Theory’s Theatricality and Architectural Agency

Abstract

This paper argues for a pre-theoretical and pro-theatrical understanding of theory. To begin, it considers the Greek tradition of theōria as practiced around the fifth century BCE in the period just before Plato appropriated the cultural practice of theōria as a model for philosophical inquiry. As will be shown, this proto-philosophical practice of theōria was profoundly theatrical, which is to say, spectacular and dramatic in social, situational, and symbolic ways. Such events of theōria involved diverse citizens participating as active witnesses in recurring festivals that had both intimate and far-reaching political, religious, and aesthetic significance. Reflecting on some present-day settings and occasions for practicing theory, this paper concludes with a disciplinary provocation: the re-engagement of theōria’s fundamental theatricality can reanimate the social, situational, and symbolic dimensions of architectural theory, without sacrificing either its relative independence or its capacity for heuristic wonder.

Keywords:

• architectural history and theory
• theōria
• theater
• performance
• democracy
• hermeneutics
• Aristophanes
• Plato

Notes

¹ My summary of theōria is based on primary sources and supporting scholarship: Andrea Wilson Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy. Theoria in its Cultural Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); summarized in idem, “The Philosopher at the Festival: Plato’s Transformation of Traditional Theōria,” in Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman & Early Christian Antiquity, ed. Jaś Elsner and Ian Rutherford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 151–80; and Ian Rutherford, State Pilgrims and Sacred Observers in Ancient Greece: A Study of Theōria and Theōroi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

² Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 5.3.7–9: “The life of man resembles the festival [at Olympia] celebrated with the most magnificent games before a gathering collected from all of Greece. For at this festival some men trained their bodies and sought to win the glorious distinction of a crown, and others came to make a profit by buying or selling. But there was also a certain class, made up of the noblest men, who sought neither applause nor gain, but came for the sake of spectating and closely watched the event and how it was done”; quoted in Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 17.

³ This is exhibited in Plato’s Republic; Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 74–83.

⁴ Hans-Georg Gadamer, Praise of Theory: Speeches and Essays, trans. Chris Dawson (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 31.

⁵ Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd revd ed., trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (London: Continuum, 2004), 122.

⁶ On chōra as region, see Lisa Landrum, “Chōra before Plato: Architecture, Drama and Receptivity,” in Chora 7: Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture, ed. Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Stephen Parcel (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016), 323–58.

⁷ Quoted in Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 47.

⁸ For evidence, see Ian Rutherford, “Theoria as Theatre: Pilgrimage in Greek Drama,” Papers of the Leeds International Latin Seminar, vol. 10 (1998): 131–56; and Clemente Marconi, “Kosmos: The Imagery of the Archaic Greek Temple,” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, no. 45 (Spring 2004): 211–24.

⁹ Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 47.

¹⁰ On interdependencies of theōria and democracy, see Rutherford, State Pilgrims, 36–40; Simon Goldhill, “The Great Dionysia and Civic Ideology,” in Nothing to Do with Dionysos: Athenian Drama and its Social Context, ed. J. Winkler and F. Zeitlin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 97–129; and Simon Goldhill and Robin Osborne, eds., Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 5–8.

¹¹ Herodotus, Histories, 1.30.2.

¹² Quoted in Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 66. See also Rutherford, State Pilgrims, 148.

¹³ Rutherford, State Pilgrims, 158–9.

¹⁴ Theognis, Elegies, 805–10. This is the earliest extant instance of theōros in Greek literature. On theōroi as “champions of justice,” see Gregory Nagy, “A Poet’s Vision of his City,” in Theognis of Megara: Poetry and the Polis, ed. Thomas J. Figueira and Gregory Nagy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 36–41.

¹⁵ “Il faut toujours dire ce que l’on voit, surtout il faut toujours, ce qui est plus difficile, voir ce que l’on voit”; Le Corbusier Talks with Students [1961], trans. Pierre Chase (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999), n.p. This epigram, which also appears in Le Corbusier’s 1959 edition of Les Trois Établissements Humains, is borrowed from French poet, dramatist, and essayist Charles Péguy (1873–1914): Charles Péguy, Pensées (Paris: Gallimard, 1934), 45.

¹⁶ Gadamer, Praise of Theory, 31.

¹⁷ Plato, Republic, 7.517d, with Rutherford, State Pilgrims, 326–7.

¹⁸ Rutherford, State Pilgrims, 5, 145.

¹⁹ Martin Heidegger, “Science and Reflection,” in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 164.

²⁰ Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 45, with further references.

²¹ Rutherford, State Pilgrims, 145; James Ker, “Solon’s ‘Theōria’ and the End of the City,” Classical Antiquity, 19, no. 2 (2000): 304–29, esp. 309–10.

²² Froma I. Zeitlin, “The Artful Eye: Vision, Ekphrasis and Spectacle in Euripidean Theatre,” in Art and Text in Ancient Greek Culture, ed. Simon Goldhill and Robin Osborne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 138–96, on 141.

²³ A relevant example is in Euripides’ Cyclops, when Odysseus implores Zeus (and the spectators) “to look” upon injustices perpetrated by Polyphemus (354). Odysseus then calls himself “architect” of the scheme to restore justice (477); Lisa Landrum, “Ensemble Performances: Architects and Justice in Athenian Drama,” in Architecture and Justice: Judicial Meanings in the Public Realm, ed. Nicholas Temple, Jonathan Simon, and Renée Tobe (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 245–56, esp. 253.

²⁴ Leon Golden, Aristotle on Tragic and Comic Mimesis. American Classical Studies 29 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1992), 2.

²⁵ On the performativity of Greek stage conventions (choros, skēnē, mēchanē, and ekkyklēma), see Ruth Padel, “Making Space Speak,” in Winkler and Zeitlin, Nothing to Do with Dionysos, 336–65.

²⁶ Zeitlin, “Artful Eye,” 141.

²⁷ Rodolphe Gasché, The Honor of Thinking: Critique, Theory, Philosophy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 203. Gasché’s essay title echoes Michel Foucault, “Theatrum Philosophicum,” Critique, 282 (November 1970): 885–908. Whereas Gasché interprets Blumenberg’s reading of Theaetetus, Foucault interprets Gilles Deleuze.

²⁸ Lisa Landrum, “Performing Theōria: Architectural Acts in Aristophanes’ Peace,” in Architecture as a Performing Art, ed. Gray Read and Marcia Feuerstein (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 27–43.

²⁹ Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 78, referring to Plato, Republic, 475d.

³⁰ Lisa Landrum, “History and Histrionics: Dramatizing Architectural Inquiry,” in Made: Design Education & the Art of Making, Proceedings of the 26th National Conference on the Beginning Design Studio (University of North Carolina – Charlotte, 2010), 17–24; Lisa Landrum and Ted Landrum, “Miming a Manner of Architectural Theory. Eudaimonia: A Pantomime Dream Play,” in Confabulations: Storytelling in Architecture, ed. Carolina Dayer, Paul Emmons, and Marcia Feuerstein (London: Routledge, forthcoming in 2017); and Lisa Landrum and Ted Landrum, “Enigmas in the City: A Retrospective Exhibition of Group Costumes,” in Warehouse, ed. Brandon Bergem and Nicole Hunt (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, 2012), 174–77.

³¹ Gadamer, Praise of Theory, 32.