Fall/Winter 2008-9

WHAT ABOUT THE INSIDE?

6

Archltecture'slnslde

114

landscapes within Buildings

122

aeneflcent Emptiness In the

Photography 01 Candida Haler

8yMohsen Mostala....,
12

Interiors a!Rlsk

Bv David l. Hays

Precarious Spaces in Contemporary

Art. By Ewa lajerSurcharth

22

Making Space for Fashion

Stanton Williams's 1987 Commission

(or IsseyMiyake. Bylrfn" Sealberl

By Will iam 5. Saunders

124

lumbering to Extinction In the

Digital Field
The Tav&o,lst Office Buildh' l.
By frank Duffy

29 Tensions In Transparency
Between Informarion and Experience
The Dialectical logic of SANAA's
Architecture. By Eve 81au

38

Excerpts from Spheres III:

FODms
By Peter Sloterdllk~ firSI English
translation by Daniela Fabricius

S3

Houses of Mirth
Atelier Bow-Wow's Ironies.
By Irene Chens

65 Dexterous Architecture
By Presion 5coll Cohen
70

The Reenchantm.nt of
the Interior
Olalu, Eliilsson's Weather Prol ~t .
By Sanford Kwinler

7S

Control. By Mark Pimloll

p.tr. Envy
The Desi,ns of Pelra Blaisse.
By Sylvia Lavin

9S

The B.auty ofthe Percolation

On the InteriOfS of l eWIS Tsurumaki
lewi s By Michael Cadwell

102

Weaving Worlds, Stitching

Storie.
On Ihe Fabrics of Reiko Sudo.
ByAklra Suzuki

106

134 BuckmlnsterfuUer: Stlrtln,wlththe

UnlverSIP: Introducllon Sy K Michael
Hays and Dana Miller
On Suslainabillty and DeSign

140 The MachIne as the Garden

The New I-i;lrvatd Campus In AII\ ton.
Sustalnability, and li s Effectson
DeSign. By Nathalie Beauva is
On Architecture

146 Globa' Architecture II Review Essay

8y Kenneth Frampton

The Continuous Interior

Infrastructure for PubliCIty and

87

On Architectural History

1]2 TheOJ.ltaland the Utopian

Reassessing Buckmln !ller Fuller
By Antoine Picon

Whatever Happened to
Whatever Happened to Total
DesIS"?"?
The Momentary Utopian louissance
of the 80uroullec Srothers.
By Michael Meredith

Book ReViews

I S4 The Concrete 0111,01': China's

Urban Revolution and What It Means
for the World By Thoma~ I
Campanella. Review by AleJo Krieger
1 sa The Neoliber.1 City: Governance,
IdeoloD. and Development In
Amerlc.n Cilies By lason Hackworth.
Review byAlan Altshuler
161 Form Follows libido: Architecture and
Alchard Neutraln it Psychoanalytic
Culture By Sylvia Lavin; lessons from
Bernard Rudofsky: life as a Voya,.
Edited by Monika Platzer.
Reviews by Christopher long
16S Architect and Enalneer: A Study In
Sibling Rivalry By Andrew Samt.
Review by Mark Cruvellier

EXCERPTS FROM SPHERES III

Sphli,enlll: Schliume
Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2004

The background breaks its silence only when

processes in the foreground overexert its carrying

By Peter Sioterdljk

capacity. How many real ecological and military

First English translation by Daniela Fabricius

catastrophes were necessary before one could say with

Foams In the Age of Knowledge (pages 65-74)

provide an atmosphere that is breathable for humans?

The things that are most delicate become objects only

How much ignorance towards the atmospheric premises

legal. physical. and atmo-technical precision how to

later. This is true for many things that are taken for

of human existence had to accumulate in theory and

granted and only mature into being recognized once

praxis before the attention of radicalized thinking was

they are 1051. and they are usually lost the moment that

capable of submerging itself into an essence of moods

they are drawn into comparisons thai take away their

(Wesen der Stimmungenp-only to later encroach on

naive given ness. The air that we breathe without

the constitution of being-in an encompassing milieu and

thinking. the places saturated with moods in which we

on the modi of existential imbedded ness in totalities 1

unknowingly exist both contained and containing, the

(for which we have recently started to use the term

unremarkable because obvious atmospheres in which

"immersion")? How far did the pendulum have to swing

we live. move, and have our beingt-these are all

in the direction of individualistic misunderstandings

thematic latecomers because until they were brought to

and autistic desolation before the intrinsic value of

our consciousness they provided, like perennial natures

resonance phenomena and inter-psychic entangle-

or goods. an a priori silent background to our being and

ment in an animated space could be articulated in a

presence. These elements now become themes only

reasonably complete way? How much neglect. masked

because they have proven manipulatable in both

as progress, did close human relationships have to

constructive and destructive ways. Previously accepted

endure before a constitutive definition of sufficienlly

as discrete provisions of being. they had to become

good couple and family relationships could be

objects of concern before they could become objects of

described with respect for their fundamental terms?"

theory. They had to be experienced as fragile,

fAil th'at is very explicit becomes demoni~e who

destructible, and losable before they could advance to

engages in making articulate background realities that

being tasks for air and mood phenomenologists. for

were previously kept in unspoken shared thoughts or

relationship therapists. for atmosphere engineers and

knowledge-and even more in what is unthought or

interior decorators. as well as for cultural theorists and

unknown-commits himself to a situation in which the

media technologists; they had to become unbreathable

stringency of what is required and what is kept silent is

before people could begin to see themselves as

advanced and irresistibly endless. Woe betides him who

protectors. reconstructors. and inventors of what had

bears deserts: Now what once seemed to be a given

until then just been assumed.

natural resource must be artificially reconstructed. One

Page J8IUuC,II ,1I iflfl (11.1 "nHl<;d",man.

misunderstood Copernican revolution . By confronting

.1 '.:ou'>I)('ndrd ( OIP'" with e ~PQ~~d

mu ... d\'~. ltJlh {(!nllll\{. 'IUm VC'!odliu:!i,
DC' (orpor;5 Humoni Fol,,;co (On the
'.)tllJrtufPof !fIt' Humon Budy). l'j/~].
Scil'lI( '! Phuto llbr.1lV Photo Re
,>!!,l'rhf'f<;. 111(. Righi 'h,~ di<;(ove,v of
tht> "f,'f1Virunrnl'!l1. ~ Sourr t.' unknown.

the conventional darkness of one's own corporeality

with organ maps and drafted documents showing a new,
precisely viewed inner machine world (it is not for
nothing that the magnum opus ofVesalius is called De
human; corpo,;s fobrico). the early modern anatomists

tore open the image'poor somatic interior ground of a

perceived selrimprisonment and involuted the self
knowledge of Ihe thusportrayed bodily subject so that
is forced to articulate. with burdensome care and

being as before. Now I have to look at the anatomical

(onnolation. At this transilion into the ex.plicit. the

maps and take;n their message: There you are! That's

modern function 01 cull ural science (KU/tufWissenscho/t)

what it looks like inside you as soon as those who know

becomes manifesl.lt is the preferred agent of

what they are doing take a look with a scalpel! No anti

civilizational explications in general. From now on it

anatomical mauvaise fo; can help bring back Ihe naivete

In a much later phase. after academic abstractions

had pushed the underlying operative conditions of

needs to be both a technical science and the curatorial

of bodily being as it existed before the ability to operate.

modern knowledge past the point of recognition,

training needed for working in our cultural greenhouses.

