Dualism and Polarism

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D ualism and Polarism : Str uctur es of Architectur al andLandscape Architect ur al D iscour se in C hina and the W est

Stanislaus Fung and Mark Jackson

IN T ERST IC ES 4 D ualism And Polar ism 1

In the p re sen t pape r , we pr opose to o f fe r a numberof ref lec t ions on a possible approach to cultura ld i ff e rence in t he s tudy of C hinese a rch i tec ture andlandscape a rch itec tur e . The m odern s tudy of thesecultural fields comes to us within a doubleframewo rk in which the m oder n disciplinary divisionof labour is over la id by cult ura l divisions that haveseparat ed the unde rstan ding of traditional C hinesematerials from contemporary debates of these fields,

conceived as international in character but comm onlynarrated as descended from the Anglo-Europeantradition. In both these fields, contemporaryprofessionals have negotiated their daily practiceacross a divide between their specific culturaltradit ions, on the one hand, and the gener a l debatesof the i r p rofe ssion , on the o the r . In addressing theprob lem of cu l tu ra l d i ff e rence in a rch i tec tur e andlandscape architec tur e , we believe that theore tica land philosophical resour ces are quite crucia l, fornew visions of cultura l possibil it ies in architec t ura lthinking are not secured by (a Eurocentric)comm onsense but r equire intellectual tools of somedegree of sophist ica t ion . In the p re sen t pape r , wewill have occasion to draw on recent work incomparative philosophy and poststruct ura l ist t heoryas we l l a s works in a rch itec tur a l theory tha t mightbe m ore familiar to our immedia te audience . In viewo f t h e b r o a d r a n g e o f s o u r c e s t h a t w e h a v e fo u n dpe r t inen t to our conce r ns , and the r e st r ic t ions o f space under which we are presenting this discussion,we wil l l imit our purpose to indicating re levancebetw een differe nt bodies of scholarly wor k. Thisattem pt t o relate d iverse bodies of materials is in partre la ted to our re jec t ion of the idea of recognisingethnic minorities in an implicitly sentimental andhumanistic fashion. The usual institutional m easures,

that it inspires - for instance, in terms of curriculumreform - of ten r e inforce and consolidate ra ther thanchallenge the cultural division that segregates theChinese and the contemporary in architecturaldiscourse. A serious challenge to this culturaldivision, it would appear, ineluctably calls fordifferent resources gathered across a range ofdisciplines, and the cr oss-cultural wo rk that it e ntailswould involve a risking or transformation ofimpor tan t i s sues o f cur ren t conce rn to the W este rnarchitec tura l w orld.

The present series of reflections is organised aroundthe following foci. We will begin by identifying twocontexts of discussion in which the cultural interestsof t r ad i t ional China and con tem pora ry a rch i tec turea re in te re s t ing ly r e lated and cons ide r the m odes of thinking involved in explor ing such re la t ions. Next ,we w il l provide an account of theor ies of textuali tyin architecture in the last thirty years that highlightsthe univer salist und erst andings of architecture that

informs them. W e wil l at tempt to indicate how somerecent wor ks in French philosophy and comp arativephilosophy open up interesting possibilities in dealingwith t he issue of C hina as other. O ur belief is tha t theintroduction of philosophical resources is useful inprod ucing nuanced re adings of Chinese writ ings onarchitecture and landscape architecture that haveimportant resonances with contemporaryarchitec tur a l concerns. W e propose to i l lustra te thisby a close reading of a crucial passage from t he 17t h-century treatise Yuan ye w h i c h h a s b e e n t a k e n a s alocus classicus in the modern genealogy of thetraditional designer in Chinese architecture andgardens. By way of conclusion, we w il l addre ss theq u e s t i o n W h a t i s i t f o r u s t o s p e a k o f a w e i narchitecture? We will suggest that an interesting takeon this quest ion might be der ived f rom the notion of community in the work of the poststructuralistphilosopher, Jean-Luc N ancy.

O ur po int in addressing an unusually broad range of issues and concerns is simple: Cross-cultural studiesin architec ture and landscape architec ture are mostpowerful and innovative when conceived as thecoordinated ex plora t ion of a pattern of re levance indisparate scholarly pursuits. They are leastconsequential and challenging when pursued as

dainty adjuncts to mainstream debates in theirfields. Since no audience in the field of architecturaltheor y is like ly to be familiar with t he ful l range of r e sources tha t we wi l l d raw upon , we have p i tchedthe pr esent discussion in the fol lowing way. W herewe have reason to believe that a t least some par t of our audience will be fully conversant with thesources - for instance, the works of JenniferBloomer , Mark Wigley, and the Frenchpos ts t ruc tura l i st wr i te r s that they dea l wi th - ourdiscussion will presume familiarity with the m. In the


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case of sources from Sinology and comparativephilosophy that are largely unknow n to W esternaudiences in the f ie ld of architec tu re and landscapea rch i tec ture , we wi l l a t tem pt to wor k wi th themwithout presuming readerly expertise. Since the

professional and pedagogical relevance of theresearch that w e are pur suing is already beginning toobt ain some degree o f appreciation,1 we will notrehearse matters at a strictly elementary level ofdiscussion on this occasion. O verall, even thoughthe re m ay be a spec ts o f the work tha t would no t beimme diately accessible to our audience, we hope thatthis paper will convey a sufficient sense of ourgene ra l purpose and the pe r t inence of the ma te r ia lwith which we ar e dealing.

A sense of the pertinence of traditional Chinesemater ia ls to contemporary concerns in architec tureand landscape a rch i tec ture can be a r t icu la ted wi thr e f e r e n c e t o t h e r e c e n t w o r k s o f A u gu s t in Be r q u ea n d D a v i d L . H a l l . I n a r e c e n t i s su e o f AA Fi le s,Be rque of fe red a r ead ing of the imp or t ance of thetradition of Chinese gardens with reference toEuro pe and the death o f the m odern landscape.2

China, he says, is the o nly civilisation apart from t hatof Europe and their re spective spheres of influenceto have a vocabulary that inc luded a word forlandscape, and a pictorial repe rtoire that includeda genre in which the dep iction of the environme nt ise levated to a theme in i ts own r ight , de noted by theterm landscape. 3 Berque a rgues tha t , in Europe ,the no t ion of landscape appea red on ly in mod ern

times, a t the mom ent in history when m an conceivedof himself as detached f rom natu re - as the subject ,with nature as the object. Until the sixteenth centuryt h e r e w a s n o w o r d f o r l a n d s c ap e i n a n y E u r o p e a nlanguage.4 The distinction between landscape ande n v ir o n m e n t e m e r g e d a s t h e p r o d u c t o f a m o d e r nmentality in the sixteenth century. Modernity,considered as an histor ica l process, se t in motion,almost simult aneou sly, and cer tainly interrelatedly,bot h a landscapist and a sc ient if ic view of nature ;then caused them to evolve, paradoxically, more andmor e independent ly o f one ano the r , and f ina l ly . . .rende red impossible a unif ied vision of natur e and acoherent genre of landscape-painting.5 Cartesiandualism and the Newtonian conception ofhomogeneous, isotopic space served as the conceptualunderpinnings of this whole process in whichlandscape, born as a pictorial genre in the sixteenthcen tury , d i sappea red f rom avant -ga rde a r t ea r ly inthe twentieth century.6 In the course of thesecen tur ie s, t he modern wor ld was to rn apa r t by thetriple forces of science (the factual), art (thesensible), and morality.7 The story of ecological

catastrophe and moral conflict in recent times isfamiliar to everyone.

Berque po in ts ou t tha t , in con t rad is t inc t ion to theEuropean tr adit ion, the C hinese landscape tr adit ion

develop ed within a non- dualist cosmolo gy and hasnot ent ert ained the subject/ object opposition.8 Itemp hasised the corresponden ce and aff ini ty of thehuman wor ld and the na tura l wor ld . Whi leEuropean even ts unfo lded w i th an an t i thes i s o f thephenom ena l and the phys ical wor lds , the C hinesetradition articulated relationships that integratedlandscape with environment.9 It is of particularin te r e s t to us tha t in look ing beyond the modernlandscape, and pro posing the re int egra t ion of theworlds of art, science and morality,10 Berqueexplic i t ly explore d the exemp lar i ty of the Chinesetradition.

