Architectural Affections

Abstract

This paper explores the significance of subjectivity, and intersubjective relations, in oral history interviews in architecture. Building upon literature from feminist theory, cultural studies and the methodology of oral history itself, the paper examines how questions of identity and gender bear upon what is said and what can be said, by whom and in what way in the performance and performativity of the interview. Speculating on the affects that spin between the interviewer and the interviewed, and their socially coded behaviours and relationships to one another, the paper attends to the significance of professional, disciplinary and identity positions, as they bear upon the speaking position. Touching upon the affective turn, the theoretical valorisation of embodiment and the poetics of intersubjectivity, the paper attempts to contribute to the theory and methodology of oral histories in architecture and feminist practices both in and on architecture.

Notes

^1. Janina Gosseye, “Lost in Conversation: Constructing the Oral History of Modern Architecture,” symposium call for papers posted online, accessed June 1, 2014, http://lostinconversationconference.wordpress.com/.

^2. On architecture and authorship, see Architecture and Authorship, eds. Tim Anstey, Katja Grillner and Rolf Hughes (London: Black Dog Press, 2007).

^3. See Bridget Fowler and Fiona Wilson, “Women Architects and Their Discontents,” Sociology 38, no. 1 (2004): 101–19; Diana Agrest, Architecture from Without: Theoretical Framings for a Critical Practice (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993); The Sex of Architecture, eds. Diana Agrest, Patricia Conway and Leslie Kanes Weisman (New York: Abrams, 1996); Annmarie Adams and Peta Tancred, Designing Women: Gender and the Architectural Profession (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2000).

^4. See, for example, Gwendolyn Wright, “On the Fringe of the Profession: Women in American Architecture,” in The Architect: Chapters in the History of the Profession, ed. Spiro Kostof (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 280–309; also Architecture: A Place for Women, eds. Ellen Perry Berkeley and Matilda McQuaid (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1989).

^5. Lynn Abrams, Oral History Theory (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), 22.

^6. Abrams, Oral History Theory, 18.

^7. Abrams, Oral History Theory, 18.

^8. Abrams, Oral History Theory, 24.

^9. Abrams, Oral History Theory, 9.

^10. Quinlan lists the following factors affecting interview dynamics: “relative age, gender, race or ethnic background, educational background, social status, religion, regional identity, relationship to each other, and even relative degree of emotional commitment to the project”. Mary Kay Quinlan, “The Dynamics of Interviewing,” in The Oxford Handbook of Oral History, ed. Donald A. Ritchie (Oxford Handbooks Online), 7, accessed June 10, 2014, http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195339550.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780195339550

^11. Abrams, Oral History Theory, 10.

^12. Helga Amesberger, “Doing Gender within Oral History,” in Oral History: The Challenges of Dialogue, eds. Marta Kurkowska-Budzan and Krystof Zamorski (Amsterdam: John Benjamin's Publishing Company, 2009), 63–75.

^13. Ken Hyland, Disciplinary Discourses: Social Interactions in Academic Writing (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), 170.

^14. Naomi Stead, “New Belle-Lettrism,” in Semi-Detached: Writing, Representation and Criticism in Architecture, ed. Naomi Stead (Melbourne: Uro, 2012), 175–81.

^15. Rachel Brownstein, “Personal Experience Paper,” in Personal Effects: The Social Character of Scholarly Writing, eds. Deborah Holdstein and David Bleich (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2001), 230.

^16. The question of “mutability” as one of the defining qualities of oral histories is discussed by Abrams. She quotes earlier seminal work by Allessandro Portelli, identifying six “elements” that make oral history “intrinsically different” from other modes of history and historic sources. The six are: orality, narrative, subjectivity, credibility, objectivity and authorship. Abrams herself adds three more to this list: peformativity, collaboration and mutability. Abrams, Oral History Theory, 19.

^17. The historic under-valuation of empathy as a supposedly inherent or naturally feminine trait is fascinatingly discussed by Lorraine Code, who also traces its significance in psychoanalysis – one of the very few locations where empathy is valued (primarily amongst men) as a professional skill. See Code, Rhetorical Spaces: Essays on Gendered Locations (London: Routledge, 1995).

^18. For a cautionary note on the use of oral histories in architecture, see Robert Proctor, “The Architect's Intention: Interpreting Post-War Modernism through the Architect Interview,” The Journal of Design History 19, no. 4 (2006): 295–307.

^19. See John Peter, The Oral History of Modern Architecture: Interviews with the Greatest Architects of the Twentieth Century (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1994).

^20. The project was funded by the Equity and Diversity Unit at the University of Technology Sydney, and the films can be seen at http://www.dab.uts.edu.au/shorts/. I have written previously about the filmmaking process. See Naomi Stead, “Använd bara inte ordet feminism: Ett projekt om jämställdhet och mångfald inom arkitektyrket i Australien” (“Just Don't Mention Feminism: Reflections on an Attempt to Engage Young Women with the Architectural Profession in Australia”) in Drömbygen/Mindescapes: On Gender and Architecture, eds. Annelie Kurtilla, Katarina Bonnevier and Ana Betancour (Stockholm: Arkitekturmuseet, 2009), 46–53.

