A N D R E W,BENJAMIN:

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PETITION

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a
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n event is not a simple .

occurrence, nor is it just that
which happens. It is the event
that occasions what occurs
and what will have occurred.
It will be essential therefore t o
maintain the difference
between event and occurrence;
with that difference, what arises as
an inescapable task is explicating
the nature of the difference
between the two. In order to think
this difference-and this will be
the case for the thinking of
difference in general-recourse
must be made t o ontology and
time. It is only by recognizing the
ineliminable presence of ontology
and time that it will then be
possible to differentiate difference
from either diversity or variety.
Difference marks out an-other
possibility. (It is the alterity that
must be sustained.)
With any account of the event,
time and existence must be
brought into play, since what
delineates the event, in its

constitution as an event, is that it will resist

any possible complete self-presentation.

Presentation understood as occurrence does

not complete the event. It is, rather, that the

event is the basis of what occurs.

Presentation cannot be complete in itself.

The time of presentation therefore will differ

from the time proper t o the event as the

condition of presentation. The event has an

afterlife. The life of an occurrence-a

specific presentation-is significantly

different. (Again, the question of difference.)

The life of the occurrence-the

presentation-is not therefore coextensive

with the life of the event.

The events resistance to its own self-

presentation should not be taken as the mark

of a melancholic via negativa in which

activity is condemned t o follow the path of

impossibility. It is rather that resistance

should be understood in ontologico

temporal terms and thus as pertaining on the

one hand t o the nature of the relationship

between the event and the time of the

present and, on the other, to the complex

relationship between presentation and work.

While these relationships stand in need of

clarification, it will only be within the terms

set by them that it will be possible t o raise

the question of the architectural event.

How then is the event t o be taken up? Here

rather than merely raising the question of

the event as though such a question were

able t o be posed outside any context, what

must be maintained is the determining

presence of a residual logic. In order t o think

the time of the present-a temporal modality
inextricably connected t o the event-what

must be recognized is that part of what gives

the present its specificity is itself already

given. The conditions of possibility for

meaning, understanding and experience and

thus for the minimal attribution of identity

are already given prior to any specific

attribution of meaning, claim t o understand,

actual experience or identification. The
already given needs t o be approached
therefore in terms of the logic of the gift.
The importance of this logic is that it allows
the present an initial description. It also
identifies the site of resistance and
contestation.
Identification, working through giving and
taking-the attribution of identity and thus
that attribution being taken over and coming
to be the identity in question-will always
demand the necessary presence of relation.
For these present concerns, the gift is most
appropriately understood as tradition, since
tradition-the work of tradition-is the work
of that which is itself already given. It is a
gift the response t o which will involve work
(at times the work of passivity, the absence
of experiencel.2 Even if the gift were t o be
refused, it would, in the act of being refused,
still be taken over. The primordiality of
relation would still endure. Refusal will need
t o be understood therefore as a specific
placing. Refusal may involve dis-placing or
re-placing. The possible permutations that
characterize refusal as a form of acceptance
will match the varying possibilities within the
philosophies of destruction. (Refusal will in
the end have to be construed, and thus
presented, beyond the delimiting purview of
the negative. This construction will
inevitably involve introducing a type of
relation. Pure refusal will always be marked
by the same impossibility as that which
characterizes absolute singularity.) The
already given cannot but be given. However,
what the already given cannot guarantee are
the conditions of its own acceptance, and
this will be the case despite the fact that
these conditions of acceptance also

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comprise part of what has been set out in

advance. The conditions therefore play a
significant and determining role as part of the
complex of the already given. As a
consequence they can be said to figure in the
constitution of the event as an event. It is this
that rids the event-and thus a philosophy of
the event-of any inherent idealism.
What is designated as the already given
works, as has already been suggested, t o
provide and sustain the conditions of
possibility for what takes place at the present.
(Experiences, for example, occurring at the
present and therefore being experiences of
the present, do not simply happen; they
occur and therefore need t o be understood in
terms of that which provides them-the
experiences-with their conditions of
possibility.) The advent of any occurrence
exists in relation t o this determining setup.
However, i n spite of the suggested formality
of relation's presence, namely its possible
presentational formalism, relation is not just
a spatial term. What comes t o be presented
in spatial terms-in the movement of its
presentation-enjoins its own specific
temporality. (Formalism on the other hand,
while correctly fascinated with relation,
almost inevitably presents relation in purely
spatial terms.) Consequently in moving from
the centrality of thinking relation purely
spatially, it will become necessary to argue
that the temporal will always play a role
within any determination of the already
given's acceptance (a role far greater than
that of an element in the ensemble).
Furthermore, and in that concrete relation
that can be brought about as much by
abutment or overlap, there is, despite the
possibility of a reduction to what in this
instance would constitute the pure matter of
presence, namely materiality, the inclusion of
time. Temporality here is neither a
supplement nor an extension: it figures