Actors of modernity took part, whether they wanted to or

philosophers (ould come upon the idea that making

things explicit is a discourse operation that first of all

It is especially after cultures have stopped seeming to

Revolution, Rolation.lnvaslon

nol, in a quasiautochirurgical revolution . Even those

be a given that one must care fortheir maintenance and

The demon ism olthe explicit is the path olthe history of

who were nol dissection artists occupied with cutting

concerns the bookkeeping of the accounts of opinion

cultivate their regeneration by redescribing , filtering,

civilization. It grows at the pace at which modernity

into organic tissue were , as cultural partiCipants,

and persuasion of a speaker.' Is thus every person who

clarifying, and reforming. The culture of cultures

progresses in becoming aware of its own artificiality.

virtually placed into a position of operation and of

speaks a speculator in the stock market of statements.

becomes a criterion of civilization in the age of making

What was once in the background moves into the

knowledge in which there was no choice but to comply

and philosophy the market regulalor? The true meaning

foreground; that which has been unspoken since one

with the great changes in the old relationship to the

of explication lies elsewhere: The powerful quality of

can remember suddenly has been brought forward; the

inner universe of the body. Understanding one's own

modern knowledge relations is not the ability to mirror

that hardly anything Ciln be assumed anymore. When we

enfolded implicit is projected onlo an open surface so

corporal interiority from the possibility of its anatomical

the "subject" within itself or to publicly a((ounl for the

begin, at this point to articulate the world with

that every detail that was once hidden on the inside lies

exteriorily was the primary cognitive Nrevolutionary"

reasons for one's opinions; the subject operates on

estranged detail, what can we say about the state of the

evenly spread out in bright visibility : these scenes are

result of modernity-comparable only to the world

itself and has its own maps of the partially enlightened

art of our beingintheworld? When we carefUlly

evidence of a movement in which those with knowledge

pictureshifting violence of the first trip around the

darkness in front of itself, which sketches out potential

articulate (with the phenomenologists) in what

radically change their position in relationship to now-

world by Magellan and del Cano.'

encompassing states or totalities we see ourselves as

knowable objects that were once known differently or

backgrounds explicit.
To be absolutely contemporary, we have to assume

For the cognitive habitus, to circumnavigate and

points of attack for selfinvasion. One can', be confused

by the division of labor between surgeon and non

embedded, when we design and eventually reconstruct

not at all. The obsolete metaphor of the "revolution" as

map the earth is the same thing as to cut open the

surgeon. He who is a subject afterVesalius inhabits.

(along with the media scientist. the interior architect,

a groundbreaking overturn or relationships between

human body hom all sides and graphically represent it

willingly or not, an autooperative space. Being modern,

I can no longer authentically-meaning in cohetencp

the ergonomic specialist, the atmodesigner) the

bodies and roles can, in respect to such changes in

from all angles. 80th operations belong to the great

spatialities, the atmospheres, and the encompassing

position, be granted epistemological honor just one last

rotation that

situations in which we spend time according to our own

time before being stored in the archive of exhausted

and circumstances. ~'Making it explicit" has meant,

potential inner surgeon. When modern people are lying

plans and values, then there is an aftereffect of

(oncepts.

since the beginning of modernity. a turning around of

in a deep way, then it is almost always because they are

the bodity world-partially through the operalive

consciously avoiding their autooperable natures.' The

alienation in these constructive and reconstructive

'0

nothing could be found in the same place of knowing or

provocative detail. what once participated in silent

"THE DEMONISM OF THE EXPLICIT

IS THE PATH OF THE HISTORY OF
CIVILIZATION. WHAT WAS ONCE IN
THE BACKGROUND MOVES INTO
THE FOREGROUND; THAT WHICH
HAS BEEN UNSPOKEN SINCE ONE
CAN REMEMBER SUDDENLY HAS
BEEN BROUGHT FORWARD."

The closest example of what can be defined as a

chang~d

the angte of knowledge 01 things

with the cultural niveou-be myself if I abstract from my

activities that have eliminated the obvious before they

"revolution" is found in looking at the breakthrough or

abilities of the anatomists-in which one is constituted

principal of saying "no" to operating on the state in

allow us to return 10 a second set of givens. II they

the work of the anatomists of the 16th century. who

as a virtual sellsurgeon with a radically changed angle

which one finds oneself is the seed of bad Romanticism.

return, then the products or objects of explication come

decided to open the body's interior by cutting into it,

on the relationship with one's self-NAtter all, an object

Our unavoidably imperfect but still expandable ability to

under the care of conservation. They either become

and to publish their Rndings through descriptive

becomes comprehensible to us only at an angle of forty

grasp our own somatic and psychosemantic interior

objects of constant sociopolitical concern or undergo

illustrations. It may be that the Vesalian "revolution"

five degrees.'" Modernity is the age of anatomy, the age

ground is characteristic of the situation that

the process of their new design. Where there was a

had a greater impact on the relationships of Western

of cuts. of invasions, of penetrations, of implantations in

with the worn-out predicate of "modern."

wlifeworld," there must now be air~conditioning.

people to themselves than the long over-cited and

the dark continent. the former lethe.

What about the Inside'

EJ:cerpls from Sphern III: looms

w~

describe

We Have Never Been Revolutionary (page. 86-88)

smallest maneuvers; everything new that carries on is

With the 20th century having run its course, there is a

operative. The visibility of real innovations comes back

dawning recognition that it was a mistake to put the

to the effect of explication-what is then praised as

term "revolution" at the center of its meaning-just as it

"revolution" is usually only the leftover noise that arises

was wrong to understand the most extreme ways of

when the event is over. The contemporary age does not

technical processes; systems theories make explicit

thinking during that time as the mirroring of a

turn over objects or themes-it turns them out. It unfolds

societies as structures visible to their visions and btind

",evotutionary" social base. One 51ill gives (omplicit

them. it pull. them to the forefront. it lay. them out on

to their blindnessJ

credit to the selfmystification of the actors of the epoch.

a plane. it forces them to become manifest. it spells

Whoever spoke of revolution. whether political or

them out in a new analytic way and installs them into

be experienced in the form of devotion. participation.

and communion free from ulterior motives were placed,

Encompassing relationships that could traditionally

cultural. before or after 1917. alway. lei himself be made

synthetic routines. It turns suppositions into operations:

a fool by a vague melaphor of movement. After all. the

it gives exact methods to confused tones of expression;

through explication, into the objective givens of

impact of the century never lay in reversals . Nowhere did

it interprets dreams in user's guides; it arms ,essenti~

technical feasibility and execution, without giving

the top and bottom switch places; nothing that was

ment, it lets love play on countless and often newly

people the option to remove themselves from these

standing on ils head was put on its feet ; it would be

invented instruments; it wants to know everything

"circumstances" or "media. " Even if mistrust grows. we

sky can no longer mean what it once did. From the

futile to look for evidence that somewhere something

about what i. in the background. enfolded. formerly

remain immanent to the suspected. We are damned to

immemorial homeliness of morta l~ in thf Opt" air, an

After the awareness of the first as well as the second

greenhouse effect,living and breathing under an open

that was last became first. Nothingwas turned around,

unavailable-at least as much as is needed to make it

being~in, even if the containers and the atmospheres

unhomely, unlivable. and unbreath able one has risen .

