Statement 38

Using the word ‘architecture’ promises a sense of cultural alignment with the shadow of its long history, even though it is a history without a terminus a quo. Was it the first brick, the first thatch, the first strike of an ax to a tree, the first mound, the first palace, the first application of geometry, the first line of demarcation, the first basket, the first deity positioned in a cave, the first boat, the first dance, etc.? The word ‘architecture’ washes over these ambiguities and, if anthropologists and historians do not have the answers it positions them in the domain of ‘theory.’ The fog of uncertainty disappears into foundationalism. ‘Theory’ sets to disclose the teleological project of architecture over and against its semiotic void. Unlike the Platonic ‘good’ that begins in a teleological imaginary and ends in the confusion of its operative violence. ‘architecture’ starts in a confusion of cultural practices only to want to ‘end’ in a teleological imaginary.