 103. 4. Marcel Detienne

Les ruses de l'lntelligence,

66. Gaia is evoked by the Egyptian

priest of the Timaeus, in a discourse Cf. also Heidegger, the gaping, interpretation Nietzsche, that which

to which we shall return, It is at the moment when he vol 1, p. 350, French translation p. 274. Chaos, "chaos, We understand

the greater antiquity of the city of Athens which, however, located as if on deposit in Egypt (23d-e)
c/13J170,

has only a mythic mernory, the written archive of which is is split in two (Auseinanderklaffende)

Signifies the yawning

(das Gahnen),

'chaos" in close connection

with an original

of the essenee of the "elettieie" 31

in as rnuch as it is the abyss which

opens (ct. Hesiod Theogony) The representation as its technical (Vermensehung) of the resolution Oemiurge). between existence considers of existence of a Creator, 5. It is Plato who gives the determinant and being there is (bestehe) places the difference The existent tent and being are in different the "chotisrnos"

Jacques Derrida of Chaos, in Nietzsche. includes has the function of preventing a 'humanization' (the

in its totality. The 'humanization' explanation,

as much the moral explanation Deutung)

of the world on the basis He says that Thus If Plato of the entirely pp. 174-75,
6. This is

on the basis of the activity (massgebende the ehora signifies placed

of a great artisan (Handwerker) for Western thought.

interpretation

the "cnoriemos.

the place (Ort). Plato means that the exis(sind verseheiden

and being are differently

qeortet;

of place between

being and the existent,

he then poses the question

other place (naeh dem ganz anderen French translation "Gescblecht, the conditions Intersected studied,

Ort) of Being, by comparisorl\j1's':,[\tuhat of the existent.'

(Was beisst Denken?

A. Becker and G. Granel, p 261). Later we shl,?)ieJrn sexuelle, difference ontoloqique." In Heideqqer, -

at length to this passage in Heidegger.,ii"."i1\:J\j ¥;~( in 1970 ('Theory Cahiers de I Herne of materialism)

and its context.

one of the motifs which link this essay to the one which I.wrote OIIJ:1blChleeht difference

IntroductiO. n to that essay 7. Cepitel, Fourth Section of philosophical discourse on the Timaeus Other texts were or of the divi-

XIV, V. In another context, that of a seminar held at the Ecole Normale Superieure of Inscription of the text of political philosophy the example with other questions which here remain In the background
IIi0 the question

These reflections

and to which I shall return elsewhere.

In particular

those of Marx and

of their relation to the politics of Plato m general,

sion of labor, or of myth, or of rhetoric, or of matter, etc. 8. The possibility

of war breaks into the ideality, in the ideal description

of the. ideal City, In the very space of this fiction or of this rep.l'·.i-.;;."tlatlon The vein of this,•..... .. f.)-: roblematlc, which we cannot follow here. seems to be among the richest. It might lead us In partli>'!; owards an Original forQ'l,of fiction which is Ou Contra! social. According to Rousseau, the state of war between States cannot give rise to any pure savagery It bnngs the social contract

lavj .l~o;siS purely

must reign Inside the State. Even If it has its original us come back to a sort of specific limits of the social contract; discourse the singular which describes

law, the law of the people (genos, of the social contract

rlJ.f

civil, like the one which war also shows the or fabulous on war,

Jeople, ethnic group), war makes

out of itself. By this suspension

It throws a certain light on the frontiers

itself and of the theoretical

it. Thus it is at the end of the book of this ideal fiction that Rousseau

in a few lines gets on to the

problems which he is not going to deal with. We would have to analyze closely this conclusion relation which they maintain with the inside olths social contract relation but also a formal relation, a probl' of political It IS a thematic

and these considerations

at the moment where they open onto its outside. Rousseau seems to rub his eyes so as to perceive

jf i'\r~omposition:

the outside of the fable or of the ideal genesis. set down the true principles tions; which would treaties, include the law of nations,

He openl ,,:'/'aJyes but he closes th\i'i>.:'i?pk "Chap State on this commerce, the law of war and conquest, public

law and tried to foundthe

=l:

X, Conclusion. law, leagues,

After havinq negotiations. see nurse

to support

It by its external rela-

etc. But all that forms a new object too vast for my short Sight in Les enfants dAthena "Autochthony of Isocrates) confrontation chapter, an Athenian topics,"

I should have fixed it ever closer to me" 9. Cf. Nicole that which concerns In particular poles, Athens "both

Loraux, "On the race of women," also, In the preceding (trophos), fatherland "share the theatrical pan), the Egyptian of archives, and cold (22e-23a) and stage, In

(1981, p. 75 et seq). In the context which we are here delimiting and the 'rival and complementary

logos and mythos" which

t~t\t0'!I,80 In complicity"

(pp 67-72). As for the race of men (genos anthrofor memory, for the conservation by excesses of heat protection from destruction

priest of the Titneeus assigns

'pi' }hjeQ it: these are the places propitious

for Writing and for tradition

these temp!2ik',j",'c::ones which provide

32

TRANSCRIPT JACQUES DERRIDA, PETER EISENMAN,

TWO ALAIN PELISSIER, RENATO RIZZI 8, 1985 of the fragment from your work on chora. I don't text together. We could not remains indeand Peter text. Let me return again to the process -

PARIS, NOVEMBER the transcript

of our first meeting as well as a rough translation text. then bring it together . the Dapporto, and

sit down and design things together we do is write an architectural Juliet project. In this project project without their differences . Interestingly, ques Derrida's; opens the circle, changing

any more than we should sit down and write a philosophical with a philosophical the Bandello and the Shakespeare. Jacques

we had three

s, but the scaling -

the architectural

ave three texts: Bernard Tschumi's, each of these IS a text on a text: Bernard's his is a text on Plato's Timaeus. We therefore IS to Tschumi, plus Eisenman

Derrida's

can be seen as a text on mine for have both a closed and an open by Tschurni's text as by

it to a spiral. But the process the two. Something a mis As I u being

will be as much conditioned is Interesting

Let's see. Tschurni is to Eisenman as Eisenman Derrida. Then a third which connects that I was actually Derrida's there, a level of correspondence, Plato with Tschu a recep

Then, Plato to Derrida as Derrida is to for me as I read the chora text !S a case in point. There is text, one which because of its which,

like that.

making chora before I knew about it. The R perhaps 's Eisenman. g, between

and Juliet project

. What we may want is to write an In-between it, chora is a place, a receptacle, ormnq I therefore propose a project texts Tschumi's text as being,

which in itself has no yours as becoming

become

both the chora and Tschumi in one site erased in another,

on our site or sites. I feel one site would create too much of an "object." a writing that appears through a registering Ing IS Demda's in order to find a registration but whose purpose and text is not to produce the structure I find. between Tschurni and Eisenman Demda moving around I to use this interpretation that is so much a part of my misreading of Tschurni's of your work. I therefore

If we had two or three, we could counterpoint and disapthat is, that the first reading is Tschurni's,

and so on, to create a cycle of appearance propose of that text chumi's.

text on the archaeology as I woul

the past of La Villette, Venice, etc. The seconly being would be this registra-

text, which is what I would like us to discuss more fully today. I will have to do an analysis of the Derrida for it in the project sleeping. The project's . its being would eff , this gets tough for me ... that is, to register Tschumi's being. It would be like a house in which people live, between Derrida and Plato, which is analogous construct to that

would have no being in and

Similarly the purpose of my text will be to efface its own corpus in order construct of Eisenman as Derrida's of Plato. When I

Timaeus, it is as if the route is in the form of a spiral. helix or labyrinth of chora because anything though chora cannot "be," we can represe nting chora as Tsc the relationship ich is the Derridean

as if you were trying to chora. rep-

find your way. I don't know what the form of the investigation Peter Eisenman Will not represent

is, but I see you probing this text. here, there and then back again. he idea of representing , i representing of Tschumi's Eisenman

but the idea of Derrida

resenting Tschumi and so forth The reader will get a registration tory of the La Villette text and its site. That should lead to the second I in tum leads to a third site, chora, where the impossibility Villelte. It will be the analogic you a drawing structure of registration \NI be and I don't know what this means In physical

La Villette to the hisof La

analysis of the Timaeus, which

of being would be the effacement that's obviously

of Eisenman in the realization

which will provide the information. form -

I don't know what your response to this to. Can you suggest any formal analoDo you want the

the work to be done. That's why I haven't bmught

I have brought you instead an idea, a text I would like you to respond

to your work on chora; to the way you have tried to get at the Idea in your paper? AP I have a question.

33

TRANSCRIPT visitor to the park to read the process of the analysis? say that the potential read Derrida if you are trained in reading losophy in a different way. Jacques to retrain readers of architecture me -

TWO

PE I don't think an author knows what the reader reads. But you could as readers. I have always believed that it doesn't help you to I believe, too, I am trying You have to phase out of reading Leibniz and start to read phi-

readers of this project need to be retrained l.eibniz, for example. is retraining

readers to read him -

he does this as he is writing. models labyrinth

as I write it, and I face the same difficulties.

JD I have no way to answer the question you asked is one, but one among others. I said that In Timaeus, of everything n::~~;~ a place

what is the formal analogy to my way of working.

I have many different

It would be very difficult to schematize in this text is, what does "to receive" Socrates is, in the end, a receiver -

the chora text. I'm not able to draw it myself. PE Would you try? JD One of the questions mean? Chora is a recePtacle;I~~YYVill he is the one, finally, who liSjl,Jiele :;:i~:~.i~n recall that in our last meeting, states everything; he IS the addressee

~~:~~h~~~si~ :~i~~s:~:~~i~h;:'IIT:: from which everything is watched

~~:t~:~hdee~~~I' :~~;~~i~Se ~:~~~eeCneit~:s:ftt;u~i~t;?

c~~~at~::h:y

Tschumi referring to you, myself referring to Plato and yourself referring to Tschumi and me or read or received? ture. PE What about you? Let's make you Socrates a moment ago, a mediator then ask questions between you and and will want to for a minute. JD I could be a receptacle

will urere be a receptacle,

PE Yes. JD And who will be the reader, the general reader of this advenin the sense that I am, as you said Socrates will not only an archi. PE Exactly. JD So, okay, let me be the La Villette Socrates.

now this multiplicity

of layers and levels of text could become

tectural object, but somethingmore. How can it become som~· .•".:,.'.';'.iZ'fI;;pecialized, which .a.•..... '.•.•.•. in • r.•..•. • eader, trained or.noc could receive. Or how does It train - what Will be the pedagogy, so to spea y'_' , y'".,lb:Jr training a new reader. What would this training be In terms ~,. of architecture? The pedagogy will take place at the site. The reader or visitor will have1 .•.~~,;s;trained by what we are going to '.;•. do, trained to read, to interpret, and perhaps to write a new text. PE The meta-purpos is very exciting. ... JD An oscillation
(iT

))e to train new readers,

perhaps

even to train them to write. Now, that possibility thing like thatl I don't know if I can understand as a centerpiece, a kind of place and non-place

between different texts -

can you find someIt should also be

But in any case, this place should not be ultimate, outside; from which you understand all places. JD Yes, non-place of La Villette, understands

a place among others. Do you agree? AP Yes, but when we read Plato, we find a discourse one place from which the reader, by reading its generatio_n, the archaeology

on the universe which I have read PE We could make a the whole. However,

non-place is also a place where you are not. JD Now, let-'.J.L.·:,.~:(dd something very s...... i.l. Let's call metonymy this particular . p ec... ic. place from which we understand the whole, or read the ,Ji/?:, or have the memor\f!,~q~,e whole, so that in the part you have the whole. Now, it is my wish to avoid such a totalization, such a totalization. reader whole, you will nevertheless metonymy in the classical of necessity write something and the metonymic strucl,~ which you are speaking the possibility approaches the The only way to avoid it would be that in this place in which y!Ui:frir/e add a small part, that you will open the circle of understanding

new. Then there will always be something of totality.

more. It's only by having the will not be will

or visitor write something,

Then the metonymy Physically

sense. PE I think the idea of writing something

new is good. I also think there should be the possithe architecture the sand and the water. Perhaps the person, and non-totalization. The person There should also be a sense of dislocation. Irom the place itself; I once did a house with a room that you JD That is a good analogy for But what about the

bility of erasing. by walking, should feel,

One POSSibilitlj,jS."to use sand and wa.t.e ..r.-

sand for writing, water for erasing. way to consider are also the issues of non-place is not participating. are occurring

have to deal With these Issuest"c,:,,2 will have to findi18fll:l?109iC can cause the water to affect the sand
In

0}:,~(a

a meta-sense,

that although

active,'~,,;,(,he

JD Perhaps glass.

. PE Yes, glass or mirror. Also, the sense of participating

which would be dislocated

in other words. a sense that the results of your participation of always making one feel outside of the house, because chora. Chora is virgin. There is no content,

elsewhere.

could look into but that you could never enter; you could feel its presence no consummation.

in every other room in the house. This had the effect to what happens.

the ultimate interior was inaccessible. Chora is totally indifferent 34

TRANSCRIPT raised it once-

TWO

of the mystic writing pad? The notion of writing which in some way leaves a trace, but the sursoft underneath it, so that after lifting the paper, the But how will all of the layers be senfor me because of their layers. I can't it's very hard for me to to me because unconsciously

IS gone. That's another analogy that could be useful. I wrote another text on a text by Freud in which I discuss this it a piece of paper that you write on and there is something but the. JD Roughly speaking, because it's a metaphor .Jacques, let me tell you something. know that it's possible for the unconscious.

