HOW REACTIVITY AGAINST A CULTURE MEANS ENSLAVEMENT TO IT

* The following is an adaptation, in a different format and with a few slight edits, of something I handed out today at a local church I’ve been attending. I hope it is still meaningful here for others, even if it is, to some degree, “out of context.”

“The facts have shown us that the illness that seized civilized Russians was much stronger than we ourselves imagined.”

– Fyodor Dostoevsky, in a letter to his friend Apollan Maikov on Jesus’ healing of the Gerasene demoniac as inspiration for his novel Demons

Here, we see a conservative Russian state TV host spontaneously using “Western” dance moves from the pop culture film “Pulp Fiction.” Further, as can be seen in the full video, HERE, he is doing so IN IDENTIFICATION WITH Ukrainian President Zelensky. Solovyov’s identity was here partly defined by the enemy with whom he is tied together in a state of tension.

“My wife came out and said, ‘How do I look in these jeans?’ I said, ‘Thank you, Jesus, for my smokin’ hot wife.’

– Mark Driscoll in his Mars Hill series called “Vintage Jesus,” which can be heard at 7:25 of “Driscoll’s t-shirt ministry” on Youtube HERE

I see myself in Mark Driscoll and praise of his “hot wife.” His commentary was followed by a pregnant pause that was filled by a big smile of his and followed by jovial laughter from the audience. I am his audience.  My desires and aspirations are formed the same way his are. And, I am constantly tempted, in that formation of my desires, to enact them in such a way that sacrifices care for power. I once screamed abusively over the phone at a woman who I had been interested in, and in whom I had invested many hours of time relating to, when she ghosted me. Her and I hadn’t violated any of God’s commands. We had “been pure.” As it turns out, however, my idol was being revealed. She was Eros to me, Aphrodite, a false goddess. And, in the confusion and pain out of which I lashed out in anger, I was experiencing judgment for my idolatry. I learned my idolatry from somewhere. It is an idolatry that is predominant in our culture, and which we see at work in Mark Driscoll’s ministry.

So, is it any surprise that he built up Mars Hill on the image of strong masculinity and “family values” and that it then crashed when his abusiveness was revealed? Discerning Christian women did not seem surprised. See, for example “Why I’m totally not surprised by the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast,” by Cecily Paterson  (link HERE). He is still being abusive at his new church in Arizona, by the way. See “THE TRUTH ABOUT MARK DRISCOLL” on the Vince Manuele Show via Youtube (link HERE). We see these same dynamics at work in John McArthur’s church, which prides itself on “family values.” See “Former Elder at John MacArthur’s Church Confronts ‘Awful Patterns’ of Endangering Abuse Victims,” by Julie Roys, Feb. 9, 2023  (See link, HERE).

Reactivity against a culture means enslavement to it.

In the face of – and in reaction against – modern secularism and humanism, I can also identify with the Fundamentalist affirmation of miracles and scriptural authority. I used to call the Enlightenment the “endarkenment.” For me, this was a reaction against vacuous formality, mechanical monstrosities, and prideful presumptions to scientific and technological mastery of the universe. I saw these as worthless sacrifices of time and care built into previous practices involving and requiring human touch and relationality (such as in ancient masonry, for example). So, I can see part of myself in the shoes walking on a path of scriptural literalism

My reaction, however, took a somewhat different shape from that of the Fundamentalist. In the face of technical disenchantment, I was enchanted by Gnosticism. As it turned out, my draw towards Gnosticism was shaped by my own Christian up brining in the first place. I had been taught – whether implicitly or explicitly, or both – that this world is impure or evil, will be burned up, and that we will spend eternity transcended higher in a disembodied and “purely spiritual” heaven. All the while, I was blind to the actual story God is telling and into which He is inviting us. I was incapable of tending to my viscerally embodied responses and inviting God to reshape them in His image. Why? Because the solution to any problem was transcending it.

Reactivity against a culture means enslavement to it.

I can also identify with Mark Driscoll’s affirmation of “family values,” including around the problem with abortion. Sexual promiscuity strikes me as degrading and evokes instability. A part of me can also identify with Driscoll’s warnings against homosexuality. After starting my nursing career, I worked for about a year as a server at Olive Garden. When a young man who was a fellow server, we’ll call him Brian, wore bows on his wrists (and sometimes eye liner) at Olive Garden, my body viscerally reacted against it – without thought or reflection. I had a hard time recognizing this, because my lifelong habit had been to transcend the solution to any problem. Transcending it meant interpreting it through the lens of “God clearly says,” so end of discussion. How am I supposed to react? Does it matter?

For Paul, however, there was no such thing as homosexual identity. “Homosexual practices” in in the 1st century Roman context were more about power and status than a person’s sexual orientation (see Destroyer of the gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World, by Larry Hurtado, and The Patient Ferment of the Early Church, by Alan Kreider). What if part of the reason men were able to be sexually stimulated by the prospect of “homosexual practices” in the first place, in that context, was because their identity, and thus also their desire, was formed inside a culture governed by hierarchical power structures? Paul’s challenge to “homosexual practices,” at least as much as anything else, was actually about Jesus’ subversion of Roman hierarchies by, as king of the entire universe, dying shamefully on the cross at the hands of abusive Powers (Phil. 2: 1-11).

Paul’s visceral response to Roman sexual practices was formed not by abstract, transcendent rules but by Christ’s kenotic love. My response to Brian came to light one night when he was obviously and visibly upset that the new manager, who was a Christian male, used his power to force Brian to remove his bows from his wrists. Brian, by the way, was 6’-8” tall and well over 300 lbs. And, at any given time, the Christian male manager was literally the only person in the building bigger than him. This was when I realized that my visceral response to Brian’s bows was because he presented a challenge to my own identity and socialized formation as a male inside a culture governed by hierarchical power structures (see, for ex. “Growing up in Pornland: Girls Have Had It with Porn Conditioned Boys” – link HERE).

Reactivity against a culture means enslavement to it.

For Paul, not only was there no such thing as homosexual identity, but there was also no individual identity in the first place. This past week, on Wed., I walked out to my apartment’s parking lot and saw a sticker on my car saying it would be towed by Saturday if my expired tags were not updated. The purpose of the realty company’s use of the tow truck is to prevent unused cars taking up parking spaces needed for residents. This rule did not at all apply to me. The application of such a sticker was also a change from the previous practice of my apartment complex, which relied on interpersonal knowledge of which cars are unused in our parking lots. When I learned the nature of the change, and when I realized that my realty company likely had a contract of mutual financial benefit with the tow truck company, I did not react well.

There was other stuff going on, too, but my body viscerally and without reflection interpreted what was happening as my individual freedom and dignity being sacrificed to mechanical rules universally applied. I screamed at the ladies in the apartment office and slammed the door shut behind me – only to find out later that there is an interpersonal mechanism in place right on their desk that prevents the wrong cars from being towed, if I but just go talk to them. God’s story is about interpersonal relating and desire, the formation of community. In my individualist reaction against “the culture” of mechanical bureaucracy, I was incapable of enacting God’s reign of relating to the actual women in the office in accordance with Christ like love. I tried three times today to go to the office and apologize. Unfortunately, no one was there. I will try again next week. In any case, I view this episode in my life as a microcosm of white Christian evangelical support of Trump in concert with literally deadly reaction against what they interpret as the “group think” of “sheeple” (i.e. the 1/6 insurrection attempt).

For Paul, not only was there no such thing as homosexual identity, but my visceral response in affirmation of our individualism was foreign to him. In Paul’s context, “homosexual practices” were not a free individual choice of identification with a sexual orientation. See, for example, “Capitalism and Gay Identity,” by John D’Emilio, – who, by the way, identifies as gay. Part of D’Emilio’s argument is that Capitalism, in its ideology of free individual choice, its increased economic prosperity and independence, leading to migration from countryside to city (said countryside where homosexuals were more shunned and less tolerated), and contributing to the growth and formation of cultural communities inside cities, including homosexual ones, all facilitated not the very existence of homosexuality but its increased proliferation in society. In other words, our current cultural climate regarding “homosexual practices” is not merely or only a product of universal, free individual choice but, rather, at least partly, of contingent social and economic forces through the course of our history for the last 150+ years.

Also, empirically, according to anthropological studies, most every people or nation on earth through the course of time has had such sexually or gender ambiguous people living among them. They have usually lived in their own community, somewhat separate, or “exiled” from the rest of the people. See, for example, “The evolutionary paradox of homosexuality,” by Tom Whipple, published May 9, 2018, in BBC Science Focus (link HERE). The scriptures even have and address folks who appear as sexually ambiguous. And, it is not to condemn them with rules against their practices. Isaiah 56: 1-8, referred to as “the gathering of the outcasts,” is fulfilled in Acts 8: 26-40 in the story of Phillip and the Ethiopian eunuch. So, if “God created us male and female” is a legitimate literal, scientific, or technical reading of the beautiful poetry of Genesis 1-2, then where did Cain’s wife come from in Gen. 4: 17 (for more on this generally, see The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate, by John Walton)? In our blindingly idolatrous identification with historically contingent images of what manhood means and looks like – as in my response to Brian’s bows – we can’t see what God is doing in His story, even though it’s right in front of our faces in the scriptures. Our reactivity against “the culture” renders us incapable of participating in said story of God, to which we are blinded.

Reactivity against a culture means enslavement to it.

In my former life as an Architect, I helped design the relatively new Carter Machinery building in James City County. We designed it to have a pattern of relating the weight of the land to the light of heaven, folded up inside a rhythmic pattern of relating between charcoal grey brick and yellow metal cladding. It was a design-build collaboration with the owner, Carter Machinery. In a key spot at the front of the main building, where the pattern for which we aimed was most readily to be revealed and able to be read viscerally in an embodied response, Carter changed the metal cladding to the brick. This destroyed the intended affect. Why did Carter make this move? To make the building look more expensive, and to “raise the value.” So, in accordance with capitalist logic of valuable possession of material objects as spectacle, our attempt at reconnection with the earth was lost. Well, I did not know any of this until I visited the site one Saturday afternoon. When I saw what they had done, I screamed so loudly and for so long that I lost my voice.

I returned home exhausted and fell asleep. After praying and talking to my pastor at the time, a scripture came to mind, seemingly not of my own accord. It was the image of Shimei throwing rocks at and cursing David, in 2 Samuel 16. The image, seemingly from God, helped me to realize that I felt like rocks were being thrown at me, and that I was being cursed. It also helped me to be viscerally changed by David’s response. What was it? “The Lord has told him” to do it (v. 11)! What if, in the Carter Machinery building, “the Lord told them to do it”? I eventually realized that capitalism’s hierarchical structuring of reality had shaped me to aspire towards the top of said hierarchy by revealing my artistic talent for all the world to see. The capitalism I blamed was the capitalism I had become.

God, however, was inviting me to become a sacrificial offering of such idolatrous self-identification. God was instead drawing me towards practicing Christ-like love in service to others. In my aspiration to make the story of God’s union of heaven and earth appear (Rev. 21), I had been blind to God’s path to making the union of heaven and earth appear (John 12: 24). In my blindness, I viscerally reacted against being prevented from seeing.

Reactivity against a culture means enslavement to it.

Years later, I now work as a hospice nurse.

Speaking of desire for connection with the land in the face of (capitalist) exile from it, the scriptures are full of cultural allusions to this that we (in our capitalist relating to land by means of taking possession of it as a distant spectacle that is cut up into plots of ownership) might tend to miss. Consider Peter, Cornelius, and the “great sheet” with “all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air” that Peter was told to “kill and eat” (Acts 10: 12). According to Willie Jennings in his commentary on Acts 10, in that cultural context, the different animals of the lands that sustain different peoples become representatives of said peoples. The different animals that sustain Jews and Gentiles represent for them their different ways of life and historical origin stories in relation not only to different lands but also to different gods. So, why would Peter have resisted the Word presented before him? Peter resisted, because it was a visceral matter of his Jewish identity that had been distinguished from other peoples by YHWH Himself! For Peter to even step foot in Cornelius’ house was to be defiled, to be rendered unworthy of entering the Jewish Temple for worship in the way he was accustomed. For further reference on this, see N.T. Wright’s What St. Paul Really Said, The Challenge of Jesus, and The Climax of the Covenant.

In the scriptures, we also see, “in the country of the Gadarenes,” Jesus’ casting of a “Legion” of demons through a herd of pigs and into the sea. Significantly, this story is set in a Gentile domain. According to Ched Myers’ Binding The Strong Man, at issue here is not simply the Jewish refusal to eat pork. This is not a story about Israelites following of a transcendent rule of God for their dietary practices, over and against Gentile lawlessness. A “Legion” was a highly disciplined, well-trained, and heavily armed body of infantry soldiers of between five and six thousand men. They were a formidable Power. Rome was a formidable Power occupying the land God had given to Israel. For a people living adrift under political exile in the promised land, the image of a “Legion” oppressing a Gentile man in his own region can become an image that reinforces the nature of the “sick culture” the Jews resent. This is to say that an entire herd of swine rushing headlong to their death in the sea at the hands of a Jewish prophet is an image steeped in cultural antagonisms. Even still, the town shows up at the graveyard confronted by a inexplicably healed family member. Why would they not have celebrated? Why do we imagine, instead, they would have asked Jesus to leave?

