arkitrave :: log

What we know, or what we would know if it were simply a question here of something to know, is that there has never been, never will be, a unique word, a master-name. This is why the thought of the letter a in diff?¬¨¬©rance is not the primary prescription or the prophetic annunciation of an imminent and as yet unheard-of nomination. There is nothing kerygmatic about this “word,” provided that one perceives its decapita(liza)tion. And that one puts into question the name of the name.

Derrida has died, at the age of 74, in Paris. The father of deconstruction, he invited us, in addition to being thoroughly confused by his writing, to consider binaries that we accept as fact (silence|sound, light|dark, absent|present) and not just reverse them but turn the entire system on its head. His influence in architecture can be seen in the work of Eisenman and Tschumi, and his influence in film, art, and literature is too great to even scratch the surface here.

In many ways, my thesis is a sort of deconstructivist look at silence; I’m suggesting that silence can be materially present, and functioning as silence only relative to a multiplicity of musical materials. The translation of that idea into architecture is what I’m working on right now.

So long, Derrida. The world needs more writers who make us bang our heads against the wall and THINK.