I read your texts and they are wonderful

I see that you and Blanchot

and others have done it. So you have to say, "Peter, I

carl do it." I mean, that's why we're here. You have to be the one who says yes or no, because 'riends tell me that there are levels of meani it's as if I were in an unconscious state. I don't want to repea Id like, for example,
i would welcome

the Romeo and Juliet project that are inaccessible I need to happen is for the site and our discussions your thoughts

and Juliet; I never repeat a project I want to push past, beyond, on what was missing from Romeo and Juliet, so that I can providing a structure, person. a formal analogy of your I can click off of what you the Romeo and Juliet proof chora is naked; JD It's not a criIt has to do why not PE you towards

one another, just as I am pushing a critique For the moment,

of Romeo and Juliet. I am a reactive person, not an original and emotional, not

I have nothing to say about Romeo and Juliet. If you force me to compare

this one, I would say that it is still very historical

enough. The atmosphere omeo and Juliet is too loaded

no love, no story; it's desert. PE It's a zero? JD A zero, yes. PE And I want Critique. That's what I wanted to hear JD T point of origin It's
0

ing point for Romeo and Juliet is a story full of events, of facts, story, not an Italian story or a Christian theology. why isn't chora the word? Before God and nature -

en before creation. a word. It's pre ... any Because anything PE no it has all things,

PE Pre-word. JD Yes. It is before and it is totally independent.

it is not only before, because it's also after. JD It's only before in the sense of allowing. It's before before. AP Yes, it's before
it can receive all things, and It can keep all things. which no archaeology PE It can give form to things without La itself. JD It is something could reach. You wish to tell and retell the story of Tschumi's ere is nothing

or archaeology

.. Okay, we have to do so. But having reached

a certain point, which is chora, there will be no other. Maybe a stone which is not a stone, with PE Material? JD It's not "inexplicable" because it

where there are no traces, where it's Just blank, where final I or history, no time. JD Not even matter PE An essen matter either. PE Okay. It's , yet indefinable; its value because

, in a sense? JD It's not a void , a looming which is nothing, JD Non-readable. empty, then full RR [translated quite a paradox.

substantial

doesn't read. It's mute. JD It's non that exists in one's thinking.
10 comprehend

from the Italian] Chora is a The moment one attempts state in real-

It, to define it, one reduces

it cannot be defined.

Perhaps chora is an impossible

ity, one that only exists in one's thought. Of course, chora cannot be represented lnat is why it is interesting. possibility
Wrc!

In trying to define it, one goes beyond the boundaries in any form, in any architecture. PE Yes, that's itl That's it, How to think about the i of chora. PE Exactly. is that the non-representable space coulve

set up by the phrase itself. JD the receiver, ra is impossible the visitor, the to represent,

That is why it should not give place to an architecture , that's it. JD Whilt, ility of representing . it's impossible.

What is interesting

of thinking about architecture. PE That is the beginning.

can train ....

this being. JD Of representing,

for mstance, an architecture

of representation,

That's the limit, that's the boundary. We can't

You have to draw a limit. It would be a solid limit, which could represent,

so to speak, the limit that the receiver, the visitor, the the more we assume materiality. traditional representation. No matter how

reader would reach. PE Yes. But the more we begin to take these things into account, talk to them on the site. We have to efface all the forms we make, decontaminate

much we say, "this is chora." we don't want the visitors to feel "no, it's not, it's a table." We will have to erase and efface to get to ehora. The way we get there is chora. JD And at the same time, you have to keep something 35 you cannot erase everything.

..
TRANSCRIPT You have to keep ... TWO PE Yes. If you take the and of introducing them Now PE The mark of the erasure. JD Yes. It's the form of the limit that is to be decided. them from their traditional reading of architectural representation whole of the table away then you have nothing. What we have to do now is to write the program to find a means of de-programming of the discursive, to the possibility for the question made figurative? drawings, rather than the figurative, In architecture. for the training of the readers

of the limits. What is the limit of moving from the discourse, I think that the strategy suddenl

Hence the need of a figure for your text. JD Give me some time. PE At our next meeting

so that we can see what we are doing.

One feature that I have in mind IS that the text goes backwards walk backwards? cession Is there a way, while walking forwards, of course questions of questions

«.

Nevertheless,

we have to figure our discourse.

in and about your text, to figuration?

What can be a program JD to

we will have some

for this meeting was right to develop backwards?

PE That's fantastic I How can you get somebody

/;;;Jicdd yourself walking then another structure,

JD And there is a sucwhat dees embracWhat does PE Now you you will have

about who or what re fS'iH,,'-; what. What is the mCI¥;;'r';j\'neral, the more embracing

receiver? At a certain point, I find a certain aspect more embracing, ing mean? What does receiving it mean that the bigger the structure, the smaller the receiver?

I};

.atly ...

mean? What does It mean to have a structure I go backwards I believe what is interesting together. our project -

within a structure and describe

within a structure?

these conclusions.

are telling me about your architecture. written a book, Chore. and we will have will be a commentary

about this situation Then, together,

is that, at its conclusion,

we will have made a book in a sense, which

on both your book shifting

a parallel. JD And nobody would be able to tell which was which.

PE Nor which was the beginning They would be constantly chora because, sense of traditional precisely

It would seem the project C';~i(';1'ilefore your text and that your text came before the project. JD I would say that this i -

rrjt\ 'I!:'oilityof

saying what ~i~in before everl'}~";S' to say whether

is has to do with the structure In another sense ,;by the Demiurge of something

of in

in a certain sense, chora is the beginning origin and becoming it IS not an origin between

of the beginning, it's impossible

in the strict

chora is not an origin. The origin is the inscr s;lff La Villette and my Cannaregio

chora. So chora is not the beginning, of priority or authorial chronology. text isn't finished

It is an origin or not. PE Yes. That is in that

why I want to use the relationship

project as a text -- to subvert any tradition ... is that your

JD So, because

the sense of origin is usually related to some history, some inscription I'm sorry that I keep interrupting on an unfinished text. We are making a critique

that sense the origin is an inscription

In chora. PE What's even more timely. on a text that i~ a commentary of our tl~· drawings is only at

and that we are working

could change the text itself, just as your critique in any sense a process that closes. Everything a step in a longer process, reader and the visitor to understand our specific in general. task. That it becomes JD Something

will change them. Hence there can be no origin or

JU::/;8J3.

JD When this is bui,bf.~n),a Villette, I hope that it should be only

which leads me to a question

do you think that there

coAl' .

a pedagogical

document

to help the of La

what's going on? PE We are going to make sucfr"a-G:Jcument, I believe that it's important for the greater object for architecture a vehicle task of talking about architecture

whether the authorities

Villette do or not. That's why we're recording. object, other than an aesthetic

that what we do together transcends as other than a representative discussion of architecture at the site for

object, other than an originary

the stimulus for a theoretical

sche,'01etic could even be made available that some mO"fu''?!1J.loe allocated a very small document narrative discourse.

project is to provide such a dJ"'~'lent, visitors to take and read also be a more complete

ii""'if0".",,

for the visitor. PE Well, why don't we say that part of our for that. We will say that it is to be available and the project as a whole. But there will

")Idnatlon of the registrations,

36

DRAWINGS 1-7 December 19,1985

37

DRAWINGS 1-7

h
i.

38

DRAWINGS

1-7

[J

r:i
1.-~_1

39

DRAWINGS 1-7

L_J

'--I

[J

40

DRAWINGS 1-7

41

DRAWINGS

1-7

42

DRAWINGS

1-7

43

MODEL 1

44

MODEL 1

45

TRANSCRIPT

THREE 16, 1985

JACQUES DERRIDA, PETER EISENMAN TRENTO, DECEMBER

[The meeting is already in progress; the subject is the metaphor of "quarry" as a working concept in the project.] JD Is that literally, or. . PE We are talking literally about moving stones where the superposition that the visitor participates in their location as he or she goes from site to of La Villette. The stones of Eisenman, presence of the palimpsest site a labyrinth. Its form is not of the labyrinth is the site of chora; the site of erasite. The first site is a quarry; the second is a palimpsest being from the quarry site, are moved to the palimpsest to the third site the destruction the Derrida/Plato you can call it chora if you want. but let's stick to palimpsest for the tirns the archaeology with it the both marks itself on the site and is itself marked by what

of Tschumi's plan for La Villette is r site, where a moveci

G1

is on the site. When moved again, it leaves a trace of its presence site. JD I like the idea, but of the continuous

.. PE The Demda/Plato

known to begin with because it is the result of the movement of the stones from the palimpsest. of the narrative; the breakdown sure. No matter how many stones you bring part, because at no time does it have a prior To complete the cycle, the erasure could be ficult how is this process expressive It can never be complete.

story; the attempt to define the undefinable

How the stones make the labyrinth is the most difficult of the quarry and the era-

[wards which it moves. So, my proposal is a quarry, a palimpsest and a labyrinth bringing of stones back to the quarry, the replenishing a labyrinth. Why? it suggests derive the form of the first two sites, but the third is more diflabyrinth is the only architectural constant movement. There isn't of reaching a conclusion, project yes JD

sure of the labyrinth. And thus the process continues. I believe of your text on Plato? J metaphor for discontinuity any place in the labyrinth and "no place." The labyrinth denies JD The labyrinth is structured

by the hope of getting out. PE is two things chora and Tschumi's

So it has nothing to do with the chora structure. PE The palimpsest other, the labyrinth is also united to chora. The palimpsest to ask the question

has something to do with chora, and as each site relates to the Now, maybe you are right JD To turn to something very practical,

"Why the labyrinth?" I see what you are saying. This site is problematic. end of December. uppermost

are we sure that three places are available? Have you explained show Pelissier and Tschumi the proposal for three sites lapse the three sites into one by working at three the labyrinth. It can be done With a very low increment of

that three places on the site are required? PE I think we should If they say it is not possible, we will have to colthe quarry: the middle the palimpsest; the bottom Now, You should hide that possibility. the stones ....

permit me another technical question. How can you imagine this process of printing? It came to me in a dream, as I told you the other night. I dreamed that people were ta

It matter, on what kind of structure? PE The thing we are try-

ing to do is to make something which is not stable, which leaves traces of a former stability. I'm trying to find a way to make this project ephemeral and constantly changing. A quarry seems to me a potent vehicle for such an idea. JD You gave up the idea of water? PE I haven't given up any of the things we discussed; there has to be ... JD Circular~~E The questions Will t
I

I'm Just trying to see what you think of this process

If it's to be continuous,

I keep asking are: how do the people know where to p~t the stones? How do Imprint the stones on sand? JD When you say tnat the palimpsest Will a visible representation, a drawing or something? PE No, it should be Yes. JD In concrete? PE Yes. JD It's difficult to imagine. PE It's difIt will be difficult to do all the things we want. If you solid. deteriorate it into a minianon-anthro-

the stones get marked? How d(j;,:,;;jy leave traces? Co be the second site, with La Villette the layer ... ficult for me too in the actual form. JD The previous structure of La Vi

I mean, we are trying to pull this out of our joint unconscious.

don't like the idea of moving stones, then how do we build change Into the project? CR It's too much like miniature golf. PE She's saying it as a term of derision. JD But you know, the visitors can, if the structure is not sufficiently make the idea of a quarry manifest? The labyrinth, architecturally,
46

ture golf course. PE Maybe the idea of people moving things is wrong, but somehow I like the idea of the quarry. How does one is the nearest thing to a non-narrative, non-linear,

TRANSCRIPT condition Its role symbolically

THREE We have a quarry, from which stones have obviousleaving a trace on the

IS to relate the quarry to a palimpsest.

takcn and moved to a palimpsest, the palimpsest

where they leave their mark. Then they are moved to this other thing

and carrying some evidence of having been there. This labyrinth then contains traces of all of the movements in the quarry. So the quarry is a form of chora, the palimpsest is also a form of chora The whole thing becomes a mental operation concerning by the people from the quarry to form the palimpsest and return eventually to the quarry Trying to translate it into stones and people, that's the difficulty. the central idea of imprinting something Perhaps we shoul er a metaphorical

a form of chora, and now I am saying that the history of the stones as they are I know It'S not so easy. JD It's easy there's no problem for you. JD

PE So conceptually

are further along than we were. Now, how do we make It physicalyou imagine this physically? What sort of impression will there have rather than a physical one. As in your example of the mystic wntHowever, when you

surface which has traces in it, which do not make any sense in themselves. been imprinted, in turn, on it. So what you see on the palimpsest

es where these glyphs can be seen to have been imprinted by the palimpsest and where the glyphs site is the trace of the writing, and on the labyrinth site, the let's assume we have a piece of paper and we , whatever the material, and we freeze that. Now, with traces of the palimpsest. Is that possible? JD Yes. Repeat it once more, I'm not sure I got it. PE No, I'm not sure I have

Look, you are pushing me to invent this as I go along. Let me try it this that paper in such a way that our writing leaves a trace on a palimpses could be the plan of La Villette, it could be Tschu take the imprinting characteristic; a text. Now, lets plan, so th also marks Tschurni's

n or whatever; in any case, we are talking about writing. JD In I, which impressed the concrete and which has its own positive Villette so that it leaves a trace, but the archaeology of La Villette by La

we get to what I am calling the labyrinth, we have the Tschumi plan as modified

Viiie,te JD The problem is, what substance will you use for this. If the floor layer is concrete, then you need something which is not hard PE That is correct. JD But not liquid either. It seems you need a sort of paste. PE Let's say paste. In any event, the people could cause the imprinting or we could cause it for them. JD But are you suggesting written? PE That's right: my project for Cannaregio. form the labyrinth. JD So the paste they take from the sible? PE material tar-fetched
I

that on the first piece of paste, there is already then these pieces are moved by the vis-

It's the quarry. So that writing already exists In the paste. Tschumi's uld already be printed? PE Yes. JD And not hard. PE Not Yet something that remains, yes, it's difficult. JD Is it posand we're talking about hard and soft

takes the pieces from the quarry and impresses them on La Villette at the palimpsest

don't want to answer that

yet. Let's assume we just do this metaphorically,

perhaps clay. CR It could all

same material, then. PE No. JD No, it has to be. PE No, it can't. JD This is a very of Tschurni's project. Then, people would take homogeneous paste, put it on the wall Let's say that in the of La Villette and, of the narrative

Idea, but let us suppose that in the first quarry you already have a matri. Let's say that In the quarry you have a wall on a first printing, and carry this to the second place. Then one would have to take similar paste, which would they bring it to .•i_presentation / at the palimpsest

WIIICh, for instance, there is a representation to take an impression,

you a material continuity, and put it on the first, the carrier, at the second place. PE Let's t&~. differently quarry, the paste has my project printed on it. Then, people take this. pushing the paste on that, up comes Tschurni's project. This IS the ry into Tschurni's project, which in turn is transformed thai we have been developing. by our work into The ultimate erasure of the non-narrative

transforms the stones of the quar-

mth, which symbolizes the breakdown

structure is the return of it to the quarry. This is the closure.