W hatever the l imita t ions of Berques account of thehistory of European landscapes, its suggestivenessechoe s stro ngly wit h a recent paper by D avid L.Hall, the comparative philosopher, that offers amore nuanced reading of various aspects ofmodernity and its disintegration.11 Halls basic thesis isthat the values under lying the postm odern cr i t iqueof mod ernity resonate m ore p rofoundly w ith thedominant cultur a l intere sts of the Chinese than everd id the in te re s t s and va lues o f the Modern W est . 12

As China and other ethnic Chinese communities rushh e a d - lo n g t o e n t e r t h e m o d e r n a g e a n d a d o p t t h einstitutions of liberal democracy, capitalist free

enter pr ise , and the spread of ra t ional technologies,all of which are being subjected to postmoderncr i t ique , i t is unnecessary for the C hinese to re jec ttheir c lassica l past in order t o enter the m odern age ,since the mode rn age is itse lf enter ing into a per iodthat is ideologically similar t o t he c lassica l Chinesepast.13 The im port of the ram ifications of such a viewfor educators in architecture and landscapearchitec tur e tod ay is c lear . In teaching inst i tut ions,Chinese and other e thnic mater ia ls are segregatedf rom the s tudy of ma jor i s sues and deba te s o f thedisciplines of architecture and landscape architecture.O n t h e o n e h a n d , s t u d e n t s ar e c o m i n g t o g r i p s , i f they a re lucky enough to have enro l led in a cour setha t dea ls wi th the i r own cu l tu ra l t r ad i t ions , wi thcultur es (such as that of China) that are po sitioned asfar away, temp or ally and geographically remote .Yet as far as their professional skills are concerned,these are defined implicitly against a framework thatis international but assumed to be an outcome of theAnglo-European tradition. Members of anincreasingly multicultural student body (includingstudents from Asia) are meant to form some sense oftheir professional identity across this fragmented


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situation. Halls remarks point to possibilities that aresignificant for refiguring our cultural backgroundwith a contemporary world in the fields ofarchitecture and landscape architecture.

In exploring the ramifications of the views of Berqueand Hall, we immediately come across twoproblems. First, the question of China as other. 14

Berques account of the Chinese t radition m ight givethe impression that China and Europe are beingconfigured as mutu ally exclusive domains of culturalvalues, so that the dualistic mentality that hehighlights as a feature o f We stern landscape thinkingwould appear t o have been loaded on a t the level of inter -cultu ral com parison. This difficulty is indeedheightened when matters are dealt with summarily.W ithout losing the valuable impetus given byBerque s work , the re fore , i t would seem necessa ryto p r ov ide an account tha t addressed th i s p rob lem.Second, H alls remark m ight be taken as apri ma faci ecase to explore possible resonances betweenpostmo dern and Chinese mater ia ls a t the level of architec ture and landscape architec ture . Yet, as wehope to indicate in m ore focussed discussion below, adirect juxtaposition of contemporary architecturaltheory wi th C hinese sources might r equ i re a mor enuanced employment o f the con tem pora ry wr i t ingsin terms of developments in Western philosophybefore their possible relationship with Chinesewr i t ings can be exp lor ed f ru i t fu l ly . W e have somereservations concerning direct comparisons ofChinese and W este rn sources ,15 a n d i t is o u r h op e

that the r esources of comparative philosophy mightprovide some assistance in the form of inter-culturalmediation.

W e propose now to ou t l ine a d i r ec t ion of th ink ingthat an elaboration and refinement of Berquessuggestive rem arks might take by r ecourse to ther e c e n t w o r k s o f H a l l a n d h is c o l le a g u e , Ro g e r T .Ames. Recent writ ings in architec ture and landscapearchitecture have variously referred to dualisms,binary oppositio ns and bi-polarity in discussions ofimportant aspects of W estern philosophy. W e wouldlike to begin by establishing a sl ightly mo re form alcontex t fo r the u sage of th i s c lus te r o f te r ms eventhough, for considera t ions of space , we wil l not beable to pursue the matt er in a nuanced manner .

Dualism is a feature of a world-view character ised byan ex nihi lo creation in which a fundamentallyinde te rminate and uncondit ioned power de te rminesthe me aning and orde r o f the wor ld .16 This pr imarydualism, in var ious form s, is the source of dualist iccategories such as knowledge/ opinion,universal / par t icular , na ture / culture , cause/ effec t ,

which organised human exper ience . Knowledge hasbeen co nce ived of a s the d iscove ry of the de f in ingessence or form behind changing appearances. Inarchitecture, this is related to the importance ofgeometry and number , p r o to types o f the idea l , . . .

their immutability contrasting with the fluid andchanging reality of the sublunar world.17 TheW este rn concep t ion of a rch itec tur a l and landscapedesign as the rational application of universalpr inciples to par t icular s ites and as the imita t ion of nature through the use of geometric andproportional principles is directly related to thepre dom inance of such thought. I t is a lso direc t lyre la ted t o a v iew of a rch i tec tur a l educa t ion a s thereproductive transmission of such principles.

Polar ism or bi-polar i ty, on t he other hand, indicatesa r e la t ionsh ip of two te rm s each of which can on lybe expla ined by reference to the other . Unlikedualistic oppositions, each term in polar relationrequire s the othe r as a necessary condition for beingw h a t t h e y a r e . 18 But it is important to note thatterms in polar re la t ion with each other are notdialectical. Unlike dialectic relationships, polarones are not involved in an oppositional play movingfrom contr adiction, synthesis t o sublation.19 In theChinese tradition, yi n an d yang are not dualisticpr inciples of l ight and d ark, m ale and female , wher ee a c h t e r m w o u l d e x c l u d e i t s o p p o si t e , w h e r e e a c hwould logically entail the other, and in theircomplement arity constitute a t otality.20 Rathe r , yin isbecoming-yang and vice versa . Fur ther , yi n an d yang

refer t o the r elationships of unique particulars and

expresses the mutuality, interdependence, diversity, andcreat ive e f f icacy of the dynamic relationships that aredeemed imman ent in an d valorise the world . . . In sum: yinan d yang are ad hoc explanatory categories that report onint eractions among imm ediate concrete things of the world. . . Important here is the primacy of particular differencesand the absence of any assumed sameness or strict iden tit y. 21

By contrast, dualistic oppositions such asn a t u r e / c u lt u r e , o r m a n / w o m a n in v o lv e t e r m s t h a tindicate essential sameness. It is important torecognise, therefore, that dualism and polarism referto different ways in which the relationships ofbinar ies may be thought. The confusion of dualismand po la r i sm wou ld en t a i l se r ious consequences inthe reading of different sources. Later, we will offera close reading of a Chinese tex t w ith this distinctionin mind.

W e wil l begin the next s tep in our a t tempt toobviate a dualistic comparison of China and Europe,which Berque s wor k might g ive r i se to , by no t ing


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tha t thinking in terms of polar re la t ions such asyinan d yang is known as correlative thinking. Polarterms are re la ted to corre la t ive thinking, whereasdualisms are re la ted to causal thinking. T he la t terinvolves understanding the world by tracing

cause/ effec t re la t ionships of radica lly unequal andsubstantial terms, while the former involvesunderstanding the world in terms of correlatedentities or processes of becoming each of which doesnot derive its meaning and order from sometranscendent source.22 Correlative and causalth ink ing can be found in bo th the C hinese and theAnglo-European traditions. 23 However , the formerhas been the do minant mo de in the Chinese tradition,whi le the la t te r has been the dominant mo de in theW estern. This mor e complex character isat ion of thetwo traditions provides one of the qualifications thatwe believe would be useful in construing therelat ionship of t he t wo traditions in non-dualisticterms.

The re a re t wo fur the r e labora t ions tha t would a l sobe useful for this purpose. Although they lie inspecialised philosophical territory, a line of thinkingthat involves them, it would seem, brings us close tothe dom ain of a rch i tec tura l theory again . F i r s t , w eno te th at correlative thinking lies at the basis ofcausal th ink ing i f me t aphors can be sa id to g roundliteral, scientific language. Since the state ofphilosophy and science offers us nothing mo re t han aseries of incomp atible visions of the wo rld whichlogic and rat ionality has not be able to synthesise, we

are per force lef t wit h a taxonomy of theor ies interms of metaphilosophy.24 Thus any attempt toproblematize the whole range of theor ies wouldenta i l a corre la t ive m ode of thinking. N ow, we havealready indicated above that correlative thinkingconstrue s re la t ionships of par t iculars . A corr e la t iveund erst anding of the contr ast between cor relativeand causal thinking would de-universa l ise , histor iseand particularise both m odes of thinking.25

O ur nex t e laborat ion involves a con tex t o f thoughtvery close to contemporary architectural theory.26

The noted linguist, Jakobson, is famous forspeculating that metaphoric and metonymicopera tions form the universa l basis of a l l languagelearning and use. W hen the note d structura listanthropologist, Claude Lvi-Strauss, read MarcelGranets La pen se ch inoi se, 27 a Sinological milestone ,he found that Granets discussion of correlativeth ink ing in the Chinese mind could be r e lated toJakobsons understanding of the u niversa l stru ctureof language. By recourse t o Jakobsons wor k, Lvi-Strauss formalised Granets articulation ofcorr elativity in La pen se sauvage . 28 Correlativity was

thus in t roduced in to r ecen t W es te rn d iscourse in amove that entailed the rationalisation anduniversalisation of a mode of thinking that construesrelationships of part iculars. Poststructur alist critiquesof structu ra l ism have focused on t he ways in which

causal thinking has slipped in the very move tohighlight correlativity as the universal ground ofthought and language . At th i s po in t , i t should beevident tha t the encounter of Lvi-Strauss with theworks of Jakobson and Granet is pivotal for anumber of contexts .