The story of Saul and the Amalekite animals in 1 Samuel 15 might be of some help towards answering that question. In terms more native to Ancient Near East (ANE) culture than to ours, the Amalekite defeat is Israel’s feast. Agag’s capture is Saul’s monument. Amalekite shameful bloodshed is sacrifice to Israel’s victorious glory. The making of Agag king of the Amalekites into a slave is the affirming of Saul as master. For more on such bronze age practices in Mesopotamia and the surrounding region, see The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by David Graeber and David Wengrow (and Walter Wink’s Powers trilogy). They go in depth in discussing such patriarchal signs of authoritarian monarchy as the “monument to himself” that Saul built after shedding Amalekite blood.

If we are still wondering at the meaning of Saul’s monument in the context of the question of cultural understandings of our relationship with the land, consider another and very different monument we see a representative figure head of Israel build. Compare Saul’s “monument to himself” in 1 Samuel 15 to Joshua’s building of a monument at Gilgal with 12 stones – 12 stones from the Jordan River – after crossing said Jordan River, in order to remember what the Lord had done in that place (Joshua 4). Notably, Gilgal later become a place where Saul and Samuel went to worship in 1 Samuel 15! Joshua’s monument to YHWH was itself a play on an Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) cultural practice. Think, for example, of the Egyptian pyramids, which Egyptian kings built “as monuments to themselves,” who were worshipped as gods. Development of communal identification around sacrificial feasts of the animals of a particular people was also an ANE cultural practice (see, for example, Leviticus 7). In scriptural terms, then, Saul’s sacrifice of Amalekite animals to Israel’s glory, and the “building of a monument to himself” would have been akin to divination and idolatry.

Remember that – per Willie Jennings in The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race – a people’s animals, which are sustained by the land and which sustain said people, became representatives of that people who associate with them in their very identity (communally). This is an important aspect of understanding God’s formation of Israel’s identity in the Exodus that is so foreign to our own culture that we miss it. God was inviting the Israelites into His reign over their relationship with the land. The land was not to first be an identity marker that signified Israel’s glory but, rather, a medium of relationship that signified the reign of YWHW’s will and judgment. God was challenging “the culture” in ways Israelites had a hard time even seeing or understanding, and much less being freed from. We often say, “you can take the Israelites out of Egypt, but you can’t take the Egypt out of the Israelites.” We don’t often, however, imagine, or much less consider, that and how the 10 plagues, Aaron’s golden calf, and Israel’s grumbling in the wilderness was their struggle with letting go of identifying with the land of Egypt that had sustained them for so long.

Idolatry is not just bowing down to a statue. Idolatry is the Israelite’s image of reality being enslaved to the land of Egypt while in the middle of God’s mighty work of Exodus from it. And, of course, our sense of identity is always tied to our image of reality. Israel couldn’t imagine that God was inviting them into a new identity. We have a hard time imagining it, too, but now for different reasons. Considering my stories above, about “hot wives,” bows on wrists, and stickers on cars, this visceral difficulty in imagining what God is doing in relation to “the culture” may begin now to sound like a familiar refrain.

Was this challenging of that to which we are blind by virtue of our idolatry not also what the Lord wanted to do in commanding that the Amalekites be “utterly consumed” and “destroyed” – rather than sacrificed to Israelite victory in a great feast?

“Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,
    as in obeying the voice of the Lord?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
    and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
²³ For rebellion is as the sin of divination,
    and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry…”

–           1 Samuel 15: 22-23

Why and how did Saul actually imagine that he had carried out the Lord’s command? Why was it not obvious to him that he had not? Why is Samuel’s response to Saul legitimately imagining he had fulfilled the Lord’s command, of all possible responses, “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?” What if Israel still hadn’t completed their Exodus? What if the golden calf remained ever before their mind’s eye, so to speak? These are questions of our image of reality that penetrate to the depths of our very identity. Saul wasn’t imagining reality the way Samuel did because of his image of his very identity. You don’t just decide to choose to change that.

If 1 Samuel 15: 24 can, in some sense, indeed said to be about “people pleasing,” or “fear of man” over “fear of God,” then we still have to ask why the people would have wanted Saul to do what he did rather than what God had commanded in the first place? Is this story, as we might tend to imagine it, really just about Saul’s individually free choice to follow or not follow God’s clear and obvious command, to which Saul simply had to mentally assent? As we tend to imagine “the culture” is doing today in relation to God? To His clear commands and requirements? To the authority of church?

Samuel’s “destroying” of Agag king of the Amalekites with his sword is also the “consuming” of Saul’s visceral desire to be master. That is why it is accompanied by Saul’s removal as king of Israel. And, the removal of Saul as king is judgement on Israel’s false image of glory they had found in the feasting on Amalekite animals. Saul was in a reactionary culture war against Agag. Israel was in a reactionary culture war with the Amalekites. God wanted to make all things new.

Reactivity against a culture means enslavement to it.

Speaking of cultural antagonisms around land and place, the woman at the well in John 4 says to Jesus, “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship” (v. 20). Just as the Saul’s expectation to “utterly destroy” the Amalekites was not simply a clear rule from above, the places this woman mentions are not just observations of where Jews and Samaritans worship. She is acknowledging the reality of cultural antagonisms with a man who is subverting cultural antagonisms with her. “This mountain” and Jerusalem were lands in association with which Samaritans and Israelites, respectively, identified.

“You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. ²⁴ God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”  

– John 4: 22-24

Here, “in spirit and in truth” does not mean disconnection from or transcendence over the land. In the Gnosticism of the Rapture theology into which I was formed growing up, that is what I thought it meant. I have since come to see that my interpretation of the text here was governed by visceral response to cultural antagonisms, and that the particular response chosen was in accordance with what was available to me inside a culture that formed me. I have also since come to see that “in spirit and truth” instead means healing of relationships, and that this healing was embodied in what Jesus was actually doing in that very moment. He was relating in trust, care, and service to “her, a Samaritan, with whom the Jews had no dealings.”

Our exploration of scriptural allusions to connection with the land in the face of (capitalist) exile from it now brings us to the Ascension and Pentecost. Here, we see the same pattern of God’s reign inviting us into a community of healing relationships between peoples of different lands or “cultures.” This is Jesus’ final blessing upon them (Acts 1: 7-8) before disappearing into a cloud. It’s what the Spirit empowers 10 days later. And, it is Paul’s entire mission. He was carrying out a previous pattern. The Lord’s instructions to Peter regarding Cornelius were an unfathomable expression of desire for relationship with the cultural “other” through sacrifice of Peter’s previous sense of identity. Joshua’s monument at Gilgal was a remembrance of God’s might and care, both as expressions of desire for relationship. Israel’s crossing of the Jordan was a fulfillment of what was initiated in Exodus from Egypt. Jesus sent the healed demoniac as a trusted testament to his reign of care and desire for relationship, to which representations of Roman identity in antagonism with distrusted Jews – i.e. a herd of pigs – become a holy and creative sacrifice. Do note the creation imagery with their falling into the chaos of the sea. The woman at the well becomes a trusted testament to Jesus’ reign of care and desire for relationship, to which the antagonism between Jews and Samaritans itself becomes a holy and creative sacrifice. If we want the healing waters of Revival, is this what we mean?

The “preparation of a table in the presence of my enemies” is, in the context of ancient Israel, a table of friendship.

And yet we read 1 Samuel 15 as primarily being about Saul being a “people pleaser.” And, we do so in the service of a culture war that we are so committed to as to declare that it’s not a culture war but a spiritual war. God’s story is healing and desire for relationship. We have made ourselves faithful to a different story. We have given ourselves faithfully over to a war against a culture, itself governed by antagonisms.

Reactivity against a culture means enslavement to it.

I confess that I am myself a reactionary. Initially, I viscerally reacted against the very sermon being addressed here, which was on homosexuality,1 Samuel 15, and the culture wars. I may not have consciously thought this, but my body was screaming, “It’s them not me!” Echoing Adam, my body said, “she did it!” Can anyone else here join me in confessing my discipleship under, and thus “ancestry from” Adam? Perhaps a better way to interpret Genesis 1-4, rather than as a technically literal text in reaction against modern science’s challenges to scriptural authority, is to actually place ourselves inside its action.

If we confess that we have been “led astray” by cultural idols that shape our sense of identity, reality, and purpose, and if my own revelations of idolatry led also to realization of my judgment, then are we able to forgo our Sauline and Roman images of cultural or sexual mastery and, instead, heed Habakkuk’s warning of a coming judgment from the “Babylonians”? Can we forego our war against the “Babylonians” and instead apologize to them for how we have been treating them? This does not mean we have to agree with them. If we humble ourselves before the Lord and confess our sin, then perhaps the Lord, in His great and graceful desire for relationship, will have abundant mercy on us.

WHY IS A SHAMAN PRAYING TO A CHRISTIAN GOD? Part 2

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold…”  

– W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming

QAnon shaman inside the US Capitol during the 1/6 insurrection attempt, photo from HERE

This is Part 2 of a 2-Part series exploring the story of the “QAnon shaman” Jacob Chansley, its setting, its beginning and end, and the character in it that he plays. Considering his prominent role in the 1/6 insurrection attempt and my strongly visceral response against it, the curious mix of horror and comedy that his persona evoked, as well as the event’s unique place in history and connection to larger global trends, he has become a very curious figure for me. My very curiosity I see as an exercise in loving my enemy rather than indignantly dismissing him.

In Part 1 – HERE –  I chronicled his allegiance to a historical narrative whose rhetoric lifts up the value of “freedom.” In exploring more deeply the setting of 1/6, I referenced the story of our common political history that so formed the imaginations of both Chansley and myself growing up – namely, Progress from the primordial innocence and simplicity of small bands of hunter gatherers, to increasing size and complexity requiring the domination and administration of a centralized State, to the current Nation-State arrangement that “inevitably” came to fill the entire globe. Probing Chansley’s prayer to God for His “white light,” I also explored how steeped our common environment is in abstraction. Lastly, I chronicled the Greco-Roman notion of “civilization” as an identity marker in relation to the “barbarians,” our sense of superiority over others in allegiance to the universal values and neutral principles of the modern Nation-state, the loss of our connection to the land in our abstracted universality, as well as, in response to all of this, the current global trend towards affirmation of a more particularized identity in the “Civilization-state.”  

DRIFTING APART

In the wake of 1/6, I have frequently seen the QAnon shaman’s persona, not to mention QAnon’s movement itself, referenced as “syncretism.” Indeed, that seems to be the implied meaning of the tweet from which this blog series is named. But, is not syncretism an effort to splice together disparate images of identity into one, over-arching montage? When we consider “syncretism,” are we not in waters that flow in the direction of inevitable progress towards a “universal harmony”?

“My religion encompasses all religions. I believe in God, I believe in the universe. I believe you are god, I believe I am god; I believe the earth is god and the universe is god.”

– Ray Bradbury

When we consider “syncretism,” are we not in waters that flow in the direction of inevitable progress towards a “universal harmony”? With both that question and the QAnon shaman’s prayer for God’s “white light of harmony” in mind, I want to return to Graeber and Wengrow’s discussion of our political narrative of inevitable progress from innocent simplicity to complexity requiring the sovereign domination plus intense bureaucratic administration of a centralized State:

“[T]here are now planetary bureaucracies (public and private, ranging from the IMF and WTO to J. P. Morgan Chase and various credit-rating agencies) without anything that resembles a corresponding principle of global sovereignty or global field of competitive politics; and everything from cryptocurrencies to private security agencies, undermining the sovereignty of states.

If anything is clear by now it’s this. Where we once assumed ‘civilization’ and ‘state’ to be conjoined entities that came down to us as a historical package (take it or leave it, forever), what history now demonstrates is that these terms actually refer to complex amalgams of elements which have entirely different origins and which are currently in the process of drifting apart. Seen this way, to rethink the basic premises of social evolution is to rethink the very idea of politics itself.”

– The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by David Graeber and David Wengrow, p. 431 

In short, “Progress” to our currently predominant political form that combines a universal image of “civilization” with an abstracted Nation-state was not as inevitable as myself and the QAnon shaman grew up imagining. To quote W.B. Yeats in the interim years between WWI and WWII, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold…”  Such a feeling of sliding into an abyss can leave us with a desperate sense of loss of identity, of exile. Keeping in mind the above quote from Graeber and Wengrow regarding “planetary bureaucracies” that undermine the sovereignty of states, read this excerpt from the transcript of the QAnon shaman’s prayer in the US Senate chambers:

“Thank you Heavenly Father for being the inspiration needed to these police officers to allow us into the building, to allow us to exercise our rights, to allow us to send a message to all the tyrants, the communists, and the globalists that this is our nation not theirs, that we will not allow the America – the American way, of the United States of America to go down…Thank you for allowing the United States of America to be reborn. Thank you for allowing us to get rid of the communists, the globalists, and the traitors within our government.”

That sense of exile, of loss of identity, can easily get tied to reactionary antagonism against whatever we blame for said loss. But, if the “loss” is the “drifting apart” of how we once imagined things to “hold” together, then is “syncretism” still an applicable category?

QAnon is also famous for their desire to “drain the swamp,” to tear Washington D.C. to the ground. In the QAnon shaman’s own prayers, this is because he ties D.C. together with “the communists, the globalists.” Such language traditionally functions as dog whistling against Blacks and Jews, which, functionally speaking, is happening here, but is that all? If things are “falling apart,” and we are actively working to tear them down, then are we splicing together a montage or slicing the film up into pieces as they fall to the floor?

