As authors develop their chapter contributions for Architecture＋Lacan, draft versions will be accessible here, with short summaries of content and reports of issues in preparing documents.
D Kunze, “The Second Parallax of the Heroic Traveler“
Any connection made between psychoanalysis and architecture requires a revision of the idea of parallax, which is currently limited by Kant’s transcendental aesthetic. A true topology is “heroic” in that it must engage ethnological interpolations of projective geometry (the katabasis, the isomeric balance, the katagraphic cut) alongside theoretical understanding of self-intersection and non-orientation as foundational principles. Contemporary accounts of Lacan’s topology have misrepresented the origins of projective geometry as beginning with Euler’s account of the Königsburg Bridge Problem. Lacan, however, correctly cites the true authors of mathematical topology, Pappus of Alexandria (300 c.e.) and Girard Desargues and Blaise Pascal’s revival of Pappus in the 17c. This essay pushes beyond a strictly abstract approach to topology to insist that ethnology provides the best insights, through works of mythology and folklore, theater, visual art, and (especially) architecture and the origins of cities. In these, the logic of the torus stands out, as the creation of liminality where Lacan’s “double inscription” takes place materially.
PROBLEMS: In composing the text, I found that Springer’s template was virtually useless for Mac users, but some features of the sample work (Lacan’s Cruelty) required macros to execute (e. g. the Notes before the Bibliography; the footer material on the front page; endnote styles). Mac authors must wait for a sample MS-Word file formatted to the required design before they can comply with the publisher’s requirements.
ASPIRATIONS: I discovered many things while writing the chapter. While I couldn’t say everything, I said some things differently, and I think this chapter contributes to the idea that architecture is essential for any meaningful advance of Lacanian theory, which up to now has been limited by its misunderstanding of topology. This limit is self-inflicted, since all Lacanians would have to do to correct it is read more Lacan, in particular the middle seminars and the key minor works, “L’étourdit” and “La troisième.” I don’t insert anything that Lacan does not say directly, but I do interpret lalangue and the lamella using terms borrowed from fluid dynamics, mainly “viscosity.” This is the way flows are structured by symmetrical difference and the void produced by Euler circles, in ways that Lacan explains in reference to the unary trait, which he relates to the Fibonacci series and its recursive (self-intersecting) logic. I’m not a mathematician but neither were prospectors in the Gold Rush qualified geologists. I know how gold glitters, and try to pan for more.