In terms of the historical unfolding of philosophy inthe Anglo-European tradition, the thinking aboutcorrelativity in the philosophical preoccupation withlanguage marks the second import ant shift away fromEnlightenment rationalism. First, a series of thinkersfrom D escartes to Hegel emphasised

the metaphor of mind as the medium through which t heworld was to be accessed. Beginnin g wi th th e existent ialcritics of Hegel - principally . . . Kierkegaard, there was ashift away from mind to experience as the fundamentalmedium for world-access. 29

The moment of Lvi-Strauss and correlativity is partof the second transition from experience tolanguage in recent decades.

In terms of inter-cultura l understanding between t heChinese and Anglo-European traditions, thestructur alist recognition o f correlative thinking as the

basis of thought and language is a momentousoccasion, for correlative thinking has been thedominant m ode of thinking of the Chinese tradit ion,but for the slippage of causal thinking into themoment of reckoning. In this regard, thepoststructur a l is t c r i t ique of s truct ura l ism st i l l holdsth e po te nt ial to open up significant cro ss-culturalwor k . T his i s one way in which we might beg in tounde rstand the impo rt of H alls remark that thecultura l interests of the postmoder n and the C hinesehave significant resonances.

In te r ms of the deve lopment o f a rch itec tural andlandscape a rch i tec tura l theory , we can f ind in thephilosophical discussion of language and corre lativitydirect pertinence both in the discussion ofarchitec t ure as language and in the ram ifica t ions of French poststructura l ism in architec ture . The m atterof Lvi-Strauss and correlativity is therefore, byextension, one of considerable import. It is preciselyhere , in issues of architec ture and language, t ha t wecan explore the closest relationship between theChinese and the Anglo-European t r ad i t ions . In thelight of our comments on Lvi-Strauss and


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corre la t ivi ty, i t would appear tha t this re la t ionshipw o u l d n o t b e a p p r o p r i a t e l y e x p l o r e d b y a sim pleadop tion of W ester n semiotics, semiology, orstructur a l is t hermen eutics, for the study of Chinesearchitecture and landscapes.30 O ur foregoing

observations indicate that t he rat ionalist, universalisttende ncies of causal thinking would ne ed to be keptin abeyance i f the r e sonance o f a spec ts o f Chineseand postmodern concerns in architecture andlandscape architec ture were to be explored.

LINGUISTICS AND SEMIOTICS

In 1961 , the Amer ican journa l Progressive Architecturepubl i shed a se r ie s o f a r t ic le s on the con te mpo ra ryc r i s is o f arch i tec tur e , wi th pa r t icu la r focus on thefai lu re o f in te rna t iona l modern ism and the moder nmovem ent, and the signif icance of a new and youn ggenera tion of architec ts centred around Louis Kahn,o n e o f w h o m w a s Ro b e r t Ve nt u ri.31 Emphasis wasgiven to the necessi ty for architec tura l practices toaddress their ground in human cultur es and meaningsrather than being absorbed with formalism andfunct iona li sm. W ith in t he European con tex t , D ianaAgrest makes much the same po int r egarding thewaning of the enthusiasm for functionalism in the1940, and comments on the work of thearchitectural group Team 10 who themselves suggest:

Our hi erarchy of associat ions i s woven int o a modula tedcontinuum representing the true complexity of humanassociations . . . We must evolve an architec ture f rom

the fabric of life itself, an eq u ival en t of t h e com plex i t yof our way of though t, of our passion for the nat ural worldand our belief in the abili ty of man. 32

At this t ime, there were a lso the emerging f ie lds of operational research, mathematical approaches tocomplexity, d evelopments in com puting, and artificialintelligence approaches to design and planning.W r i t ings by Lione l March on a m a thema t i sa t ion of the design of architectural and urban forms areindicative of such developments.33 W e may alsomention Christopher Alexanders N ot es on th eSynthesis of Form which deals with issues ofcomplexity, cultural diversity and design.34

I t is dur ing this per iod o f the 1960s that an intere stin l inguist ics developed in the f ie ld of architec tur e .Mario Gandelsonas provides the following scenario:

T hi s in terest in l in gui stics developed whil e architecturaltheoretical production expanded at an accelerated rate as aresponse to the architectural crisis of the 50s. The practical

fai lu re of mod ern ar ch i t ect ure aft er t he Second W orld W arduring the reconstruction of Europe became apparent during

this decade. The most negative aspects of the theorieselaborated by the modern movement, which concealed undera descriptive discourse a normative, esthetic-technicaldiscourse based on a tabula rasa approach and anantihistorical position, became apparent. 35

This interest in l inguist ics cannot i tse lf be divorcedfrom the developments in a range of cultura l s tudiesand human sciences in the 1960s, associated with t hedevelopments of structuralism, semiotics andphilosophies of language developed from the projectof Logical Positivism. The theorist Julia Kristevasuggested at the t ime t hat mo dern linguistics, as heirto the age of Cartesianism regarded languagefundamentally as a logical synthesis, consideringlanguage as a strictly formal object in that it dependson a syntax and mathe maticalisation.36 Elsewher e shesuggested that the study of language is a t a cross-roads whose opp osed directions ultimately inflect onthe directionality of op posed philosophical tr aditions:

The theory of meaning now stands at a cross-roads: eitheri t w i l l remain an at tempt at formal ising meaning- systemsby increasing sophistication of the logico-mathematicaltools which enable i t t o formulate models on th e basis of aconception (already rather dated) of meaning as the act of atranscendental ego, cut of f f ro m i t s body, i t sunconscious , and a l so i t s h i s t o ry ; o r e l se i t w i l l a t t u nei t s e l f t o t h e t heory o f t he speak ing sub j ect a s a d i v id ed subject (conscious/ unconscious) and go on to at tempt tospeci fy t he types of operat ions character is t ic o f the twosides of this split . 37

W hile ther e has been a long history of the m etaphorof architecture as a language, particularly in relationto composit ional approaches of Classic ism and theBeaux Arts tradition, as with for exampleSummersons The Classical Language of Architecture, 38

with the development of semiotics and structuralism,the r e la t ion of language to a rch itec tur e takes somenew directions. Some markers of these newdirections are Venturis Complexity an d Contradiction in

Arch it ecture a n d ( t h e c o - a u t h o r e d ) Learn in g f rom LasVegas; both of which cannot be separa ted f romdevelopment s in other cultura l spheres, par t icular lythe Pop Art movement which presented thecha l lenge of the eve r yday chaos o f the s tr ee t andpopular cultur e to t he high-culture aesthetics of thewhite-cube gallery.39 W e may a lso not e Um bertoEcos essay on the column in the journal Semiotica; 40

Agrest and Gandelsonas exchange with Jencks in thejo ur nal Oppositions, 41 which introduced into Americanarchitectural discourse the stakes involved in aEuropean intellectual concern with AlthusserianMarxism, foregrounding the relations betweenprodu ction, ideology and sign exchange; Jencks and


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Bairds Mean in g in Archit ect ure, especially Jencks essayon semiology, w hich deferred t o the English languagetheor i s t s Ogden and Richards r a the r t han succumbto Continental influences;42 Gandelsonas OnReading Architecture in Progressive Architecture, on

Eisenman and Graves,43 and his essay in ColumbiaUniversitys Semiotext(e), taking direction from thewor k of Kristeva on poetics and language.44 D o n a l dPreziosis ear ly work on semiotics and architec tur erepresents the most formalist aspects of astructura l ist appr oach to language and architec ture .45

This indexical list is far from constituting anhomogen eous group ing , nor can we say th i s is anexhaustive ca ta logue of posit ions or marke rs of thef ie ld. In fac t , each of these proper names present s afocus for it s own field of discussion wit hin the br oadarena of language mod els and architectural practices.