If what it meant to splice together a syncretistic montage of identity was to bring elements of different cultures from around the globe together into one civilization of universalizing values with neutral principles, then what does it mean, and what are we doing, if those same elements appear in the persona of a man moving in the direction of and actively working towards “things falling apart”? What if “syncretism” as a category relies on a contextual setting, and the direction of a story, that is simply no longer the case?  

After all, to be White is to be racialized, too. And, to be racialized in the first place is to be abstracted. And, to be abstracted is to be extracted from concrete, material particularities of the land and culture in a way that sets the preconditions for fragmentation that requires the work of splicing together in the first place. What if a shaman praying to a Christian God is precisely the inverse of syncretism?

And, what if the inevitable wasn’t ever inevitable in the first place? As Graeber and Wengrow discuss, we associate the achievement of great civilizations with grand monuments built by their sovereign authorities. Do suits worn by men in seats of authority signify the global heights of civilization? At the start of Chapter 11 in The Dawn of Everything, Graeber and Wengrow mention how the etymological root of “civilization” goes back to Latin “civilis”:

“which actually refers to those qualities of political wisdom and mutual aid that permit societies to organize through voluntary coalition…mutual aid, social co-operation, civic activism, hospitality or simply caring for others…” (p. 432).  

Graeber and Wengrow go on to explore and discuss the particular ancient civilization at Knossos, on the island of Crete (link HERE – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knossos ). There are a few things to note here. First, it was apparently matriarchal. Secondly, we have no evidence there of monarchy, nor of rule by domination in the first place. Related to both:

“[I]t’s hard to believe that the kind of complex mathematical knowledge displayed in early Mesopotamian cuneiform documents or in the layout of Peru’s Chavin temples sprang fully formed from the mind of a male scribe or sculptor, like Athena from the head of Zeus. Far more likely, these represent knowledge accumulated in earlier times through concrete practices such as the solid geometry and applied calculus of weaving or bead-work. What until now has passed for ‘civilization’ might in fact be nothing more than a gendered appropriation – by men, etching their claims in stone – of some earlier system of knowledge that had women at its centre.”

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by David Graeber and David Wengrow, p. 433

AIMS FOR DOMINATION

So, again, we are asking why a shaman is praying to a Christian God. We have tied the shaman to historical narratives of freedom from authoritarian monarchs, to a grand story of human civilizations and politics inevitably leading to the modern Nation-state that now covers the globe, to exilic abstraction from particularities of land and culture, to a resulting quest for identity within the known and particular boundaries of a “Civilization-state.” We have also tied the desire for a “Civilization-state” to the “drifting apart” – or, perhaps, tearing down – of the very State by which the shaman in question knows the walls of his home, because of the power of global, bureaucratic institutions that undermine more localized state sovereignty. Remember Cartman’s cry: “Screw you guys; I’m going home!”

Here, the Civilization-state serves as, at best, a response to but, more often a reaction against the Nation-state. As discussed above, part of the narrative value built into our Nation-states hearkens back to the Greek notion of the supremacy of their civilization over neighboring barbarisms. The question arises for me, then, whether the Civilization-state also rejects the practice of identifying as “better than.” In every instance available, whether Chinese, Indian, Russian, or Christian Nationalist, the answer is a resounding, “No.”

I am left to wonder, though: why not? If a movement is formed in response to a sense of inevitable power over others, then, surely, said movement is one towards gentleness, peace, compassion, cooperation, and care right? That’s what “civilization” is really about in the first place, anyway, right? Why is that not what we see happening? Why do we see a response against domination itself taking the form of domination? What do they want? What are they after?

Graeber and Wengrow also discuss how, through the course of extensive empirical studies, their observation is that (male) domination is always aimed towards “something always out of reach – whether that be an ideal world order, the Mandate of Heaven or blessings from insatiable gods” (p. 432). In other words, the Civilization-states’ binding to their relatively locatable and identifiable land extends to practiced cultural belief in particular religions that arose or are dominant there. If what Graeber and Wengrow observe is holding true in the story of the Civlization-state, then it seeks domination to fulfill commissions or requirements of, or obtain blessings from their respective divinities.

Notably, being “out of reach,” such divinities share similar effects on the Civilization-state’s narrative as the globalizing abstractions against which it reacts. It is for these abstractions, Graeber and Wengrow say, that, at various times in our history, we have subjected ourselves to being dominated, and thus also for which we have been more than willing to sacrifice “the three primordial freedoms, those for which most of human history were simply assumed: the freedom to move, the freedom to disobey, and the freedom to create or transform social relationships” (p. 426).

In short, we sacrifice our freedom to obtain a greater good. We subject ourselves to domination to reach towards something greater than the one to whom we subject ourselves. In the case of the QAnon shaman’s Christian Nationalism, his subjection is to fulfill what he perceives as God’s requirements, in order to obtain what he understands as God’s blessings. “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” “though shalt not murder” in the name of abortion, and “The man is the head of the wife” are taken up in a culture war against the “barbarians,” against those who would break God’s commands and thus block the land’s pathway to blessing and prosperity.

Even still, I have to ask – isn’t there another way? Can we at least ask if there might be one? After all, the whole point of the Civilization-state is to move in another direction. QAnon’s language is filled with hope for change. Given QAnon’s historical ties to valuing freedom and ongoing language that affirms it, does not openness to something new also not also clear our imagination to a freedom fulfilled – without domination?

“An origin for ‘the state’ has long been sought in such diverse places as ancient Egypt, Inca Peru and Shang China, but what we now regard as states turn out not to be a constant of history at all; not the result of a long evolutionary process that began in the Bronze Age, but rather a confluence of three political forms – sovereignty, administration and charismatic competition – that have different origins. Modern states are simply one way in which the three principles of domination happened to come together, but this time with a notion that the power of kings is held by an entity called ‘the people’ (or ‘the nation’), that bureaucracies exist for the benefit of said ‘people’, and in which a variation on old, aristocratic contests and prizes has come to be re-labelled as ‘democracy’, most often in the form of national elections. There was nothing inevitable about it.”

– The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by David Graeber and David Wengrow, p. 431

If the whole point of why the shaman is praying inside the Capitol in the first place is acknowledging the possibility for an open horizon to change, then why tie their vision to the State in the first place? After all, it’s the State that exercises dominion over us. Even if it functions according to their particular values, towards blessings of the God they believe in, it’s still the State to which we subject ourselves!

The Christian-Nationalist’s response to this is again resounding. Just as a reaction against the dominion of universalizing and neutral global powers doesn’t mean rejecting the practice domination, neither does rebellion against the State mean rejection of State domination. It is here where I realize that to reject the State’s authority doesn’t actually mean embracing freedom. It is at this moment of realization when I see that “freedom” doesn’t actually mean freedom. And, it never has. “Freedom,” for the QAnon shaman, means subjection. And, in particular, it means subjection to domination in order to obtain desired aims of blessings from God by doing what he understands is required from Him.

CONCLUSION

As a Christian, I have much more to say about this. What QAnon shaman is doing implies of Jesus is, at best, limited. More likely, I think such an image of God is disastrously idolatrous. Connected to that, and in reference to the aim of domination, there is also much to say about the deception and abuse by strongman leaders of “Civilization-states,” such as Donald Trump and in other places like Russia, China, and India. I should also at least mention the need to set boundaries around such abusiveness. The specifics of what I mean in joining domination to the need for unpacking “idolatry,” however, are not my purpose here. I am primarily asking why a shaman is praying to a Christian God. And, I am doing so as an exercise of curiosity, as compared to indignant dismissal.

When Jesus relates to anyone, whether friend or enemy, he tends to draw out what they want. One thing the QAnon shaman appears to want is “freedom.” What he specifically appears to mean by that is release from a seemingly inevitable Progression towards bondage to global elites and “communists.” Historically, this has taken the form of ressentiment against Jews and “Negros.” And a form of that is – however intentional or conscious – at work here. His persona also, however, seems to highlight a desire for a sense of identifiable connection to something more localized and particular than the universal values and neutral principles of the Nation-state to which the heights of global civilization have taken us.

By the same token, he presents with a longing to at once both tear down and build back up that very Nation-state. His desired image of it appears to him to be “drifting apart.” His response seems to be to want to tear what we have down to the ground. Why? Because it violates the commands and requirements of his God. His desire appears to be for a Nation-state that follows those commands and requirements, as he understands them, in order to obtain the blessings that follow. Further, and both contradictorily and potentially shockingly, logic tells us that, though his vocalized desire is for freedom, what’s actually happening is that he is working towards the building up of a Nation-state’s dominion to which he can subject himself, with the aim of the those very blessings!

All of this is happening in a larger historical context. Where a particular people – namely, those some have named white Europeans – built up and successfully imposed a supposedly universal and neutral system upon the entire globe, “syncretism” meant the combining of elements from different and various cultures, religions, or schools of thought into one greater or higher purpose and creation. This is what I have heard people say the QAnon shaman was doing. We live, however, in a context in which what was syncretized is “drifting apart” into particularized fragments.

And, Jacob Chansley was even actively working to “tear apart” what had been syncretized. So, though his persona can appear to us as what we have come to know as syncretism, it has to be something else. If we name what he’s doing “syncretism,” I fear we are actually imagining him to be working on the modern project of liberal democracy by building up of the universal, neutral, and “pluralistic” Nation-state of our own understanding. I fear, at that point, we are imposing rather than listening. The QAnon shaman, however, is not even interested in obtaining dominion over a house by building up elements of a coalition – one syncretized element at a time. 1/6 was an effort of one particular people to take control of the House, quite literally, from the inside. In short, then, what I am suggesting is that a shaman praying to God isn’t syncretism. It’s inverse syncretism. It’s not freedom. It’s domination.

WHY IS A SHAMAN PRAYING TO A CHRISTIAN GOD? Part 1 of 2

“My punishment is more than I can bear. ¹⁴ Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”

– Cain (Genesis 4: 13-14)

“Screw you guys; I’m going home.”

– Cartman, from South Park

I’m sure everyone is familiar with the “QAnon shaman,” otherwise known as Jacob Chansley. During the 1/6 insurrection attempt, he stuck out, because, well, look at the photos of him. Examples HERE, HERE, or HERE (for reference to the photo) – . And, video of his time in the Capitol can be seen HERE, where his prayer starts at about 7:56.

My initial reaction to him was a complex and visceral mix of disgust and laughter. And, it occurred in the context of my traumatic horror in watching 1/6 unfold. It was also, thus, partly because I see him as my enemy. The title of my blog post (stolen from THIS tweet), then, could easily be read as a critique and a warning that signals the need for setting boundaries around abusive behavior. And, in some sense, it does function that way. I have come to trust, however, that one element of loving my enemy is, rather than dismissing him with disgust, seeking to understand him. This means getting an image of the setting of his actions, as well as both where he’s coming from and the direction he hopes his path takes him, his beginning and end. It also means having some idea of the character he plays in the environment we all share together. In other words, it means getting a sense of his story. In turn, entering inside the particulars of the QAnon shaman and his story means touching things outside his private world. Of course, then, the title of my blog post could be read that way, too.

FREEDOM

1/6 being an insurrection to overthrow the government, the QAnon shaman’s story is a political one. And, we live in a politic dominated by the story of revolution, whether French, American, or other. “Off with the king’s head!” is a visceral cry we carry with us, take for granted, and according to which our Founding Fathers say our government is organized and structured. Braveheart’s cry for “freedom!” is so ubiquitous in our minds and hearts that it could mean we’re clocking out of work on Friday afternoon.

David Graeber and David Wengrow’s description of what they call our “three primordial freedoms,” which they say were taken for granted for most of human history, are as follows: “the freedom to move, the freedom to disobey, and the freedom to create or transform social relationships” (p. 426 of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity). Is this the “freedom,” exactly, with which we associate in our politic?

Primary elements of this historical stew from which the pot of QAnon emerges include Second Amendment rights and willingness to die to maintain religious and political freedoms. Out of a similarly visceral sense of freedom, dominant QAnon language includes the common idea of thinking for yourself – in the form of “Do your own research” – references to the coming of a “great awakening,” and invitations to “take the red pill.” “Think for yourself,” and you’ll find the natural freedom that rightfully belongs to you.

INEVITABILITY

In The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, David Graeber and David Wengrow also very clearly articulate the dominant narrative and interpretation of our history I grew up being taught and by which I understood my world. It goes basically as follows. Human community started in the form of small bands of hunter gatherers. As agriculture was discovered and animals domesticated, communities grew in size and complexity. This led to and required hierarchical models of organization combined with the institution and reach of administrative powers. Such an inevitable and necessary combination of sovereign power plus administration formed what we now know as “the State,” which progressed to the form the Nation-state. The fact that the entire globe is now covered in such Nation-states, they note, reinforces our sense of the inevitability of this story of evolutionary progress from primordial origins of the state.

Notably, the QAnon shaman was taught the same version of our history as me. Outside of QAnon’s specific conspiracy theories, their “awakening” essentially means escape from deceptive stories of our freedom and, instead, seeing the dominance at the heart of the state’s administrative apparatus. In their language, “sheeple” are those who don’t seem to see this, those who are not truly free, and are thus immersed in “group think.”