What we are saying is that there is a cycle where things are only as they were before or as they will be. JD The cycle then has the meaning not of a reappropriation, done by us beforehand. but of an erasure; the concept of complete erasure. PE I don't think it is necessary actually to do either architecturally or literally. JD But I think that for the safety of the operation, it should be but if you leave everything to them it will this. We can make these operations

Which does not exclude the possibility of people doing something,

47

TRANSCRIPT

THREE 16, 1985

JACQUES DERRIDA, PETER EISENMAN TRENTO, DECEMBER

[The meeting is already in progress; the subject is the metaphor of "quarry" as a working concept in the project.] JD Is that literally, or ... beingPE We are talking literally about moving stones where the superposition that the visitor participates in their location as he or she goes from site to of La Villette. The stones of Eisenman, presence of the palimpsest site a labyrinth Its form is not of the labyrinth is the site of chora; the site of erasite. The first site is a quarry; the second is a palimpsest you can call it chora if you want, but let's stick to palimpsest for the time the archaeology with it the both marks itself on the site and is itself marked by what

of Tschurni's plan for La Villette is re

from the quarry site, are moved to the palimpsest site, where a move IS on the site. When moved again, it leaves a trace of its presence to the third site the destruction the Derrida/Plato site. JD I like the Idea, but. of the continuous
C1

PE The Derrida/Plato

known to begin with because it is the result of the movement of the stones from the palimpsest. of the narrative; the breakdown sure. No matter how many stones you bring part, because at no time does it have a prior To complete ficult the cycle, the erasure could be sure of the labyrinth. And thus the process continues. how is this process expressive of your text on Plato? The labyrinth denies metaphor for discontinuity and "no place" it can never be complete.

story; the attempt to define the undefinable

How the stones make the labyrinth is the most difficult of the quarry and the era-

which it moves. So, my proposal is a quarry, a palimpsest and a labyrinth of stones back to the quarry, the replenishing a labyrinth. Why? p~;~ne it suggests constantjrfs,
fJ§ii!)of

derive the form of the first two sites, but the third is more diflabyrinth is the only architectural constant movement. There isn't reaching a conclusion, yes. JD

any place in the labyrinth. JD The labyrinth is structured

by the hope of getting out. PE Th is two things -

So it has nothing to do with the chora structure. PE The palimpsest other, the labyrinth is also united to chora. The palimpsest to ask the question, "Why the labyrinth?" I see what you are saying are we sure that three places are available? Have you explained show Pelissier and Tschumi the proposal for three sites lapse the three sites into one by working at three the labyrinth. It can be done with a very low increment of

has something to do with chora, and as each site relates to the chora and Tschurni's project Now, maybe you are right This site is problematic. JD To turn to something very practical.

that three places on the site are required? PE I think we should If they say it is not possible, we will have to colthe quarry; the middle the palimpsest; the bottom Now, should hide that possibility. the stones. uppermost

end of December.

permit me another technical question. How can you imagine this process of printing? It came to me in a dream, as I told you the other night. I dreamed that people were

It matter, on what kind of structure? PE , , , The thing we are try-

ing to do is to make something which is not stable, which leaves traces of a former stability. I'm trying to find a way to make this project ephemeral and constantly changing. A quarry seems to me a potent vehicle for such an idea. JD You gave up the idea of water? PE I haven't given up any of the things we discussed; there has to be ... JD Circular~~'.L,.-E;'E questions The the stones get marked? How I'm just trying to see what you think of this process, If it's to be continuous, I keep asking are how do the people know where to put the stones? How do will a visible representation,
/i

drJi;f6jy

leave traces? COl~l~.,\!Oyimprint the stones on sand? JD When you say that the palimpsest a drawing or something?

be the second site, with La Villette the layer .. , Will thj,j! in the actual form. JD The previous structure of La Viii ficult for me too -I

PE No, it should be

PE Yes. JD In concrete? PE Yes. JD It's difficult to imagine. PE It's difIt will be difficult to do all the things we want. If you solid, deteriorate it into a minianon-anthro-

mean, we are trying to pull this out of our joint unconscious.

don't like the idea of moving stones, then how do we build change into the project? CR It's too much like miniature golf PE She's saying it as a term of derision. JD But you know, the visitors can, if the structure is not sufficiently ture golf course. PE Maybe the idea of people moving things is wrong, but somehow make the idea of a quarry manifest? The labyrinth, architecturally, 46 I like the Idea of the quarry. How does one non-linear,

is the nearest thing to a non-narrative,

TRANSCRIPT be a catastrophe.

THREE start with paste, print It and transboth of it is In this association,

The thing should be achieved before anybody enters. PE Let us metaphorically I say labyrinth the other.

form it into the labyrinth

but we could change that. But we start with the quarry, we go to the palimpsest, . the imprinter. JD Peter, I would suggest something. So you are the theoretician

which are chora-like, one the receptacle, practical consequences

as if you were the dreamer and I were the architect. the technician. is that everything should be done beforehand. give the visitors the opportunity participate

and I am thinking all the time of the

PE Well, we do not have to worry about that because we know that it is not true. JD What I would suggest There should be solid form and structure before it IS ever entered. Then we should what the structure means everything you are describinq now and then to new, and having understood, them to write, I would be there. if not all the content of the possisomething rthe proto-text: that would be has, well, intelligence
I

first to understand

in it, so that they could have some initiative, could do But we should not new. the opportunity

bility, at least the general structure. PE Okay. JD Once they have something which they could sign themselves. too dangerous. imagination

tood, they could try to write something

PE And they would not get it. They would not know. JD They would not get it. If

and creativity enough to write something for contemplation,

the other hand, some visitor

wants simply to be a spectator, Just passing by, observing be a promenade each place Will have two texts one given,

and not doing anything, he or she could be free to do so. It would also The possible text will be that of the visiting writer, the opportunity to write

as if it were a museum. PE So. what we are saying, to go back to the double text idea, is that PE Yes. though that is tricky. JD But it is also safer and more practical the third figure and your idea of chora in relation to the theme which is present in the chora JD It seems we erasure would imply some com"Photograph" means "writ-

or erase. JD Even to ask questions, to object ideas of quarry, palimpsest and labyrinth

PE Between now and our meeting in Paris, I would like you to Maybe you will think text and perhaps useful the four elements. PE Earth, air, fire bination of water, light ... ing of light" a spot with light or mirrors.

third place, air is also to be there. Fire could be replaced by some source of light, so the What I was dreaming of, and I don't know if it is technically

PE It may be possible to have one sec in a mirror what was erased. JD possible. is to use some form of photography.

writing with light, so that. for instance, what people have written at the second site could be kept awhile, to reappear would have a certain duration, and then or Video, perhaps. PE
I

on a mirror at the third site. When the light goes off, everything goes black. The photograph gone. We could use photography a record of the tape, which IS then erased by light in erase also. JD They would not allow us to burn anything be useful. PE Yes, I like it. What worries me, Jacques, classical; II's a topos. PE As yet, the palimpsest

you ... some kind of video camera that Imprints on the third place 'here would then be a constant circularity of erasure. CR Fire can Ilette, for safety
11)

a video machine or camera would I have a very ambiguous relationship It's too door from the reappropriation they are not architectural

is your concern about the

with the labyrinth. I like it, of course, but I think it is too close to the desire to find and quarry do not exist in architecture: ing to use an extant architectural could have concerns the idea logue. He IS the one who spoken, a sort of eye and ear receiving and I am less sure that the rest of our, your ... PE No, no. Of our ... figure to root the thing architecturally. the place where everything

figures. I was try-

I think we need the third place, but perhaps another figure IS received. That is chora that is also Socrates in the diaPerhaps it is possible to

would be better. Can you give me another metaphor? We have Tschurni and Eisenman, now we need you and Plato. JD The idea I he is the universal addressee of everything.

be the place which is to receive everything which has been written or I will tell you what I am sure of and what I am less sure of. I am JD. . is physically possible for the moment. We have to imagine It will be profound or not prosimplicity, but it also has sure that the idea of these three places making a sort of strange memory of La Villette, Tschurni's project and yours, etc., is strong. crowds coming into this place. It must not be too complicated, otherwise people will not understand.

found, but simple. The operations must be simple. PE Simple. I think you are right. It has to have incredible to be able to do what we want it to do. In the third site, the labyrinth.
48

I want a void, an absolute erasure. JD That is water. PE

TRANSCRIPT \!\/ater erases sand. You see, the quarry has architectural

THREE dimension, it has mass and it can be read. Things have been or in sand. JD In that case you, as But what is the last place? and finally,

erasure of a sort. It seems that there are three kinds of erasure. The quarry, let's say is my project in Venice. You and you see the project in a different way than you would see it in a palimpsest do that. But in this case you want the visitors to do the something. three kinds of erasure
1.0

PE Yes, I understand.

taking stones away; covering up a layer with another layer as in the palimpsest;

erasure by water. How do we relate that to you and Plato? That IS the difficulty So how do we make "walking backwards' c)(Jckvvards is fine, but how do you make a thi n that says, "Now, tur , about it concrete the arc .

using that metaphor to embody your PE

Plato JD You asked me this question some time ago, and my answer was that I had the feeling of walking backwards. How do you experience work when you are walking backwards? people have to walk backwards? and walk backwards"? How do you do that physically?

We will get it We have to be prepared for

we will know when it is right. JD Do you think that the second place would have to

ral structure of La Villette? Will you ask them to build a model? PE A model? The plan, or perenter mysteriously.

It could be at different scales. I don't have any notion yet of how we are going to do that, but it will be something that suggests the history -- the abattoir, for example. Then the third site is the place where Derrida/Plato are saying that there are two histories one of Tschumi/Eisenman me. Labyrinth was a er of Plato/Derrida, uristic to push it I'm sorry but this third is really bugging of the dialogue, a urn so on PE So how about a both of which fuse In

it's difficult. JD Let's go back a hybrid, dreamed of. The

chora text. The main motives are first, the inclusion of

in narrative, boxes within boxes. Then, Socrates as chora, as , chora is thought as in a dream e video. It has to do with light, but also with dreams, phantasms

for the third site? JD That's all right PE It seems to have something to do with what you PE Receptacle? JD Receptacle, night. PE Light JD Light and night Did

JD Something having to do with a dream ...

you decide if the places are to be open or covered? PE Open JD Then we couldn't use video or film. PE The third could be closed, a dark cave. JD So that we could enter into, let us say, Plato, in three stages. First, chora will be totally open air. Then some situation, and finally, totally black, totally enclosed. black because it is underground. and erasure. Then the final place a cave, go through the black box to PE rViuch better this progression, this of the cave, of course, Plato's cave. PE That's right, but PE It could be the other way. The quarry where you begin could be round is you and Plato, you quarry Plato. JD Everyone will around. The next could be the palimpsest, where there is you start we could go that way around. That is interesting . You and Plato, then me, then Tschumi, then the work. If we did it in reverse, the und

. JD But in the final state you have to erase, you cannot simply have the masterwork.

49

DRAWINGS 8-18 January-August 1986

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68

TRANSCRIPT

FOUR THOMAS LEESER

JACQUES DERRIDA, PETER EISENMAN,

NEW YORK, APRIL 3, 1986 a new executive architect in Paris who will take the project and produce the final drawings in order to begin construewant to begin in August The new architect is a good friend of mine, Jean-Louis Cohen. JD Cohen this Pelissier affair at all. What happened? wasn't he with us at PE Yes. But I don't understand JD It's a mystery to me, too. PE I was

, in which It seemed he had put this big en given three sites, use the same th he meet with us at idea of the maintenance unfullctional Hence tectwe e end of AprilWhat

ht In the middle of our site, leaving nothing for us at all. When I saw nally admitted that this was the case. But now they have agreed to Pelissier. This means the registrations are going to be different."

should be able to finish the work to our mutual approval by June, I will even suggest to JeanI wanted to do today is to explain where our idea is, and to ask some questions project.f From a reading of your Trento lecture, I find at the same time a are not dealing with uninhabitable, of shelter. For example, traditionally, unaestheta museum of the tradihave always the idea of movement and maintenance the dislocation

tile paper you gave in Trento and the one you wrote about Tschumi's of the metaphysic and the displacement places -

model. I think It is something that I have been intuitively working Wit places, but perhaps with deconstructive the notion of m shelters art Yet In Ohio, we made the museum a long g dislocates m, though it fulfills th intaining its constru According to Jacobson, I tmial symbolism in architecture So, in this interpretation, or metonymic. been metaphoric to as

ke structure that shelters -

but not at all as a museum shelters.

m function. We are talking about the dislocation or mimesis in architecture

attitude. You cannot play the piano and say you are doing archiand the narrative or realist mode, is to

suggest that the poles of Western representation I see architecture as taking this notion of representation

the vertical axis, poetics, is metaphoric

the horizontal axis, is metonymy

as its tradition. What I think we are trying

which is already present In the Romeo and Juliet project, but which has become clearer to me through our discussions, or analogy, Our work on these three sites is an attempt to will sites Band relationship, C.

drive a wedge between metonymy and metaphor as the dialectic poles and suggest an aperture which could be referred to perhaps locate the notion of metaphor and metonymy through a disII be a place which has a presence of site A but will also of the three sites will contain its own presence as well as C; site B the absence of A and of the narrative, In one sense the memory and in another the future. The location of time and place, What I mean by that is the following have another time and another place its own absence of presence in a co C, and so on, Each site will have the The visitor does not understand

Site A will contain the absence of Band

of the other sites as a trace

viewer will always have presence, memory and immanence, at site A the conditions

so that there is always a dislocation of the directionality

of the traces of sites Band C, but when the visitor gets to those sites, he or of the future, Then, upon arrival at site C, ever, these tenses, these past, ne be specific about the idea of

she realizes that they have both a memory of where they have been and an anticipation present and futures of the sites, can themselves tile abattoir, when the walls of the city occupied time of Venice and the future the superposition be displayed in differ

the structure closes in a sense, because you have the presence of memories of past and future logical times, different times, We are talking about La Villette in 1867, when an ab the site, and about

pied the site of the park, about Paris in 1848, before 8, We are also talking about the time of Tschumi, the C are one site at a

of Tschumi with the past suggests a trace of the future. Now, let's talk more about a part of the other sites, as well as the notion that A, Band as A with pieces of Band C, B with pieces of A and C, etc. which was itself the site of an at differing scales.

place. Each site will contain, through superposition,

different scale. The three can thus be read as a whole, as a unity abattoir, as well as other places which operate parenthetically.

