Chris L. Smith

“Text, Textiles and Technê”: On the Barthesian Myth of the T-shirt

Abstract As a form of cloth and clothing, the T-shirt “speaks” at once about the “seen” surface of materiality, of imagery and of embodiment; and about the “unseen” depth of cultural disposition, of socio-politics and of commodification. The T-shirt in this respect is considered a text, a Technê of productive knowledge, and read as the textility of both thought and matter. This article discusses the “mythical” reading of the T-shirt with specific reference to the semiology of Roland Barthes. The discussion begins with the proposition of the T-shirt as material culture, the T-shirt consumed in such a way as to articulate the complex signifying fabric of cultural systems in the practices of everyday life. The “system of object” of the T-shirt in this regard is perceived as an activity consisting of the systematic manipulation of signs. We then discuss the relationship between material culture and semiology; and how the T-shirt may possibly relate to Barthess notion of “myth.” The Barthesian myth suggests the production of the “second-order language” of the T-shirt. The consumption of the T-shirt in this sense is considered at once ontologically social and ideological. This becomes a basis for exploring the mythical reading of the T-shirt using two T-shirt “works of art”: the “T-shirt painting” of Untitled (Jimi Hendrix) by Richard Prince (1992-3); and the “designed T-shirt,” the “Tunku Abdul Rahman T-Shirt” by Pop Malaya (2007). It is argued that both T-shirts suggest a very particular mythical reading, i.e. of Americanization and of counter-Americanization. This mythical reading prompts the dialectical conflict between the “face and surface” of the T-shirt. We term this the “(sur)face of the T-shirt.” This article therefore paves the way for possibly linking textile studies of the T-shirt between fashion, the human body, and the sociologic study of mass culture.

Flow: architecture, object and relation

This paper – like those following it in this issue of arq – focuses on the shifting notion of ‘flow’ and the significance of that notion for the practice, critique and theorisation of architecture.

Skateboarding with Roland Barthes: architecture, myth and evidence

This paper explores the notion of myth as a specific form of evidence and evidentiality of architecture. This exploration is conducted with specific regard to two key texts: the first, a philosophical text, and the second a text of architectural theory. As such, Barthes’s text: Mythologies firstly published in 1957 and Borden’s text: Skateboarding, Space and the City: Architecture and the Body published in 2001 are explored. This paper suggests that the role served by Barthesian myth in respect to language is similar to the role served by skateboarding in Borden’s exploration of the city. It is suggested that both myth and skateboarding serve as evidence of the instability of objectivity in language, everyday life practices and architecture. We thus argue that the notion of myth will chart a new dimension of contemporary architectural thinking and prompt more possibilities in interlinking design research between architecture, the human body and the sociologic study of mass culture.

Architecture, Cigarettes AND THE Dispositif

This paper aims to explore the concept of the dispositif and develop arguments as to its value in reconceptualising the social function of architecture. The notion of the dispositif is derived from the writings of Michel Foucault and is explored in respect to the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. The notion of the dispositif of concern emerges from Foucaults concepts of an apparatus that manages relationships of power between different bodies and organisations. Foucault considers the dispositif to be at once object and apparatus – a dynamic tension that is well recognised by theorists of architecture as a potentially productive condition. It is upon this dynamic tension that the present paper will focus and present an exploration of Giuseppe Terragnis Casa del Fascio as an example of an architectural dispositif.

Text and deployment of the masochist

The term ‘‘deployment’’ was first used in respect to discourses of desire by Michel Foucault in The History of Sexuality: Volume 1 (1978). He defines deployment in terms of the habitual discursive environments and social structures into which desire, pleasure, lust and love are placed and the manner by which sexualities exceed the discursive fields they occupy. Foucault suggests that a society actually deploys the sexuality of its subjects. This paper traces one such deployment: the deployment of the masochist across two critiques. The first is a critique of the psychoanalytic interpretation of sadomasochism; and the second, a critique of hylomorphism. The critique of sadomasochism focused upon is that which occurs in Gilles Deleuze’s extended essay ‘‘Coldness and Cruelty’’ (1989). The critique of hylomorphism focused upon is that made by Deleuze in collaboration with the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus (1987). It is a critique that Deleuze and Guattari extend from the work of Gilbert Simondon and his texts L’Individu et sa genèse physico-biologique and L’Individuation psychique et collective of 1964. The intention is not to compact masochism and the critique of hylomorphism into a discrete entity but to consider how the deployments of the masochist allow it to serve as what Deleuze and Guattari were to call the conceptual persona [personnage conceptual] for both critiques. It might be noted that this topic is approached in a manner that relates to a disciplinary background for which the negotiations of form and matter are near unavoidable. In architecture, architectural theory and other disciplines engaged in ‘‘tectonic cultures’’ (in making and constructing) notions of fetish, flesh, sexualized and gendered bodies have been a determined preoccupation over recent decades. The locus of these notions, however, seems to be that of a negotiation of spatialities that occur in relation to form and function. The body of the masochist is of interest not only in its intensity as an image but because it negotiates the concrete of reality like no other: It privileges an alternative locus for an alternative spatiality; that which occurs between form and matter. For those of us who deal in specific concrete ‘‘technologies of the self ’’ the body of the masochist is a gift.

Architectural Wounds: Teufelsberg

Abstract The decaying structure of the National Security Agency (NSA) Field Station Berlin recalls voiceless conflicts, political posturing, and grandiose magic. The structure stands atop Teufelsberg, a man-made “Devil’s Mountain.” Teufelsberg itself stands atop an Albert Speer-designed military academy. The NSA Field Station was silenced by the untimely arrival of notional peace. This site no longer indoctrinates young men with ideological manifestos, nor does it whisper airwave secrets for Allied Intelligence. The geodesic radomes are dormant, the Mountain itself a mere ghostly depiction of a spymaster’s lair – of now absurdist attempts at societal order, escapes and cycles perpetuated. This haunting architectural remnant is at once a resilient monument and an odd gestural specter.