From the br ief survey of the reception of l inguist icm o d e l s i n ar c h i t e c t u r e a b o v e , w e m a y t u r n t o t h esemiotics approach of those whose work owes a debtto Ferdinand de Saussure and his binary of the sign assignifier/ signified relat ion. 46 The field of semioticsitself becomes divided between those who see astructuralist project of analysis, exemplified perhapsby the ea r ly wor k of Do na ld Preziosi , and thosealigned with the later work of Roland Barthes, alongwith poststructuralisms radicality of the signifier.This latt er field is dispe rsed across foci o n desire(Lacan, Deleuze & Guattari, Lyotard, Lingis), onphilosophy and textuality (Derrida), poetics(Kristeva), transgression (Bataille, Blanchot,

Klossowski), the fields of pow er, knowled ge andspace (Foucault, d e Cer teau, Virillio), simulation andhyperreality (Baudrillard). Again, this is aheterogeneous field of elements, linked in somerespects by a radical dislocation of the Cartesiant r ad i t ion and the s ta tus o f the t r anscenden ta l ego .O ne cannot simply tr ace a lineage from each of theseback to Saussure . However , in the possibil i ty of i tsemergence, each has a concern with the structurationof language and its relation to subjectivity andcultural pr actices.47

With respect to the cultura l practices of architecture, dominated by a reductive andinstrumentalist functionalism, the importation oflinguistic and semiotic theories made possible aques t ion ing of the supposed na tura l and mot ivatedrelations between forms and functions. For example,in relation to Um berto Ecos writings on architectureand semiotics, Gandelsonas comments:

Th is analysis of the arbitrary li nkage between architecturalobject and function or other meanings invalidates thenotion of function as the uni que determinant of the form of

th e object . I t a lso inv al id ates the idea of meaning asinherent to the object. 48

Gandelsonas goes on to present the value of asemiotic model:

Which of the architectural texts (drawing, models,l i terature, building) is going to be fragmented in order tobuild these codes? In our Western conception of architecture,where th e emphasis i s centred on the f inal product , theanswer would be the bui ldin g. But the archi tect not onlywrites in order to establish procedures, conventions, rules,but h e also draws. Th e drafting t able is the theatre wherethe production is developed. On e of the implications of th esemiotic approach has been to make the theorist aware ofthe various texts. In contrast with the traditionalapproaches of a r t h is tory and cr i t ic ism wh ich consideredthese tex ts to be equivalent , they begin to be s tudied, aswritten architecture - the an alysis of classical and moderntheories, that is the architectural discourse, drawnarchitecture - the analysis of different systems ofrepresentation, and built architecture - the semioticanalysis of technical theories. 49

Gandelsonas approach in t his essay takes direc t ionfrom t he wor k of Kristeva on language, transgressionand poe t ic s . As i t i s our a im to si tuate a cur ren tconjuncture of poststructuralist philosophy andtextuali ty, i t w ould be useful to reference the stakesin the em ergence o f writing as a radical practice fora generation of poststructuralist thinkers. JohnRajchman comments:

Th e debate overcriture (writing) was thu s a debate aboutth e political culture of modernism [as a radicalopposition to bourgeois language (Barthes)]. I t was adebat e abou t th e vision of a non-technocratic yet non-hu man istic cult ure th at would celebrate our decenteredrelation to language in sublime laughter andtransgression, about an avant-garde culture (the termcomes f rom th e twent ies) present ing i t se l f as th e ruptu re ,t h e t h r e sh o l d , t h e l i m i t s o f o u r a g e; a n d a b o u t a n o n -

pop u li st or el i t is t cu l t u re wh ich wa s nevert hel ess com mit t edto the le f t . 50

The key f igure s fo r Ra jchman in the em ergence o f writing as a radical philosophical and politicalpractice: Barthes and the whole nouvelle critique,Lacan (whose Ecrits appea red in 1966) and Der r ida(whose Of Grammatology an d Writing and Differenceappeared in 1967) . Of Derr ida , Rajchman suggests:He a t tempted to graf t the question of writ ing ontothe entire philosophical tradition, supplantingHeideggers great question of Being.51 Rajchmansuggests:


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might this inform and be informed by th ese configurations?. . . Wh en I use the word wri t ing in th is tex t (and I use i t alot ) , I do n ot re fer simply t o that concept o f wri t ing as am i r ror or docum en ta t i on o f speech , bu t t o w r i t i ng as aconstructing, nonlinear enterprise that works across culture

in networks of s igni f i cat ion. Th is writ ing, a l though i t mak es use of lan gua ge, i s not l im i ted by convent ionalconcepts o f language, that i s , i t d oes not ex ist in ident i tywith language. 60

W e have int imat ed above that the importa t ion of linguistic models and semiotics into architectureduring the 1960s and 1970s did not ostensiblyaddress the foundational nature of functionalism andformalism as the determining ground of architecturalpractices. Regarding poststructur alist incursions, withmore radical notions of textuality and outrightchallenge to the form / function binary, the questionrem ains as to whether the institutional and discursiveformations of practices named architec tura l quiteeasily continue to go about their economicallyrationalist, functionally formalist business, and treatsuch incursions as mere accessory. Indeed, thesethree cont emp orary arenas we have just outlined m aybe seen annually played out w ithin the circuits of the

Any series of conferences.61 T he Any ser ies a t tempts t oaccommodate each of these three developments,i ron ical ly con ta in ing them in a p r ope r name w hichdissimulates its identity as the identity ofdissimulation. The imp licit universalism of this title,

Any , a veritable le i tmot i f for contemporarypoststructuralist incursions in architecture, cannot

but ra ise the question of who is or is not addressedby this any. Literally An yon e, Anywh ere, Anywa y ? Inthe context of a Chinese philosophical and landscapearchitec tur a l t radit ion, we want t o address precise lythe addressivity of the any of poststructuralisttextuality in architecture, with reference toconte mp orary issues in the study of classical Chinesephilosophy which suggest resonances betw een thattradit ion and poststructura l ist thinking. Admittedly,with a r ecognition of deconstructions crossing-out ofa universa l ist is , the re is a leverage in the p lay of dissimulation of the proper. Yet, such a play,precisely in its lability, slips quite easily into auniversal ist discourse . W e wil l re turn t o this themeof an opposit ion between universa l ism and uniqueparticularity of the any more fully when discussingcontemporary issues in Sinological comparativephilosophy. But are we slipping into a naiveuniversalism with this nomenclature of the any?

A pr incipal concern of this paper , then, is to addresscontem porary issues in text uality and architec ture ,developed within a W estern p hilosophical t radit ion,in re la t ion to the c lassica l Chinese tradit ion and i ts

practices of architec tur e and landscape architec ture .It is necessary to locate some o f the principal theme sin con tempor a ry Weste rn approaches to tex tual ityand architecture as the basis for a further discussionconcern ing comparative philosophy and Sinology. T o

locate these pr incipal themes, we need t o re turnbr ief ly to the impetus for an approach to l inguist icand semiotic models in architec ture , as a move awayfrom functionalism and the formalism associated withEuropean modernism. The problems withfunctionalism/ formalism may be unde rstoodultimately or foundationally as those related toinstrumentalism, scientism and an aestheticismderivative from an ideology of utility, rationalism andpure function. 62 These im plicitly infer ep istemologicaland ontological conditions: empirico-rationalism,subject/ object duality, causal agency of design, anAristotelian pro jective teleo logy in finality of de sign,which is to say, t he considering of design in ter ms ofa narratival order of origins and ends and a causalitywhich relates them. Significantly, there is thepredominance of being over becoming: ground,ord er , the permanent, ideal , f ina li ty of form weassociate with t eleological thinking takes prece denceover the form less, p rocess, heter ogeneity and flux.