nothing was spun in a circle. Instead, everywhere that

available for new acts in the foreground-unfaldings,

with which we have to surround ourselves can no longer

With the appearance of the environmental que~tion.

which was in the background was brought into the

crackings open. intelVentions, and reformations. It

be assumed,like a benevolent nature.'

human habitation of its primary milieu has turned out

foreground; on countless fronts. that which was tatent

translates the monstrous into the everyday. It invents

was encouraged to become manifest. That which was

methods of bringing the unheard of into the register of

but that we al.o can no longer fully trust. have been

and substantiated through scientific publications

opened up through invasive hypotheses, intelVentions.

the real; it create. the button. that allow u.ers to have

calted Umwelten lo (environments) since the beginning

the existence of microbes. human ellistencf has had

and probes ended UP in think tanks, in printed text, in

easy access to what was previously impOSSible. It tells

of the 19th century, a term that was introduced into the

to understand itself. through explicit m easur~s.

business balance sheets. The middle ground was

its own : "Dontt despair. What you can't do you will

di.course of theoretical biology in 1909 by Jacob von

as in symbiosis with the invisible-and moreover.

spread out, representational functions proliferated,

learn." Rightly. ours i. called the technical age.

Uexkiill. It i. al.o a term that has .ince pa ed through a

in prevention and resistance against now precise ly

laws were shuffled , management expanded. the points

The circumstantial totalities that we cannot leave.

to be problematic. After Pasteur and Koch rttVe~led

long and sometimes meandering career. which appears

positioned microbic competition. From the moment of

of attack for actions. production, and publications

World,50ulln Agony orthe Emergence of Immune

to be imminent to seemingly self-evident concepts. II

the massive gas attacks of the Germans. as well as

proliferated. new bureaus shot out of the ground, and

Sy.tems (pages 192-201)

With the ob.ervation that life i. alway. already life in an

the devastating counterattacks of the Allies in 1915.

the number of career options multiplied by a factor of a

In the campaign of modernity again.t the .elfevident.

environment-and thus also in a certain sense against

breathable air 1051 its innOCen c.f; bfginn'ng in 19'9 it

thou.and, Something about all of this fit. well with"Paul

that which was once called nature, air, atmosphere,

this environment and in opposition to many foreign

could be portioned and given as gifts in thr lorm 01

Valery's malicious thesis that the French and eo ipso,

culture, art. and life are put under the pressure of

environments-the perpetual crisis of holism begins.

ready-mades, and from t924 on it could be offered as

the Moderns. had turned "a revolution" into "a routine~

explication. which fundamentally change. the way of

The ancient human disposilion to allow oneself to

executionary air for delinquents. U After the synchro

nization of national presses during the fir st Wo rld War.

- The real fundamental term for modernity is not

.,

D,agp,D,uck.anlug.IIPalmt"nl 01 de
(omplt"ssion sickness. 1915. Source
unknown

being of these "givens." What was once the background

revolution. but eA'PUCQtiO~ExP\ication is. for our

surrender to immediate totalities as to good local gods

of a saturated latency has now been given emphasis as

lost its orienta tiona I value when the environments

civil communication was fundamenta lly compromi sed-

time. the true word for becoming. under which the

an i ue. and ha. been placed in the category of the

themselves became construe Is or could be recognized

the Signs themselves seemed to be stained through

conventional modes of being can-through drift.

pre.ent. the objective. the worked out. the manufactur

as such. The quasi-religious act of propping oneself up

their contribution to belligerent deliriums and psvcho-

simulation, catastrophe. and creative recombination-

able. In the forms of terrorism, iconoclasm, and science,

against a surrounding primacy-nature. cosmos,

semantic arms races; thanks to the critiq~ of reliBion,

be subsumed. Oeleuze must have articulated a related

three latency~breaking forces were put into place,

creation, situation. culture, homeland. or whatever-

ideology. and language, vast portions of th e Sfmant ic

thought when he tried to displace the type of event that

under whose innuences the data and meaning of the

would. in an age of toxins and strategies, have the

environment were demarcated as int~ll f-ttuaIlV un-

is a "revolution " onto the molecular level, in order to

old "Iifeworlds" cave iGrOriSm makes explicit the

semblance of a seduction into self-endangerment.

breathable zones-from that moment on. it would

avoid the ambivalences of action in relation to "the

environment from the angle of its vulnerability; icono-

The progress of explication forces naivete to have a

be responsible to only occupy spaces that had been

masses"; it is not the voluminous overturn that counts,

clasm makes explicit culture from the experience of its

change of meaning; naivete becomes more conspicuous

pumped empty by analy.i newlv furnished. and

but the flowing. the discrete continuation into the next

ability to be parodied; .cience make. explicit primal

and even offensive. Now, naive is that which invites

cleared for critically mobile living. Even Mona lisa

state. the .u.tained night out of the .tatu. quo. In the

nature from the point of view of its repUcability through

sleepwalking in the midst of present dangers.

molecular realm. it is just about the small and the

pro.thetic device. and it. ability to be integrated into

Whal aboullhe

In5lde~

smiled differently after Marcel Duchamp save her

a moustache.

Excerpts from Sph~rn III: FfHlms

In this conle:d,the Question of immune systems

consequence of privileging dissociation over

.lnd poisoned, when everything is potentially deceitful

participation is the growing pressure of risk. which has,

(t) Arli!ot!io Right .. Society lARSI. t~ ... wYorkl

ADAGP. P.lri!io/Suc(l!~sion Marccl

Ducllolmp. ( ourlt'W Th l' Phil.ldt'lphia
MUSt'um of Art: louise o1nd Waite.

and suspicious. wholeness and being able to be whole

since the beginning of the 20th century. burdened

can no longer be derived from external contexts. Now,

potential global scenarios and thei r inhabitants.

integrity is no longer thought of as something won by

Because humans in the age of background explications

putting faith in a benefici al enclosure; instead it comes

pick up ever less untouched a priori information about

troops with varying success. In contrast to the users of

from the personal contribution of an organism actively

how and where they should b. (unless they live high in

this hawkish terminology is a biological dove faction

A.t('n~ b(lrg (OIlf'(lion . 1'} 'jO

besieged terrain defended by the body' s own border

tending to delimiting itself from an environment.

the mountains or are rooted in one of the evermore

th at paints a less martial image of the events of

Thus the thought emerges that life is not so much

rare traditional cultures), they are forced to adjust their

immunity; according to th i s group, the self and th e other

determined by openness and participation in a

orientation from being anchored in an implicit back-

are so intertwined at a deeper levellhat one is more

whole , bul by self-enclosure and selective refusal to

ground to settling in the explicit. As the self-evident

likely to encourage counterproductIVe effects by using

participate. The greater part of the surrounding world is

became rare, its role had to be taken over by options.