ABSTRACTION

We are all immersed in a world that consists of abstractions. We can hardly say there’s anything concrete about most of what dominates our lives, including “the nation” itself, “the people,” formal mathematical processes and calculations, and even money, now digitized. And, it would be difficult to honestly describe a global politics of universalizing values and neutral principles – on which our liberal democracy is founded – as in reference to that which is materially concrete. Consider, thus, our abstraction as you read the following bit of the QAnon shaman’s prayer from inside the US Senate chamber (full transcript available HERE).

“Thank you divine, omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent creator God for filling this chamber with your white light and love, your white light of harmony.”

QAnon Shaman’s prayer inside the Senate chamber

What, exactly, does he mean by “white light”? Is it an explicit statement of White Supremacist ideology? After all, 1/6 functioned to, as the law states it, obstruct and impede an official proceeding – namely, our Congress’ certification of Joe Biden’s election as President of the United States of America in November, 2020. Regardless of the fact that what this actually meant was an attempt to suppress the legitimate vote of those who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), our racialization is itself an abstraction (see The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race, by Willie Jennings).

Or, rather, does “white light,” for the QAnon shaman, represent a longing for a version of spiritual purity, an aspiration to connection with the Uncreated and immaterial source of created reality? Both his prayer and his persona excluded anything associated with the particularities of Jesus’ human personhood or Israel’s specific role in our salvation history.  

Every ‘Q Drop’ whose “crumbs” the QAnon Shaman “followed” was lacking concrete specifics. Or, their meanings were open to vast worlds of interpretation. I find it fascinating that this actually fostered open curiosity, but I also have to wonder if abstraction along such lines registers for some of us as a path to what we believe to be or imagine as freedom. I know such abstracted escape from concrete particularity has functioned that way for me in the past. But, is abstraction really freedom?

IDENTITY

Part of what governs the story of our political history, which is a large and significant part of what gives shape to the setting of the QAnon shaman’s story, is the notion of “civilization.” The term generally refers to technological, scientific, and cultural achievements, whether of a people or over the course of eras. Our imaginations are shaped by a particular story of civilization that’s wedded to the above noted image of political origins, history, and progression.

In the Greko-Roman world, the term “civilization” bore meaning not so much in opposition but in comparison with the “barbarians,” which was essentially just in reference to those who didn’t speak Greek or Latin (see Bruce Shelley, Church History in Plain Language). For ancient Greeks and Romans, to be civilized was to be better than being a barbarian. So, as discussed by Graeber and Wengrow, for our political history to progress inevitably to current heights of the Nation-state, with its organization according to a combination of state sovereignty and administration, is also to become more civilized. This history was obviously built into the QAnon shaman’s persona, into his clothing himself in Norse and Viking symbols. He didn’t show up to the Capitol Building in a suit for a professional business meeting.

For the Greeks and Romans, seeing themselves as better than barbarians, particularly in association with their achievements in culture, knowledge, and technology, shaped their particular sense of identity. So, we find ourselves in a situation where Progress to the Nation-state of liberal democracy gives us a sense of superior identity, particularly in comparison to others, whereas, at the same time, the universal values and neutral principles of the Nation-state of liberal democracy work to erase our sense of particularized identity.

Of course, a particular civilization is tied to its land. And, through the course of 1/6, the blood of multiple people – in reference to the voice of God in our story of Cain and Abel – “cries out to me from the ground.” In response to such murderousness, God says to Cain: “Now you are under a curse and driven from the land…you will be a restless wanderer on the earth.” Cain’s response? “My punishment is more than I can bear.” As noted above, we have also now taken up higher levels of abstraction as part of this exile from the land and its concrete particularities. I’ve never killed anyone myself, nor participated in a murderous insurrection attempt, but I can identify with Cain. The QAnon shaman is my enemy, but I am beginning to be able to identify with him. “Screw you guys; I’m going home!” – Cartman, from South Park. It almost seems like we’ve participated in our own punishment. Perhaps abstraction doesn’t equal freedom!

Bruno Macaes explores a global discourse that addresses these tensions in his June, 2020 article – HERE – called The Attack Of The Civilization-State:

“Nation-states are a Western invention, naturally vulnerable to Western influence. Civilizations are an alternative to the West.

The BJP’s strong victory in India’s 2019 election, where it captured more than 300 further seats in the lower house of Parliament, shows how powerful that attitude turned out to be. As the political theorist Pratap Bhanu Mehta put it, Modi was able to convince voters that they should rise against a power structure that is essentially made up of Anglicized elites and that a Western philosophy of tolerance had become a symbol and a practice of contempt for Hinduism. There was a time when that liberal philosophy was taken seriously almost everywhere. Many of the independence movements in what used to be called the ‘third world’ fully subscribed to it and used the language of human rights and the rule of law against the European colonizer.

The shift now taking place is arguably deeper and more radical. By accusing Western political ideas of being a sham, of masking their origin under the veneer of supposedly neutral principles, the defenders of the civilization-state are saying that the search for universal values is over, that all of us must accept that we speak only for ourselves and our societies.”

Proponents of the Civilization-state include strongman leaders of China, India, and Russia. As noted in Macaes’ piece, a common refrain he kept hearing while visiting China was, “Always remember that China is a civilization rather than a nation-state.” Some folks also associate Christian Nationalism with the Civilization-state. My friend Glenn Runnals refers to their movement, because of their historical ties to “freedom” as compared to explicit authoritarianism, and because of the USA’s unique relationship to ancient history, as an approximate or incomplete form of longing for a civilization-state.

The Civilization-state is also, in part, about recovery of a relationship with the land with which a people identify, a relationship lost in the Nation-state’s graphic – i.e. abstract – means of drawing territorial boundaries (see, for example, stories of the Sykes-Picot line). Also from Macaes’ piece:

“As a civilization-state, China is organized around culture rather than politics. Linked to a civilization, the state has the paramount task of protecting a specific cultural tradition. Its reach encompasses all the regions where that culture is dominant.”  

So, it becomes notable and relevant here that much of QAnon’s language is steeped in the vocabular and tradition of a particularly Christian identity. Does not “the storm is coming” echo the apocalyptic language of the prophets, and of Jesus on his way to the cross? Q’s “The Great Awakening” wouldn’t be an intelligible phrase without our particular Revivalist history. It’s also no surprise, then, that those who research QAnon find that part of the draw to it is a sense of community it fosters. This is admittedly quite different from how, say, Deuteronomy 4:5-8 identifies the people of God. I am not, however, primarily writing a critique of but, instead, asking why a shaman is praying to a Christian God.

WAS LE CORBUSIER A FASCIST? Conclusion and Index

In my previous posts of this series, I was telling a story. It is a story about stories, in that it was prompted by three French journalists telling us a story – namely, that the famous 20^th century architect Le Corbusier was a Fascist. It is a personal story, in that I am repulsed by fascism but love Le Corbusier. It is a geo-political story, in that Corbusier was born and raised, quite actually, right in the middle space between French cosmopolitanism and German Nationalism. It is also, of course, a story, about Le Corbusier and his work. To tell that story was to tell multiple “stories within a story,” which hopefully began to give a sense of why this blog series carries its title.

I then more directly addressed the question of whether, as the “secular liberal” journalists have claimed, Le Corbusier was indeed a Fascist. We are confronted by an uncomfortable uncertainty. And, in response, we see that Le Corbusier and his work, like most anything else in the hands of either side of the political aisle, are, when placed in their grasp, turned into territory to compete over for power and control. What if part of the point of Le Corbusier’s work is to point us toward that fact?

So, in my previous post, I articulated that competed-over territory as an analogy to our common environment – which, for us all and before we ever make any political proclamations, whether committed ideologically to left or right – sets the conditions that form who we are and frame the possibilities for the paths before us. How does Le Corbusier’s work “tell a story” of those conditions? How do we continue to see that story playing out in our contemporary world?

To answer that question in conjunction with “stories” told in Le Corbusier’s architecture, we moved through “stories within a story” of our wanting to “burn it all down to the ground,” of tensions between globalism and horizonalism, of disembodiment and immanence, of progress and petrification, of idealism and cynicism, of mechanical controls, their burdens, and politics as control, of mechanical rules and authoritarian personality cults, and of structurally being defined by our also being “held together in tension.” So, to pick up where we left off:

When our modern projects “grounded” in a universal, Utopian vision centered in the cities held together in tension with one another appears to climax and fall to pieces through the course of World War II and its ending, Le Corbusier responds by letting “the ground” give way to “the land.” The world as it had been known had disappeared, gone up in flames. So, we needed something else to stand on. Some respond by wanting our society “grounded” in abstracted fantasies to give way to gestures toward something older, more concrete, local, and stable, such as “the land.” Meanwhile – as mentioned in “The Land Where The Question Is Heard” (HERE) – the contemporary American vote is largely determined by how closely oriented one’s way of life is to the land. Though the joke in the linked video HERE is that “working outside” is turned into an identity, why would that particular choice be made in the first place? Turns out we never stopped being made of dust and breath.

Presidential voting map by county, 2020. Notably, the blue and red are easily correlated with urban and rural. Photo from HERE

Our common spatial and technological conditions of the modern world also set up reciprocal relationships in how we practice knowing. Where ancient knowledge was produced by interpretation of what was given to appear to us, moderns come to doubt what’s given but presume certain knowledge by the workings of our minds. When such presumptions to what eventually came to be practiced as global human mastery climaxed and failed with WWII, Corbusier, along with many others, responds in such a way that optimism and progress give way to complexity and nuance, curiosity and mystery, to have transcendent clarity move to the background of embodied vitality. This was explored in “On The Mystery of The Question,” HERE.

Now, we see the contemporary conservative grasping firmly to presumptions of certain knowledge, while the leftist reacts against that by using modern tools of rational critique to point out how certainty functions to scaffold abusive authoritarianism (which isn’t to say that they aren’t right in some way). Stories of disorientation to the body and identity formation around poles in tension with one another ring true again.

Our common spatial and technological conditions of the modern world even seem to have a role in shaping our orientation to “religion.” When ancients lived inside the horizon under the dome of heaven and practiced knowing according to what was given to their embodied senses, their communities tended to be organized around temple sites. These temples themselves functioned as vertical axes of union between heaven and earth, hidden and revealed. By contrast, when, with the speculations of the mind, we came to see our home as a globe in outer space, doubt ancient authorities, and embark on projects of mastery of the entire known universe, the primary axis around which our societies are oriented came to be the horizontal. Nothing is hidden anymore. And, as said societies turn secular, we tend to either reject or not be tuned in to ancient Temple imagery of a vertical axis uniting heaven and earth. This was referenced in “The Mystery of The Question” (and discussed in “The Governance of the Question”).

Throughout the series, then, we also implicitly saw multiple references to Corbusier’s playfulness with the sacred and profane, religious and secular, heaven and earth. These are also elements of our environment and history not only that we all encounter in the modern world but that shape us. As it turns out, there is still a sky above us, and a shared history we all inhabit. We still do, then, tend to be taken by a visceral sense of wonder at and submission to something greater than and above ourselves.

SpaceX launch. Phot from HERE

We imagine that we function according to a default atheism. But, do we, really?

From the climactic ending to “Matrix Revolutions.” Photo from HERE

CONCLUSION

We are each and all responding to our common environment in different ways.

Are we reconciling to or with it, or are we reacting against it? Are we adapting resiliently and thriving, or are we trapped inside a compulsive trauma response? How does our environment shape us to respond? What possible pathways do the conditions of our environment leave open to us?

Perhaps reality is more complex and nuanced than ideological assertions tend to allow. To, in the face of easy answers, instead embrace the vulnerability of mystery and curiosity is to inhabit, and potentially better see, the difference between ideology and concrete reality. Corbusier seemed acutely aware of this. Do notice the Labyrinth at his Maison Jaoul.

Interior of Le Corbusier’s Maison Jaoul. Photo from HERE

To embrace mystery is also to see how the competitive critique of ideological discourse often misses the beauty and wonder of actuality, presence, and creation.

Again, was Corbusier making assertions, or was he reconciling to the reality of the conditions with which he was presented and that he observed. Was he critiquing, or was he articulating what it means for something to appear in the world? Or, was he actually making something appear in the world? Where was he articulating or critiquing, and where was he observing and reconciling? Even these questions don’t have simple, pat answers. And yes, his work is itself open to important critiques.

What implications does my questioning of Le Corbusier’s supposed Fascism, and of our ideological discourse more generally, have for our contemporary political engagement? How do we interpret our environment? One thing it doesn’t mean that both sides of the political aisle are the same, or that the setting of boundaries around deception and abuse is inappropriate or not called for. It does not mean that some responses to our environment are not more destructive than others. One thing it does mean is that we can’t reduce one side to racism and homophobia. There is more going on than that, and much of it is actually hidden, not inside but by our ideological discourse. It also means that we can’t identify totalitarian tendencies with one side only, or pigeonhole progress on progressives. What is going on is more complex than that. Our bodies, inhabiting the inside of spatial relationships, have a knowing. And our discourses have limits.

Giving attention to our visceral relationship with our shared spatial and technological environment rather than foreclosing potentials hidden by ideological discourse and jumping ahead to easy answers thus means and requires embracing our human limits and vulnerability. This line of questioning, and this leaning into curiosity and mystery of presence in concrete reality means better understanding of one another. It means compassion and curiosity, particularly and especially where we might otherwise exclude and tear down (which, yes, is different from boundary setting). Neither the conservative nor liberal, right nor left, escapes some relationship with any of the “stories within a story” that shape the conditions of our environment and formation of our person that Le Corbusier tells us about.

So, again I ask: was Le Corbusier a Fascist?