The m ult ipl ici ty of direc t ions taken dur ing the mid-20th century in addressing, in a more complexfashion, an orientation to human cultures andmeanings by no means count e red a l l o f the above .Most of the sociological, anthropological, orlinguistic-based research which has overrun the

disciplinary boundaries of architectur al practices, hascontinued to inscr ibe a hum anist- ra t ionalist subject ,an empirically knowable world, an implicit Platonic-Cartesian metaphysical tradition, a causal andna r ra t iva l account ing for human agency . T he mos tradical challenge to this order of the human sciencesin their wholesale incursion int o t he disciplinary fieldof architecture has been that limited corpus of workswhich have addressed head-on the implicitepistemological and ontological grounds of thishumanist tradition, and which are located in thework of those concerned with textuality and writing,as the predominantly French poststructuralisttradit ion has developed i t . Precise ly because of thedisturbance made within this aspect of architecture t othe deeply embedded stra ta of the Westernmetaphysical tradition, there is particular efficacy inexamining corre lative fields within cultural tr aditionsthemselves not founded on the Platonic-Cartesiantradition. Hence, in suggesting a turning, viacontemporary comparative philosophical writings, toa c lassica l Chinese tradit ion, we are not suggestingthat the contemporary field of textuality andarchitecture is itself dominant in Western discourses


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in architecture, nor that it signals a future horizon asdestinal for architectural practices, nor that itharbours a truth veiled by a humanist-rationalisttradition. Rather, because of the thinking of practicethat its dislocation makes possible, it affords an

openness or horismos for reconfiguring how weencounter China . As we have introduced ear l ier , thephilosophical writ ings of Hall and Ame s suggest aresonance between the classical Chinese tradition,under stood in term s of correlative thinking, aestheticorde r , po la r - te rms , r a the r than b inary oppos i t ions ,ra t ional thinking, logical order and causal re la t ion.In Halls tex t , c i ted ear l ier , suggestion is made inparticular of the relation of Derrideandeconstru ction, w ith i ts undoing of the binary logicof Western metaphysics, and the bi-polarity ofclassical Chinese correlative thinking.63 For thisreason we consider that approaching a classicalChinese tradition in architecture and landscapearchitecture with the resources of contemporaryphilosophical development s in W estern notions of architecture and writing clearly disturbs thedisc iplinary boundar ies of histor ies and theo r ies of architecture in the West, which figure Chinesearchitectur e as a provincial, second ary, accessory tothe m ainframe of an implic it ly universa lis t W esterntradition.

Thus, in what follows we are considering howcontemporary practices of textuality and architecturemay be understood in terms of their poststructuralistlineage, and indeed, in terms of their emergence

from a more general field of the application oflinguistic models to architecture, commencing in the1960s . The ma jor i s sue fo r us though , i s the ex t en tto which we may understand such practices inarchitec ture as corresponding to those a l luded to byHall and Ames when they suggested correlationsbetw een poststr uctur a l ist thinking and the c lassicalChinese tradition, or the extent to which thesepractices in fact constitute a continuance of theWestern tradition of logical order and causality. Dueto t he l imi ted space ava ilab le in t h i s pape r and thebreadth of material we are covering from twophilosophical traditions, we need necessarily toassume that our audience is familiar enough with theissues and them es of the poststructura l is t t radit ionand the w ork of some of the p r inc ipal a rch itec tura ltheorists in this field, in particular Jennifer Bloomera n d M a r k W i gl e y . H o w e v e r , w e c an n o t t r e at t hewor k of theorists such as W igley and Bloomer simplyas th e dat um level of poststructuralist writings inarchitec ture ; we cannot assume that the ir worksimply correlates with that implied by Hall andAmes. The problem is that we see complicationsar ising in the W estern architec tur a l mater ia l , which

may be exp la ined in t erm s of some thing l ike a lapsein to log ical o rde r and un ive r sal i sm, even when thestakes of such a lapse are so critically understood bythe work of deconstruction. Given thatdeconstruct ion p arasitically inhabits the philosophical

t r ad i t ion o f causa l th ink ing and log ical o rde r , t h i sinhabitation constitu tes the locat ing of the lability ofthis order, the lapsarity of its systemic structuring.64

For this reason we are intr oducing the work of Jean-Luc Nancy , which of fe r s wha t w e cons ide r to be apoststructuralism correlative at an intimate level withthe classical Chinese tradition, in the sense that Halland Ames have conf igured. In the wor k of Nancy, i tis apparent that any investing in universalismsconstitutes an under side to the discourse of the other.Nancy answer s the universa l ism of the any with aphilosophy of touch, where every notion ofotherness is consti tuted not in a remoteness of theo t h e r b u t i n a b o d y t o u c h ab l e a n d t o u c h i n g . T h efield of textuality and architecture cannot broach thethematics of cultural difference, except via arecourse to discourses of exclusion, marginalisation,otherness, implicitly an embeddedness in, and are l iance on, an Anglo-European tradit ion. The w orkof Nancy which, of course , cannot escape precise lythe same lineage, poses the possibility of thinking thisquestion of cultura l difference mo re r adically, mor eintensely, than does the thinking of a humanisttradit ion, or even that anti-hum anist t radit ion thatth inks the d is loca t ion of our W este rn t r ad i t ion inte r ms of a spac ing o f wr i t ing . Nancy prov ides us

with the impetus to ask in a thorough way thequestion of what it is to encounter culturaldifference . H is philosopheme s of the tou ch, we wil lsee, suggest a rich correlative re sonance w ith thecomparative philosophemes of Hall and Ames.Initially, as something of a detour, we will deal withthe work of Nancy, introducing br ief ly some of hisnotions of writ ing, body, l imit , w eight , and pose thequestion of how we approach China otherwise thanas other.

TO UCH AND TACT

Something mor e needs to be sa id on dislocation andthe approach to C hina. This some th ing more wouldcomprise two questions, or two halves to a quest ion,or a problematic that in unfolding exposes twosurfaces: how do practices of writing, textualityt o u c h o n C h i n a , h o w i s co n t a c t h e r e u n de r st o o d,how do w e we igh the i s sue of tac t , an appro ach , atou ching which weighs up a long history of makingcontac t , o f v io lence , w ounds , impene t rab le bodie s,dissolvable bodies? The reason w e ask this quest ionhere is tha t , in a sense , we seem to be making things


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too simple , too stra ight- forw ard, precisely by notre f lec t ing on tha t long t r ad i t ion of v io lence to t heo the r t ha t cons t itu te s the W est s r e la t ion to C hina.Already the d r i ft o f our tex t in fe r s a r e sonance , anintimacy between contemporary practices of

textuality and their philosophical radicality and anon-Western tradition, in classical Chinesephi losophy . W hich i s to say, once aga in a Chinesetradition gains its ident ity as a gift from the W est, asa recognit ion adequate to our specular demands fora ref lec t ion of , and on, our own philosophicalspecula t ions in poststructura l ism. We need to ask adiff icult quest ion her e - dif ficult in tha t w e m ust becareful that the answer is not simply lying in wait, inantic ipation for us because i t is a quest ion: how dowe t ouch upon China? O ne may consider , forinstance, what is and is not touched upon byFoucault in the p re face to Th e Order of Thin gs a s h ef irst account s for t his most rem arkable of books onEurop ean thought , a tex t which no t inc ident ly soaptly construed t he stakes in criture:

Th is book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of thelau ght er th at shat tered, as I read the passage, all the

fam i l iar l an dm ark s of m y thou gh t - ou r thou gh t , th ethough t th at bears the stamp of our age and our geography- breaking u p al l t he ordered sur faces and a l l th e planeswith which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion ofexisting things, and continuing long afterwards to disturband t hreaten with collapse our age-old distinction betweenthe Sam e an d t h e O ther . T h i s pas sage quo t e s a ce r ta inChinese encyclopaedia in which it i s written t hat an imals

are div ided in t o . . . In th e wonderment of th is taxonomy,the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing t hat, bymeans of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm ofano ther sy s t em o f t h ough t , i s t he l im i ta t i on o f our ow n ,the s tark impossibi l i ty o f t h inking that . 65

At stake here, for Foucault, is a transgressivelaughter, to be read, we expect, in intimateproximity to a Bataillian rire , w hich takes thought totwo limits at once: firstly to the co-incidence o f limitwit h itself, the limits to thou ght inscribed as theimpo ssible. But, and this is the second limit, thisbreaking of an ordered surface, which Foucaultr e fe r s to , i s , a s we l l , a grea t l eap to the t h ing , touching that other l imit, where thought touchesitself as the impossibility of the thing. But can we notsay also that t hought, this thought at least, is athing :

Though t l eaps : i t l eaps i n to t h ings , t r y ing t o ge t t he rewit h th e same leap as the before [This book firstarose], t o recover t h e i rr ecov erabl e. It t ou ch es t h e t h in gi tsel f , but th is th ing i s a lso thought i t sel f . 66

Hence for Foucault another system of thought,within the fable , China , touches on but never touchesChina . I s no t C hina he re the s ta rk imposs ib il i ty o f thinking that, w h a t c a n n e v e r b e t o u c h e d , l i m i t t othinking, to exper ience , ye t a l imit only reached by

th is encounte r? W e may recognise the d i lemm a weface he r e and t he d i f ficu l ty o f the ques t ion s implyasked : How is China encounte red , how do we r eadit, experience it, know it, where the it isconstituted in a multiplicity of particulars within theorbit o f a system of thought. But why are w e askingthis , as if we are not the ones who are proposing theposs ib i l ity o f such an encou nte r , a s i f we have no talready, in writing this question, prepared its answervia a tradition of philosophical, historical andanthropological writ ings. Yet i t is precise ly becauseof these long traditions - the givenness, n aturalism o fthe ir pr esenta t ions - tha t the que stion is so dif ficultto pu t , a quest ion we need to r epea t wi th r e spec t totextuality, and repeat again with respect toarchitecture.