Each site speaks of another place at another scale of activity, so there is also the site of Cannareqio,

We can bring in other places in the superposition

69

TRANSCRIPT and so on. I carl conceptualize three tissues superpose points of the conceptual it, but to demonstrate

FOUR model; it's very difficult.

Finally, and this is tricky, we can say that each site is a tissue of three layers, in which tissue 1 Interacts with tissue 2 at another it for you will require us to build an extraordinary at least conceptually, and interact with each other so that if you pull one tissue out of site A, it interrupts sites B and C. There though I cannot visualize it. PE There are two with an origin and signifiers, one of which is JD The receptacle apparatus that I want to talk about. First, I am not dealing with figure/ground Instead, there is what you might call a tissue of free-floating that we discussed an analogy of th

thus neither time nor place, but analogy. JD I understand, else, which would be a superimposition. not a ground, not a substratum. it. It is a reverberating, displacing

always the base for the others. This makes the notion of the receptacle PE I am describing tacle and the traces of the receptacle are left on the object. At the s

very problematic.

and the object. The object is formed by the does not recei It remains out of reach, so to is not yet finished. The probare essentially PE But why, then, isn't recepta-

activity. JD This is more difficult. T

on it, but, at the same time, the receptacle lem is that there is no physical analogue. inadequate. Receptacle is a metaphor

remains virgin. It does not receive anything that it re Plato uses many metaphors to describe

speak. PE Have you added more to your chora text since you sent the first fragment? JD Yes, It is a in which the traces form and are inscribed. not sensible, not something.

something for which metaphors

cle a ground? JD Because it IS nothing. It is three tissues? We are constrained to make

It is not a being. PE So what about these

JD Of course. That is the trouble. We have to make being out of • exceeds the normal ontology. What is being? The paradigm, intelligible is more is inscribed, is is neither sensible nor intelopenness; it is place, but place is So, for itself is "bad"; It has no pertinence.

something which is not being. What interests me about chora is the intelligible paradigm, the sensible emanation, these are bei beings, the paradigm and the copy. But chora, within which nothing. So we have the use only of bad metaphors; instance, to get rid of figure/ground We know they are inadequate is very good ....

ligible, it is a third something which does not belong to being. So it is place, place as indeed the concept of metaphor PE And metaphor/metonymy

also? JD Also. But we cannot avoid metaphors PE But suppose we were talkto speak differently. These

but we cannot simply avoid them, just as we cannot avoid buildings. that is what relates to another

ing about allegory rather than metaphor? JD If this context requires the use of the category, allegory, okay. Allegory in the sense of speaking differently about the other sites are ephemeral; their physicality the meaning, chota, lies inbetween. ordinary Parisians understand PE That is what we are trying to do other place at another time. The meaning of each site is tied to the You have to go through all three, and of a textual activity, a simulation. They of what

next site; it requires movement in time and place. TL A It is not the thing itself. JD Chora is the but they must realize that they are in the That is the important thing everything,

should sense something else and feel dislocated. is a garden. It should be like reading Finnegan's ogy, such as the maze. That When we dig up a particular

the dislocation from the ordinary expectation

Wake for the first time. JD You have to be amazed by it. PE That's right, you have we are also trYing to avoid a typical typoltypology. So when we move a stone, it could be

to be amazed. The second point I wanted to add is that besides avoiding figure/ground, , it comes from a
m~1tJ"l',;Y""

are working with the quarry, which does not belong to the traditional architectural location; its meaning is in its specificity.

we leave a gap, a presence of absence of that stone. Iy building by rearranging what is there, using the

e not disturbed the earth, we have not imported anything, we are merethe earth. Of course, we have to invent what that earth is we are considering

brick, stone, glass, etc. It will be made of materials that come from the earth, which we will pile up in certain ways so that the traces, the gaps, the markers and layers of textual activity will be clear. One possibility so that it could be seen at one site that my project at Cannaregio is using Tschumi as a sort of switching on the quarry SWitch. At each site, Tschumi would be at a different level top, middle or bottom. We are also considerinq

was used by Tschumi as a quarry, and at another Tschumi would

be a quarry for a future project. Paris is a quarry used by both of us, particularly the abattoir and the walls. If we say the middle layer

70

TRANSCRIPT

FOUR

quarry. we get an interesting result because in the process of quarrying you erase below and add above. This yields layers of erasure and causes the middle layer. the locus of the analogies from site to site, to be constantly changing. studies of the raw material Cannaregio La Villette, Cannaregio and so forth and found some interesting relationships. For found that Tschumi's grid for La Villette, at a scale change, precisely coincides project at the appropriate used in both projects. I should be clear here we are inventing this connection. ition of chronology for superposition almost went crazy. e use analogous with my grid for Cannareqio So, if we

scale, we get Tschurni's project. accurate even to increments of gray and black I don't for a moment believe that this analyIt IS also interesting that my

anything about Tschurni's project in relation to mine; in fact, as I mentioned to you some time back, I hoped a theme and precedent located, as is the case for Tschumi's project in Paris. So the abat-

which we are exploring for analoqic possibilities.

there is no amazement. We've gone through two people working on this project already, and one material at differing scales for several reasons. One is to subvert the notion of the by presenting the same analogous material at different scales in the same the castle of Romeo challenged the notion that body as the source-authority the superposition of scale. Secondly,

vve subvert the value of the thing itself, the privilege of a specific object at a specific scale. For example, in the Romeo and of the outline of the city of Verona with the outlit

al relationships, d's dreamwork: perimposed to dlanges but

OI1C~

which is why I said that the operation is not of scale, condensation by superof the scales. TL In order aspects

displacement

materials, used again at displaced

the reverberation In time -

from

g self-same

copies at differing

sizes, at each scaling step we introduce

changes in rivers, borders, etc. We use the same superposition

analogy but with the material at different points

in history as we change scales to produce a self-similar, but not self-same result. It is as if we place two mirrors in front of each other, mirror reflects the image in the other at a different time. It is up to us to choose the particular time frame of a reflection to tell viable building that nevertheless is unlike any that has been the traditional use of history in architecture, which is conit as a dream, as a guess. PE Yes, that is precisely the a certain story, to create further analogies. PE Two features of the process are important: first, you cannot predict at the beginning your results will be, and second, invariably the process results i seen before. It is full of the archaeology fined to a history of the immediate we want to stimulate. Since and much of the development is d of the Site, yet is displ ral context. JD I c

our Romeo and Juliet project, when we first met, our work has become very exciting, utable to our interaction with you We are going to show another project to a client next

week. They think they are going to get another Ohio State, a grid building, but instead we have used design methods Similar to those used on this project. I am certain they are going to be very surprised to see this. In any case, what I think is important is that we make sure your participation in the La Villette project is very strong. What we are trying to do is to reconstruct you can call it wh paradigm for archite u want but we in our terms what you your with the were saying in the chora text and in your talk at Trento. We are saying that this is your proqra program. JD Okay. PE It may be a misreading cult to make. JD Do not worry; it is an impossible tenant, it is the contretemps theoretical formulation. As Thomas will tell you, La Villette is a killer p nd that we are Interrupting , you to feel comfortable

e theoretical paradigms is the challenge

which you set up are so diffi-

in itself that IS important. PE We realis very good. Chora is not the mainSo we understand it, but underis that I think

ize that we cannot realize it and that is why the challenge is so great. This notion of contreternpsi' which cannot be. If we achieved

it, there would be no maintenant.

standing it is not doing it. But I think it is just a question of breaking the back of it now. But what worries me, Jacques, we are frustrated. JD I'm not. I would not say that I don't understand, tough time visualizing it ourselves. We cannot hold it though there is a certain sense of understanding 71

I just can't visualize. PE Well, at this point we are having a that we are onto something

TRANSCRIPT quite interesting. TL I think we have a fundamental far, all the thinking is two-dimensional, sions, we could make sense of this thing

FOUR

problem, which we must get over. At this point we are dealing with plan only; so PE I agree that this is a problem, but if we could realize even two dimenproject, Tschumi's between the grid elements in

not architectural.

we do not even have that yet. TL Here are Venice, the Cannaregio IS that the distance project

project and the La Villette site at their original scale. One thing we discovered Tschurni's project is exactly twice that in the Cannaregio of the squares in Tschumi's and we discovered apart smaller squares, we discovered double that of Tschurni's

Then, we scaled the grid squares in Peter's project up to the size When we scaled Peter's squares down to Tschurni's the density of the elements in Peter's project IS exactly Tschumi's major axis is exactly axis cuts one of of this even down to details such as in exactly the same way perhaps it was unconlittle squares. These simOnce you study the two projects by Le Corbusier, which was his grid to my site, and so it

that there are twice as many Tschumi squares, even though they are twice as far

In other words, the density of Peter's elements is half that of Tschumis. that the exact opposite is The next set of drawings has to do with

ninety degrees to Peter's major axis relative to true north. In scious There is no question, however, that there IS a marked similarity ilarities are as much inventions of scaling as discoveries. once you put them on top of each other and prior authorship In fact, my project was to be located directly on the site of the old

as Peter's axis cuts one of his. JD To what extent do you think Tschumi was conscious

TL Yet there are amazing similarities.

the scales, things fall into place. PE I want to reiterate that I make no claim to an unrealized project for a hospital on Cannaregio the northern end of the Island. I merely extended mstruction of the
!

is more proper to say that both Tschurni and I used Le was Swiss, so go the parallels for the story we are inventing. lion of the tradition of precedent Notice also the edge conditions abandoned,

-id system. Furthermore, Tschumi is Swiss and Le Corbusier of narrative IS also a deconstruca general hidden condition. TL -aris That IS another similarity we project? PE It was to the Cannaregio

and authorial priority. JD Let me suggest that you are of the walls of the old abattoir in Venice and the old conditions. JD What happened PE Extensively.

are trying to play with. PE They could be called analogous Harvard Architectural of this relationship,

someone else did it JD But has it been published? and expects us to work with it He couldn't

It IS well known; It was even on the cover of the

Review and it was also published in Italy and France. Why do you think we are here? Tschumi IScertainly aware be happier with what we are doing. JD How did this story with us this project? PE He spoke to me last summer. He wrote me a letinterested in working with Jacques Derrida. I said, yes, absoluteat what would

begin? I met Tschumi; I know him. Did he first speak to you ter about doing a garden at La Villette, and he asked if I Iy, that would be a most fantastic experience, course, you happened because I he called you and asked you, you were enthusiastic,

lin far

transcend

the project itself. Then

and here we are. I think these

'lings produce very strange results. Of were working on Romeo and Juliet But Romeo and Juliet will be perso I wrote a series of

to be working on your chora text at the time; we had no Idea nothing to do with architecture.

and very similar things, I think. I could read chora and think that you told me what to do in Romeo and Juliet. JD Did I? It happens that I had written a text on Romeo and Juliet two months ago formed in Paris and the director is publishing what I call aphorisms on the interested in that PE When I difficult project for us JD Well, Romeo and Juliet. The plates are beautiful you can entitled "Aphorisme a small book for the occasion. et Contretemps." He asked me to write something,

When I was writing chora I did not know that you were but to imagine. PE Jacques, this IS the book of

to myself, "That sounds like mel" JD It's true. TL This has been a very ufficult to understand,

. ",ie

superpositions

and process of scaling -

but it is very primitive com-

pared to where we are now. We will have to invent a way of presenting Choral Work that thing I made up with you in Paris, SONSANSONSENS. PE Yes, and there is togetherness.

our work at La Villette. I would like to use as a subtitle to JD I don't know. I'm afraid it is a little too playful in French. JD It is musical.

PE Okay, Choral Work then. JD Yes, it is fantastic, PE It has three or four meanings that I can think of immediately. cal work, and choral as of chora. JD It reminds me also of "firework"72 choral work, firework, something

For me, it means corral as enclosure, coral as stone and coral as color, choral as a group musiwork, PE Great, now we

TRANSCRIPT

FOUR

'Ne have you, me, a story and a title. JD It remains to do the work. TL The work is missing. JD I never thought it I think the fact that It is difiicult means that something lor one week with this .... There is another thing is at work something good is at work. JD Do you devote So, I am going to PE I have been overseeing Thomas, because I have been working on three other projects at the same time. If we the money they offered us is totally inadequate. say that we want a certain amount of money. JD You are in a better position than I PE I just want to tell you that akillg a hard line, because it is a very tough project and we are doing three sites. I am trying to negotiate, so dont only pay $90,000, then of course, we, you, are completely underpaid. PE Yes, WE. TL We need to make a sysmuch you quarry, etc, then operate with that system on the material _ to define a system of relationships, II of Paris, the trace of the foundation e pieces which are so that you of this site in the foundation d that become active presences. of the abattoir, the trace of We want the wall to go from trace with the people at

of the wall itself. This is what can change from site to site. It is important that we see They will be convinced by the totalization of the his-

ect; a different way of looking at history. JD We will have to make a compromise

will have to show them the historical aspect of the construction. will be the face of the compromise.

On the other side, we should break this totalization. PE In the end, what we do must chitecture must be built. They say, "If you mainor it will not be architecture Some of my critics attack my attitude th _ its metaphysic - then how do you know what it is that you dre maintaining?" JD Well, maintaining, if you refer Ie thing. PE In a way, it means dislocating dislocation between an-architecture the whole thing. JD You must the dislocation, mai ning the difference. , you cannot choo is the "difference in site changes the specific archaeology. and architecture

of the word maintenant, does not mean rnaintaini

ne or the other. That is why I believe that what we are doing is both Oerrida,'Point de Folie, Maintenant architecture," a discussion 1986. in La of dis-

between" that we are trying to open up, without saying no to anything, 2. See Jacques is a French idiom close to the English colloquialism "hitch," as in "a

s/ide, Folio VIII, AA Publications, architecture

1986.3.