INDEX TO – WAS LE CORBUSIER A FASCIST?

The Ground of the Question – link HERE

Moving Around the Question – link HERE

The Body of the Question – link HERE

The Governance of the Question – link HERE

The Mechanics of the Question – link HERE

The Structure of the Question – link HERE

The Land Where The Question Is Heard – link HERE

The Mystery Of The Question – link HERE

WAS LE CORBUSIER A FASCIST? Well, Yes, But… – link HERE

WAS LE CORBUSIER A FASCIST? A Question of Assertion or Play? – link HERE

Our Current Common Conditions – link HERE

WAS LE CORBUSIER A FASCIST? Our Current Common Conditions

In my previous posts of this series – links HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE – I was telling a story. It is a story about stories, in that it was prompted by three French journalists telling us a story – namely, that the famous 20^th century architect Le Corbusier was a Fascist. It is a personal story, in that I am repulsed by fascism but love Le Corbusier. It is a geo-political story, in that Corbusier was born and raised, quite actually, right in the middle space between French cosmopolitanism and German Nationalism. It is also, of course, a story, about Le Corbusier and his work. To tell that story was to tell multiple “stories within a story,” which hopefully began to give a sense of why this blog series carries its title.

I then more directly addressed the question of whether, as the “secular liberal” journalists have claimed, Le Corbusier was indeed a Fascist (see “Well, Yes, But…” – HERE). We are confronted by an uncomfortable uncertainty. And, in response, we see that Le Corbusier and his work, like most anything else in the hands of either side of the political aisle, are, when placed in their grasp, turned into territory to compete over for power and control. What if part of the point of Le Corbusier’s work is to point us toward that fact? One of his works is called the “Monument To The Open Hand” – link HERE to see – in honor of humanity’s posture of receiving and giving with thanks.   

Again, what I am doing here is telling a story. Every story has a setting. Both sides of the political aisle live inside a common environment with a common set of conditions – as explored as a summary of Le Corbusier’s work in my previous post, “Questioning As Play” (HERE). Architecture is a unique means of exploring this fact, because its history and present tell our collective story. Not just Corbusier but Architecture itself, by its very nature, does not speak the language of political rhetoric. Both sides of the political aisle inhabit and craft the space of our common architectural heritage. And, in this way, architecture is, at a visceral level, a kind of analogy to the larger environment that we all inhabit. And, we shape our environment. It, in turn, shapes us.

Le Corbusier’s work illuminates these facts in a particular way. In what way does his work do this? We could say that his work presents our common environmental conditions in the particular ways that we have discussed in the “stories within the story” explored in previous posts. We all live in an environment that shapes us to live inside a play among the very things revealed and articulated in Le Corbusier’s work. Without pretending that Corbusier’s work is comprehensive or of final authority, it remains true that we are all responding to our common environmental conditions put in play by him in various ways that said environment presents to us as options in the first place.

Now, hopefully, my reader is beginning to get a more full sense of why my blog series carries the title it does.

CORBUSIER’S WORK AS A KEY TO INTERPRETING OUR CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT

Where ancients tended more so to build up from the local and contingent conditions given by the earth, modern persons and lives stand or fall upon a framed construct built into our history.  The geometric rules of optical perspective developed in the Renaissance name this construct as the “ground” (as discussed in “The Ground of The Question” – HERE). Both left and right now have different versions of wanting to “burn it all down to the ground,” – whether the Patriarchy or Washington D.C. – apparently without realizing that they are constructing the ground in the first place.

Where ancients’ sense of identity and home was bound to the embodied limits of their horizon under the dome of heaven, moderns came to rely on the work of the mind to imagine themselves living on a globe in outer space, as discussed in “Moving Around The Question” – HERE. Contemporary political tensions are now, at least in part, governed by what feels to conservatives like predominant and inevitable global cosmopolitanism, in tension with a compulsive drawing of some semblance of more localized boundaries (even if said boundaries are drawn at a national scale).

We tend to imagine that the 1/6 QAnon shaman praying “against the globalists” in the US Senate chamber was just motivated by ideological discourse, but I submit that Architecture and its history helps us see how this has to do with the question of where our place or home is. We are all on a Homeric Odyssey of sorts. But, now that we live on a globe in the universe rather than on the earth inside the horizon, even our religion is cosmopolitan.

Ideological discourse asks us to pit totalitarianism against pluralism. Since this is a blog series exploring the question of Le Corbusier’s Fascism, however, I think it’s also important to mention another way that the spatial and technological relationships native to the practicing and inhabiting of architectural edifices helps us understand that politics is about more than ideological assertions.

Once living on the globe in a universe rather than on the earth inside the horizon, we all – whether of more pluralist or authoritarian bent – have totalizing tendencies. 

As explored in “On the Body of The Question” – HERE – this different (from the ancients) orientation and understanding of home, place, and identity – regardless of our ideological commitment to left or right, conservative or liberal movements – means a new relationship with the body and sensuality. So, we are now tempted in new and perhaps unexpected ways to either divorce from or immersion with our bodies.

Contemporary conservative theology and law is committed to a disembodied “originalism.” Anti-government, or anti-“regulation” ideology is governed, at least in part, by dissociation from the body.  By comparison, others tend to view truth as only and exclusively embodied. Similarly, the contemporary liberal proclaims sexual freedom, while the conservative dictates abstracted rules from above.

Burning Man photo from HERE

Where ancients valorized the heroic deeds of their ancestors and idealized heroes, and played their role to honor them in their own lives, moderns embarked on a larger-scale project of movement away from previous authorities. Instead, we moved towards optimistic progress governed by an Ideal image of both humanity and society. I talked about this in “On Governance of The Question” – HERE. This project wasn’t at the scale of our own lives or local community but of all of society, or even the entire globe. Where contemporary liberals proclaim “peace and free love” and are policed by the cynical, contemporary conservatives assert an ideal of free economic growth and resent the reality of sensed, embodied limits. This particular example of reciprocal relationships around governance and policing thus also functions as a form taken by our sense of truth being disembodied.

Corbusier’s prophetic image of the dead, hovering body rings true. None of our contemporary political activity is about crafting well ordered, proportional relationships in concrete reality. Idealism and cynicism are reciprocating twins, because they are both born of an abstracted “progress.” So, the way architecture gives us a spatial and symbolic sense of progress transcending the sensed horizon also helps us to better see that and how “progress” isn’t just a question of political rhetoric of left vs right, conservative vs liberal. This is also revealed in the fact that Frédéric Bastiat happens to be a hero to anti-progressive conservatives, whereas Elon Musk is hardly a “progressive.”  And yet, they are both obviously “governed” by an image of social “progress.”

Progressive and anti-progressive turns out to be a reciprocal relationship that is geometrically similar to that of idealism and cynicism. It is also, in the same way, partly governed by our relationship with the spatial and technological environment.

To that end of optimistic progress governed by an Ideal image of both humanity and society, where ancients took advantage of machines to hoist the heavy loads of particular buildings, modern persons instead came to presume to function as machines to lift the heavy load of all of society. We got an image of this in “The Mechanics of The Question” (HERE). Whether as consumers or producers, or as managers, in business, marketing, or the music industry, we now tend to imagine society itself as a machine that aims towards predictably controlled outcomes. And, we also see political involvement as having individual “control” over our lives and world. Control, notably, is a mechanical term. Of course, too, we have parties adapting to common conditions in opposed ways competing for said control.

Ancients: “To do what would otherwise take much of the entire community, we lift heavy loads with a few people using machines that merely approximate the motion of the heavenly divinities, which determine the temporal cycles of the lives of said entire community.” Us now that we use our individual minds to imagine what was once heaven, but is now a disenchanted outer space, as our home: “I create my individual, personal reality using the Instagram machine.”

Screenshot from HERE to see the whole reel in context.

Or, being shaped by the machine, we rage reactionarily against it. What if the accusation of “virtue signaling” is partly just cynical distrust that no one not immersed in the social machine is not “creating their own reality”? So, we now also have an inescapably and reciprocally tied socio-political relationship between individualism and “group think.”

In that post on Corbusier and machines, we also explored the ancients took the circle and right angle to be the elements of mechanical motion. We now find ourselves standing in long, mechanically straight lines to wait and turn into the DMV. Where the ancients merely sought to use machines to free much of the community from the lifting of specific heavy loads, all of us now, whether committed or biased more to left or right, conservative or liberal parties, once we presume to function as machines, find ourselves bearing loads in common with one another. In the bureaucratic machine, the community is the heavy load. It’s well documented, for example, that “reality creation” on the Instagram machine correlates with increased depression and isolation. Though elements of the machine shape all of us, some of us just choose to respond to it differently from others. Of course, those different choices, such as “individualism” vs. systematic “group think,” or fantasy vs. reality, tend to be viewed as opposing one another.

Just for reference, photo from HERE

The contemporary left uses the “straight lines” of abstract rules to run an administrative bureaucracy, not as embodied persons but as representational office holders inside “the system.”

Meanwhile, conservatives gravitate towards particular personalities able to exert authority, precisely, in part, because they subvert the bureaucratic administrative apparatus of the machine. Liberals tend to view this as “unpresidential” or “unprofessional.” Our disoriented relationship with embodied sense rings true again.

Where ancients lived inside the horizon and worked to make something appear, buildings and local communities held together like a woven fabric that appears over time (as in masonry). Where moderns live on the globe and thus by default have a total vision of everything from the mind’s eye at once,  and set out on a project of movement away from ancient authorities, the elements of modern buildings and society come to be held together in tension – whether in open conflict or not. The re-bar, bolted joints, and beams in tension of modern buildings, serve as analogies to how the community of people who build them is itself held together. Le Corbusier helps us wrap our mind around this in “On The Structure of The Question” – HERE. 

The inescapably bound and reciprocal socio-political relationships being described in this post turn out to generally be ones characterized by tension, a motion of pulling away from one another at opposing poles. In many of these ways, as well as others, we see contemporary liberals and conservatives competing for rule over the same territory – which, essentially, extends across the entire globe – while, at the same time, being defined and identified by their tensions pulling against one another. Humans are not able to hold the whole world in their hands. And, when they try, it instead tends towards pulling apart.

Here, we see a conservative Russian state TV host spontaneously using  “Western” dance moves from the pop culture film “Pulp Fiction.” Further, as can be seen in the full video – HERE – he is doing so in identifiction with Ukrainian President Zelensky. Solovyov’s identity was here partly defined by the enemy with whom he is tied together in a state of tension.

Of course, to accuse others of “virtue signaling” is also partly to be structurally defined by one’s enemy, as well as by a dominating cynicism, itself tied in tension to modernism’s Utopian Idealism. I also, just this past week, saw a woman walking into the grocery store wearing a “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirt. If her sweatshirt wasn’t an identity marker, then the structural tension with the other pole, by which it appears, would not be relevant here. The contemporary left, too, appears to be “pulling in tension” against the very real and destructive practices of what they perceive as “the Patriarchy” or racialization. The two – left and right, sweatshirt-wearer and Applebee’s protester – identify and are defined by structural tension with one another, by which they are held together.

When our sense of home and identity is not oriented around what appears like a materially woven fabric over time but, instead, is about speculative work in the vacuous space of the mind, then the embodied presence who steps in for the previous “fabric” is an object we perceive as exterior and “other” to ourselves as our polar opposite.

German Theologian Karl Barth makes this identifying tension most explicit.

In my next post, I will finish “telling a story” of how Le Corbusier’s work can, in the face of our ideological assertions, function as a kind of key to interpreting the conditions of the environment in which we find ourselves before we ever make our way down a path of activism’s political proclamations. I will also conclude my blog series that thus asks, “Is Le Corbusier A Fascist?”

WAS LE CORBUSIER A FASCIST? A Question of Assertion or Play?

In my previous posts of this series – links HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE – I was telling a story. It is a story about stories, in that it was prompted by three French journalists telling us a story – namely, that the famous 20^th century architect Le Corbusier was a Fascist. It is a personal story, in that I am repulsed by fascism but love Le Corbusier. It is a geo-political story, in that Corbusier was born and raised, quite actually, right in the middle space between French cosmopolitanism and German Nationalism. It is also, of course, a story, about Le Corbusier and his work. To tell that story was to tell multiple “stories within a story,” which hopefully began to give a sense of why this blog series carries its title.

In my last post – “Well, Yes, But…” (HERE) – I more directly addressed the question of whether, as the “secular liberal” journalists have claimed, Le Corbusier was indeed a Fascist. In the end, we see that Le Corbusier and his work, like most anything else in the hands of either side of the political aisle, are, when in their grasp, turned into territory to compete over for power and control. What if part of the point of Le Corbusier’s work is to point us toward that fact? 

ASSERTIONS OR OBSERVATIONS?

What if Corbusier’s primary purpose into which he put his energy – namely, his work – wasn’t, in the first place, about making an ideological commitment? Of course, that isn’t to say that he had no private ideological leanings, but what if one of the lessons he teaches us is that ideology and politics are two things to be distinguished?

Water fountain at ground floor of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye. Photo from HERE

In “The Ground of The Question” (HERE), we see that the ground upon which our way of life stands or falls is a political one, but Corbusier’s work appears to simply, first and foremost, present before us the image of the “ground” of our very perception. His early work surely asserted his desire and a social need for “progress,” which was something to which he put his mind and hand. As discussed previously, however, even then, he was taking up an element of the modern environment into which he was immersed at birth.