these an-too primitive strategies of marking

a toxic or meaningless background for the organism-

This leads to the age of chosen world images (Welt

boundaries.

thus it arranges itself in a zone of strictly chosen things

bilder) and chosen self-images. The long economic cycle

and signals, which become one's own circle of

of "identities" sets in.

relevance: in other words, to come into language as

In addition, an intricate game at endocrinol ogical

emissions surfaces. one that works in the threshold
between subconsciou s biochemical processes and the

Identity is a prosthesis for self-evidence in uncertain

" an environment." One could go 50 far as to call this the

terrain . It is fashioned according to both individual

fundamental thinking of a post-metaphysical or other-

and colle clive patterns. The concept of building mental

metaphysical civilization . Its psycho-social trace is

prostheses exp resses the insight and circumstance

manifested in the shock of naturalism, through which

that the production of vital assumptions-life-guiding

biologically enlightened cultures learned to convert

"hypotheses" (in William James's sense)-is no longer

from a phantasmic ethic of universal peaceful

primarily derived from a cultural inheritance, but is

coexistence to an ethic of antagonistic protection of

instead ever more a matter of new Inventions and

interests of finite units-a learning process out of which

constant reformatting. This is where the growing

political systems since Machiavelli have gained

impulse to individualize life forms comes from.

manifest advantages.

Admittedly, as long as I seethe singular fact of my life

With the catastrophe of passed down culture and its

to be that I am Corsican. Armenian, or Irish Protestan t,

"WHEN 500 NEW DISEASES ARE

FOUND OR DESCRIBED EVERY
YEAR, IT DOES NOT MEAN THAT
THE SAFETY OF THE INHABITANTS
OF THE PROUD TOWER OF
CIVllilATION INCREASES."

experiential surface of the organism . It is not jusl in Iheir

intricacy that immune systems confuse the secur ity
demands of their owners ; they irritate even more
through the immanent paradox that their successes. if
they turn out to be too thorough. can turn into a cause
for their own kind of sickness: The growing universe of
auto-immune pathologies illustrates the dangerous
tendency of the self to be victorious to the death in the
fight against the other.
n is not by chance that in more fecent definition s of

latest principals of health as the minimal biological

immunity there is a tendency to attribute a much more

holistic morals, the issue of the century emerges:

then modernisms of this kind are none of my business;

requirement of existence. and the discovery and

meaningful role to the presence of the foreign within the

making immune systems explicit. Clearly, the

"11 consider myself an ethnic readymade and prepare

problemat ization of those finely tuned delicate

self than was provided for in the traditional

construction of immunity is an event that is much too

myself to appear in the multicultural bazaar. I will even,

structures, there had to come that which we have called

understandings of identity as a monolithic. closed

broad and contradictory to be described only in medical

if must be, protest on the streets for the preservation of

the " immune system" (in the bi ochemical sense) for the

organism of the self- one could almost speak of a

and biochemical terms. In keeping with its complex

the British fox hunt. If I don't Ukethis escape into a

l ast

postslructurat turn in biology. In this light. the parrots

nature, components that are political, military. juridical,

type, however,' assure myself of my selrorganismic

securities al the level ofone's own body opened a layer

security technological. psychosemantic, and even

foundations, on which' will depend from now on ...

of regulating mechanisms that , once they appeared,

force that applies a strict policy against fOffignefs and

allowed the profound implausibility of biosystemic

more a theater troupe that parodies its invaders and

religious contribute to its emergence in the real." The

..

MoUCI'\ Duchamp .'io((ofPr,,;( Ai!. 1919.

The first manifoldly felt, yet hardly fully grasped

;uio;( ... Wh('n everything could be latently contaminated

This search for inner solidity is not without irony.

tOO

years. The forced awareness of background

of antibodies in an organism seem le~!t to be a police

twilight of immunity would determine the intellectual

In the massive interest in biologically grounded self

integrity to come into view forthe first time. With the

acts as their transvestites. But no mall et how one sums

lighting conditions of the 20th century. learning to be

hood. it is precisely the most avid clients of bodily

body's own immune systems having become an issue,

up the debates or biologists surround ing the meaning of

immunity, whoever is extensively interested in health as

suspicious, for which there is no other example in

health as a form of identity who are drawn into a

the connection of the enlightened individual to the

GeistesgeschicMe (the history of ide.. and thought),

paradoxical insecurity that leads to the realization that

organic requirements of being sick or healthy radically

the basis for personal lntegrily and identit y will soonet

colors the meaning of everything that was previously

health, in the fullest sense, does not exist. What one

changed. Now one had to recognize that there are occult

or later learn so much about their functional lequirements that the biochemic al dimension of immuni ty as

called rationality. For Intelligence operating at the

loses sight of in the cult of health is the subversive

battles between pathogens and antibodies in the human

forefront of development, the education in non-

role that medical research has played in the events of

body, the results of which determine the status of our

such steps irritatingly out of its latency and grows into

commitment begins.

explication. As a consequence of the search for the

health . Many biologists describe the somatic self as a

one of the most concerning foreground issues.

What about thrlflsldr ?

[xcerplS from Sph~ru III: Faams

This has consequences for the mental immunity of

"enlightened society." It no longer just knows what it

life. insofar as it is in vague agreement with its

photographic, cartographic) that in sum yield what one

we do not usually project houses and apartments into a

background and can be supported by tradition, often

can call air sovereignty or spatial domination in the third

vacuum , in the future they might .. well be lormulated

knows but must now form an opinion on how it will live

still maintains an aura of protected naivet~ . One who Is

dimension. Its extension into electronic technology

as explicitly as if they were close relatives of space

wilh its always-arriving state of explication. Moderns

enlightened smiles at this. but nevertheless, having

produces control over telecommunications. or "ether

capsules.

are shown with increasing urgency that the progress of

already lived too long in perpetual alarm, also envies it

domination." with the oft noted consequence that

knowledge does not consistently translate into

at timest!he enlightenment of enlightenment becomes

space was temporarily moved to the background in favor

It is the medium in which the ex.plication 01 human

analogous advantages for immunity. Knowledge, it

a form of management of the collateral damage of

01 lime. As to the opinion that "spatial thinking"

inhabitation in manmade interiors is articulated in a

turns oul. isn't always power. When, as is true today.

knowledge. Due to first stage enlightenment. we are

altogether has since then represented something out of

process. Accordingly, building has. since the 191h

sao new diseases are found or described every year, it

all - to use a phrase of Botho Strauss-"prognostically

date, only those who allowed themselves to be overly

century. represented what was un1i1 1848 cane d a

does not mean that the safety of the inhabilanls of the

contaminated."';-J

Impressed by analogous declarations that have been

"realization of philosophy." To use Heidegger's voice

circulating since the 19205 can continue to adhere to it.