Contretemps

hitch ill the plans." Plays on contretemps

were used by Oerrida in his Trento lecture, in which he developed An of Absence,

through weaving together various meanings of the French, maintenant

for example, now, but also maintainBox 3, AA Publications,

Peter Eisenman, Moving Arrows, Eros and Other Errors -

73

DRAWINGS 54-62 August 1986

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DRAWl NGS 54-62

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DRAWINGS 54-62

76

TRANSCRIPT

FIVE THOMAS LEESER

JACQUES DERRIDA, PETER EISENMAN,

NEW HAVEN, APRIL 21,1986 recncmber Peter's discussion with four elements at our last meeting of the levels and layers of time and place? Well. what I did was to set in Venice and Peter's project there. them through their four possible vertical per-

the site of La Villette, Tschurni's project, the site of Cannaregio

these four elements vertically, one on top of the other, and elaborated each horizontal level represent a di was created In which each element is rei and mater! column, but "Hter's scheme id or void. As you can er three "fictional" columns.

time as well as a different condition of solid and void, form and recepthe others in various conditions of past present and future, absence first column of the diagram, which shows Tschumi's For example, in the next condition, scheme and represents facts as they exist relative to the site. So, we will we have Venice as a future for Bernard's scheme is the influscheme. So in this permutation,

s scheme and Venice as absences, project and La Villette as the present for Peter's Cannaregio

Each column contains a different fiction, created by the different ordering of the four elements in the hori, three fiction columns represent the three sites

you can see, at each site there are always two elements in the present": one in the future and one in the past TL We also scale relations into the horizontal readings of th ich is not there exc in terms of the philosophic structure, s. JD What you call solids are.

? TL Things which come up,

is. ? PE That which is because rt does not yet

nd. JD And what you call receptacle as a trace. PE This has to be fine-tuned,

are not happy with, but at least we have moved to a point where we can work with it The IS something that you can play with now, because it is in a form you can underdoes not appear and that these remaining columns are the fictional transReality does not appear as such; this first column is reality. TL It's the missPE And present JD Where IS present? PE Always in the middle. The top row the case in the fictional columns, So in the second colwhile Venice at the top and Peter's scheme at the bottom TL Let me try to explain the operation of scale in this scheme. The first JD So, you are saying that the existing condition ,'ions of the existinq condition, PE That is correct in a way. JD And the rows are future, past ...

future, the bottom IS past, and the middle two are present
urn -', for example,

column shows the two sites and two schemes at real scale, whi Bernard's sch TL Look at Villette are at actu are 01 different scales. PE And thls b

interesting because, if you remember, if you scale up Bernard's scheme, or scale down ares In both schemes. At full scale, the squares are different sizes, but in the scheme cre-

mine, they are equivalent

column, we would blow up Peter's scheme until his squares are the same size as Bernard's. PE That is a superimposition

Eisenman as Tschumi. TL And the process continues like that It is not worked out in complete detail, but the basic operations and relations are there. You can see how in each scheme, each column, the various elements relate to each other in the various combinations of past, present, full scale, scale up and third column, Peter's scheme, at the top, is a future, while La Villette, notated at a different time. PE For example, at one time, the past, sent or the future, it would not. TL Which way to scale, up or down, project is superposed Venice, Paris, Tschumi and Peter d so on. So, for example, in the of something else; it would be would appear, whereas as at another time, the prethe relations of the schemes. So, in the fourth colwith, Peter's project and Bernard's

urnn, in which Peter's project and Venice are at real scale, Paris is scaled to, that is, superposed

with Venice. So, Paris must be scaled down and Bernard's scaled up. The line which separates the top two logics, the 1-2-1 of tense and the 2-2 of superposition relations and what is it

elements in the column from the bottom two can be seen as a ground line: the two on top are solids above ground, the two on the bottom are voids, below ground. There are two horizontal solid/void PE We should put that ground line in the diagram. JD A naive question. What do you mean by underground, 77

TRANSCRIPT physically? PE We will show you in the axonometric. cle, either past or present. It depends

FIVE negative form, has a reading as a

TL Everything that IS underground,

on how deep it goes into the ground. The present has voids and solids, the past has It is the future plan. The only part of Venice

and the future has solids. Perhaps we can find a better analogy, a better way to read the system diagram. Let's look at site one umn 2). Venice, which appears at the top, is scaled up, is solid and is the highest you will see is the canal of Venice as a wall, three or four meters high. Bernard's scheme, the second element in the column, is full scale, since it is in the present, and solid, but It comes only a little bit out of the ground. The notation we are using for present a little bit up or a little bit down. La Villette, the third element in the column, is also In the present tacle, as In its superposition permutation It is both the wall of Paris and the canal. and is a deeper void. In the next site these things will change In te in the next column. PE It is not important that anybody but as a small void. It is a and soon, as per of the notations that scheme, the bottom element In the column, is the scale, solid and void, registration, stands this scheme, ... JD ... and

will be seen as a text Walking through, people will begin to see the differences forms to use in the superpositions. But once the superpositions past, are elaborated

matter whether you read this or that as past or future; the time is only important in that it gives In solid and void at various depths, It does not PE What with ter to say that one condition represents another future. The whole idea is to see this as interchanging.

is that you see the notations perrnutatmq three is a drawing of Venice at full scale to La Villette.

, in different ways. TL I will show you the three sites. For site two (column 3), this funny thing IS that it looks scaled down the abattoirs of Venice, compared 'arisian abattoirs see when you scale Paris PE You get thi the abattoirs appear to be at the strange play of scale and realTL There is an intrinsic distortion. PE at this diagram, in which La Villette is scaled down to make

those of Paris, seem not to be at the right scale, but they are. If y the squares in Bernard's project the same size as those in Peter' The Parisian abattoirs are so much bigger than the ones in Venice

same scale. PE Which is nice. TL Yes, it is a reversal of reality and meaning

ity, as if half is always at the same scale and half not, as if something terrible has happened. get confused explaining

Of course how one knows this comes from how we key it. JD How they know. PE First of all, we have to be able to read it We even it to you. TL But is it important to know which is the reality and which the fiction, or is the Important thing to fabric, with the three . boom, boom, boom, of a larger scale which erases these other scales at each site. That's '. ed is the next layer ... something similar, tJes? Let's say the thr are like holes in a fabric and that the project as a whole an aspect 6,ements in each of the three sites would I do not have it clearly yet know the phases and transitions in the process from site to site? PE I see the whole project as a continuous sites as holes within it So, what I would like to see is a what I think is missing from this project at the moment that you read the three sites from. Do you see what I

entire park is also a hole in the same fabric. Therefore, what we do on these three sites of the same fabric and the three sites part of a schema underlying the whole thing. Thus JD I understand not only relate to each other at various scales and times, but also to the scale of the fabric. It's difficult

in a very abstract way, but why don't you explain the physical aspects. That would be easier for me to understand. say one meter. But as in archaeology, above the of
j

PE You have a ground plane, and you have these shaped cuts in the ground plane at a certain height, as well as objects above the ground plane at a related and conversely, therefore, the excavations the deeper one digs. the further into the past one moves, the past and the further into the future. So the negative pieces also use colored materials -

the solids of the future could be at a depth/height

eters. We can arrange it so people will be able to walk down into the red for the pieces that Tschumi and I As it stands now, everything is

as well as up onto the objects and walls.

shared, blue tile or gravel to simulate water and so on. If we color some of the solids blue, we would have a reversal of water and wall, This would be the physicality of the three sites, using the theoretical in the same scale relative to a human being. What we need somewhere the Tschumi/Eisenman scheme we've discussed. is a notation of one of the schematic at least in principle. elements, say one of

squares, that would be larger, at real scale relative to the actual park. This would break the boundary of the PE The first to be built is the site

scheme and relate it and the park to a larger fabric. JD I think I understand.

78

TRANSCRIPT

FIVE

JD What's in between doesn't matter? PE It doesn't matter at all TL We have to locate the schemes into each site; thing we could use, ' , , JD It seems that once you have finished your project, you'll have to surround it with a wall, made use of the ninety degree relationship between my Cannaregio project and Bernard's on their major axes, Two TL There are still a lot pieces on Bernard's actual major axis, so we will be able to use that in siting the schemes

Do you think that what will be missing on the terrain will be shown elsewhere? TL In a way, yes, In these two schemes the top of one and the bottom of the other, JD When you say "we show," you mean build PE Build, We might build what they have seen at another site, that that were missing there, and so on, We 'Jut ,JD S one scheme here and the bottom of another here, so we are supplementing, People at one of the sites may realize, seeing the same thing at different scales, different configurations, , as the fragments are similar, not the same, TL So you show all of the others. JD But first you have to E And at different scales, JD As a system. TL As pieces. PE You

TL And at different I see fragments, none of which is the baSIS for determining

. since people will have to reconstruct the whole themselves, will there be something which prevents closing the circle, something temporal or ... perhaps? PE What do you think it should be? JD I think something should either in a different way? JD So that under no circumstances can you have PE Erased. JD Something which should not only prevent you from totalizing but also motivate an infinite desire to

PE Start aqam To see if you can reconstruct

in your mind. TL We are not showing the reality. what we called tf\c existing conditions - the first column of the theshowing. JD Yes, the existing conditions, present conditions, scheme. PE But you could reconstruct that from elements. PE You the dimension of either present-past. you: mind PE Traditional architecture Classical ure out the quarry from the stones. TL Yes, but you don't know To put It in an abstract way, I would be interested in a way of or the past in such a way that they couid never be integrated into the totality as presentIn that way, the relationship to the future could be totally open; this could motivate the visitor to stop and read. provides a virtual perception always provided of the whole. When you walk through a Palladian plan, you schernatize it In its symmetries. The somatic memory puts these things

you don't have to walk through the whole building to understand architecture parts in different

places to allow the whole scheme to be put together. What iece that would provide an aperture, a kind of opening to Jacques is saying is that maybe there could be something in each This is a key point, I think This is where the concept of nowhere TL That breaks the circle. JD That would be left to ini same number of each type of quarried stones and IS a erasure could enter. For example. ne wanted to count the integers, each site would have the same number. What would of those stones. So Missing, or to the contrary? TL You mean misplaced? JD No, more than. PE More be very strange is If we took some stones? There you gol Yes, that is very interesting. We could add. We could say that the colored stones we have are red, gray, blue, for example. However, in one place you could have some extra green ones, or some missing pink ones so that you find more or less. TL I understand. But how do we go about it without, you know, just throwing stuff in? PE Without being gratuitous? JD No, no. At the Leave something, a fortuitous event. PE Yes, but how cannot predict. do that? JD That is a problem. does not prevent or close you? which could perhaps be moment there is nothing gratuitous.

P8I'haps you could make it possible for the visitors to do something PE No. not at all. I hear what you are saying, but I don't know how to out, are extrinsic to La Villette, or the abattoir of La Villette, and

The temporal dimensions, an ultra-memory

Tschumi an intrusion that gives you an Idea of someand ultra-future. PE In the proas you were sayPE Right

that was not there before. It could provide the visitor with a kind of promise -

we are doing there is a Tschumi, and a La Villette, past, present and future. We are adding an ultra-memory, :-'1 and ur-future. JD Which would be the same in the end. It makes no difference That is interesting -

before La Villette, and a future memory, a future presence after Tschumi. Our sites project back and forward into an ur-memobetween the ultra-past and ultra-future I think we could do it. TL I don't know how. JD Without disturbing this? PE Perhaps you would disturb it, a piece 79

TRANSCRIPT that ruptures the fabric. It could be something looming underneath,

FIVE taken on top of another photograph.

like a photograph

other than the material we are using. JD A ghost. We must not say that before La Villette there was simply nature; we need other artifact which is totally buried, totally invisible. PE I think we could do that. TL We could go to your work at Cannaregio, dig up something from its past. PE We need something like the slab in 2001. It had no meaning, no life. JD Something without meaning as an artifact; something which IS not nature. PE An unexplainable which is not a natural material. JD What is needed here is some heterogeneity. TL Out of proportion to the other elements, so that it makes no sens since It is totally heterogenous, it could become the focus. PE Yes. PE
oS

artifact. It could be out of a different stone or Something impossible to Integrate into the

TL It could also be in a different scale, distorting the scales. JD Much, much bigger or much, much smaller; very out of

the text, but at the same time, we should not make it too central

interesting is that it is very but we can read it." PE JD And this will be

of this text almost familiar to the VISitor. JD They would say, "We can read this place of the real signature. Some little something, read on the one hand as a combination In a sophisticated way, and then, in the or would be written. PE From which and

can read it and it doesn't bother us." JD And then there is this other, this uncanny other. PE of those three elements contextually ... expanding,

I don't mean names, but some signature would be there. So your work would and then as an exercise In where would this be "Id be something totally alien from which and towards which everything had that's very good, I think. JD Now, practically, cuts. I think we just have to try it. TL I think this piece

ated? PE Well, we have to make the site first. We have to be best just in the ground, on the surface, maybe. PE But it on the surface of the ground. Just suddenly, this flat metal. PE

TL On the surface would be nice, because it's not one of our schematic to him. Then it would be totally heterogenous. gram, chora, we took It and developed

options. It IS we could have Jacques put what feels ri

don't think it should be solid. It should not raise or lower. I'll tell you what we could do it, and now you add the heterogenous

It Will bring the final closure to the project, In the sense that we started with your element. It will be terrific. JD At least I'll make a sugdimen-

gestion, okay. Have we decided that this piece will be a flat piece of iron? PE Of stainless steel, perhaps. What do you think'! You decide on the surface. JD Everything else will be stone sion of such a thing? PE You will have to feel it, and size, the material we won't say anything. JD No, no. You the totally heterogenous began with the program, then we drew and had discussions the piece. I think it is perfect It gives us no responsibility. .fhe PE Stone and water. JD Now, what is the approximate choice of dimensions, It will only be a and various attempts at JD If I find something interesting, and the shape? PE Yes, the shape, the No. That finally closes the thing from as some sort of narrative, then we the last thing is M. Ie Philosophe draws I think it Will be good. I'll work on it

to the totally rational. If you think of the text that we are

80

CORRESPONDENCE ----------

Curieuse ironie que l'invitation de Bernard Tschurni a l'architecte new-yorkais Peter Eisenman et au philosophe francais Jacques Derrida. II leur dernandait de dessiner l'une des parties de son «pare urbain du XXI' siecle " a La Villette alors que, en un sens, Peter Eisenman lui avait deja apporte sa contribution. En effet, en 1982, la conception de son projet s'inspirait de celle d'Eisenman de 1978 pital de Venise datant de 1965, ni l'un ni pour la place Cannaregio, projet qui .ul-rneme se referait deja a celui de Le Corbusier po I'autre de ces deux projets n'ayant ete construits. urbain im§gulier de Venise. La premiere composante ou memoire » du projet d'Eisenman pour Cannaregio i et la prolongeait jusque dans I'cspace de la place voisine, conservant ainsi le Corbusier a l'etat de trace du passe et du futur. Suivant cette trame, Eisenman situa des objets; des blocs et dcpourvus d'echelle, des objets a la limite de I'architecture, anihilanl la relation classique de des batiments Enfin, une troisierne composanle, une diagonale engravee dans Ie sol de la place Cannaregio rspresentait Ie quatrieme aspect, la rnemoire enfouie sous terre, la passe inconnu et la possibilite d'.m surgissement du
e.