Arakawa and Madeline Gins Reversible Destiny House II

(aerial perspective). 1990

within and is thereby part of the event's won

constitution. Matter and the materiality of
presence necessarily involve time. The
involvement is neither arbitrary nor optional.
Time, however, cannot be thought outside of
its interarticulation with existence. The
ineliminable copresence of the two is the
founding site of complexity. Admitting
neither singularity nor unity except as
potential aftereffects will work to open up
the possibility for a reconsideration of
complexity in terms of ontological and
temporal differences.

In taking on the complexity of the already

given it should not be forgotten that the
nature of the already given, its nature as an
event, lends itself to a doubling in which it
comes to be given again. The doubling,
therefore, as a possibility within the already
given needs to be located not just outside
the ambit of addition but afterward and after
it; in other words, a relocation takes place in
the move away from the dominance of
representation and toward the centrality of
repetition.3 In this move a task is identified.
Henceforth doubling will have to be
presented, perhaps thought, as a repetition
and therefore neither in terms of piety nor of
recollection. However, if the already given is
itself a repetition, then doubling, rather than
comprising either a restating or repositioning
(both of which are intended as purely spatial
determinations), involves the interplay of
repetition, innovation and the gift.
The logic of the gift entails that the giventhat which is already given-can be
formulated in terms of the repetition of the
same. This is the gift of continuity.4
Tradition therefore is the continuity of the
given. Continuity is the same's repetition.
As a consequence it is innovation-a process
inextricably linked to the process of
experimentation-that will allow for an-other
possibility. Alterity here involves neither
destruction nor forgetting but an

intervention that is to be understood as

repetition, in that what occurs takes place
again for the first time. The presence of the
"again" signals a conservation and thus a n
enduring repetition. The addition of the
"first time" indicates that what is presented
resists any straightforward reduction to its
being a simple enactment of that which is
repeated. It is in this precise sense that there
will be an opening for architecture in which
architecture will be able to house and thus to
retain the telos of architecture-a retention
that sanctions architecture's continual
reidentification as architecture, and with it
the continuity of the possibility of its being
experienced as architecture-without all
concrete manifestationsof the architectural
enacting and symbolizing that telos. At work
within this complex interplay of repetition,
innovation and the gift, the ineliminable
presence of time retains its effective presence.
This state of affairs-the presented
interplay-can be thought within the
Freudian concept of Nachtriglichkeit (a term
that can be provisionally translated as
"iterative reworking"). More accurately,
however, the complex interplay signaled
above needs to be thought in terms of
Nachtriglichkeit's own reworked repetition;
in other words, in the terms set by its own
iterative reworking. What this will mean is
that rather than applying the concept-as
though the act of application were not itself
already implicated in those activities carried
out in its own name-it will be put to work
and will as a consequence therefore come t o
figure within its own reworking. Here the
site of that work will be the attempt to trace
the unfolding of the interplay of repetition,
innovation and the gift.5 This use of
Nachtrijglichkeir, which sets the terms for its
own deployment, signals once again the
move away from the effective dominance of

representation and toward the centrality of

repetition. One immediate result of allowing
Nachtraglichkeit to set the determinations of
the time of intervention-the interruption of
the repetition of the same, the continuity of
the logic of the gift-and thus the time and
temporality of an-other repetition, is that the
reworking in question will demand a
repositioning of the before and after and
the original and the secondary. This
repositioning will give rise to a number of
questions. The first concerns the nature of
relation within the accepted centrality of
repetition. What is a relation within
repetition? The second concerns the nature
of the event: What constitutes the event?
The third concerns the occurrence: What will
havehappened?