again: It puts into effect the erorterung (discussion;

proud tower of civilization therefore increases. Revealed

knowledge about the security architecture of

In whIch we live, and move, and have our beIng

The English author E.M. Forster had alreadY,ln his 1928

figuratively speaking: demarcating or exploring of a

existence-whether from the fields of medicine. law, or

On Modern Architecture as the Making Explicit of

posthistorical science fiction story. "The Machine

sile) of being. Architecture was not satisfied with bting

politics- often, because of ils increasing explicitness

InhabitatIon (pages 501-507)

Stops," put the sentence into the mouth of one

the more or less artistic handmaiden for meeting the

(and decreased ability to be suppressed), has a

If one had to find the quickest possible way of

character: "You know that we have lost the sense of

housing needs of people. the roots of which can be

destabilizing effect. As a result of the counterproductive

explaining what changes the 20th century brought for

space. We say 'space is annihilated,' but we have

traced back to the arrangement of shelters. caves, and

effects of advanced explication. latency as such also

human being-in-the-world,the bulletin should read : It

annihilated not space. but the sense thereof." ll This

huts. It reformulated the places where the living,

becomes explicated for its desirable functions . For

architecturally, aesthetically, and juridically unfolded

thesis on the primacy of time is one of the rhetorical

resting, and beinginplaces of groups and individuals

forms in which intimidation cloaks itself in modernity.

could happen under conditions 01. high d.g... of .ell-

someone who has come into knowing, it becomes clear

existence as in~abitation-or to put it SimPlyGt made

only after the lact what he really had by not knowing,

dwelling explic~ Modern building disassembled the

Whoever gives in to it risks missing a key event in

referentiality. of financial exchange. of legalization ,

Thus it is revealed that pre'enlightened or already

house. the supplement to nature that makes being

contemporary thought. which can be placed under the

networking. and mobility. We now kn ow that the-Sf

ex plica led conditions as such can be relevant

human possible. into discrete elements, and reassigned

title "the return of space."]s Michel Foucault wrote.

places can no longer be thought of as just the here and

immunologically-at least in the sense that residing in

them"; it took the city, which was once at the center of a

"The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch

there of one lifeworld. For a place to exist. it must meet

what is opened up occaSionally and conditionally allows

world planned in a circle around itself. and repOSitioned

of space ....

for a psychic profiting from certain protective funclions

it so that it became but one position In a network of

the following conditions: a quantum of enclosed and

The real "spatial revolution" of the 20th century is

conditioned air. a site of inherited and updated

01 not knowing. This had already been recognized by

flows and streams. The analytical "revolution" that

the explication of interior human habitation or dwelling

atmospheres. a node in housed rel ationships. a

ancient authors like Cicero, who wrote: "Certainly the

constitutes the central nervous system of modernity

through machines for living. climactic design, and

crossing in a network of datanows. an address fot

ignorClnce of future malice is more usefullhan

also infected the architectural shells of human spheres

environmental planning (including the large building

business initiatives. a niche for self relationshi ps. OJ

knowledge ofit ." I~

and by establishing a formal alphabet created a new art

forms that I call "collectors"))), as well CIS the

base camp for expeditions into the world of work and

of synthesis, a modern grammar of generating space.

exploration of neigh borings with two nonhuman spatial

experience. and a guarantee of a subjective niChe. The

and a changed stale of existing in an artificial milieu.II

structures that are pre-embedded or adjunct to the

further explication advances. the more the construction

human. the cosmic (macro and micro) and the virtual. In

of apartments resembles the installation of space

While enlightened consciousness today springs

from explicitly imagined possibilities of failureevidence ol~isk in accidents, terrorism, business.

The phrase spatial revolution, which Carl Schmitt

cancer and heart attacks/and other scales of precisely

used to describe the political consequences of the

order to make explicable the inhabitation of living

stations. living itself. and the manufacturing orits

enumerable possibilitie~of damage-the unalarmed

transition into the age of domination over alr.I' would be

spaces by humans. no less was required than the

containers, becomes a spelling out of all of the

worth reserving for this event if we had not already

inversion of the relationship between foreground and

dimensions or components that were once primordially

encouraged abstaining from the use of the word

background. To think of it in Heidegger's perspective

connoted on the anthropogenic island; in doing so. the

revolution because it is a kinetically deceptive and

and put It in his way of speaking: The being in

fragmentation 01 completely lumped together living

politically misleading term for processes of explication.

something-at-all had to be out of jOint before It could

relationships and their rational new formations can be

What Schmitt was referring to belongs to a complex of

emphatically be raised to the theme of inhabitation-in

pushed toward an extreme where the absolute human

phenomena thatl have elsewhere described as the

the-world . While traditionally living and housing lormed

world-jsland is repeated in the form of the apartment for

a single resident.

"THE FURNISHING OF SPACES FOR

AHAPPY BEING-IN-ONE'S-SElF
IS APREVENTATIVE MEASURE
THAT ANTICIPATES THE PROBABLE
DISRUPTIONS OF WEllBEING IN
ASHARED REALM."

Thus the definition or modern architecture emerges:

What about the Inside?

making explicit of air space, whether through gas

the supportive background of lile processes, in the

terrorism, the Air force, air design, or airconditioning. 1o

caustic airof modernity being in a "lifeworld" was part

It represents the epitome for types of practices

of a greater environmental reversal.uThe selfevidence

communication of persons and goods that radically

(aerotechnical, artilliary, aviatory, pyrotechniC,

of living can no longer remain in the background, Even if

changed the conditions of perception and design for the

Eac.rpts from

Sph~~s

III: Foams

Ie is above all the modern mobilization and

",. ( t"hC'I,/I.,,.dwitlrlo'r'/lc-rlln.] \,,/11"".

lilt"'.',1111o, I'll','

"'''''''''1. II,.II"'HI
"I, "",11>"

l'lUH 1!l.'M \ ""III"

,\I\ !:t'l, "'~"I\I,.I

,UIU

conditions of its living behavior. It never had a sufficient

sounding sentence in Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of

the 19th century. Whoever steps out of the determined

reason, not to mention the resources, ror this .

Space: "Ihe wellbeing of allHfe is in ils germ."

community of immunity and solidarity is traditionally

considered a traitor. The scandal of the modern model of

The present contains, in this regard. not just the

This Ihesis becomes acceplable when it is lied 10 Ihe

advantages of explicitness; the angle of reflection has

daim Ihallopology should be inlroduced as Ihe base

living consists in the fact that it supports the isolation

changed draslically enough so Ihal an analylically

discipline of immunology. The furnishing of spaces for a

and communication needs of individuals and their life

productive, chronic awareness of questions of

happy being-in-one's-self is, in this view. a preventative

partners. who no longer look for an immunitary ideal in

inhabitation and habitus has been provoked. One can

measure that anticipates the probable disruptions of

imaginary and real collectives or cosmic totalities hind

now freely state that sedentary life was too slow. too

wellbeing in a shared realm. Bachelard's lopophilic

analogous models for houses. peoples. classes, and

states),2' For them. the latent layer of meaning of the

much turned inward. and too oriented to a model based

onlology is Ihus read as Ihe foundalion of a Iheory of a

on the plant to come to speak of its forms of living with

well-positioned life-or better, as a theory of residence

Roman expression immunitos is brought to the next

the deterritorialization necessary for theoretical insight.

in a eutonic space. We shouldn't be disoriented by

level by not collaborating in the community project.