There are two approaches in answering this,anti the tica l to one another . With the f irs t weinvariably commit to repetition a long history ofem piricism and ration alism in reco gnising what wemay ca l l the o t he r a s the o the r o f the same , and inconstituting the impossible precisely as the impossiblel imi t to an iden t i ty assure d and knowable . In thisapproach , the bord e r , tha t p lace o f encounte r isi tse lf consti tuted in on e of two ways. I t is e ither theplace of a non-touching of impenetrable bodies

which recognise only the impossibil ity of the other ,armour ed bodies tha t fa i l to r ecognise any thing butthe mselves. O r i t is the space of a dissolution of bodie s , whe re the o the r o f the o the r d i ss imula te s ,for exam ple, a Foucauldian impossibility of thinkingthat dissimulated in dreams of isomorphism andcorrespondence, pure translatability, puretransparency, becoming Spirit. In either case there islittle that shakes the hegemonic assurity, identity,propr ie ty in appropr ia t ion. The second approach(and t h i s writing already marks the aporia ofotherness inscribed here) recognises the locus of theimpossible as not residing in China but ra ther in thelimit that constitu tes the possibility of experience,that the stark impossibility of thinking that dem andsthe thinking of the impossible, what the impossiblea s su c h i s, a s li m i t t o w h a t i s , t o t h e t h e r e i s o f th ink ing and the the re i s o f the th ing , in shor t tothe limits of experience.

But how is China touched here , with what tac t? Wewant t o explor e this question briefly, a very difficultques t ion , a ques t ion which i s a t the hea r t o f ourpape r , a quest ion w hich resonates with t he most


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pertinent issues in writing and textuality, incomparative philosophy and Sinology: what is abor der , a neighbour , an inter ior and exter ior , athought and a thing, a se lf and an other , whattraverses and touches upon this catalogue? For

Foucault the ex otic charm o f anothe r system namesvia the fable what is beyond the l imits to t hought,an outside, untouchable, impossible, yet neverthelessincluded within the limits, the touchable. Everyquestion of border crossing bears on this difference,we ighs on th i s sense o f touch , where expe r ience i stouch, w here it touches its limits. These limits, in there la t ion be tween the t ouchable and i t s un touchablel imit , a re thou ght as the possibili ty of a leap, orm o r e c o r r e c t l y , a r e t h i n k in g a s a l e a p , a c o u n t e r -weight to tou ch, wher e weighing and thinking rem aininfinitely separable, in a place where they areinseparable.

With this rhetor ica l and philosophical mise-en-abymeof the touch , we need to in t roduce the wr i t ings o f Jean-Luc Nancy.67 N a n c y s w o r k e m b o d i e s fo r u s asomew hat provisional and stra t egic intervening of aphilosophy of to uch pr ecise ly because such thinkingseems to address three problematics we havetent a t ively int imated, tha t of the re la t ion betweentextuality and architecture, that of the relationb e t w e e n Ch i n a an d t h e W e s t , a n d t h a t o f b r i n gi n gboth of these together . N ancys wor k addresses thesein a way which does not resor t to , nor re ly upon, anempiricism or rationalism of subject/ object dualities,or the givenness or naturalism of categories, the

givenness of a disciplinary field or geographicalregion or faculty of thought. Nancy treats everyborder as the touching of bodies, bodies which haveno residual signification, interiority,transcendentalism or incarnation. Textuality andarchitecture too easily have the remains of asignification, and China has the remnants of ananthropology, an interiority, a transcendentalsignified as inscripted guarantor, as incorporatedt ru th . W e in t roduce Nancy no t in o rde r to con te s t ,discount or criticise contemporary work ontex t ua l ity and a rch i tec ture , nor to p rov ide a newpath to thinking comparative philosophemes onChina , but r a ther to r emain tac tful, t o be as c lose tothese cont em por ary accounts as possible, t o theirl i te ra lness, to l i te ra l ly be them, without s imula tion,mime, repre senta t ion or a llegory, to touch them,their body, the ir corpus, fai thfully, tac tful ly. Wetake the failure of linguistic models, semiotics,models of inscription, the lapse of strategicinterventions in textuality and architecture, aswritings inevitability, the inevitability of writingswanting-to-say, its law of inscription, the im possibilityof writ ing t ouching i tse lf as the n o- longer-saying of

discourse . Hen ce these lapses and fa ilures are notp o s it i o n e d t o b e c o r r e c t e d , t o b e p u t o n t h e r i g h tpath, to invoke a better theor y of textu ality, a morenuanced reading of ecriture . W e a t t e m p t t o be m o r etactful than that, particularly as such a strategy

c o m m i t s u s o n ly t o t h e r e p e t i t i o n o f t h e m i m e o f writing in , w hich is to say, the m ime of inscription. Itis this whic h leads us to Jean-Luc Nancys w ork,pa r t icu la r ly h is no t ion of exscription , i n r e l at i o n t otouch and tac t , and in re la t ion to writ ing andinscription.

This is indeed what writing is: the body of sense that willnever tell the signification of bodies, nor ever reduce thebody to i ts sign. To write the sign of oneself that does noto f f er a s i gn , t ha t i s no t a s i gn . T h i s i s: w r i t i ng , f i na l l yto stop di scoursin g . . . Bodi es are first masses, massesoffered without any thing to articulate, without any thing t odiscourse about , w i thout anything to add to them . . . For indeed, the body i s not a locus of wri t ing. No doubt onewrites, but i t is absolutely not where one writes, nor is i t what one wri tes - i t i s a lways what wri t in g excr ibes . . . Abody i s wha t canno t be r ead i n w r i t i n g . (O r one has t ounderstand reading as somethin g other th an decipherment.

R at her , as t ou ch in g, a s being t ou ch ed . W ri t i ng, reading:ma tt ers of ta ct) . . . In incarnation, the spirit becomes

f lesh . Bu t h ere we are t a lk in g abou t a body t h at n o sp iri thas become. N ot a body produced by t he self-production orreproduction of the spirit , but a body given, alwaysalready abandoned, and wi thdrawn from al l the plays of s i gns. A body t ouched , t ouch ing , and t he t ract o f t h i stact. 68

M o r e n e e d s t o b e s a id h e r e . D e r r i d a c o m m e n t s o nthis very diff icult notion of writ ing. H is comment ismade in the context of a discussion about theintangible and the unt ouchable and the bet ween of these a s tac t , the be tween of a cannot - touch and amust-no t- to uch, a law as a law of tac t . D err ida wil lhave already said, at the commencement of hiswriting on Nancy, Le toucher:

For there is a law of tact. Perhaps the law is always a lawof tact . . . Between two given orders, i t in effect installs arelationship that is at the same time conjunctive anddisjunctive. Worse than that, i t brings into contact(contamination and contagion) contact an d non-contact. 69

Thus Derrida says:

I t [the law] thu s inscribes the u ninscribable in inscriptioni tse l f , i t excr ibes . The law of excr ibing, o f excr ipt ion asthe last truth of inscription f inds here at least one of i tsessent ial demonstrations.


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Der r ida goes on to quote N ancy on exc r ip t ion andsense , t he propr ie ty of sense , p roper sense , a tac t of sense:

th e most prop er sense, but proper on the condit ion of

remaining inappropriable, and of remaining in appropriablein its appropriation. Of producing an event and adisrupti on even as i t inscribes i tself in a register of sense.O f excribing this inscription - and that the inscription beinscribed - being, or rather the t rue in scr ibing - being of inscription itself . Of having weight at the heart ofthought and in spite of thought. 70

To re i te ra te , the re a re t wo i ssues o f conce rn fo r ushere , those of textuali ty and architec ture , and thoseof contem porary com parative philosophical w rit ingsconcerning China. In the following, we want tobroach some issues in com parative philosophy andSinology in a reading of the Chinese text , Y u a n y e,and, f ina lly, re turn to the work of Nancy inquestioning the notion of comm unity inferred bythe epistemic divergencies between China and theWest.