sugYou

nenthe from
1 we

futur inconnu. La projet de Tschumi consiste en une trame carree de 120 m de cote recouvrant la totalite des 55 ha du pare. A cette trame sont iuxtaposees deux diagonales croisees et une sene d'allccs courbes et d'espaces lrregulicrs. De merne qu'a Cannaregio, 33 bati.nerts ponctuent la trame, a La Villette sous la forme de " folies» de style constructiviste et de la taille d'une malson qui abriteront restaurants, cafes et au Ires equipements de loisir. . du pare, illeur sem,'Ci naturel que leur proposition Aussi, lorsque Tschumi demanda 11Eisenman et Derrida de de Tschumi. Cette nouvelle trame est de la rneme cons isle en une de Cannaregio rnooifie les mailles en sont deux fois plus grandes. Eisenman et Derrida placerent egalement l'axe de Tschumi : ils en firent la ligne generatrice de la rotation des o; nnisons ». Certaines de diagonal du projet venitien celles-ci sont enfouies pour evoquer I'idee de passe, d'autres au niveau du sol representen: Ie present tandis que la projection dans le futur est signifiee par la hauteur de certaines d'entre elles. Le terrain est concu comme un moule portant en negatif et en posit if l'empreinte du passe et du futur. C'est une fiction enlierement mineralc faite d'aciers corten et inoxydable qui se deroule sur un plan incline afin qu'on ne puisse la contempler que de l'exterieur : cette disposition offre une vue par-en-dessous des reliefs « en negatif »
du moule,

~aws

guratifs ; traces et Contrairement a celui de Cannaregio, le projet d'Eiscnrnan et Derrida l'interventioi1 de Tschumi ; et la part de passe reconstruction des anciens remparts de Paris, de I'abattoir qui existait sur subsistant dans son projet. Les superpositions exponentielles d'Eisenman rnettent en connexicn ces differentes sortes de passe, de present et de futur : Paris et Venise, leur projet pour La Villette et celui de Tschurni, Ie projet de Tschurni avec celui de Cannaregio et celui de l'h6pital de Le Corbusier : les anciens abattoirs de France et d'llalie, la vie ella mort, l'idee urbaine el l'idee de pare, la ville et la place, la maison et la folie. C'est seulernent lorsque Ie projet d'Eiscnman et Derrida et celui de Tschumi auront ete realises it La Villette que l'on pourra savoir s'il est possible de percevoir toutes ees dimensions ou bien si l'on s'est egan§ dans Ie non-lieu engendre par toutes ces entites simuitances, dans cette fiction de mernoire et d'avenir. JADE MERKEL

81

•
CORRESPONDENCE

AGENCE BERNARD PAPC DE LA VILLETIE

TSCHUMI ARCHITECTES 211 AVENUE JEAN JAURES

MAITRISE O'GUVRE GENERALE 75019 PARIS TEL (1) 4607 16 16

Hareh

25,

1987

Peter D. Eisenman 40 West 25 Street, New York, New York

10th Floor 10001

Dear

Peter:

A text you sent to accompany a publication! of your collaboration with Jacques De r r Lda for a garden at the Pare de 1a Villette has been called to my attention. Its author. Jayne Her ke L, states that the. concept of my 1982 project [or 1a Villette was inspired by (tls'j_n_ s p Lr a Lt de") s Cann a r eg Lo project of 1?78. To quote the phrasing of i t r oduc t o r y paragraph: que 1 r invitation de Bernard Tschumi a new-yorkais Peter Eisenman et au ph Ll.c s o p he francais Jacques Dcrrida. de dessiner 1 "u n e des parties de son ain du XXle sieele" ~ La Villette alars que, en un .)~ter Eisenman lui avail c1~ja appc r t e sa (?ffel, en 1982, la de son p r o j et; s'inspirait de c e Lke d'Eisenman de 1978 la place Cannaregio, ...
I_'

i'

architeete

The statement
a highly

is partisan

unfortunate, supposition.

even

When I requested that you be invited to design a garden at la Villette and Ln t r oduc ed you to Jacques Der r Lde , whose work had no doubt been of some. influence on your own, I expected yon to refer to your Caonaregio project, also structured on a point grid. I hoped, however, that you wou Ld know better than to fall into the trap of claiming sovereignty. Sd.nc e its 'l.nc ep t Lon , over the ideas in La date, my plan for the Bou Ll.cc for the. Circle .hav e wanted to claim "au t ho r Lt y" "eto discover its putative sources. To .aen said to be inspired bv others) of trees, Roberto Bu vo i sin and Conceptual point grid of Follies, Tchernikov for the architectural now Peter Eisenman for t he po Lnt grid ag at.n . Hithin t h t.: sertions, your specific allegation forces me to place the p Lan p r ecf.s e l y in the context of my 0",'11 production. point grid of students was at in 1977 in .Io yc e s Garden, a the Architectural Association
I

The first time I used the project done w'l.t b a group

and based on James Joyce' s _J;'_~.!!E!-_~~~r:t~~_:;;~_~,~_~. Joyce's Garden wa s published the same year in the Architectural Association Proj eets Rev Lew+-Long before your Cannaregio. The 36 points of the point grid we r e placed

lIn

Pare-Ville

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ifisseau

de

Pd.e r r e s ,

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82

CORRESPONDENCE

AGENCE BEr(t~ARD PARC DE LA VILLETIE

TSCHUMI ARCHITECTES 211 AVENUE JEAN JAURES

MAITRISE D'GUVRE GENERALE 75019 PARIS TEL (1) 46 07 16 16

aecor-d f.ng of London.

to the regular intersections Each point "..TaS the location

of of

an ordinance survey grid the 'r e s p ec t Lv e buildings

of the project's participant

de la Villette CornpetLt commod a tt on of diverse bu began specifically with e I absolutely Lon cd text as

T started to work on the Pare

1y brief also required the acdifferent programs and designers, ed en t of the 1977 Joyce's Garden. afore-

and publicly object to what appears in the a claim to "Ln sp Lr at Lcn'' by Peter Eisenman.

ne edn r t refer you to the now lengthy bibliography of writings dealing w i.t h the problem of ascribing priority Lo the use of such devices (and of which the grid might be taken as a paradigmatic in~ stance). But suppose that I wouLd pursue your logic. Should I then, in turn, say t ha t you r by my point grid in the Joyce s Garden ec ed enc e ? Should I argue that you r use ] Lt e r a r y texts as pr s (cf . Romeo and Juliet of 1985) was "{u sp-i.r ed " by my numerous projects based on texts Kafka, Po e, Ca Lv f.no , et; n in 1974? Or should I suggest that principle of sup figurative a r c b L> ter-.tural and landscape elements ts onwa rd s long preceded in 19808?
I

[ would not. It seems unfortunate that at a time when other es have rejected the notion of authorship and the unproblematized view of subjectivity that u nd erl.Les t t , ar c h-i t ec t.u r e , if we arc to judge from your example, should continue these. regressive practices. Dear Peter, a r c h Lt ec tu r e-o-and some of us in my g ene.r a t Lon-o-owe you a great d ea L. The quality of YOlU work, the o b s e.s s Lve and courageous architectural search which has been yours for over thirty y ear s is an "inspiration" for us all. It is to your credit that the pioneering you did, whether with the Institute or in your own work, has undoubtedly opened the way to a distinct archi teo You can claim all that. But you need not claim for yourself

RT: I.p cc : Jacques Derrida Hal Foster Ser g e Goldberg Jayne Merkel Hubert Tonka/Isabelle Anthony Vidler

Au r Lc o s t e

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83

CORRESPONDENCE

ROBERTSON 40 ucst 25th Street 212/645 '1100

Nev

York.

:.iE'W

£'1r. Ber:">3_rd Tschumi 3erna:;:_-c. TSC~:lli-:~i .?Tc~:i teats

Li:

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Dear

Eernard, be wr i t t.c n , for !1i.2 to

I am sorry that this b~t also chat it has

yo~..:. 1,\7211 kr.ow 6i:=;:-::2'/28 oy the has a r i s er: 2S E. res111t

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0::

~iSUllderstanding c as ua I an« erroneous

only nas
n-utue L m.i s r e p r e s e nc ed

for

2-

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which 1132 character, even wor s e , i:.

in~e~t and tje content

~ou speak p:eclsely

pressed 00a15 for re~r2t that today
I

of unprobleffiatize6
is nc autllor 2nd the to call

"authorit
I

nowever,

aesthetic object). It was cur intention from t~e into ~uestion by writing an a~chitectural t2~:t ~hich O?Crat2s with the idea o~ the author in such 2 way as to d2stabilize them. Since bo~h and I, in our respective fiel~s, have desta~ilizations, I cannot between us whict wo~l~
else. I bo Li eve the Gutset of this exercise those ve~y thc~es

(for

e:{a~?le,

C0

84

CORRESPONDENCE

1-1r. jse z-ne rf 'I's chun.i 15 ,]_987

Pacre

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s uppc r t c once r-n i.nc er ch: tee Lure , f o r to La.

r,.y voc r

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85

MODEL 2

86

MODEL 2

87

MODEL 2

88

MODEL 2

89

TRANSCRIPT JACQUES DERRIDA, PETER EISENMAN,

SIX

JEFFREY KIPNIS, THOMAS LEESER, RENATO RIZZI

NEW YORK, JANUARY 10,1987 PE Let me see if I can review the materials and explain where we are. The wall is made of marble, though not the original one grounds of Paris are in Cor-ten steel, which is pre-rusted. The other wall is luminous, as if it were diaphanous, unreal' How thick is this wall? RR As thick as It is high PE You would sense it as a battlement form is the same? PE Yes. In the summer, this place will radiate a trem is no penetration of the perimeter at the moment; the issue is wheth problem If we did. PE The problem is the holes, but I don't think the If we were required to have a handrail, it would destroy everything entire project off ground level so that the edge would form an embankment. perhaps onyx. JD JD And the material of the

amount of heat. JD Can the visitor enter? PE No, .hould allow it. RR We would have a security and enough to requir JD It will have to be lit. gOing to have several p It has a lot of features is total, we should

by framing it into reality. An JK It seems to me you to walk around. PE You could walk in the

lems realiZing this. PE We could deny access. JD Then it would just be a spectacle would Invite people into it. JD It really is a

sites, but not this one. JD It would then become a holy space. PE It looks like an outdoor amphitheater. would be safety problems for children make the railing. But let's use a railing from within the world of one crossing, cne path, prescribe one way of going into it? PE JK You could cover the holes with glass. PE They are not that have to demarca three feet. I think

So many things about it call for going in and under. PE What about PE If the prohibition Maybe we could use a moat? JD Could we organize that path. There are too many holes. The moat is like a curtain risby raising or lowering the

have to have a rail for the moat. JK If you have a moat, however, the rail becomes a passiv which would create a strong object presence. scheme then a railing disappears.

ing to the scheme. PE We could have a moat and elevate the whole scheme within it. Then you would have a moat and a solid wall If we build a moat and create strong edge conditions Without those conditions, the railing will appear as part of the project. JD I must say that I am very to enter without danger? PE I have an idea. Can we take the grata second datum? RR It cannot be anything which people out. JK No, he doesnt that it is any like the idea consider grills like the lyre over the

disturbed that you are talking about making this into an object. PE As soon as you prohibit access and create a barrier, the project becomes an object. JD Is there no possibility of allowing ing of the lyre form Jacques has created to cover the could trip on. PE And a guard is no good either. Jacques of a prohibition acting to make the work an object, worse, a sacred object. PE I think holes. JK It would not be allowed. PE I don't know that I am convinced it. It couid be an unknown territory We are not prohibiting

people from going on It because it's a precious object, but because it's we really need your position on this. For my part, it makes no contract this was RR

dangerous. JD You remember that we thought that people really should be able to enter to look at this wonderful object. PE You see it as a wonderful object, but we are not sure that they will. Jacques, difference supposed whether they enter to be a space In ;ople participated PE What about a duck What I don't want to have to do is fill in the holes. JD But In the preliminary

l~1::

I have ItI Why not fill the holes With water? They were water In Venice Je
1

That makes It more dangerous

a park? RR It's true In the Luxembourg

Gardens they have them PE

Nobody falls in. It relates to the Venice project and SOl c: {/ .rr problem

RR I don t think the water helps With the security problem, under water. JD That would be good. PE If we subnothing you would

they would worry about someone falling in. TL How about putting everything public pool doesn't require a railing, especially

merged the project, we could do so in such a way as to have some of the pieces emerging above water TL Like a large pool. PE A if it's not deep. TL We could raise the lip. PE Yes, a little lip notice. You could walk out on those few objects which were above water. JD Where would the water be? PE The water would be everywhere, very shallow, like a beach. Jacques, what do you think about the idea of the water? JD It's a good idea. TL Peter, if we