As long as the sedentary world condition stayed in place

Ihe facllhallhis conlradicls crilical conformily. The

Can onelhus perhaps say Ihal modern "sociely" forms

then (it is Varros's dictum), the land would be of divine

offensiveness of a doctrine of happy consciousness in

a collective of traitors of the collective?

origin, whereas the city would be an addition of the

the middle of a cult of unhappiness dissolves as soon as

human hand that circumscribed the horizon-only those

one admits that a positive theory of an integral position

who use the city for a second house and treat their

is in one dimension many times richer than a critical

the beginnings of modern architecture would manifest

country villas as their real homes could still know what

Iheory Ihal invariably lakes form as a symplom of an

a debate around the correct definition of an immune

being at home means. The city dweller should believe

inability to participate. A theory of an integral position

space? Don'lthe houses of our era have to become

Ihal he is jusl a Iransposed planl-and planls don'l jusl

allempls 10 explain Ihal. and why.lhe welfare oflhose

material symbols of the struggle between an interest in

live in a place. they root themselves (though plants with

living alone in their own spaces. temporally and

isolation and a demand for integration? Are the

double root systems seem to be a hybrid). Only since the

objectively fakes precedence over estrangement.

apartments of this time not the manifestations of a

rise of modern transport conditions- transport

It elucidates why ressenUment usually reveals itself as

civilizational project that brings to the table a new

understood as the explication of movement or

a jealousy of place: those who wish for the humiliation

format of immune unities and integral spaces? What is

telemobility-did real architectural. technological. and

of others want to see the devastation of the place in

certain is that the link between immunity and

existential alternatives to the post-Neolithic habitus of

which Ihey would feel whole in Ihemselves.

community has had to be thought out in a new way as

living emerge. an alternative that finally made it

Thus one reaches a dynamic definilion oflhe

living and working conditions have started moving

possible 10 bring lighl inlo Ihe elernal half-darkness of

apartment as a spatial immune system. living is, from

toward the atomization of individuals living on their

dwelling human being. Ever since the portion of

sedentariness. Now skepticism can assert itself against

an immunological perspective. a measure of defense

own. Just as life in the age or"bare life" is defineod as the-

humanity that was first affected by the Industrial

everything that sticks to the ground; the term

Ihrough which a zone of well-being is walled off againsl

successful phase of a (biochemical) immune sysu~m. so

Revolution in Europe and the U.S. worked itself out of an

(or rootlessness) has a light sound to it and can be

Invaders and other bearers of illness. All immune

"existence" thus describes the successful phase of a

agrarian condition and was converted to a multi-local,

expressed on demand. Ever since this split. one could

syslems go beyond reason in calling upon Iheir righllo

one-person household.

semi-nomadic modus vivendi, it became apparent how

say that traditional living in so-called homelands in no

defend agaTnst disruptions. If they become contentiou""S,

full of presuppositions the old way of living in villages

way represents the universal ur-form and norm of

it is only because the di;;osions of zones of shared

and domains in the agrarian age was. All knowledge that

habitation (of housing oneself), as some Pietists have

immunity are not defined 0

we carry within ourselves of the habitations and habits

recently pontificated. It is instead a dogged but

uprooting

----

priori for cultural beings.

Immunity (even if under a different name) is above

The Roman juridical expression integrum did not

only refer to the unharmed state of natural-born living
conditions. which are protected bv law; it atso rl!'f~n~d

10 Ihe idea Ihallhe unharmed slale of Ihe whole "Ih ing"

of the old fundus reflects a world of residing in

surmountable way that humans inhabit space when they

all and for Ihe mosl pari underslood as a social facl-

homelands, fatherlands, and regions, which was

are held back by somelhing.

one could go so far as to look for the criteria of social

the result of conflicts and measures. This seemingly

coherence in the automatic participation in an immune

willful and. solospeak. heaUhy slale exisls as such

imprinted over the 10,000 year realm of sedentariness,

48

If modern housing types are forms of explication of

an immunitary quality. could one not then expect that

Ihal is a household or a public good was ilself alreadv

whose formal and material sediment are present in the

The Apartment as Immune Syslem (pages 534-545)

commune. Tradillonally. families and dans. and laler

only because il profils from Ihe benefit ot living undor

form of historically referential house. village, and city

There is a form of explicit habitation in which human

also Ihe cily.lhe community of failh.lhe people.

Ihe sharp sword of Ihelaw (in differenll~ rms Ihis has

architectures. This universe belongs to a life that has

living is understood as the construction of a shared

Ihe party.lhe corporalion. havewanled 10 qualify as an

been called Ihe dialeclical relalionship b~tw n

stopped, which, because of its imprisonment in narrow

communal and personal immune system. This quasi-

operatively effective immune system. and forced onto its

violence and law). The integrum is an a .. embl~d life

field markers and languid rhythms. was incapable of

hygienic dimension of primal existential space

followers Ihe behavior Ihal conformed 10 Ihe slandards

or rhymed lola lily in which Ihings belong logolhor.

giving an adequate account of the motives and

formation is best elucidated by an initially implausible

of commonly gained immunity, called "solidarity" since

like house and yard. skin and hair. man and mouse. U

Whal aboollhe Inside '

Excerpts from

Sp"~rft III:

FoDms

"THE MODERN APARTMENT IS

APLACE TO WHICH UNDESIRED
GUESTS ALMOST NEVER HAVE
ACCESS. HERE TOXIC PEOPLE
HAVE TO STAY OUT. ALONG WITH
BAD NEWS:

01 immunity. the One who supposedly addresses

solidarity). The modern apartment is a place to which

everybody actually represents the quintessence of

undesired guests almost never have access. Here toxic

these four walls that are called one's own neither serve

selectivity.

people have to stay out. along with bad news. if possible.

the sleep of death nor postulate a flight to heaven . the

The apartment is developed into an ignorance machine

house that ensures nightly immunity does not make any

Intuitions of this type were present for Nietzsche

opened to the outside.' Because nest formations" in

when he presented his friends with a suggestion for

or an integral defense mechanism. In it the basic right to

demands in terms of size. It demands neither a Pharonic

formulating a new categorical imperative after the death

not take note of the outside world finds its architectural

pyramid nor the furnish ing of cathedrals. Maybe the

of God: 8e a new beginning yourself, by your own power!

support. n

Be an original game that plays itself. be "a sellrolling

The modern apartment is the extension of the body

" small house," which some contemporary architects are

concerning themselves with .)~ is above all a form of

wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea " !:r, With suggestions

through which Ihe habitualized care for one'S self and

explication of the nightly beingat-home-herein a

of this kind. the adjustment from theology to

one's own background defensivity is specifically

response of an architecture for historical people to the

These double forms evoke the protective blessing that

immunology is implicitly complete-and eo ipso the

brought to representation. It makes e.plicit the fact that

ahistoric hut. At the cen ter of the small, immune,

guarantees peace for a collective: they beseech the

resulting release of finite egoisms. Saying yes to oneself

living organisms do not exist without making sure that

acosmic house stands the bed-the Simple techni cal

common roof of immunity that shields the community.

sketches the outline of the real living space of the yes-

they are enclosed within themselves . Thus the apart

ass istant to sleep that more than anything else has

The so-called whole thus takes advantage of a border-

sayer, in recognition of the fact thai no sphere of self

ment wins a share of the core processes of modern -

contributed to the humanizing of nights. Thus much

making. assembling. complementing power.

yes saying can be allencompasslng-and that forthe

ization : It articulates the appearance-or the becoming

supports the idea that living is, in the last instance,

Other. and others Ihal want themselves. there will

articulate-of immune systems, and at the same time

the epitome of being able to sleep at one's own place.