SUBJECT/ O BJECT

For considera t ions of space , we cannot offer here adetailed account that avoids an overly schematicju x t ap osit io n of Chi nese an d W est e rn m at e r ia ls , norw i l l w e b e a b l e t o e x p l o r e t h e n u a n c e s o f t er m sfrom Yuan ye i n fu l l . O u r p u r p o s e h e r e i s o n l y t oput forward a preliminary reading that explores

Chinese ga rden h is to ry a s a c ross -cu l tu ra l m ode o f scholarship that addresses an international audience.O ur main focus is as follows: T he traditionalW este rn o ppos it ion of r e a l ity and appea rance , a l sounderstood as a Pla tonic division of ideal and copyand a Ca r t e s ian d ivis ion of mind and body , has it smost significant articulation in the binary oppositionof sub jec t and o b jec t . In the f ie lds o f a rch i tec tureand landscape a rch i tec ture , we have the no t ion of architect-designer as a subject rationally designing aworld of designed objects . Now, in his discussion of the problems of the modern devastation of theenvironment, Berque points precisely to the absence,in traditional China, o f the subject/ objectopposition71 which became the conceptualfoundation of the modern world and i tsenvironmental devastation. If Yuan ye is indeed ac l a ss ic t h a t s p e a k s n o t o n l y t o t h e w o r l d o f 1 7 t h -century C hina, but says somet hing to the present asif it were said specially to it,72 i t might be f rui tful lyconstru ed as a trea t ise tha t discussed garden designwithout recourse t o the binary opposit ion of subjectand object. Even though we will not have theopportunity to discuss in detail contemporary

concern s with the oppo sition of subject and object inarchitec ture and landscape architec tur e , w e proposeto articulate aspects of Yuan ye that might befruitfully brought into relation w ith these concerns.

The key term s we propose to discuss are introducedin Yuan ye as follows:

The skill [qiao] of designing gardens lies ininterdependence [yin] and borrowing [jie] and theirexcellence [jing] l ies in their suitabili ty [ti] an dappropriateness [yi] . . . In terdependence means fo l lowingthe r ise and fal l o f the s i te [ji shi]73 and i nvest i ga t i ng i t s

proper disposi t ion , pruni ng th e branches of obst ru ct in gtrees, d irecting streams to f low over rocks so that they aremutually complementary [ l i t . borrowing andresourcing], erect in g pa vi l ion s an d k iosk s whereappropriate, not int erfering with out -of-th e-way paths, andlett ing t hem wind an d tu rn: this is what is called excellentand appropria te. Borrowing means even t hough everygarden distinguishes between inside and outside, inobtaining views there should be no restriction on whetherthey are far or near. A clear mountain peak rising up withelegance, a purple-green abode soaring into the sky -everythin g wi thin ones l im i t o f v is ion - b locking out t hecommonplace, adopt ing t he admirable , not d is t inguishingbetween cul t ivated and un cul t ivated land, making al l in toa m i s t y s cene : t h i s i s w ha t i s ca l l ed be ing s k i l f u l an d suitable.74

The initial relation of skill (qiao) withinterdependence and borrowing (yin, jie) and

excellence (jing) with suitability andappropriateness (ti, yi) in lines 1-2 suggests a readingof the fi r s t th ree te rm s a s those pe r t a in ing to thedesigner (subject) and the latter terms as thoserelating to the designed outcome (object). Thesubsequent unfolding of the passage, however,pre vents a s imple reading in ter ms of subject andobject: jing (excellent) and yi (appropriate) areapplied to yin (interd epende nce), while qiao (skilful)and ti (suitable) are used to characterise jie(bor row ing). Th is sh i ft ing r e la t ion of te rm s can bedirectly contrasted with the following words ofRepton: I confess that the great object of myambition is not merely to produce a book of p ic tu re s , bu t t o fu rn ish some h in ts fo r e s tab l i sh ingthe f ac t tha t t rue t a s te in landscape garden ing, aswe l l a s in the o the r po l i te a r t s , i s no t an acc iden ta leffect, operating on the outward senses, but anappeal to the understanding, which is to compare , toseparate and to combine the various sources ofpleasure der ived f rom external objects and to tracethem to some pre-existing causes in the humanmind.75 Reptons words implicitly emphasise thebinary dualisms of external object and human


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mind, accidental effect and cause as intentionalact. Thus, the human mind, in its rationalunderstanding, causes there to be true taste inlandscape gardening. Repton makes a distinctionbetwe en t he contingency of outward senses, aligned

with accidental effects, and true taste whichappeals to universa l hum an understanding, a lignedwith a pr iori (pre-existing) causes in the hum an mind.We see he re a p r iv i leg ing of the un ive r sa l , on theside of subjective m ind, over the ext ernal object.

In contrast to t he f ixed r e la t ion of subject to objectand mind to m atter t ha t we f ind in Reptons words,with its unity of opposites - true t aste - marking thefinality of understanding, we have the shiftingre la t ion of terms we have just noted in the quota t ionfrom Yuan ye. Here, the notions of skill andexcellence both qualify the comportment oflandscape, as in everything made into a misty scene,an d the agency of following, pruning, directing,erect ing. Skil l and excellence sl ide betw een theagency of the des igne r and the land tha t is ac tedupon . W e have he re the e lus ive cor re la t ions whichconsti tute inter depende ncy. This s l iding of meaningoccurs between an inter ior , the designers mind, anda n e x t e r i o r , t h e s i t e o f t h e g ar d e n . W e e n c o u n t e rthis same sl iding a lso in another par t of Y u a n y e i ndiscussion of different suitabilities of sites:

Th us sites also have different suitabili t ies, an d th is shouldbe assessed. Only when the master designer has hills andstreams in his bosom can a garden be either elaborate and

ornate, or simple and casual. 76

In contrast to the dualist ic term s in the quot a t ion of Repton, we find our Chinese termsinterde penden ce and borrow ing in polar re lation,each requir ing the o ther in ar t icula t ing i ts sense . Inthe f inal chapter of Yuan ye, we read m ore explic it ly:The composit ion of gardens has no f ixed patterns;the borrowing of views involves interdependence.77

This echoes the tex t f rom the beg inn ing of Yuan yewe have adduced above. There, the passage oninterdependence characterises the actions of thedesigner as well as the mutuality of scenic elements,discussed in terms of mutually borrowing andresourcing. The passage on borr owing conveys theaction of adopting and blocking out as somet hingunde r taken depending on whe the r the e lements a readmirable or commonplace.

The m utuali ty of meaning that we have identified inthe Chinese terms can itself be designated byyi n , o n eof the te rm s unde r s tudy . This leads us to r ende r i tas interdependence rather than following ordependence.78 By do ing so, we are a t tempting to

call attention to a reading of the relationshipbe twe en des igne r and s ite t ha t does no t fo l low thesubject/ object dichotom y. The dualistic logic ofsubject and object is commonly involved in conceivingof the designer as an autono mou s individual , whose

design ideas have a causal relation to a given site. O nthis view, the site is a physical, em pirical datum ontowhich a p ro jec t , p lan , in ten t ion i s p ro jec ted . Thedesigner and his subjective intentions are active, andthe objective conditions of site are passive withrespect to them. Alternatively, the designers actionsmight b e con ceived of as a passive fol lowing of theobjective dictates of site and materials. In thisinstance, the previous relationship is simply inverted,but r em ains dualistic. The passage on yi n w e q u o t e dabove clearly side-steps this dualistic logic. First, thedesigners action s are spo ken o f as a following andnot as an imposition of active agent on passive land.Second, this following is not a passive pro cedur ebut involves actively pruning, directing, anderecting. Inte rde pend ence is discussed in such away that obviates the subject-object opposition.