What will be taken up therefore-albeit

briefly-is the import of these questions. It
will necessarily be an examination that traces
a range of strategic uses of Nachtraglichkeit.
The site here is given by the attempt to
respond to the task of considering
architectural thinking, rather than leaving this
task empty insofar as its content is
concerned-failing thereby to provide the
consideration with any location and therefore
remaining a t the level of singular abstraction.
The stakes will be slightly changed by
claiming that architectural thinking must be
considered as thinking. With this move the
actual consideration of architectural thinking
will encounter the work of the already
given-the logic of the gift-since
architectural thinking as thinking will involve
the already given operating within and as a
tradition. Tradition, understood as the work
of the already given, sets up the possibility of
both a politics of interpretation and a politics
of the architectural occurrence. The latter will
involve,.among other things, the policy of
building, the way in which the specific
function is understood in order that that
understanding play a determining role in how
the function then comes to be housed. (A

Arakawa and MadelineGins: Reversible Destiny House II (office), 1990.

museum does not just display; it necessarily

enacts a specific politics and policy of
display.6) The already given does not
operate therefore within the purview of
either neutrality or equality. (Itwill be in this
precise sense that conflict will be original.)
The inescapability of the gift of the already
given provides, in part, the need-both
philosophical and political-to redeem the
concept of the avant-garde as well as
providing that redemption with its conditions
of existence. Redemption here involves the
strategy of "starting" identified by Walter
Benjamin in One-way Street. It is a strategy
that destroys the web of continuity by
allowing for a reworking, disrupts the
context and undermines by intensifying the
complacency of tradition. Here destruction
involves relation as it comes to be enacted
within the process of reworking, a process
that in the end becomes a modality of
repetition.

It will follow from the necessity of the

encounter among architectural thinking, the
consideration of it as thinking and the
already given that any consideration of
thinking will have to incorporate the process
of taking up the relation and furthermore will
have to pay attention to the relation, though
now in terms of the continual coming into
relation (a continuity that will provide the
site of reworking), between the already given
and the advent of either thought or material
presence. The coming into relation as much
as the recognition of relation is constituted
by the event.
These relations, however, are themselves
already inscribed within repetition insofar as
either there is a repetition of the already
given-a repetition of the same-or the
advent of thought, again on the one hand
itself or on the other in response to that

material presence that causes the already

given to be rethought and thus presented
anew. What this will entail is that while what
is present presents itself as architecture
insofar as it fulfills a number of preconditions
in order that it be experienced as
architecture, it nonetheless leaves open the
question of how it works as architecture.
What is essential here is that both of these
determinations pertain at once. The
difference between the closed and the open
will necessarily involve time. The complex
possibility of an initial and thus grounding
difference is in its being taken u p already, the
enactment of Nachtraglichkeit, It is a
repetition; however, it is no longer limited by
the same and thus it can be said t o be
articulated within another logic. Here, with
the abeyance of the domination of the logic
of the gift, there is the logic of the again and
the anew. The "again" recognizes the
ineliminability of the gift while the "anew"
signals the possibility of an-other occurrence,
an innovation, and with it the possibility of a
redemption of the category of the new.
It is vital, however, to stay with
Nachtriiglichkeit. As a point of departure
Nachtraglichkeit becomes a way of accepting
the materiality of the object-an o c c u r r e n c e
that, either through the action of
interpretation or in specific cases through the
presence of a subsequent occurrence or
occurrences, causes a relation to be
established in which the object is given
again. The relation is its being given again.
In this sense what is identified by the term
Nachtraglichkeit becomes the process of
interpretation and therefore provides a way
of presenting the temporality of
interpretation. It also allows a way of
thinking the relationship between t w o forms
of material presence to be established. The
presence of the second coming into relation
with that which was already present may
cause the former to be given again and in
being given again to take on a different

character. (It is essential here to emphasize

the absence of teleology.) It is this precise
temporal structure that will sanction, for
example, an-other thinking of the possibilities
of urban development. It will allow for a way
of thinking the specificity of an architectural
occurrence that in being specific opens out
beyond that which is unique and selfenclosed within the actual occurrence. To the
extent that this occurs it is possible to
identify, and in identifying it to affirm, the
effective presence of the architectural event.