Seen from this angle. the right to integrity of the

domestic sphere is the source from which the early

always be enough room, even if never in the same exact

the experiments of self'relating individuals with larger

In this sense the bed is the middle of the world."

European culture of law unfolded. The institution of

place. Every loca' "yes" to one's self noats in a foam of

associations (of which even the largest will be much

The bedchamber of real people is not "as Hegel says ...

Housherrenrechr(patriarchallaw) Is the latent model for

analogously sectioned off self affirmations. "And he

smaller than the "whole"). It materializes the lact that

a crystal , in which a dead person resides")': it is also

aU immunity-provided that one interprets th is as the

who proclaimeth the Ego wholesome and holy. and

human openness to the world always corresponds to a

not a gothic tree of life that curves itself up into an

decision-making authority over the admitlance or non-

s.IHshness blessed. verily. he. the prognosticator.

complementary aversion from it.

admittance of that which is foreign to one's own realm-

speaketh also what he knoweth." What Nietzsche. who

At night, the hour strikes when the immunitary

" organic excelsior"n; it is the shell of the acosmic at a

human scale. In homeless people one can observe how

whereas this realm always already has to be imagined

unsuccesslully searched for a place in the world that

house reveals its performance as a protector of sleep.

the need for a place to sl eep approaches the minimum;

as an effective immune assemblage of own and not-

was atmospherically bearable for himself. does not

In forming a prate clive sleeping environment, the house

a cardboard box over one's head can be enough to meet

own, lI lmmunity implies a prophylactic violence to

explain here, of course, is why the empirical place for

becomes complicit in the acosmic needs of its residents.

the requirements of an inviolable space. The expression

preven t a harmful violence-it interiorizes what it wants~

refurbished and legitimized selfhood is usually the

It forms an enclave of world less ness in the world-

Is delivered by the most famous among the homeless:

to protect again~ Roumrecht (the right of space). which

apartment-understood here as an immuno-spatlal self

a nightly integrum. secured through roof and wall,

"The foxes have holes. and the birds of the air have

forms the heart of private law, protects the unified life as

extension of the human who remains happily by himself.

door and lock. The house. which is the shell of sleep.

nests; but the Son of man hath nowhere to lay hi s

the embodimen t of the activities of multiple intertwined

That this should be a small room can only at ftrst glance

delivers the purest evidence of the relationship between

head."oWhat does this mean? He who is su

lives: these should be able to thrive alone in the places

seem surprising.

immunity and spatial sequestering. It embodies the

a spherical hyperimmunity (et non sum solus,

where they realize themselves by themselves , which

It was Marshall McLuhan who later let slip the secret

unity of geometry and life. a topically realized utopia-

quia Poter
mecum est)-' can even abstain from the most basi c

unavoidably means in their own borders. to the

of living in modern conditions when he deduced It from a

as a timeles s projection of the interior as a stillalways

sleeping comfort of God's children; he does not demand

exdusion of others.

fully transformed immune situation. The literate person,

being-insi de." It guards the human -forming and re-

hi s own bed. but the blanket of paradise. When the

according to McLuhan, no longer has the need "to see

generating nights in which no plan for the world of

house acts as a giver of shelter at night, the primal

of successfully setting limits-it is an emergency of

his hous .. . as a cultllke e.tenslon of his body.....

daylight is forged .

scene of the integrum is lulHlled.

inclusive exclusivity. No universalist propaganda can

because he no longer uses the universe. its divine

change this. Even a single god, whether it is Yahweh or

foundation, and its supposedly universal set of rules as

Allah or Pater Noster, is first and foremost a big evictor.

Even if he sends out invitations to everybody, they are

Immunity, as a tocat aseity. stems from the practice

The natural transcendence of night is articulated

Thus il turns out that worldlessness IS a local

most closely in the built forms of bedrooms offering

attribute. Every sleep is the sleep of somebody: e

a personal immune system. Thus he no longer needs to

deSigned rest environments. Here the skin 1expands

absentmindedness is the absence of a finite sp i Jlt of

equate the house with the cosmos ; global order and

into a bed-i - surrounded by a room-' in a housel. The

a section of the world . There is no sleep of the world .

formulated according to rather standoffish conditions.

lifestyle part ways. For the resident of the media

puresl sleep is one in an acosmic onion. In the house

because the world has no eye s that it could close as

There is no mention of the fact that there is enough

enhanced house. modernity has replaced the vague

of nighl, the houseless are accommodated: those of us

a whole . just as there is no world house 10 which

room at his house for everybody. There may be many

psycho semantic protection systems of religious

who are "released " also find here another umbrella over

everything could be at home. The guiding hyperbole of

apartments in the house of the Father, but most are

metaphysics with specialized legally and climatically

our heads-an umbrella that we don ' t have to wish, for

classical metaphysics. the suggestion that the cosmos

empty because they are unaffordable. As the spirit

insulated living cells (as well as anonymous systems of

that moment. to have poked through with holes and

is a house, went out of servi ce with the transition in to

Wha t about the 1n!.lde?

explicit living. We recognizelhatthe metaphysical reflex

its "selfhood, ",.:I and all the same its normal diagnosis.

of looking for immunity in the all-inclusive represents

The crisis of the world-soul passes through housing.

a thriftlessness that onlv the poorest, the unhoused

Even God cannot. if He is committed to life and not an

and uninsured of antiquity and the middle ages,

empty mask of. totality, take in everyone. These .re

could afford. Those who are weak live in hyperboles;

harsh words for those who romanticize the dissolution

the strong fill territories and leave them again. Every

of boundaries. Who will hear them?

apartment, as the support point of a finite-being-ableto-live, creates exclusivity: every punctual self-yessing

Thanks go 10 Simone Boler for checking this translation.

produces breakdowns in communication and the

Additionol thanks go to Suhrkomp Verlag GmbH & Co..

denial of environments. That is its affirmative virtue.

Frankfurt, for permission to reprint this text.