The question of whether our dwelling place is globe and universe as compared to earth and horizon is surely a political one, but did Corbusier’s engagement with that question – explored in “Moving Around The Question” (HERE) – constitute political activism? As soon as his early work begins to give an easy answer, his later work changes its tune. In the end, we are presented with the fact of playful relationship that’s built into our history between horizon and globe (see “The Land Where The Question Is Heard”, HERE, and “The Mystery of The Question,” HERE).

Our embodied, relational response with the conditions of our environment is surely also a political question. Corbusier definitively started from a position of the body’s importance – see “The Body of The Question” (HERE) – but did the image of the dead body and sensual vitality constitute the hopeful vote of a political activist, or, rather more of a playfully poetic picture of the question of the body in modern life in the first place?

Most obviously, the question of governance and regulation discussed in “The Governance of The Question” (HERE) is a political one. And, surely, Corbusier took a stance against “the gas-bags” who consider themselves “free poets.” But was this reconciliation with the reality of the natural laws and limits of embodied existence or an obstinate stance against freedom? And, speaking of our compulsive cries for freedom, our question of constructing the bureaucratic machine is self-evidently a political one. But was Corbusier’s image of the house as “a machine for living” – as presented in “The Mechanics of The Question” (HERE) – an ideological assertion or a reconciliation with the conditions of his modern environment?

In “The Structure of The Question” (HERE), we have seen that Le Corbusier leaned into some antagonisms with the capriciousness of capitalist developers, with the petrification of architectural institutions of learning, and with futile bourgeoisie frivolities. But we have seen that and how his image of structures “held together in tension” also function as poetic presentations of the political, epistemic, and anthropological realities in which we are immersed.

PLAYFULNESS

Bear in mind that the circle was – for an ancient person standing like St. Catherine’s Monastery upon the earth – an element of sacred geometric symbolism for the relationship between heaven and said earth. As discussed previously in “Moving Around the Question” (HERE), the ellipse was a sign of what it means to live on a globe in the universe rather than upon earth and inside horizon. If all of these moves discussed above that Le Corbusier made in his work constituted ideological assertions, then why the obvious and conscious playfulness between circle and ellipse at, for example, Villa Savoy’s water fountain, as seen above?

If that cylindrical base was merely an obvious, coincidental, and logical choice for the base of that fountain, then what was going on at this baptismal fountain at his Chapel of Notre-Dame du Haut at Ronchamp? Just like at Villa Savoye, the base is cylindrical, and then it eventually moves up into an ellipse at the head. And yet, as compared to the fountain at Villa Savoye, it appears and reads very differently to the body’s senses and perceptions. He seems to have been making conscious design decisions about it.

Baptismal fountain at main entrance to Le Corbusier’s Chapel of Notre-Dame du Haut at Ronchamp. Photo from HERE

And, if Corbusier wanted to assert what “should be,” and if he wanted to give his ideological allegiance to past or future, progressives or conservatives, earth or universe, then why is he seen, in both his early and late work, playfully presenting relationships between elements of the two? Why do we see him simply presenting the two at play with one another? Why is the other baptismal fountain at the opposite entrance of the chapel exactly reversed in relation to the first? It’s difficult to discern at the angle from which the following photograph is taken, but the second fountain at Ronchamp starts as an ellipse at the bottom and then works its way up into a cylindrical shape at its head.

Photo from same website as previous link and photo.

If Le Corbusier was making political assertions with his life’s work, then why such conscious playfulness as with these fountains? If his architectural language was intended to follow ideological commitments of one variety or another, why would he have been willing for his work to change so drastically between early and late periods? Why did he switch allegiances between Apollo and Dionysius? Why did he go from building upon the grounds of avant-garde optimism and progress to embracing what might be considered “conservative,” religious mystery and “building upon” the land? And why did they so consciously appear to be at play with one another all along?

PRESENTATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS

I would like to suggest that the very things Corbusier is doing in his work most readily lend themselves to being marked as territory over which opposed idealogues make competing claims. What he was doing and how this occurs is not at the level of discourse or political rhetoric. What’s happening here, rather, registers at a visceral level. Why is this the case? How does this happen?  The language of Architecture is not the language of ideology. And, for that very reason, Architecture can teach us lessons about our politics that might otherwise, without good buildings, be more difficult to access.

In order to say more clearly what I mean, I need to step back to the beginning. Again, what I am doing here is telling a story. Every story has a setting. Both sides of the political aisle live inside a common environment with a common set of conditions. Architecture is a unique means of exploring this fact, because its history and present tell our collective story. Not just Corbusier but Architecture itself, by its very nature, does not speak the language of political rhetoric. Both sides of the political aisle inhabit and craft the space of our common architectural heritage. And, in this way, architecture is, at a visceral level, a kind of analogy to the common larger environment that we all inhabit. And, we shape our environment. It, in turn, shapes us.

Le Corbusier’s work illuminates these facts in a particular way. In what way does his work do this? We could say that his work presents our common environmental conditions in the particular ways that we have discussed in the “stories within the story” explored in previous posts. We all live in an environment that shapes us to live inside a play among the very things revealed and articulated in Le Corbusier’s work. We are all responding to our common environmental conditions in various ways that said environment presents to us as options in the first place.

WAS LE CORBUSIER A FASCIST? Well, Yes, But…

In my previous posts – links HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE – I was telling a story. It is a story about stories, in that it was prompted by three French journalists telling us a story – namely, that the famous 20^th century architect Le Corbusier was a Fascist. It is a personal story, in that I am repulsed by fascism but love Le Corbusier. It is a geo-political story, in that Corbusier was born and raised, quite actually, right in the middle space between French cosmopolitanism and German Nationalism. It is also, of course, a story, about Le Corbusier and his work. And, it is a story with multiple other stories folded up inside a story. I have finished telling those “stories inside a story” of his work, which hopefully began to give a sense of why this blog series carries its title.

So, now I want to address the question more directly. Was Le Corbusier a Fascist, as the “secular liberal” French journalists in question claim? Obviously, I can’t fully address that question here. Other than the books noted in the first post of this series, if interested, the reader can see below for further references [#1 through #5]. I will be linking to some of them where appropriate throughout this blog post.

THERE’S SOMETHING TO IT

Despite the questions, there is indeed good evidence that Le Corbusier was a Fascist. He was privately a member of a militantly right-wing fascist group in the 1920’s [#1, #3Corbusier also worked directly with Fascist leaders of the puppet Vichy regime in France, during WWII, creating urban planning journals, along with urban plans themselves. Their goal, tellingly colonialist, was “national renewal” [#1, #3]. The Marais quarter of Paris, which, as noted in a previous post, Corbusier wanted to raise to make room for his “Radiant City,” contains a thriving Jewish community. Of course, then, while many other artists fled France at the time, he did not [#1].]. Also privately, he supported the Italian and German Fascist movements [#1] of the time. He is reported to have had sympathies more generally with authoritative leaders and was “no democrat” [#3]. The emphasis in the following excerpt from his own writing is original, and reveals, at the least, potentially fascist sympathies:

“[T]he man of initiative, of action, of thought, the LEADER, demands a shelter for his meditations in a quiet and sure spot; a problem which is indispensable to the health of a specialized people.”

Le Corbusier, Towards A New Architecture, p. 20

If we wanted to make the case that he was a Fascist, we could shift the emphasis on his presentation of the house as “a machine for living” – see previous post of this series, HERE – away from that of a question:

“For Le Corbusier, any industrial society must be centrally controlled, hierarchically organized, administered from above, with the most qualified people in the most responsible position. He believed that the industrial era would be an age of triumphant rationality, and, as Max Weber had already observed, the rule of reason in Western society means the dominance of bureaucracy. Le Corbusier did not shrink from this conclusion: he embraced it. His ideal city is above all a City of Administration.”

From the Radiant City to Vichy: Le Corbusier’s Plans and Politics, 1928-1942, by Robert Fishman, Apr 23, 2021, link HERE

Corbusier also worked directly with Fascist leaders of the puppet Vichy regime in France, during WWII, creating urban planning journals, along with urban plans themselves. Their goal, tellingly colonialist, was “national renewal” [#1, #3]. The Marais quarter of Paris, which, as noted in a previous post, Corbusier wanted to raise to make room for his “Radiant City,” contains a thriving Jewish community. Of course, then, while many other artists fled France at the time, he did not [#1].

Model of Le Corbusier’s City Plan for Algiers, developed while working with Vichy Regime. Photo from HERE

Corbusier also declared himself in favor of a corporatist state and, related, constantly wrote about the need for increased order and efficiency in society [#1].

“It is evident that such buildings would necessarily be devoted exclusively to business offices and that their proper place would therefore be in the centre of great cities, with a view to eliminating the appalling congestion of the main arteries. Family life would hardly be at home in them, with their prodigious mechanisms of lifts. The figures are terrifying, pitiless and magnificent; giving each employee a superficial area of 10 sq. yds., a skyscraper 650 feet in breadth would house 40,000 people. This section shows how dust, smells, and noise stifles our towns of to-day. Towers, on the other hand, are far removed from all this and set in clean air amidst trees and grass. Indeed the whole town is ‘verdure clad.’ The towers are placed amidst gardens and playing-fields. The main arteries, with their motor-tracks, built over them, allow for easy, or rapid, or very rapid circulation of traffic.”

– Towards A New Architecture, by Le Corbusier, p. 56-7, on his 1920 City of Towers project for Paris

This tells us that Corbusier was the very opposite of a Socialist, and that even his work celebrated authoritarian images of “terrifying, pitiless” monumentality.

The most condemning evidence of his potential fascism was not mentioned in any of the pieces I read on the topic but was discussed previously in “The Governance of the Question” (link HERE). The model for his Modulor Man, which, relevant to the point at hand, was his representation of the ideal man, was a six-foot-tall British policeman. Presumably, he was a white man.

Obviously, Le Corbusier was a fascist.

HOWEVER

Le Corbusier also had sympathy for how Jews were treated [#1] and worked with them [#3]. Nor did he ever, like fascist leaders themselves, make public declarations against Jews [#3, #5].

“In 1940, just days before a Vichy ruling banning Jews from elective office and other professions, Le Corbusier wrote to his mother: ‘The Jews are going through a very bad time. I am sometimes contrite about it. But it does seem as if their blind thirst for money had corrupted the country.’

But, scholars note, he also built for Jewish families in Switzerland, never publicly denounced Jews and never joined a fascist organization.”[#3]

Le Corbusier’s Architecture and His Politics Are Revisited, by Rachel Donadio, July 12, 2015, link HERE in NYT

Corbusier also declared himself a socialist in 1919, and then a conservative in 1920 [#1]. What was that about?  Of course, every architect at the time was working with and supporting Fascists – if they wanted work, that is.[#1]  He tried but was unable to find favor with the conservative Vichy regime, because he was “too avant garde” [#3]. He also worked with Socialists and designed huge projects in Russia in the ’30s, [#3]. For more information on his work on the Palace of the Soviets, which was never built, you can click HERE. You can see his large and actually-built Tsentrosoiuz building in Russia, HERE.

For such reasons, many people at the time thought Corbusier was a Socialist in exactly the same way that others took him to be a Fascist [#5]. This might also be because, in the late 1920’s, he declared himself a revolutionary syndicalist and, throughout the 1930’s, worked influentially towards trade unions taking control of the means of production and electing their own managerial elite (reference HERE).

Le Corbusier’s Unite d Habitation, Marseille. Photo from HERE

I have also seen a number of writers associate Le Corbusier with Communism, because his Unite d’Habitation projects were explicitly and intentionally designed “to house the masses.”

Obviously, Le Corbusier wasn’t a fascist.

Well, that’s confusing. Maybe sometimes things aren’t as clear cut as we would like them to be.

As part of the claim of Corbusier’s fascism, journalists also put forth a number of critiques of his work that, when examined more closely, make little sense. Those arguments come to, very obviously, appear as mere ideological assertions. For example, the ideologues claim that Le Corbusier’s Modulor standardizes and rationalizes the human person [#3]. Did they not read his writings? Did they not pay attention to his actual buildings? As discussed in “The Governance of The Question” (HERE) and “The Mystery of The Question” (HERE), the ancient symbolism of sacred geometry in his work make what appears as a modernist “rationalism” look like something else. And, if Le Corbusier himself repeatedly insists that The Modulor “is not a recipe,” then what is meant by “standardization”? If his idealism was what is meant by “standardization,” then we also have to imagine the ancient Greeks as industrialized mechanists. If, by “standardization,” we mean that he wanted a common means of regulating industrialized mass production, then isn’t one based on harmonious proportions in relation with the human body and nature better than what we’re doing?

Jewish Museum, Berlin, by Daniel Libeskind. Photo from HERE (which is linked HERE)

Also, remember Corbusier’s use of the axis in his work, as discussed in “The Governance of the Question” (HERE)? For what it’s worth, This is Jewish Architect Daniel Libeskind honoring and borrowing from Corbusier at Libeskind’s Jewish Museum, in Berlin. Those two axes, in the basement of the museum, lead to “The Axis of Exile,” and “The Axis of Holocaust.”

Remember that, when I started telling “stories within a story” of Corbusier’s work, I asked my reader to pay attention to whether and where he was observing and reconciling with the conditions of his environment, as compared to making assertions or proclamations. The reason I want to pay attention to that question is because we tend to assume that political engagement, by definition, if not firstly then exclusively, means being engaged in some kind of political activism, right?