b
8

c
b

The effective presence of Nachtraglichkeit

can be taken a step further by exploring the
problem inherent in detailing the process of
coming into relation. The force of the
expression corning into relation is that it
signals in the first place a distancing of the
Hegelian position in which the advent of any
particular in its appearing to stand outside
relation is in fact always already in relation.
The need, the Hegelian craving, is addressed
by having established-reestablished-what
was already there. This structure precludes
the possibility of an occurrence outside the
pre-given and thus works against the
philosophical and artistic associated with the
possibility of the avant-garde. In the second
place, coming into relation assumes that the
already given has not of necessity delineated
the conditions for the acceptance of a
particular occurrence. The tension to which
this gives rise enjoins a demand simply to
think what is involved in establishing a
relation, given that the gift is given and that
its presence, its presentation as a gift, is no
longer reducible to its own presentation
within a repetition structured by the same.
While what may be involved here may lend
itself to a description of "privation," the
inherent deprivation refers to the advent
within repetition of a n occurrence whose

Arakawa and Madeline Gins: Reversible Destiny House II

(plan view), 1990.

presentation breaks the dominance of the

same, Le., of the intended homology
between the gift of that which is given and
the site of its reception. At work therefore is
the intrusion of a subsequent affirmation of
the ontology of heterogeneity and the
heterogeneity of ontology. This heterogeneity
must be understood as neither the
absolutely new nor the completely original
but as new or original occurrences within
repetition, enacted through the logic of the
anew and thus as an event.
The event within architecture, the
architectural event, is therefore the interplay
among various modalities of time at the
present-modalities of time bringing their
necessary ontological determinations with
them-which are a t work in structuring the
architectural. The event is formed within
and thus enacts the varying possibilities
given by repetition while providing repetition
with the conditions of its own presentation.
The event that is the movement of work is
that which works the occurrence of
architecture.

Notes
1. This paper is a slightly extended version of a

lecture given at the Graduate School of

Architecture, Planning, and Preservationat
Columbia Universityduring a conference on the
nature of the event. It presents in a condensed
form some of the positions developed in much
greater detail in my book The Plural Event
(London: Routledge, 1993). I have also tried to
establish some of the links between
architecture and the event in Time, Question,
Fold (Am Files 26 [Autumn 19931: 7-1 0).
2. The relationship between modernity and the

absence of experience is a key theme in the

work of Walter Benjamin. In this instance what
i s important i s to recognize that part of the
contemporary response to architecture is the
failure to experience it as architecture. It is
possible to generalize and suggest that to the
extent that form and function are coextensive
there is a corresponding absence of
architectural experience.

3. What is involved here resists quick

summation. If tradition is already given and the
process of destruction that envisages a
complete break with and from the
determinationsof the given is itself impossible,
then what emerges is the need to think the
response to the given in terms of repetition.
Repetitionshould not be generalized. There will
be repetitions in which the same i s repeated.
There will be other repetitions in which either
what is given is redeemed by being worked
through or in which innovation and thus an
initial relation of nonrelationto tradition
emerges as a repetition taking place again for
the first time. In each instance the static nature
of representationis replaced by the dynamic of
work. Here the dynamic involves the varying
modalities of repetition.

4. Continuity here can take many forms. It may

Andrew Benjaminis lecturer in philosophy at the

appear as progress, the end of history or the

varying possibilities within historicism. The

University of Warwick. He is the author of

problem, once again, is that, given the failure of

destruction-be it Cartesian modernism or

(Routledge, 1989) and What is Deconstruction?

Heideggeriansacrifice-how

is continuity to be

Translation and the Nature of Philosophy

(Academy Editions and St. Martins Press, 1988,
with Christopher Norris) and has edited several

sundered? The catastrophe, as Benjamin

anthologies, including Post-structuralist Classics

argued, is that continuity continues.

(Routledge, 1988) and Problems of Modernity:

Adorno and Benjamin (Routledge, 1989), both in

5. Ihave tried to develop this interconnection in

the Warwick Studies in Philosophyand Literature

relation to the work of Peter Eisenman in

series, of which he is general editor. He is also

Eisenman and the Housing of Tradition, in my

the editor of the Journal of Philosophy and the

book Art, Mimesis and the Avant-Garde (London:

Visual Arts.

Routledge, 1991).
6. Ihave offered a schematic and provisional

account of the inherent doubling of display in On

Display, in New Museology: An Art and Design
Profile (London: Academy Editions, 1991).

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Cover: Arakawa and Madeline Gins: Reversible Destiny House I/,1990. Aerial perspective.