In his 1982 interview ‘Space, Knowledge and Power’, Foucault and Paul Rabinow discuss architecture in some detail. It was originally published in the journal Skyline, so this is not surprising. There are some interesting passages, which I’m going over for the nth time, because of this paper I’m writing on Foucault and territory.
But I was especially struck by Foucault’s claim that other professionals, particularly those who work on infrastructure, begin to take over from architects in some registers. In his collaborative projects of the 1970s Foucault worked a lot on such topics. The key place you can find this is the book by François Fourquet and Lion Murard, Les équipments du pouvoir: Villes, territoires et équipements collectifs, Paris: Union Générale d’Éditions, 1976 [1973]. This contains some material by Foucault (mostly translated in Foucault: Live) but also a wealth of other discussions. And in 1975 Foucault’s cv for research funding suggested that he was going to publish the results of a seminar entitled L’architecture du surveillance (this is after the publication of Discipline and Punish, btw.) I discuss these and other projects in detail in “Strategies for Waging Peace: Foucault as collaborateur“, in Michael Dillon and Andrew W. Neal (eds.), Foucault on Politics, Society, and War. London: Palgrave, 2008, pp. 21-39.
In the 1982 interview. Foucault points to the work of the Écoles des Ponts et Chaussées [literally ‘schools of bridges and roads’] and the “engineers and builders of bridges, roads, viaducts, railways, as well as the polytechnicians (who practically controlled the French railroads)-those are the people who thought out space” (The Foucault Reader, p. 244)
There is then a brief exchange:
PR: So architects are not necessarily the masters of space that they once were, or believe themselves to be.
MF: That’s right. They are not the technicians or engineers of the three great variables—territory, communication, and speed. These escape the domain of architects (p. 244).
What I like about this is the grouping of three terms – ‘territory, communication, speed’. I’ve written a few papers where the title is either three terms or includes three terms of which territory is one – ‘Governmentality, Calculation, Territory’ (on Foucault); ‘Land, Terrain, Territory’, ‘Nomos, Territory and Großraum’ (on Schmitt), and ‘State, Space, Territory’ (with Neil Brenner, on Lefebvre). I had a chapter in an edited book entitled War, Citizenship, Territory, and my prefered title for Terror and Territory was actually ‘Terror and the State of Territory’, which became the title of the introduction…
Now all of those are, in some sense, obvious groupings. They are either other spatial terms that are related to and distinguished from ‘territory’, or they are terms that link directly to it, as strategies towards it, or related terms – state, for instance, citzenship, etc.
So ‘Territory, Communication, Speed’ is a great title for a potential paper, because while there are lots of links that could be made, the terms are not immediately obviously related. I think all the others, have reasonable links: if you were to ask someone what other terms might relate to territory, they would be fairly likely to come up with them – what are the related terms to territory in Schmitt? How might Foucault or Lefebvre be useful to thinking about territory? How would you begin to construct a political theory of territory? There are other terms that might come up, of course, but a reasonable expectation that those would be in the mix.
‘Territory, Communication, Speed’ is neat, because the terms are not so random or disconnected that they seem inappropriate, with links being forced, but nor are they immediately obvious. And it’s precisely their juxtaposition that might make for an interesting discussion. A quick Google of the terms throws up lots of quotations of the passage, and some defensive comments from architects. There is a blog entitled ‘Speed, Territory, Communication’ which looks like it was set up to work through these issues; and that was related to a project at Columbia University. But not much.
I’m not sure I’ll ever actually do anything with this – I expect (hope!) I am coming to the end of my work on territory as an explicit focus, although I keep being asked to do things on it that mean I can’t quite let go of it yet. But it’s an intriguing idea. I expect it’s the sort of thing that I would need an opportunity to write it for. (That’s if I can get round my problem with the concept of ‘speed’ – I think people who use this usually mean ‘acceleration’.)
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In the concluding chapter of [url=http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415489324/]”Cultural Political Economy”[/url], (edited by Matt Paterson and Jacqueline Best), RBJ Walker develops a claim that with any imagination of “cultural”, “political” and “economy”, each pair of words imposes a particular meaning on the third word. While of course dependent on the methodological position and somewhat open in his account, it seems to me that this particular argument might allow some further considerations for exploring these “triangulars” as dynamic rather than static.
Thanks for the response. I know Walker’s work, but not this piece. I agree that the relations need to be dynamic, though I’d say the same was true for the other groupings I’ve discussed elsewhere – the point here was that communication and speed were less obvious, but still important groupings.
On your concerns about fitting ‘speed’ into this potential project, you may want to consider Paul Virilio’s concept of ‘dromology’, which he employs in order to understand how social structuring is related to warfare and modern media. The place to start would have to be his “Speed & Politics: An Essay on Dromology.” For him, the speed at which something happens may change its essential nature, while that which moves with greater speed comes to dominate that which is slower. In an interview you may find is worth your while, he says: “Whoever controls the territory possesses it. Possession of territory is not primarily about laws and contracts, but first and foremost a matter of movement and circulation” (http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=132).
Thanks for this. I know Virilio’s work, and some of his early work on territory has been useful in my writing. I’m less convinced by the material on speed though.
I remember reading the piece by FC on architecture and thinking that his ideas on ‘the architect’ seemingly opposed that of Le Corbusier but also Lefebvre.
I was also remember Virillio, but then also thought of Nigel Thrift’s critique (‘Panicsville: Paul Virilio and the Esthetic of Disaster’, 2005). Nick Land’s work might be interesting in this regard and did Sloterdijk not use Virilio somewhere?
I like the idea of a geobody when thinking about territory and politics.
Thanks for the tip (Strategies for Waging Peace: Foucault as collaborateur)
Absolutly. Take that as a footnote to a footnote for the sake of a polemic…
Virilio’s Speed and Politics is a work of genius. His later work is less so. The Insecurity of Territory and Bunker Archaeology are important as background, and Popular Defense and Ecological Struggles contains some interesting clues. But Speed and Politics is almost flawless, as a weapon. You have to read early Virilio as you would read the diary of a general in Napoleon’s army. He is not interested in writing academically. His work is about fundamentals: matter, men, physics. Virilio once inferred that Foucault stole from a student of his the problem of the prison (specifically the panopticon). I rather doubt it and in any case the source of inspiration is less relevant than what one does with it. My point being that Foucault was aware of Paul Virilio, and likely in the 1970s at least they had shared points of interest. Discipline and Punish I’m sure made a lot of sense to Virilio, though the latter is more anthropological than Foucault would ever wish to be. Taken together, Discipline and Punish and Speed and Politics are beautifully complementary.