90

TRANSCRIPT

SIX aspects of the project, RR Or we could

two feet from the edge and then fill it with water, no one could gain access. PE No, that makes an object of it; it JK People could walk out a little bit onto the pieces to see the submerged creating an object of if? PE Renato is suggesting allow the public to enter the underneath, mtculations, level beneath, and prohibit entry onto the surface above. JK But how do you stop people from entering onto the an Interesting possibility. He is saying that we can prohibit entry to the surface as a ceiling where you would see the inverse of everything

the solids and voids of the surface, in inverse. JK You could then use a railing or something to prohibit PE It also echoes the chora idea of the It's a wonderful idea, the reverse There are some problems, of course or too low. JK object there IS no "real" object

surface without the object problem, since you do allow access into the project only have access to the imprint, not to JD Yes. it's a It's better than submerqinq

you could see some of the surface elements from within. It would be a certain passage would permit movement below, the rest would be unexcavated see the ceiling as the park and people outside through the excavations and other penetrations in the surface. PE

not be able to enter some of the features below, but they would be illuminated through glass by the sun or lights. The holes would be glass to let light in. JK Wherever there is a negative form, you would be able to see it, lit either with sunartificial light. All of the negatives of the surface are positive beneath, about and we got it by accident I JD Is it possible technically? I P be? PE Maybe two meters. JD They would see ice versa. PE Jacques, Technically, it's no problem it's just what you have JD How wide would the sur-

of the negative forms, and through the transparency,

e, the reverse of what was above. We will have to work on the I ive/neqative: vice versa. PE I think it's terrific; I think it works. Now, not be able to see some of the things beneath because of the gradient. PE That's right, you

see only parts. It would be labyrinthine. TL How do you imagine the park authorities will react? PE I don't think that's a probVVewill say this or nothing, Okay? PE Yes, this or nothing. RR This is potentially expensive. JK No, the interior finishing and detail will add expense; it will have to be air-conditioned. we not changing accidentally seems we finally get to the theme of chora, the impression, we return to your text, Jacques. JD It is the the beginning. We couldn't have thought th been
IlOW

PE The extra costs are only the JD We will need another model,

anything on the surface? TL There is a lot more work to do. PE Yes, but it's much better JD Much better. by g to the underside. It IS very interesting how in the end, and between architecture and phisolution. PE It PE Jeff, e. PE That's the difference

ical problem stimulated the philosophic

itecture and a textual architecture. to build, not how to avoid

Traditionally, the question at this stage would have on one of the gardens of his scheme for

. That is very Important. [Frank Gehry arrives, Peter Eisenman Introduces]

the project to Frank. JK Bernard Tschumi invited Peter and Jacques to collaborate his deconstruction of origins, and of the relationships

La Vilette. As you know, Peter has long been Interested in many of the themes of Derrida's work, which is how we got together. PE between objects and man. JK While at Harvard, Peter and I began prethen went on to elaborate these mary meeting to lay the groundconcept in Platos oeuvre found in his together for a Iy problematic work on textual processes for architecture into a process called scaling. After Bernards work. Jacques Titreeus. The concept, based on some of these ideas. He and

invitation, Jacques, Peter element in all

then sent a text on which he was working concerning chora, is the one non-Platonic

works. It deals with the place that receives the world becomes absolute. JD It is a place

as made by the Demiurge, in which the PlatoniC division between the sensible and the intelligible the world. Plato says that chora is unthinkable, used to motivate a scaling exercise. As they proceeded, that it can only be conceived

without space, before space and time. The Demiurge, looking at the Ideas, copies them and inscribes those copies into chora, thus of as if in a dream. Chora receives everything with Jacques, who criticized variwhile always remaining virgin. It is very difficult. JK So, chora became a kind of theoretical program which Peter, Thomas and Renato they stayed in frequent communication 91

TRANSCRIPT ous ideas, made suggestions at the same time consistent, Tschumis and eventually even contributed but breaking. the Inexorable scaling logic which Peter had constructed.

SIX that form into the scaling logic, so that It around the relationships of authorship, between Pal-is time and place. With the source material for the analogic La Villette project and relationship

this form, which is roughly a lyre and is derived from chora,

Thomas then Incorporated project

In brief, the scaling logic was constructed

La Vi!lette project and Venice and Peters Cannaregio that, because

which provided

else. Among the Derridean themes, chora notwithstanding, You have to understand Cannaregio project Tschumi/Eisenman the relationship are very analogous. one. So we inscribed We were

that they strove for was a subversion particularly thinking to cross-play

of some formal similarities, therefore my project into Bernard's

in the grid, Tschurni's

the Plato/Derrida

between Derrida and Plato. Jacques was worried

.ircular loqic of scaling was too closed, so he break. JD I drew a I music JK Then Thomas and its placement not be merely arbitrary though it breaks source material. JD Se, in brief, that is how we got to

that we somehow break it. So we asked him to conceive of and for what we did together was like a musical event. We cal! it choral workwas very close to the shape of the site, so the form could be incorporated the logic because it IS not contained ically dangerous in the to the usual architectural this object. JK Yes, that gets us to today. Now, to the vrsnor However, If you a railing you engage a philosophical ing it. JD You create a spectacle,

text. chora is compared to a sieve which separates things into the world of the sensible and intelli

the tollowinq problem

the project as it stands in the model might be physsolutions to problems of prohibiting access, such as solution into an object, a precious object, by fl-amto the spirit of the concept of

problem, because you in a series of underneath.

instead of a space in which Do we maintain the Renate had t Essentially, he conceived After many considerations,

chora, JK So, today we have been engaged

at the expense of safety, or in which all of the

achieve safety at the expense of the philosophy? hibit access to the surface but allow penetration philosophy.

of a basement condition

positive features of the surface would be negative, and vice versa. In this we can guarantee safety while being consistent with the Now the amazing thing is that not only does it solve the Immediate problem, but it also re-engages the poetics of Platos an archichora by creating a condition of imprinting by being the negative of itself in itself. "It" IS neither the positive nor the neqative, yet at with this hypothesis. JK So in solving without compromise both the philosophy were of rather than and the architecture. It IS important to

the same time both. JD Printing it is more of a struggle tectural problem created by the philosophical note that this only happened because traditional

PE You know, Jacques, Jeff the difference to Intrude into the disuntil that point at which I said you had between architecture and philosophy

has an interesting feeling about us. He wouldn't say this to you; for some reason, he and I have failed In this discourse because we retained our boundaries, I didn't work philosophically, JK What happened JD On course; we both stayed on our own turf. You wrote the program, chora, arid I stood there. I worked on the design, we talked together, but somehow we didn't transcend. got to make some formal contribution. remained intact, even though the relationship boundaries between the well. JD I'm the philosopher, nor you architecturally, condition was that the contractual

are the people most interested in breaking it It speaks, I believe, to an important aspect of 'ciplines I agree, on the other. problem. . PE Its partly an aspect of personality as remained more or less intact. JD Our I didn't think your not from within. I hope that per se. profor example. you're the architect; PE Our boundaries

within ourselves, yes. PE You write

I liked your essay on maintenance,

essay on Tschumi was that enlightening: morning that I'm not a Demdean -

it was as if by someone who remains outside of architecture,

when you write about this work, it will be more from within. Jeff always says I read these books, but I misread them. He said this I do not apply your work to architecture. less unconsciously My work has nothing to do with deconstruction I misinterpret Your work is like a stimulus for me, but not a doctrine for application. tection. Jeff would have been happier had I operated If anythinq, your work as an unconscious

in our relationship,

I think. JK No, I would not. It is true, I

92

TRANSCRIPT that. sophisticated as you are, Jacques, of the "real object," in particular the architectural symbol for your formal contribution as he is in his understanding mplications of "decentering' of man's relationship

SIX of the notion of text there has always been a naivete about Peter, as he well knows, As as he IS to underFor instance, It is evident in the choice of the sieve or lyre object and as devoted

In your interpretation object

to this project. I have a similar complaint with the architectural

for that object and that relationship, he is still quite given to a nostalgia for traditional form they are really going to have to confront each other for this to one another, The important JD Well, of course, with a motive not so much related to you and Peter text and object

possibility of your two working together arose, I thought

instead, we alluded to each other, JK What you did was to respect and accommodate of an occurrence that is important, but to the relati Peter is not an en philosophy and architecture,

First of all Jacques, I am too much In awe of you, Frank Gehry and was very hard for me to confront you, JD It is really a problem factor, JK I believe that the more that each of the center, fails because of the both with capital letImplifor

for whom I hold enormous respect, but we can work together beoause we are not afraid to rap oration I am in such awe of you that competency, 'ocuses on decentering PE No, I do not think so, JD But at least that is a oontributing rather, each of you has

your respective fields, the more nostalgic and sensitive you become to the metaphysic ethlng like "my discipline itecture and of Philosophy 1m speaking of the definition of A'

a question of your respeotive competence: up ItS own boundary conditions" have both argued wonderfully Yet content ;igree its announcements, Jacques, that

that there are philo economy of those a certain avoidance,

plications to the margins of Philosophy and architectural es has operated

strongly in this project. So It is fascinating

you speak to those silences, to what you think we avoided? PE I You have to understand that I am always putting myself in some always do, PE It IS how the architect "Well, I don't have In relationship to but to belittle yourselves

Jeff finds it difficult when I am putting myself down, JK That's what architects with someone he thinks might be more intelligent technical competency, tile other discipline, I don't know much about architecture" You both vie for opportunities have independently

JK On the same note, however, you hear Jacques saying

and in doing so, claim your own territory of expertise. and has

Not only do you say, 'Till not part of your disciptine,'

qesture you are also saying, "You're not part of mine." Yet yO' has been to the detriment of your respective disciplines 'ITJch as it tries 10 break it down. gOlnq to put this lyre thing in, back from a meeting with Jac go back over a cou

come to recognize that that gesture in that, even

motivated exclusions. This project participates

inqs. Do you remember, Thomas, when I first told you we

out of your mind. He went crazy, Jeff. He said, "Are you crazy?" I remember, Thomas said, "I qot this thing from Derrida, you're not going to put this in!" JD You know, I JK I

could anticipate this reaction. Not only from him but from you PE I said we were going to put it in, I never said we weren't I die The thinq about IYI'e, is that there is a double meaning the homophone liar [laughter] I have developed

you what you were going to do. You said, "Well, I am going to find a part of the project as it stands, and call It a lyre" PE Well, a great affection JK I think the in the kind I don't for Jacques during this project. If we were to do another project problems I have discussed would get worse. JD We have external affection could be described as an outcome of this work, but it's also of vvay of which I spoke earlier, the outcome, at least temporarily, Icave been a crisis of the ego, so to speak cannot happen. Or hoping think the error made here was yours or Jacques for a dissertation I am certain we could ove these boundaries,

s, many constraints, JK Your that In a way prohibits. Had you engaged Iy have been much less affectionate, There would

One doesn't come out of such a crisis with affectionate feelings the error was made by someone like myself expecting on the exclusionary contract between architecture

you understand.

something to happen that It's similar to the

and philosophy.

ssue Valery raises in the Eupalinos in which Socrates, in his youth, tries to decide between becoming

an architect or a philosopher.

Anyway, I never said that I thought you two werent willing to be on the line, That was never a question. TL Peter is different now. PE 93

TRANSCRIPT I am I see now that I am doing my own work. JK The conversations Jeff IS always Interested In. In a sense my project produces

SIX

I have with both of you, Peter In reality, Jacques in Iantasv, Of Grammatology he says he

the same. They concern my feelings that you say you are doinq one thing, but I see you as doing something else. PE That's the i a monster. JK Likewise, in Jacques' going to back up from the extreme Implication of his own work. Elsewhere, in "White Mythology," I think. you say that you have It is in architecture

tially created a monster. Am I misquoting you? In my thinking, the monster you have created is architecture. JK If that is the case, how is it that you have a sense of backing away and operating thing interesting in that regard. When he does a project, he systemati meet. He thereby systematically project, he determines announced ensures that, under his own terms, t its critical reception, which and prescribes

the realization of your work becomes monstrous. JD Besides which, we cannot confirm that it is a monster. we cannot recognize within the margins? You see, Peter does y.§)stabllshes conditions and goals which are impossible s,;ect will fall. In this way, deflects attention fr with the work.

intentions, he defends his project from interpretation PE I think Jacques I feel very

and response. PE Not by inten

It always operates unconsciously. els where Jacques is operating.

has the same problem; people do not and kinship to you, Jacques,

like Richard Rorty can outwit Jacques by remaining at a certain level of Jacques' work which has nothing to do with the deeper a friendship because your critics trivialize your as do mine. You can't win with these critics. beneath the self-evident one can expect to internalizing and externalizing knowledge. going to get me no matter what JK Jacques, once at a lecture, you said lurking. From the audience, The disturbing impl which due to you ;)J/ityor so members. The is the I asked you what was the secret lurking that question currently concerns the difference

the self evidence of your growing popularity. The way I am thinkiii:;' .c;";'·ln might be called externalization, implication a process which includes, called the "undecidable,"

that today we can speak of a new category,

is that by virtue of your work there can be no category of the undecidable;

the defensive externalization

of just such a category. JD It is a very important problem. We made a big step today. PE That is really very fortunate. I did not this model go to France without your seeing it Thomas, I am still not convinced be great What I am saying. that if we take what Jacques said about the and the lyre that we have it right It could be sand. It could be stainless steel and sand; maybe the goods are sand. See, that would

94

WHY PETER EISENMAN WRITES SUCH GOOD BOOKS Jacques Derrida Translated from the French by Sarah Whiting conceals a quotation from another well-known title. It lifts from it a fragment, or rather, a person. By transcribing I write such good books" (Warum ich so gute bucher scbteibei, fragmentations, play with identities, to undertake into the third person, by summoning Nietzsche's bear witness, I take it upon myself to clear Eisenman of all suspicion. to do this? But who will declare the right? ' the Ecce