To be a Fascist, one has to be grasping political power for the fascist party, right? Whatever affinities Corbusier apparently did have for fascism, considering his apparent twin affinities for the very opposite of fascism, his work with Communists, the weakness of journalists’ arguments over the complex work of a great architect, and his influence on a similarly famous but more contemporary Jewish architect, I find it difficult to label Corbusier a Fascist. It almost seems like, perhaps, Corbusier’s work itself – like pretty much everything else – serves as a territory over which opposed ideologues compete for power and control in the first place.

REFERENCES:

#1 – https://hyperallergic.com/221158/revisiting-le-corbusier-as-a-fascist/ – Revisiting Le Corbusier as a Fascist, by Joseph Nechvatal, July 10, 2015.

#2 – https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/controversy-over-le-corbusier-museum-grows-amid-reports-architects-fascist-past-180971949/#:~:text=Le%20Corbusier%20is%20widely%20lauded,with%20strong%20anti%2DSemitic%20views. – The Controversy Over the Planned Le Corbusier Museum, by Meilan Solly, April 15, 2019.

#3 – https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/arts/design/le-corbusiers-architecture-and-his-politics-are-revisited.html – Le Corbusier’s Architecture and His Politics Are Revisited, by Rachel Donadio, July 12, 2015.

#4 – https://news.artnet.com/art-world/new-books-claim-le-corbusier-fascist-289334 – New Books Claim Le Corbusier Was a Fascist, by Cait Munro, April 17, 2015.

#5 – https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32546182 – Do fascist links discredit architect Le Corbusier?, by Lucy Williamson, BBC News, Paris, Published 5 May 2015.

WAS LE CORBUSIER A FASCIST? The Mystery of the Question

In my previous posts – links HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE – I was telling a story. It is a story about stories, in that it was prompted by three French journalists telling us a story – namely, that the famous 20^th century architect Le Corbusier was a Fascist. It is a personal story, in that I am repulsed by fascism but love Le Corbusier. It is a geo-political story, in that Corbusier was born and raised, quite actually, right in the middle space between French cosmopolitanism and German Nationalism. It is also, of course, a story, about Le Corbusier and his work. And, it is a story with multiple other stories folded up inside a story. I have told most of those stories inside a story, which hopefully began to give a sense of why this blog series carries its title. Now I want to tell one more of those. 

Greek sacred temple at Paestum. Photo from HERE

Seen here is the ancient Greek Temple of Hera at Paestum. When building the Parthenon, this is what Phidias looked to for as a frame of reference for knowing how to further develop the standard of beauty for Classical architecture, and for seeing what can stand with integrity. Notice how the Parthenon’s proportions create the impression of greater lightness and slenderness for the Doric order.

I take this to be a prime example of how the ancients, in general, based their knowing on what is sensed through the body. They received what was given, and worked to make sense of it. And, when I say “received what was given,” I mean that we could anachronistically paraphrase their relationship with mystery as, “We are, because the gods are.” So, it makes sense that, to oversimplify, Plato said that certain knowledge is impossible.

On the other hand, this is what moderns look to as a frame of reference for knowing what can stand with integrity. This is not about embodied sense but is centered on and orients around the logical workings of the mind. In contrast to the ancients, Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” So, it is no surprise that Descartes also claimed the possibility of certain knowledge for humans.

In the wake of Descartes, there was the “father of sociology” (and marketing), Auguste Comte. His fame was his claim that only knowledge according to formal logic and empirical observation is true and genuine. This is different from the sense in which the ancients knew by embodied sense. Comte is not “receiving what is given.” For Comte, theology and metaphysics are meaningless and irrelevant, excluded from his frame of reference. This is intended to lead to greater and more expansive progress of humanity, with a higher level of mastery over nature. Even society, and not just nature, says Comte, can be understood according to certain and predictable laws.

Apollo and Medusa, by Le Corbusier

As discussed previously – in “The Ground of the Question” (link HERE), and “The Governance of the Question” (link HERE) – Le Corbusier’s early work was built on the grounds of social optimism and progress. It turns out, however, that Corbusier’s progress wasn’t quite like Comte’s. Corbusier’s early work was infused throughout with mythological meaning. He did, indeed, see a tension at play between clarity of mind and intoxication to sensuality (see “The Body of The Question,” HERE). And, he associated the clarity of mind needed for modern progress with Apollo’s guidance.

Then World War II happened. It’s what such visions of optimism and progress led to. Maybe we didn’t know what we thought we knew? Corbusier seems to have, like a Roman augur, read the signs of his time and place.

Hallway at Le Corbusier’s Monastery at La Tourette. Photo from HERE

In Le Corbusier’s later work, we see things like this. We see signs of mystery running throughout the building, appearing and disappearing, revealing and concealing. In his later work, we also see change from the clarity and stability seen in the mind to a stronger centering of texture, sensuality, and change. This is not a question of one or the other, but of which takes a more prominent role.

Another hallway at La Tourette. Photo from HERE

Just as Corbusier drew from Vitruvius in his understanding of machines (as discussed previously HERE), he also borrowed from Vitruvius’ categorical identification of the firmaments with constancy and clarity, and association of the fundaments with change and uncertainty. Where Corbusier’s earlier work pursued clarity and order, you see in his later work an interest in complexity and nuance. Again, this is not a question of one or the other but of the ordering of their relationship.

Le Corbusier’s Monastery at La Tourette. Photo from HERE

To give more of a sense of what Corbusier was doing, the previous photo of the plumbing wasn’t a one off. This playfulness runs throughout the building, with continued play between appearing and disappearing, revealing and concealing, firmaments and fundaments, water and blue, symbol and concrete reality, clarity and mystery. See how the plumbing disappears and ascends, where the stairs appear and descend.

Stairway at Le Corbusier’s Monastery at La Tourette. Photo from HERE

By comparison, his early work, guided by “the light of Apollo,” was about seeing a greater clarity and order by the mind’s light. However, besides such dances of shadows and plumbing lines as above, his later work was filled with little curiosities like this throughout. All of this, at his Monastery at La Tourette, most centrally oriented around:

Sanctuary of La Tourette’s Monastery at La Tourette, with altar and organ chamber. Photo from HERE

This is the most central and climactic image of wondrous mystery at Le Corbusier’s La Tourette. It orients the rest of what appears and disappears there (around tension or sacrifice? – as put in play previously HERE).

So, we have seen Corbusier tell “stories within stories” of what it means to be a modern person in a modern world. His work helps us see and understand the conditions of our environment that shapes who we are and how we might respond or adapt to the world.

Where ancients tended more so to build up from the local and contingent conditions given by the earth, modern persons and lives stand or fall upon a framed construct built into our history.  The geometric rules of optical perspective developed in the Renaissance name this construct as the “ground.”

Where ancients’ sense of identity and home was bound to the embodied limits of their horizon under the dome of heaven, moderns came to rely on the work of the mind to imagine themselves living on a globe in outer space. This different orientation and understanding of home, place, and identity means a new relationship with the body and sensuality, where we are tempted in unexpected ways to either divorce from or immersion with them.

Where ancients valorized the heroic deeds of their ancestors and idealized heroes, and played their role to honor them in their own lives, moderns embarked on a larger and more optimistic project of movement away from previous authorities and, instead, towards optimistic progress governed by an Ideal image of both humanity and society. To that end, where ancients took advantage of machines to hoist the heavy loads of particular buildings, modern persons instead came to function as machines to lift the heavy load of all of society. Where ancients lived inside the horizon and worked to make something appear, buildings and local communities held together like a woven fabric that appears over time. Where moderns live on the globe and thus by default have a total vision of everything from the mind’s eye, the elements of modern buildings and society come to be held together in tension – whether in open conflict or not.

When our modern vision appears to climax and fall to pieces with World War II, Le Corbusier responds by letting “the ground” give way to “the land,” with optimism and progress giving way to complexity and nuance, curiosity and mystery, and with transcendent clarity giving way to embodied vitality.

Neither the conservative nor liberal, right nor left, escapes some relationship with any of these “stories within a story” that shape the conditions of our environment and formation of our person articulated by Le Corbusier. So, now that I have told a story of how he told a more general story of said modern environment and person, I can begin to move on to ask about his potential particular political commitments. I can address how and whether Corbusier responded to these conditions as a fascist, and, perhaps, to what degree.

WAS LE CORBUSIER A FASCIST? The Land Where The Question Is Heard

In my previous posts – links HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE – I was telling a story. It is a story about stories, in that it was prompted by three French journalists telling us a story – namely, that the famous 20^th century architect Le Corbusier was a Fascist. It is a personal story, in that I am repulsed by fascism but love Le Corbusier. It is a geo-political story, in that Corbusier was born and raised, quite actually, right in the middle space between French cosmopolitanism and German Nationalism. It is also, of course, a story, about Le Corbusier and his work. And, it is a story with multiple other stories folded up inside a story. I have told most of those stories inside a story, which hopefully began to give a sense of why this blog series carries its title. Now I want to continue to tell more of them.

The above photograph is from Vincent Scully’s The Earth, The Temple, and the Gods: Greek Sacred Architecture. Scully refer to this as a “cleft mountain.” We’ve all heard the term “cleft,” but what exactly does it mean?

Cleft – “split; divided; a crack or crevice; an indentation between two parts…” – from:

from some free online dictionary, HERE

Photo from The Earth, The Temple, and the Gods: Greek Sacred Architecture, by Vincent Scully

A propylaea is a monumental gateway that functioned as a portal between sacred and secular spaces. That is to say that, at the entrance to the sacred space of the Knossos palace complex, the community was faced with a view of a cleft mountain. Why would that be? The mountain presents an image of the earth, of which the building is made. The image of the cleft that opens to make way for the appearance of a mass of earth gives us a sense of what ancient stone masonry was about in ancient Greece. We see an opening emerging in a mass of dark and mysterious shadow. We see the Orphic piercing of weight and darkness with light through openings to make way for plastic forms to move towards a harmoniously ordered arrangement. Here, the arrangement is not only of architectural, cultural, and religious elements but of communal life. The community’s face turned towards a cleft mountain is their posture of veneration and worship of the earth goddess who gives them life from what lies hidden under her belly.

The image of bull horns on your left in the picture functions in much the same way: as an image of strength, virility, life, abundance, and as a symbol of the provision and support of Demeter.

Of particular note, Mt. Jouctus hasn’t moved in 4,000 years (at least). The Knossos Palace complex was placed, oriented, and built in relation to that specific mountain. To be somewhere else would be for Knossos to be a different building, housing a different community, with a completely different meaning.

Every single sacred site in ancient and classical Greece was oriented to a cleft mountain in a similar way. Knossos was not a one-off.

Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, however – see multiple previous posts, but especially “Moving Around The Question,” HERE – can essentially be built anywhere. Though his projects typically respond to the site in some particular way, part of what Corbusier is doing with his work is articulating, making sense of, and commenting on the nature of our modern environment and the conditions in which modern people find themselves. That Villa Savoye belongs and could be built anywhere, and thus nowhere, renders it a particularly modern home. To be modern is to be homeless, to be divorced from the land, to be an alien in exile.

Remember – as discussed in the first post of series, The Ground of the Question (HERE) – that Corbusier, in his work, is also asking questions about “the ground.” We discussed how the ground is a construct that shapes human perception. It has also become a construct that dominates our perception so widely as to go unrecognized as such. In Corbusier’s work, we see him observing that modern persons stand and appear upon a ground rather than the earth.

We also discussed – in “The Governance of the Question” (HERE) – that and how optimism, progress, and Idealism constituted a governing image of his early work. In the sense that it was what made his early work appear and moved it into existence, that image of progress functioned as a kind of “ground.” Upon it, his work stood or fell. Upon it, we were able to see and perceive his work and its meaning. The abstraction of the ground was the ground upon which the Ideal of Utopia was to be built. Through the course of two World Wars, we saw Corbusier’s work change. I will get into some of the specifics of how that’s the case in my next post. For now, we need to note that the design for Le Corbusier’s Monastery at La Tourette, near Lyon, France, began in 1953.

Le Corbusier’s Monastery at La Tourette, photo from HERE

As Le Corbusier was working on each of his projects, he had an aphoristic saying that partly helped guide what he was doing. At La Tourette, that saying was, “The ground is falling away.”

As one enters through the propylaea between parking lot and monastery, they see no cleft mountain. Only human edifice. As we move onto the sacred premises, “the ground” falls away underneath, as the building rises over it. The square has, in our history, long functioned a symbol of mother earth. One of the primary images that guides the language of the architecture here is a dark, mysterious shadow in the shape of a square, with space in a mass of darkness seemingly opened up from above by a piercing, white light.  A photo of this was featured in a previous post of this series, “The Structure of The Question,” HERE.

If you look closely at the above photograph, you can see at least three cleft mountains subtly appearing along the horizon. One of them is very obviously on view while the community sits in the cafeteria eating and fellowshipping together. We can see in this photo of the exterior of La Tourette, HERE, that, as “the ground falls away,” the building opens to those cleft mountains, as they appear in the distance. Corbusier’s orientation of his building in relation to cleft mountains on the horizon at La Tourette was not a one-off.

Exterior of Le Corbusier’s Notre Dame du Haut, in Ronchamp, France. Photo from HERE

From this photo, we can begin to get a sense of the story this chapel tells of relating with land and sky, earth and heaven. And, as at Knossos, this story is not just about the building but also, and especially, the community.