^21. Igea Troiani has also used documentary filmmaking as a mode of history writing in architecture, and she described similar unease in her making of the short film Building Mayne Hall, although for different reasons. Troiani articulates how making this film revealed the “private politics” of architecture –in particular, the politics of friendship. See Troiani, “Writing Architectural History as Documentary,” The Journal of Architecture 10, no. 3 (2005): 275–84; see also Troiani's doctoral thesis, “The Politics of Friends in Modern Architecture 1949–1987.” (PhD diss., Queensland University of Technology, 2004).

^22. Karen Burns, “The Woman/Architect Distinction,” Architectural Theory Review 17, no. 2–3 (2012): 234–44.

^23. Alison McDougall and Christine Garnaut, “Navigating the Personal to Create the Public: In Search of South Australian Architects,” The Oral History Association of Australia Journal 32 (2010): 35, accessed June 6, 2014, http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn = 855831984008743;res = IELIND. See also Christine Garnaut, “When Only the Memories Can Speak: Oral History Creates a New Resource,” The Oral History Association of Australia Journal 18 (1996): 93–94.

^24. Robert Freestone, “The Shattered Dream: Postwar Modernism, Urban Planning, and the Career of Walter Bunning,” Environment and Planning A 28 (1996): 732; quoted in McDougall and Garnaut, “Navigating the Personal to Create the Public,” 34.

^25. There is not the scope in this paper to discuss this relationship in depth, but simply to point to larger debates, including Manfredo Tafuri's famous contention that in architecture “there is no history, only criticism”. See Manfredo Tafuri interview with Richard Ingersoll, “There is No Criticism, Only History,” Design Book Review (Spring 1986): 9–11; see also Andrew Leach, Manfredo Tafuri: Choosing History (Ghent: A&S Books, 2007).

^26. Donald A. Ritchie, “Introduction: The Evolution of Oral History,” in The Oxford Handbook of Oral History, ed. Ritchie, 2.

^27. Ritchie, “Introduction: The Evolution of Oral History,” 2.

^28. Julie Willis and Bronwyn Hanna, Women Architects in Australia 1900–1950 (Red Hill: Royal Australian Institute of Architects, 2001).

^29. Jean-François Lyotard, Libidinal Economy, Ian Hamilton Grant trans (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, [1974] 1993).

^30. Jennifer Harding and E. Deirdre Pribham, “Losing Our Cool?” Cultural Studies 18, no. 6 (2004): 879.

^31. Jeffrey Gray, “In the Name of the Subject: Some Recent Versions of the Personal,” in Personal Effects: The Social Character of Scholarly Writing, eds. Deborah H. Holdstein and David Bleich (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2001), 51.

^32. Gray, “In the Name of the Subject,” 51.

^33. Richard Ohmann, “The Personal as History,” in Personal Effects: The Social Character of Scholarly Writing, eds. Deborah Holdstein and David Bleich (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2001), 350.

^34. Ohmann, “The Personal as History,” 354.

^35. Ohmann, “The Personal as History,” 346.

^36. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 19, quoted in Clare Hemmings, “Invoking Affect,” Cultural Studies 19, no. 5 (2006): 559.

^37. Hemmings, “Invoking Affect,” 550.

^38. Brownstein, “Personal Experience Paper,” 230.

^39. Jane Gallop, Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997). See also Richard Burt and Jeffrey Wallen, “Knowing Better: Sex, Cultural Criticism, and the Pedagogical Imperative in the 1990s,” Diacritics 29, no. 1 (1999): 72–91.

^40. See Hemmings, “Invoking Affect,” 548–567; and Harding and Pribham, “Losing Our Cool?” 863–83.

^41. Harding and Pribham, “Losing Our Cool?” 871.

^42. Code, Rhetorical Spaces; Ellen Rooney, “A Semiprivate Room,” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 13, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 128–56.

^43. Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” in Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory, eds. Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina and Sarah Stanbury (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 405.

^44. Jane Gallop, quoted in Gray, “In the Name of the Subject,” 52.

^45. Ohmann, “The Personal as History,” 350.

^46. Harding and Pribham, “Losing Our Cool?” 878.

^47. Harding and Pribham, “Losing Our Cool?” 879.

^48. In terms of the celebration of “aspects of lived experience beyond the rational and empirical”, I am thinking of recent work on architecture and fiction, including the conference Once Upon a Place: Haunted Houses and Imaginary Cities, convened by Susana Oliveira and Pedro Gadanho and held in Lisbon, Portugal, in October 2010, accessed 15 August, 2014, http://onceuponaplace.fa.utl.pt/index1.html.