It is not he who speaks It, it is I. I who write; I who. fol-

persons and their titles, with the integrity of their proper names. Has whose name? By abusing metonymy as much as pseudonomy, ngs all at once, or one by one. But I will not reveal them all, and

the threads, I will to begin with reveal neither the route, nor the conndition for writing good texts? Whoever assumed from a simple reading of my title that I was going the paranoia of some Nietzsche of modern architecture has got the wrong address. First I propose to draw attention to Or want to suggest with the allusion to Ecce here. But as with which Eisenman himself knows how to play with titles. We will take a few examples, First of all, there are the titles of his are made up of words. What are words for an architect? lila! Eisenman is, in the realm of architecture of art or politics, are they in one of Eisenman's works in its last chapter, 'Del' Fall axiomatics of architecture Where would one find its remains or Its disquised worthy of being pre It IS unnecessary to . Em Musikanten-Problem" Allzumenschliches, if you like, the most anti-W an creator of our time. What is Wagnerian archi-

today? These questions will remain unanswered

not posed? I propose to speak of music, of musical instruments II the tact that Ecce Homo is, above all, a book on music. and not Finally I propose to note that the architectural to cite another chapter traditionally value, the very everything to the of Ecce Homo. has been relalthis archiIS the measure of man, that which proportions Mitzwei Fortsetzungen,'

that Eisenman begins by overturninq, "Menschliches,

human all too human, scale

at the entry to the labyrinth of Moving Arrows, Eros and Other Errors, one can read "Architecture human scale," For the "metaphysics an anthropocentrism, of scale" which Eisenman's "scaling' attempts to destabilize It is a human, all too human, desire for ' gives to 'on and the

is, first of all, a humanism or dimensions, presence and origin, from Ecce Homo,

" and "origin." Even in Its theological and aesthetics "In destabilizing

lecture of originary presence returns to man under the law of the value that architecture eVOI, simply conclude that such an

is also called into question." (Ibid.) We should not, howLet us not borrow themes or philosophemes palettes where colors it is from the beginof all, to which some

but rather some figures, some staging

phes, and then a lexicon, Similar to those computerized

may be summoned up by a keystroke before beginning to type So, I take this phrase which in a moment you will read on the screen (I writs on my computer and you know that Nietzsche was one of the first writers in the world to use a typewriter); of Ecce Homo. It concerns would wish to forbid entry a "labyrinth," the labyrinth of knowledge, his very own, the most dangerous Erkenntnisse ein thread in a "man wird niemals in dies Labyrinth verwegener

" only a little further on, there is a d." Between these two phrasMeere") and to those gelockt wird").

citation from Zarathustra, and then an allusion to those who hold "an es, one may also pick out the allusion to those bold searchers who whose souls are lured by flutes towards all the dangerous brief, let us agree that what we retain from the chapter whirlpools

terrible seas" ("auf furchlbare

Seele mit Flaten zu jedem Irrschlunde to architecture,

'Why I Write Such Good Books" in Ecce Homo is only this the seduction you will say, and not my

of music, the musical instrument, the sea or the abyss, and the labyrinth. A strange introduction subject

especially to that of Peter Eisenman, In which hand must the thread be held? Firmly or loosely? It is true that this IS doubtless of the aleatory and the necessary. When I met Peter Eisenman, I thought 95 again my naivete

I would rather speak of meetings, and of what meeting means, what takes place at the intersection of chance and program, that discourse would be my realm

Jacques Derrida and that architecture "properly speaking" places, spaces, drawinq, the silent calculation. stones, the resistance of themselves of discourse, realized. grammar, would be his. Of course I was not so naive; I knew that discourse and language did not count for nothing in the activity of and above all in Eisenman's. and semantics. two writings, I even [lad reason to think that they were more Important than the architects confronted the very conditions which, far from distancing I did not know to what extent, and above all In what way, his architecture Nor did I then know why Eisenman is a writer are Inscribed, one of those "theoreticians"

him from architecturc

and making hierarchies.

(who, as those who do neither say, write more than they build), on the contrary opens a space in will the one Within the other, outside the traditional
riC'

the verbal and the architectural,

Eisenman writes "with words" IS not limited to a so-called theoretical what this object has been or what It ought to be. Certainly this aspe something that does not simply develop as a meta-language be characterized encounters tion of architecture without submitting on a c

Oil the architectural

object, which attempts to but there is still something

as another treatment of the word, of another "poetics." It to the order of discourse.

if you like, which

Our meeting was a chance In the conception of what was called, by only liquids and solids, wat

must have been programmed

Within an abyssal agenda which I will not take the risk of analyzing hcre. Let us garden in that it does not involve any vegetation, of the Inscription whichirnpnnts

at the point when Bernard Tschumi proposed to both of us that we collaborate a "qarden" in the Parc de la Villette, a rather and minerals. I will not elaborate here on my ma of what Plato says about the architect-Derniurqe, digms, etc., all this seemed to me to merit a kind of orous and necessary, inevitably rigorous) to all the text's poetic, have resisted centuries of interpretation But once again,
I

which was a text on thc chora In Plato's Timeaus. The abyssal in the place the Images of

do not wish to speak here of

on my side, of the

tion that I put forward, even as I put myself forward with the greatest misgivings. not only takes great plcasure, Jubilation, in playing with language, inductive, role in a

What is important here is what came from the at the meeting of many idioms, Without certain

side, from Peter Eisenman. As things seemed to have begun with words and a book, I quickly had to accept the obVIOUS. with languagcs, chances, attentive to the alea, to transplants, this, and without giving It the principal, ting up this play of the letter as a determining motifs appropriated to the slip pings and derivations of thc letter. He takes this play seriously, if one can that one hesitates to call properly or purely architectural, never exists for Eisenman) er he had translated. transferred

oriqiri (such

he does not leave It outside the work, and transformed a limitless palimpsest, with "scalIden-

For him, words are not exergues. [ will cite only two ing," "quarry" and "labyrinth,"

by himself and for himself from my "Chora" text in a first architect I insisted, and Eisenman fully agreed, on the need to gl

common work a title, and an inventive of those effects of legitimizing

title at that one which did not have as its sole function the gathering of meaning, the production category under which the administration without name, if not ment of the project itself, the name. Three conditions seemed to be required. and work as possible. Such was the "classic"

tification which one expects from titles in general, On the other hand, precisely because what we were making was not a garden (the of La Villette naively classified the space entrusted to us), but something else, a place yet eleof the to a thing that would exist in any case without ItS name, outside title should be as strong, as subsuming and as economical rential function of the title and the name. 2. That this title, while desigmotion, so 3, That the verbal structure should mainnecessary to give it a name, and with this naming make a new gesture, a supplementary

natinq the work from outside, should also be part of the work, imprinting it from within, so to speak, with an indispensable that the letters of the name would participate gin or a principle. in this way In the very body of the architecture.

tain a relationship to the elee of meeting of such a kind that no semantic order could stop the play, or totalize it from a center, an oriChoral Work, this was the title invented by Eisenman. Even though it surfaced at a moment when long discussions and the principal schema of the work, this title seemed to have imposed itself all of a had already given rise to the first "drawings"

96

WHY PETER EISENMAN WRITES SUCH GOOD BOOKS but also as the result of calculation discursive and architectural, from a construction No arguing, no reservations were possible The title was perfect 1. It names cashion, by means of the most efficient and economic reference, a work that, in its own way, interprets, in a dimen-

a reading of the platonic chora. The name chora is carried over into song (choral) and on which it imposes from within a new dimension: choreographic, musical and vocal at To give way to.

With the final /chora/, chora becomes more liquid or more aerial, I do not dare to say more feminine. 2. It even song, are thus inscribed choreographic) cf the perfor the plurality of someone giving in the work, taking their place within a rhythmic composition.

is. in either sense, to make an architectural allusion to Plato's chora Eis nsists In inventing by written by both of us in concert

event out of music, or rather out of a choir. 3. In addition to being a musititle is more than a title. It also draws a signature and the mark of a Just done what he said he was doing or the counter-signature. The performance, the felicithe form of a signature that not only signs for both of us, but enunHe gives me his signature in the sense for many

al signature, the co-signature collaborator

the "power" to sign in his place. The work becomes musical, an architecture of spontaneous creation In the unconscious

011cedifferent and harmonized ocean

In their very alterity. This comprises

a gift as precious as it is petrified, a coral. As if water depths of some shared or labyrinth. The law is at the same time respectis only water and stone should be used for this I still hear It now, like the masterpiece

allied itself with minerals for this simulacrum

Ecce Homo: the abyss of depths without bottom, mUSIC, a hyp and above all, no vegetation. And this was wh so close to silence: the ic wand is also the a firecracker. And h ral sense'

mocked. Because the commission that we had been given also prescrib

been created with a single blow, with a wave of the magic wand, an orchestra conductor. ould I not be reminded of the Music for the Royal Fireworks, of the

of fireworks, the expl

we always admire in Handel. The elements are thus brought to light, to in

to the air earth, water and fire -

as in the Titneeus. at the moment of the formation of the cosmos. But it is impossible

an order, a hierarchy or principle of deduction

or derivation to all the meanings that Intersect as If from a chance moeting, in (because this was also a way not to sign while signing). r choreographers, in this labyrinthine "These superpositions but at the same is

more than ten letters, sealed, forged (coined) in the idiomatic forge (forgery) of a single language. The "title" is condensed the seal or the initials of this countersignature time. intelpi(-llations or, one might say, other performances, We might draw out som to describe the routes called the site of the castle of Juliet Like the same time palimpsest

opens up the whole to which it seems to belong. Thus there is no capital role to be played by this title, itself open to other other or even other voices. Totalization threads, other cho certain of his works skein, Eisenman often refers to the

appear in a labyrinth, which is located at

Romeo and Juliet, it is an analogic expression of the unresolved tension between fate Like the work it names, the title Choral Work is at the in my and Tschurni's "Follies"). In French, in a phrase donner carriere is also to give of carriere which at once gives nd it in the
0

and 'lee will. Here the labyrinth, like the castle sites, becomes a palimpsest" and labyrinth, a maze of superimposed text, The slaughterhouses free rein to appropriate itself graciously,

structures (Plato's text, the reading of It that I have proposed

of La Villette, Eisenman's project for Venice (Cannareqio) a space with a certain joyful insolence. Lite

that remains untranslatable,

one would say: the title se donne carriere. Cerriere means quarry.

offering up its own resources, but belongs first and

the very space it enriches. How can one give In this s a part? What is this strange economy of the gift? In as a mine of matea part of the whole en carriere, (as quarry)

How can one, while drawing from it, enrich the totality of which Choral Work and elsewhere, Eisenman plays the game of constituting

rials to be displaced tor the rest at the interior of the same ensemble. The quarry is at the same time inside and outside. the resources included. And the structure of our title obeys the same law, it has the same form of potentiality, of an immanent invention. Everything is found inside but it is almost unforeseeable. chord/strinq. This musical and choreographical architecture the same power: the dynamics I must pluck another or cited them in Itself, For my second example,

was going to point towards, as if it incorporated 97

Jacques Derrida both a poetic genre, that is, the lyric, and the stringed instrument that corresponds given and we had progressed in the preparation not solely discursive, theoretical or 'philosophical" to this genre the lyre. The title was of Choral Work, when Eisenman suggested that I finally take an Initiative that He wanted, with

(I place this word between quotation marks because the reading of the cnora thought, but we will leave this aside) of two soloists, a writer and an architect. If the architect signed and (to my mind)
fJU00C:>l..lt,S

I propose perhaps no longer belongs to the realm of philosophical tion, our choir to be more than the simple aggregation nated," de-signed

with words, I should for my part project or design visible forms. On returning from New York, in the Thinking of one of the most enigmatic d within the Choral Work itself, as the memory of a f:,rse would be possible In any totality of which it would
C'"i" in effect,

wrote Eisenman a letter containing a drawing and its interpretation. doche or an errant metonymy ure only a detached have been impressed

Plato's Timeaus, I wanted the figure of a sieve to be Inscribed on, i~ It would be errant in the sense that n nor ruin. For the Ti was characterized piece: neither fragment

utilizes whs

no doubt calls

metaphor, that of the sieve, in order to describe the way in which the place (the choral filters t on it "The nurse of becoming by the qualities of water or balance In the i others that go with them, and its visual appearance that filled It, no part of it was in equilibrium, motion to them. And its contents were in ket or similar implement for cleaning corn. in stantial on another Timaeus 52e-53a.1 so the four basic constituents was therefore varied: but as there was no homogeneity

but It swayed unevenly under the impact of their motion, and in turn communicated of movement and separation, rather like the contents of a winnowing the solid and heavy stuff is Sifted out and settles on one side, the light and were shake receptacle, which acted as a kind of shaking and fascinating by found this passage to be provocative here. As if to give a we envisaged when we piece, without oriqin the still in order to break the circle

This is not the place to explain why I have

son of the very resistance It offers to reading. This is of little

letter to Eisenman on the airplane, a fragment of which you will permit me to cite "You will. apparent destination, reappropriation, historical configuration, against the palimpsest, as if it were a fragment arriving, without indicating any totality (lost or promised), And nevertheless

together at Yale: that in order to finish, I would 'write,' so to speak, without a single word, a heterogeneous the triad of the three sites (Eisenman-Derrida, and enigmatic

Tschumi, La Villette); to break, in short, the totalization, metonymy,

so that it would be open to a general decipherment." should "recall" by chance if one

I thought that, without giving of all, of chora. of

assurance on this subject, that some detached

rebelling against tho history of the three sites and the reading I am undertaking

it, something, the most incomprehensible

myself, today, that which I find the most enigmatic, Timeaus is (we can talk about this again later), the allusion to the figure of the sieve (p the chora as sieve (sieve, sift, I also love these English words). There is In the Timeaus

a work or braided cord, 52e), and allusion which I do not know how to

interpret and which nevertheless seems to me decisive. It speaks of something like movement, the shaking (seiesthai, seien, seiomena), the tremor in the course of which a selection of the forces or seeds takes place; a sorting, a filtering in the very place where, nevertheless, the place remains impassive, Indeterminate, amorphous, etc. It seems to me that this passage in the Timeaus is as In one or three examples (if there are three, then erratic, as difficult to integrate, ~"'Qeprived of origin and of manifest telos as that piece we have imagined for our Choral Work. "Thus , 'formation': the passage from the Timeaus, on the chora, and in your Cannaregio nor horizontal. an extremely solid frame that would resemble at once a with the filter (a telescope or a photographic acid bath, or a machine which has Tschurni, La Villette). As

I propose the following approxi~r ,8 'representation,' with different scalinqs), a gilded metal object (there project) to be planted obliquely in the earth. Neither a grill, grid, etc. it would have a certain relationship fallen from the sky having photographed

web, a sieve or a grill (grid) and a stringed musical instrument (piano, harp, lyre?: strings, stringed instrument, vocal cord, etc.). As or x-rayed -- filtered an aerial view). This would be both an interpretive and selective fil-

ter which would allow the reading and the sieving of the three sites and the three layers (Eisenman-Derrida,

a stringed instrument, it would announce the concert and the multiple chorale, the chora of Choral Work. I do not think that anything

98