Architecture as Metaphor: Language, Number, Money - Softcover

Karatani, Kojin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262611139 ISBN 13: 9780262611138

Publisher: MIT Press, 1995

Synopsis

In Architecture as Metaphor, Kojin Karatani detects a recurrent "will to architecture" that he argues is the foundation of all Western thinking, traversing architecture, philosophy, literature, linguistics, city planning, anthropology, political economics, psychoanalysis, and mathematics. Kojin Karatani, Japan's leading literary critic, is perhaps best known for his imaginative readings of Shakespeare, Soseki, Marx, Wittgenstein, and most recently Kant. His works, of which Origins of Modern Japanese Literature is the only one previously translated into English, are the generic equivalent to what in America is called "theory." Karatani's writings are important not only for the insights they offer on the various topics under discussion, but also as an example of a distinctly non-Western critical intervention. In Architecture as Metaphor, Karatani detects a recurrent "will to architecture" that he argues is the foundation of all Western thinking, traversing architecture, philosophy, literature, linguistics, city planning, anthropology, political economics, psychoanalysis, and mathematics. In the three parts of the book, he analyzes the complex bonds between construction and deconstruction, thereby pointing to an alternative model of "secular criticism," but in the domain of philosophy rather than literary or cultural criticism. As Karatani claims in his introduction, because the will to architecture is practically nonoexistent in Japan, he must first assume a dual role: one that affirms the architectonic (by scrutinizing the suppressed function of form) and one that pushes formalism to its collapse (by invoking Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorem). His subsequent discussions trace a path through the work of Christopher Alexander, Jane Jacobs, Gilles Deleuze, and others. Finally, amidst the drive that motivates all formalization, he confronts an unbridgeable gap, an uncontrollable event encountered in the exchange with the other; thus his speculation turns toward global capital movement. While in the present volume he mainly analyzes familiar Western texts, it is precisely for this reason that his voice discloses a distance that will add a new dimension to our English-language discourse.

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From the Back Cover

In Architecture as Metaphor, Karatani detects a recurrent "will to architecture" that he argues is the foundation of all Western thinking, traversing architecture, philosophy, literature, linguistics, city planning, anthropology, political economics, psychoanalysis, and mathematics. In the three parts of the book, he analyzes the complex bonds between construction and deconstruction, thereby pointing to an alternative model of "secular criticism", but in the domain of philosophy rather than literary or cultural criticism. As Karatani claims in his introduction, because the will to architecture is practically nonexistent in Japan, he must first assume a dual role: one that affirms the architectonic (by scrutinizing the suppressed function of form) and one that pushes formalism to its collapse (by invoking Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorem). His subsequent discussions trace a path through the work of Christopher Alexander, Jane Jacobs, Gilles Deleuze, and others. Finally, amidst the drive that motivates all formalization, he confronts an unbridgeable gap, an uncontrollable event encountered in the exchange with the other; thus his speculation turns toward global capital movement. While in the present volume he mainly analyzes familiar Western texts, it is precisely for this reason that his voice discloses a distance that will add a new dimension to our English-language discourse.

Synopsis

One of Japan's leading literary critics, Kojin Karatani is perhaps best known for his speculative philosophical works that, ranging from Kant to Nishida to Wittgenstein and Derida, are the generic equivalent to what in the West is called "theory". Karatani's writings are examples of a distinctly non-Western theoretical tradition. In "Architecture as Metaphor", Karatani examines the relationship between archtecture and philosophy, literature, linguistics, city planning, anthropology, political economy, psychoanalysis and mathematics. Specifically, he tackles the recurrent "will to architecture", which he argues is the foundation of all Western thinking. In the three parts of the book, he shows the necessity of construction, deconstruction and complex, secular construction/deconstruction. Because the will to architecture is practically nonexistent in Japan, Karatani must affirm the architectonic, which he does in the first section using a method based on formalist/structuralist linguistics, anthropology, and mathematics.

He then explores the limits of formalism by reading the work of Jane Jacobs, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and Gregory Bateson against city planner Christopher Alexander's model of trees and semi-lattices. Finally, Karatani pushes formalism to its limits by reexamining the deconstructive implications of Kurt Godel's incompletness theorem.

Edition details

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0262611139
• ISBN 13: 9780262611138
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 246