Architecture as Metaphor: Language, Number, Money

Writing Architecture #1

by Kōjin Karatani, Sabu Kohso (Translator), Michael Speaks (Editor)

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.

Genres: Philosophy, Architecture, Japanese Literature, Economics, Language, Theory, Nonfiction

246 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Kōjin Karatani (柄谷 行人 Karatani Kōjin, born August 6, 1941, Amagasaki) is a Japanese philosopher and literary critic.

Karatani was educated at University of Tokyo, where he received a BA in economics and an MA in English literature. The Gunzō Literary Prize, which he received at the age of 27 for an essay on Natsume Sōseki, was his first critical acclaim as a literary critic. While teaching at Hosei University, Tokyo, he wrote extensively about modernity and postmodernity with a particular focus on language, number, and money, concepts that form the subtitle of one of his central books: Architecture as Metaphor.

In 1975, he was invited to Yale University to teach Japanese literature as a visiting professor, where he met Paul de Man and Fredric Jameson and began to work on formalism. Starting from a study of Natsume Sōseki, the variety of the subjects examined by Karatani became so wide that he earned the nickname The Thinking Machine.

Karatani collaborated with novelist Kenji Nakagami, to whom he introduced the works of Faulkner. With Nakagami, he published Kobayashi Hideo o koete (Overcoming Kobayashi Hideo). The title is an ironic reference to “Kindai no chokoku” (Overcoming Modernity), a symposium held in the summer of 1942 at Kyoto Imperial University (now Kyoto University) at which Hideo Kobayashi (whom Karatani and Nakagami did not hold in great esteem) was a participant.

He was also a regular member of ANY, the international architects' conference that was held annually for the last decade of the 20th century and that also published an architectural/philosophical series with Rizzoli under the general heading of Anyone.

Since 1990, Karatani has been regularly teaching at Columbia University as a visiting professor.

Karatani founded the New Associationist Movement (NAM) in Japan in the summer of 2000. NAM was conceived as a counter–capitalist/nation-state association, inspired by the experiment of LETS (Local Exchange Trading Systems, based on non-marketed currency). He was also the co-editor, with Akira Asada, of the Japanese quarterly journal, Hihyōkūkan (Critical Space), until it ended in 2002.

In 2006, Karatani retired from the chair of the International Center for Human Sciences at Kinki University, Osaka, where he had been teaching.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Elif Sena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Neden 5 değil de 4 yıldız? Çünkü çok dallanıp budaklanmış kitapta konular. Odağın okurken biraz kaysa dağılıyorsun. Bu sebeple 4 yıldız. Ama bunun dışında bence baya ufuk açıcı bir kitap. Birbirinden bağımsız konuları birbiriyle ilişkilendirerek ele almış Karatani ve iyi de incelemiş.

Sokrates'ten Kant'a, mimariden dile kadar çok farklı kişiler ve alanlar var kitapta. Hepsi hakkında sorgulamalar yapıyorsunuz. Bu konuya bu açıdan bakmamıştım dediğim çok nokta oldu. Beni sorgulamaya ittiği noktaları bu kitabı da beraber okuduğum sayfalarca iyilik mimarlık kuramı okumaları ekibiyle konuşmak için sabırsızlanıyorum. (kitap hakkında yazacağımız rapora https://medium.com/@sayfalarcaiyilik linkinden ulaşabilirsiniz.)

Kitaba gelecek olursak kitabın adıyla çok alakası yok gibi geliyor başlarda. Ama aslında çok iyi bir noktadan adının hakkını veriyor. Kitapta ele alınan bütün konular, alanlar ve kişiler hep bir tarafıyla mimariye değiyor. Ama burada mimariden kasıt gerçek bir yapı inşa etmek gibi anlaşılmasın. Kitapta bir dil inşa etmekten, matematiğin temellerini atmaya kadar mimariyi başka başka alanların içinde görüyoruz. İnsanları birbirine bağlayan temelleri de bir mimari sayabiliriz. Metafor olarak ele alınıyor yani. Bu başta bana biraz değişik gelmişti. Ama farkına varınca okuması çok keyifli hale geldi.

Şimdilik yorumumu bu kadarla bitirirken kitaptan dikkatimi çeken bir kaç cümleyi de sizlerle paylaşıyorum:

"Mimari, ortak kurallar olmadan oluşmaya koşullanmış bir iletişim biçimidir - tanımı gereği, aynı kurallar dizisine uymayan öteki ile kurulan iletişimdir." (41)

"Bütün mimarlar bilinmeyen öteki ile yüzleşirler." (153)

[Sümeyye Yıldız]

Mekan okumalarıyla değerlendirip okuduğumuz kitap. Kafamın bu kadar karışabileceğini düşünmemiştim. Tıpkı bir yabancı olarak bilmediğim bir dil karşısında geçirdiğim afallamaya benziyor. Kitap da böyle zaten. Karatani felsefe tarihine yeni bir okuma biçimi getiriyor. Bağlam olarak aynı zemine oturamayacak isimleri ve düşünceleri bir araya getiriyor. Bir = (eşitlik) kuruyor ve onu tanımlıyor. Bu anlamda matematik, felsefe, para, dil ve mimari bu eşitliğe yerleştirilerek yeniden ele alınıyor.
.
"Tasarım, Wittgenstein'ın "oyun" terimine benzer; kendisinin de belirttiği üzere, oyunda "oynarız ve - kuralları da oynarken oluştururuz." Hiçbir mimar sonunu tahmin edemez. Hiçbir mimar bağlamdan bağımsız değildir.Mimari, yapanın kontrolünü aşan bir yapış ya da oluş olması anlamında, kusursuz bir olaydır.
Metafor Olarak Mimari - Kojin Karatani
Sf 40"

[Jessica Schad Manuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kojin Karatani’s “will to architecture” surfaces in disciplines ranging from literature and psychoanalysis to anthropology and mathematics.

Read more: https://bookoblivion.com/2019/11/14/k...

[Simon Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and difficult read, the first two sections were really interesting approaching this idea of a will to architecture. A will to formalisation? very specific use of language that makes the last third of the book very technical and less exciting to read.

[Vinay Arun]

I’m not sure I can intuit the through-line between the very thorough exposition of various formalisms (fascinating, very helpful) and the finale with Marx (I anticipate my own interest to develop here) but I appreciate it. Came from Tupinamba — I think Tupinamba provides more forceful material to cull from for now

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A huge amount of valuable insight, clearly written in a strange style that is part stream of consciousness and part logical mathematical precision.

[SirriCan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Çük gibi kitap. Postmodern eleştiri metni nasıl yazılır dersi gibi.
1-Yapısalcılık eleştirisi
2-Pis kaka kapitalizm
3-Husserl Strauss Heidegger aslında demek istedikler
4- İktisatla ilgili sikimsonik bir iki bilgi
5- Bu bölümde sürekli alıntı kasıyoruz
6- Presokratikler her şeyin farkındaydı abi ya
7- Dil edilgen olacak muhakkak
8- Son bölümde konu ne olursa olsun iktisat önermeleri koyacaz unutmayın

[Selman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dört buçuktan beş.