1 Translato,'s nol~:"Lebfn. w~b~n. und

sind." Th~r~ ar~ sev~ral n!ferent~s 10 this
expression in German Romantic literature.
/( appurs in The Luther Bible. Atls 17:28:
"Oenn in ihm leben, weben und sind wlr"
(For in him we live, and move, and have
our b~inl). 2 Se. Martin Heldegger. Stin
und le/r(TUbinlen: 1967), 29-)0. 3 See
Hermann Schmitz. AdolfHitler in der
Geschichte(Bonn:1999), 21-31; 377-404.
4 On Ihe netessity of the Intelral housing
of man. see HUlh Miller, PrtJgress tJnd
Decline: The Group in EvolutitJn (Oxford:
196,,),17)-21]. See also filman Allert. Die
Fomilie. FtJlstudien Zur UnllerwOstlichkeir
einerLebensform (Berlin/New York: 1998).
S See my Sphilren II, Globen (Frankfurt:
1999). 82S-]6. and Peler Sioterdijk/ Hans
JOr,en Helntichs. Die Sonne undder Tod,
OIalog;sche Untersuchungen (frankfurt:
2001). 190 f. 6 Johann Wolflans Goethe.
Max/men und Re{lexionen Nr. S0l. 1 See
Roben B. 8random, Making It EJtpUclt:
Reasoning. Representing. and Discursive
(ommitment(Boston: 19941.8 One of the
few aulhors who was able to lake this into
at(ount wai Kar' Rahner SI. whOWfOl~in
the essay "Experiment Mensth. Theo
10Sischu Ober die Selbstmanlpulation
des Menschen": "He must want 10 be an
operable person, even if the rlSht means
and uten! of this selfmanipulation is still
larlely obscure." Die FrtJge nach dem
Mensche". Au{rlfJ einer philosophischen
Anlhropologie (Freiburg/MUnchen: 1996),
5].9 As to the required investment of
immunltary energies Into living conditions,
see my SphiJren 11/, Schllume. Chapter 2.
10 Translalor's note: Umwelt literally
means "surroundlnlwortd ."11 Jakob
von uexkUII. Umwell und Innenwelt der
nere (8erlin: 1909', 2nd edition, 1921.
12 Translator's nole: Sioterdilk is making
reference to two examples that appear
earlier In the book. In 1919 Marcel
Oucl1amp had a Ilass apothecary ampule
filled with "Patliian Air" and brought as a
gift to collectors In New York. a readymade
entitled Air de Poris. In 1924 the company

52

What aboutlhe

Insld~?

that manufattured Zykon-B was founded

in Hamburg, while in Nevada Ihe first
executionary Sas chamber was put Into
operation. 13 See Roberto Esposito.
Immunitas. Protez;tJne e negozione dello
vito (Turin: 2002). 1. See Donna .
Haraway, '"The Blopoliliu of Post modern
Bodies: Delerminatlons of Self in Immune
SYSlem Discourse." in Differences I. 1989.
15 De DivinitJt/one II, 23. 16 Botho Strauss,
Die Felher des Kopisten (MUnchen: 1999),
102.17 See H. van der Laan. DerArchiteltt
onischer Roum. FiJn{zehn tekllonen Ob~r
die Disposition der menschlichen
8~housung (Leiden/New york/K6In:
1992). I. 18. See Christopher Alexanderl
Sara Ishikwa/Munay SlIlIersteln, Eine
Muster SprtJche. StiJdte. Gebiiude.
KtJnstrukrion, Hermann Czech. ed. (VIenna:
I99S). 19 Carl SchmiU. Land und Meer.
Ejn~ welrgeschichtliche 8etrochfung
(Stuttgart: 19S1I). 3 1993 edition. 10)ft.
20 See SphiJren III, 89-192; also
Sloterdiik.tuftb~ben. An den Quellttl des
Terrors (Frankfurt: 2002). 21 Edward
MorSan Forester. "Ole Maschine blelbt
stehen" in Erich Simon and Olaf R. Splltel.
eds. Duell im 75 . /ahrhundert. Geschichten
vtJn gliJckUchen W~It~n und kommenden
Zeiten. Klossische Scienu-pction
Geschichlen (BerUn: 1997). 22 See
Bernhard Waldenfals, "Lelbllches Wohnen
im Raum" in Gerhart SthrCkter and Hella
Breuninger, eds. Kultur,heorlen d~r
Gegenwart. AnsiJtze lind Positionen
(Frankfurt: 2001), '79-182. 23 Translator's
note: by collectars Sioterdljk meanslars~
buildinlS like stadiums that sel"e as mass
satherins plates. 24 For more on this
concept. see Sphare" III. ))1. 25 Gaston
Bachelard, Poel/k des Rallm~ (MUnchen:
1960). 1)2. "Die Welt ist eln Nest." 26 See
SphiJren II, Globtn. Ch. 8, "Ole IroBe
immunologlsche Transformation. UnlerweBS zu elner Gesellsthaft der dUnnen
Wltnde" (Frankfun: 1999).995- laOS
27 See Hans Hattenhauer. Ellrop~;S(he
Re(hlsgeschicht~ (Heidelbers: 199,,).7.
28 Esposito, I]. 29 Friedrich Nietzsche,

Also sprtJch ZortJ,hustro I, Von den

drei Verwandlungen. English ii from
the Thomas Common translation.
30 Nietzsche. Also sprach ZtJralhustro III,
Von den drel Otisen 2. 31 Marshall
Mcluhan, Die maglschen Konlle (Oresden:
1996), I)S. 32 this is whit le Cor busier
had in mind when hewrole. in V~rsune
Architecture, that the apartment of the
creative "elite individual" would have to
off~r a -brilht and clos~doff room" to be
able to "peacefully tt.absorbed In his
work; the solution 10 'his problem is
essential fOf Ihe ellle." AlIsblick ouf eine
Archltelttur (Berlin/Frankfurt/ Vienna:
196J), )4 33 See Walter Benjamin's time
transcending (and at Ihe same time
historiclzlng) deduction of Interiority from
the Intrauterine primal scene in Dos
Passagen Werk. Gesommelle Sch,,(ten
V.I (Frankfurt: 1989), 292 . ~. On D.H.
Lawrence's theme of the umbrella that
humans protectlhemselves with. In which
artists cut holes and slits let in a "draft
of chaos," see Gilles Deleuze, FlUx
Gualtarl. WdS 1st Phllosophie!(Frankfurt:
1996). 241-2,.2. 3S On the
phenomenololY the nest. see Gaston
Bathelard, PDelik des Ildumes (MUnchen:
1960).119-133.36 See Markus Grob,
Tun del Archltdtur(Stutlsart: 1997),
and Stephan Isphordlnl, OtJs klein. Hous
fOr Singles, Pddre. und ~ftere MenscMtl
(MOnchen: 2002). 37 This was explo.ed by
Vil~m Russer in on~ of his most movlns
texts: Vilfm Russer, "Das 8elt, "In Dlnge
und Unding . Phanomeno/ogische Skizzen
(MUnchen: 1993). 89-109. 38 Ernst Bloch,
"On Ptlnzlp Hoffnunl," Grundrlssr einer
besseren Wett(Ffankfurt: 19S91. S.S' two
typ.s-death crystal (pyramid) and Ufe
tree (gothic cathedral)-rep,esent,
accoldlnB to Bloch. the e.trem~ poles of
"architectural utopias." 39 Ibid. 850.
40 Motthew8:20. 41/ohn 16:)2'" am not
alone becaus. the father Is with me."
U Nietzsche. Also spIlth Zorolhustro III.
Von den drel BUsen 2.

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or

HOUSES OF MIRTH

ATELIER
BOW-WOW'S
IRONIES
By Irene (heng