Notre Dame du Haut, interior. Photo from same website as previous / above photo.

From this photo, get a sense of how the building is imagined as mass of carved-out earth, with light piercing through from above to give life.

Notre-Dame du Haut, horizon study, drawing by the author.

I made this drawing when I visited Notre-Dame du Haut in Ronchamp. In the center of my drawing is a small sketch of the building’s plan view. The starfish shape that points in five directions doesn’t actually appear at the building. That is my diagrammatic key to the rest of my drawing. However, key to understanding my key is also knowing that, as you stand at that opening into the mass of the building, turn and face the horizon, what you see is cleft mountains. Well, with the exception of the rear of the building, where the water drain opens to the cistern. In that direction, you instead see bells, whose ringing call to worship pierces the soul with light.

In any case, my sketches of the building are right side up in my drawing. As I turned to face the horizon and draw the cleft mountains I saw from each position, I turned the drawing upside down. Thus, as in reality, the building and cleft mountains face and reflect one another in my drawing. Hence that particular quote from T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland that I scribed at the bottom of my drawing.

Here, it becomes important to note that the concrete of the chapel at Ronchamp was made using stone aggregate taken directly and locally from the mountain on which the building arose.

So, if Corbusier saw “the ground” of modern life “falling away” after two World Wars, then what does it mean for these cleft mountains to appear at his most famous later projects? Namely, if his earlier work was built upon the grounds of optimism, progress, and Idealism, but if that ground “was falling away,” then what was left to build on? What we see Corbusier moving towards is building upon the earth. After all, when we covered over the earth with the ground, the earth never went anywhere.

Rural vs urban voting map 2020, photo from HERE

What if the earth even continued to shape modern persons and life, even as our vision for “progress” was built on something else? And even if we don’t recognize it? After all, for humans made of dirt and breath, is this not inevitable? Modern humans are shaped by a movement above and beyond the bounds of land and horizon – see “Moving Around the Question” HERE – but perhaps we can’t escape them. Why are our voting habits so shaped by how bound, or not, our way of life is to the land? Certainly we are shaped by the land, regardless of whether we are politically committed to left or right, conservative or liberal parties. American Christians’ voting commitments shifted parties from progressive to conservative not too long after Corbusier’s work changed, too. 

So, we have seen Corbusier tell stories of what it means to be a modern person. This means he has articulated the conditions of humans appearing and living in a modern world that is appearing to them. “Stories within stories” told of what this means include those of the “ground” of optical perspective, living on a globe rather than the earth, the death of the body and sensuality, governance by Idealism and progress, individual movements according to the laws of mechanical motion, and being structurally “held together in tension.” We have now also seen him both telling us about our relationship with the land.

Neither the conservative nor liberal, right nor left, escapes any of these stories that shape the conditions of our environment. Later, I will address how and whether Corbusier responded to these conditions as a fascist, and, perhaps, to what degree. For now, I need to tell one last “story within a story” in order to get a better picture of what was being responded to in the first place.

WAS LE CORBUSIER A FASCIST? The Structure of the Question

In my previous posts – links HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE – I was telling a story. It is a story about stories, in that it was prompted by three French journalists telling us a story – namely, that the famous 20^th century architect Le Corbusier was a Fascist. It is a personal story, in that I am repulsed by fascism but love Le Corbusier. It is a geo-political story, in that Corbusier was born and raised, quite actually, right in the middle space between French cosmopolitanism and German Nationalism. It is also, of course, a story, about Le Corbusier and his work. And, it is a story with multiple other stories folded up inside a story. I have told a few of those stories inside a story, which hopefully began to give a sense of why this blog series carries its title. Now I want to continue to tell more of those.

Two posts back, I told a story of the “governance,” or “regulation” of what appears. This is a story of the structure of what appears. How does what appears hold together?

Fort Pulaski. Photo from HERE

At Fort Pulaski, the weight of the building is carried to the earth in what we would now term “compression.” In language more native to the craft of the masonry by which such buildings were made, we can say the elements of the building were woven together like a communal fabric. My reader can get more of a sense of how this works HERE, HERE, and HERE. If the building is held together like a communal fabric, we could say it appears as an analogy to the community it houses and locates. We can then begin to see that and how such a community is held together as a “fabric” in just the same way. Without one part, the whole falls down, falls apart, or no longer appears and functions as what it is meant to.

Every community has conflict, whether within or without. Ancients sacrificed enemies to make this communal fabric appear. Aztecs lived in one community, and Mayans lived in another. Where conflict arose, and Aztecs were victorious, the Aztec figurehead, the priest, for the life of the Aztec community, sacrificed and took into himself the lifeblood of the Mayan enemy. The Roman Empire occupied the Jewish Promised Land. The one who claimed to be the true heir of the Jewish throne was sacrificed to the lifeblood of Rome, in order to hold the socio-political fabric of Rome intact as such.

Le Corbusier Pavilion, by Le Corbusier. Photo from @esinkomez on Instagram.

Notice that the structure of Fort Pulaski itself – the architectural language of the arches, openings and closings, windows and walls, lights and shadows, figures and directions – tells an embodied and symbolic story of the relationship between heaven and earth. The fabric of an ancient community was imagined to be interwoven with that of the cosmos.

When the imagined location from which we understand reality comes to be located in outer space (see previous post on our relationship with space, HERE), human dwelling is no longer thought to be a union of the two. When bodies appear as objects at a speculative distance in space rather than as participants in the embodied weaving of the socio-political and cosmological fabric (see previous post on the body, HERE), observed space between heaven and earth also becomes a spectacle. Rather than joined through the weaving of a fabric, heaven and earth appear to be in tension with one another.

So, we see that, unlike an ancient building, a modern building is held together in tension. These individual posts are held together by bolts, which are in tension. The bolted-together angle bars that are functioning as beams are, themselves, mostly in tension. Notably, Le Corbusier’s concrete buildings appear to stand in compression but are actually largely held together by rebar inside the concrete, which is in tension. And – as poetically symbolized at Villa Savoye and discussed previously HERE – see again the absent body floating above the ground horizontally (the recliner). In modernity, the tension between mind and body is the prime movement by which we can see and know other movements.

Though the body’s senses are bound to what appears inside the horizon, the mind is not so limited (see Aquinas’ Summa Theologica). The ends of these bolts holding the posts in tension are right next to each other, but they are really at two poles of the entire globe. The poles between which modern society’s tensions pull are always essentially as far apart as the breadth of the earth itself. The universality of the nature of the act of pulling the universe apart testifies to this:

“Liberalism…permeates our minds and affects our attitude towards much of life. That Liberalism may be a tendency towards something very different from itself, is a possibility in its nature. For it is something which tends to release energy rather than accumulate it, to relax, rather than to fortify. It is a movement not so much defined by its end, as by its starting point; away from, rather than towards, something definite. Our point of departure is more real to us than our destination; and the destination is likely to present a very different picture when arrived at, from the vaguer image formed in imagination…I am concerned with a state of mind which, in certain circumstances, can become universal and infect opponents as well as defenders.”

– T.S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture, pp. 12-13

Modern Aztecs and Mayans, so to speak, do not and can never occupy different territories. Liberals and conservatives always take up the same territory, which is always spatially total and extends far beyond the bounds of a sensed communal fabric. To quote T.S. Eliot in Christianity and Culture (p. 33), we live in “a community turned into a mob.”

Sanctuary in Le Corbusier’s Monastery at La Tourette. Photo from HERE

Space occupied in a modern society is only understood in the mind. The “mind’s eye” is the location from which we have a view of our world. What is then left for moderns as a means of relating to the enemy is not embodied, sacrificial giving of lifeblood but, rather, the practice of discursive critique. In language native to the craft of modern, mechanized, industrial production (see previous post on machines, HERE), we can say that modern society holds together in the same way as the standardized, mass-produced building. So, we see that, unlike an ancient polity, a modern one is held together in tension. This tension takes the political form of ideological warfare.

In the sanctuary at Le Corbusier’s Monastery at La Tourette, are the various elements that appear held together at a tense distance from one another? Or, rather, does the altar of sacrifice serve as the center, by which all things come to appear a harmonious order together? Is Corbusier making an ideological assertion or describing and inhabiting an iconic image of our history?

In Corbusier’s writing and work, we see that, whatever the answer to that question, he is not immune to the way we, as moderns, are formed into a functional identity in ideological tension against our enemies.

Here is Le Corbusier critiquing the ineffectual, emotive romanticism of the predominantly elitist architectural schools of his day:

“[T]he world is unanimous in considering as gas-bags, shirkers, incapables, dull and hidebound characters, the one or two people who have grasped the lesson of primitive man in his glade, and who claim that there do exist such things as regulating lines: ‘With your regulating lines you kill imagination, you make a god of a recipe.’
‘But all earlier epochs have employed this necessary instrument.’ [Corbusier’s implied reply]
‘It is not true, you have invented it; you are a maniac.’ [says ‘the world’]
But the past has left us proofs, iconographical documents, steles, slabs, incised stones, parchments, manuscripts, printed matter….’”

– Le Corbusier, Towards A New Architecture, p. 73

“But he proclaims that he is a free poet and that his instincts suffice…”

– Le Corbusier, Towards A New Architecture, p. 74, on architects educated in the schools

Though his regulating lines positively functioned to govern what appears (see previous “The Governance of the Question” post, HERE), he was also working in a negating space of ideological tension with his enemies. So he made a hero out of the engineer and lifted up as exemplary the aesthetic of the grain elevator. Speaking of which…

Here is Le Corbusier critiquing the elitism and uselessness of the architectural schools of his day:

“There exists in France a great national school of architecture, and there are, in every country, architectural schools of various kinds, to mystify young minds and teach them dissimulation and the obsequiousness of the toady. National schools!
Our engineers are healthy and virile, active and useful, balanced and happy in their work. Our architects are disillusioned and unemployed, boatful or peevish. This is because there will soon be nothing more for them to do. We no longer have the money to erect historical souvenirs…”

– Towards A New Architecture, pp. 14-15

“Architecture is stifled by custom. The ‘styles’ are a lie.”

– Towards A New Architecture, p. 3

“The architects of to-day, lost in the sterile backwaters of their plans, their foliage, their pilasters and their lead roofs, have never acquired the conception of primary masses. They were never taught that at the Schools.”

– Towards A New Architecture, p. 31

So, Corbusier, in tense reaction against what he hated, was self-taught. There was some historical precedent to the aesthetic in which he was interested. Adolf Loos lived about an intellectual generation prior to Corbusier.

Looshaus. Photo from HERE

Speaking of ideological tension with the enemy on the polar opposite side of society, Adolf Loos is famous for his essay ground-breaking entitled “Ornament is Crime.” With that title in mind, compare Loos’ building in the photo above to the pre-existing edifice right next to it.   

Here is Le Corbusier critiquing how the sense of the unity of the plan of the city had been lost to chaos and disorder in the previous 100 years because of capitalist developers. And, speaking of the crime of useless ornament:

“We have not forgotten the dweller in the house and the crowd in the town. We are well aware that a great part of the present evil state of architecture is due to the CLIENT, to the man who gives the order, who makes his choice and alters it and who prays. For him we have written ‘EYES WHICH DO NOT SEE.’

We are all acquainted with too many big business men, bankers and merchants, who tell us: ‘Ah, but I a merely a man of affairs, I live entirely outside the art world, I am a Philistine.’ [Do note Corbusier’s sarcasm] We protest and tell them: ‘All your energies are directed towards this magnificent end which is the forging of the tools of an epoch, and which is creating throughout the whole world this accumulation of very beautiful things in which economic law reigns supreme, and mathematical exactness is joined to daring imagination. That is what you do; that, to be exact, is Beauty.

Once can see these same business men, bankers and merchants, away from their business in their own homes, where everything seems to contradict their real existence – rooms too small, a conglomeration of useless and disparate objects, and a sickening spirit reigning over so many shams – Aubusson, Salon d’Automne, styles of all sorts and absurd bric-a-brac.”

– Towards A New Architecture, p. 18-19

So, Corbusier pushed for a town planning movement throughout Europe. Speaking of town planning, here is Le Corbusier critiquing the crowded and dirty cities:

“It is time that we should repudiate the existing lay-out of our towns, in which the congestion of buildings grows greater, interlaced by narrow streets full of noise, petrol fumes and dust; and where on each storey the windows open wide on to this foul confusion. The great towns have become too dense for the security of their inhabitant and yet not sufficiently dense to meet the new needs of ‘modern business.’”

– Le Corbusier, Towards A New Architecture, p. 54-57

Le Corbusier responded by proposing a City of Towers (see his Radiant City proposal, discussed in “Moving Around The Question,” HERE).

So, we have seen Corbusier tell stories of what it means to be a modern person. This means he has articulated the conditions of humans appearing and living in a modern world that is appearing to them. “Stories within stories” told of what this means include those of the “ground” of optical perspective, living on a globe rather than the earth, the death of the body and sensuality, governance by Idealism and progress, and individual movements according to the laws of mechanical motion. We have now also seen him both telling us and living a story of modern buildings and society being structurally held together in tension. Neither the conservative nor liberal, right nor left, escapes any of these stories that shape the conditions of our environment. Later, I will address how and whether Corbusier responded to these conditions as a fascist, and, perhaps, to what degree. For now, I need to tell another “story within a story” in order to get a better picture of what was being responded to in the first place.