O ur reading of interdependence as a way ofoperating that is not just following the objectivedictates of a physical site can be further support ed byconsider ing the chapt er on Assessing the Land inYuan ye. H e r e , w e d o n o t f i n d an y e v id e n c e o f a nunder standing of site survey in the m oder n sense of aquantified, measured study of the p hysical features ofthe w hole site r esult ing in objective repre senta t ionsof the land. Assessing the land appears not to

involve the kind of abstraction of the physicalenvironment that is commonly undertaken in modernpractice . Instead of a discussion of abstrac t ion f romactuality, we find instead a fragmented narrativeoffering indications of what we might callabstraction from possibility:

Gardens should not be built in cit ies. I f one is to be built ,it should be oriented towards the elegant a nd secluded. Eventhough ones surroundings neighbour the vulgar, there is noclamour when the door is closed. Creating winding paths,make tall distant walls appear among bamboo trees.Comin g up on a stream which twists and t urns, at thebram ble gat e a lon g bridge may be placed astride thes tream. A courtyard w ide enough to al l ow a wu t r ee ; anembankment, winding and appropriate for willows. 79

Assessing the land is not discussed as a passiveexe rc ise o f r ecor d ing tha t has i t s end and goa l in aclosed and complete understanding of a staticex te rna l r ea l i ty , bu t i s p re sen te d a s a p rocess tha ta lready opens up thinking, e vokes design responsesabstracted from the vast realm of possibilities withoutdrawing i t s s t r eng th on a to ta l i s ing p ic tu re o f ha rd


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fac ts . T hus, unlike Zhang Jiaj i , we f ind t hat ther e isno sense that yi n means following an objectiveground. 80 T h e s a m e l i n e o f t h i n k i n g w i t h w h i c h w ehave explored a non-dualistic reading ofinterdependence and borrowing leads us to

consider their relationship as a polar rather than as adia lec t ica l one , which a readin g of Zhangs w orkseems to suggest.81 In Hege l s ph i losophy , a l l humanaction is negation, the negating of an existingsituation, and involves the dialectical relation ofthesis and antithesis in which something isinevitably overcome. The dialectical relation ofMan and Nature is , of course , a disaster . In ourstudy of interd epende nce and borr owing, we findno sense that they are self-sufficient and indep enden tnotions, opposed and united as thesis and anti thesis.Rather, as the designers ways of operating,interdepe ndence and borrowing are r e la ted suchthat each opens onto and enta i ls the other , asyang isbecoming-yin and vice versa.

In l ine wi th o ur r e ad ing of in te rd epende nce andassessing the land without recour se to t he not ion ofan objective and quantified site, we will now attemptto indicate a view of borrowing that m ight side-stepthe common understanding of it as the establishmentof fixed r e la t ions be twe en van tage po in t and somescenic e lement. O n this understanding, borrowingw o u l d b e o n e w a y i n w h i c h t h e i n t e n t i o n s o f t h edesigner results in a visible outcome. Somecommentators discuss it in terms of spatialexpansion, in terms reminiscent of modernist

descriptions of the extensive use of glass curtainwa l l s. A comm on w ay of ind ica t ing such ou tcome swould be the spatial analysis of gardens usingorthogonal plans and sections to indicate thedeterminate relation of vantage point and scenicelement or view. However, given our view ofassessing the land as an abstractio n of po ssibilitiesfor change with respect to a site that is conceived notas a fixed and static ent ity but as changing patter n inf lux, we are concerned with a reading of borro wing that wo uld not construe i t as a fixa tionof static spatial relationships. It is therefore ofpar t icular interest to us tha t Zhang Jia j i has arguedtha t Ji e j in g (bor row ing of v iews) i s de f in ite ly no tme re ly a me ans of spatial composition, bu t is animport ant way of thinking in the ar t is t ic crea tion of gardens.82 Following Professor Zhang, we wouldsuggest t hat although spatial alignm ents are involvedin borr owing, it is necessary to consider t he matt ermore broadly.

Zhang elaborates his point about borrowing bydiscussing instances of borr owing view s in C hinesepoetry, and eventually relates them to the

relationship between qing (sentiment) and j in g(scenery) . In a separa te discussion, Pr ofessor ChenCongzhou makes the same connec t ion , bu t wi th anilluminating tur n:

As in Pl uckin g a chrysan them um under the eastern fence/ inleisure, seeing th e southern moun tain. T he wonder of thesel ines res ides on the word seeing as i t i s done betweenintent ion an d accident , an extremely natural and e legant sentiment. 83

The c lassical dic t ionar ies, in fac t , speak of ji an ( t osee, seeing) in terms of another characterhom ophon ic with i t and which means to renderpresent: seeing as presencing.84 Now, i t iscer ta inly appropr ia te t ha t the practice of borrowingviews be discussed with regard to examples ofclassical poetry, but Professor Chens remark on thisseeing as between intention and accident wouldsugges t tha t bor row ing v iews i s no t to be s implyconsidered the work of a conscious intentionaldesigner understood without difficulty by an equallyconscious and intentional visitor . W hereas Zhangspoint about borrowing as not merely spatiala l ignment is re lated t o the ir r e levance of the not ionof ob jec t ive s ite , Chens r emark i s r e la ted to their r e levan ce of the not ion of the ac t ive intentionalsubject.

W e wi l l now draw on an exce l len t tex t ua l examplec i ted by Zhang to e labora te the no t ion of see ingtha t we have just in t rodu ced . Re fe r r ing to D i j i n g

ji ngwu lu e, Z hang highlights a passage conce rning t henew garden of the D uke of the Sta te of Ying on landwhich the Duke first saw in 1633:

That which the garden pavi l ion f ronted onto i s a br idge.Vari ous people crossin g th e bridge would ent er my ken.Th ey join me in mutual regard.85

Now , s tuden ts o f W es te rn a rch itec ture w ould befamiliar with the relationship of viewing subject andpic tured object as a prom inent the me in discussionsof the m athematisa t ion of space by perspective . I t iswell-known that this subject-object relationshipinvolves a one -way vision, subject looks at object.This con t ra s t s wi th the t wo-w ay v is ion tha t Zhanghighlights , which re la tes garden to urb an l ife andwh ich, he says, definitely extended and enrichedbor rowing v iews a s a way of th ink ing and a s anelement of l i fe .86 Accord ing to Zhang , th i s passagearticulated the spiritual essence of borrowingviews.87 Extending Zhangs po in t , we wo uld r e fe rto the im por t an t wor k of Wang Yi , who has ca lledattention to t he famous l ines of Li Bai , Not t i red of looking a t each other / there is only Mount Jingting88


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as well as other instances in which m utual re gard isnot just between viewing subjects, as Zhangsexam ple might suggest , but in one sense , be tweenperson and landscape elemen ts as well.

Approaching the matter of seeing or mutualr ega rd in ye t ano the r way , we may cons ide r howboth Zhang and Chen w ould agree tha t bor rowingviews is an encounter of landscape and person,conceived of as the re la t ionship between sentimentand scenery, qing an d ji ng. In a famo us discussion of this relationship, W ang Fuzhi (1619-1692) says,

Sentiment is the activity between yin an d yang; and t h ingsare t he p roduc t o f heaven and ear th . W h en t h i s ac t i v i t ybetween yin and yang takes place in ones heart, the

p ro du ct s of h ea ven an d ea rt h re sp on d f rom th e ou t sid e.Wh atever thing there is outside, t here can be a counterpartto ones heart; whatever sentiment there is in ones heart,there must be the thing outside [to match it]. 89

This passage suggests that sentiment and scenery arepolar terms. At the risk of serious simplification, wewould suggest tha t the tr adit ional conception of thesuccessful re la t ion of sentiment and scenery as co-arising (qing jing xiang sheng) or fusion (qing j ing x iangrong)90 is precisely indicative of the absence of asubject/ object opposition in poetic encountersbetween persons and landscapes that Zhang andChen consider instances of borro wing views. At ther isk of being tact less, we m ay touch on the m atter of see ing as touch ing in the comm on expr ession - z hu

j ing sh en g qi ng, touch ing the scene ry g ives b i r th tosentiment . This is par t of a tradit ion of speaking of seeing as z hu mu , literally touching the eyes -someone perceives some thing which is said, literally,to t ouch ones eyes.

W ho is the person that encounters the landscape andborr ow s views? W hose are t he eyes that thelandscape touches? In contrast to the Westerndichotomy of viewing subject and external object, inwhich the subject is a universal subject , a personreduced t o an abstrac ted op tica l appara tus, i t wouldappear the Chinese per son w ho encounters andborrows is not just anyone, but particularsomeones, specifically acculturised, or talented, asin the fo l lowing words o f Chen J i ru (1558-1639) :In severe instances, when ones enthusiasm isexhaus ted , one s ta len t [cai ] would be exhausted;w h e n o n e s t a l e n t i s n o m o r e , t h e e l e g a n c e o f t h elandscape also ceases to exist. 91 These words suggestto us that borr owing views is indeed not som ethingguaranteed by the intentional a l ignment of vantagepoint and scenic element which anyone can recogniseand appreciate. The chapter on borrowing views in

Y u a n y e gives us an apparently rambling series ofrem arks, aggregations of scenes, se t t ings and eventscommon in the literary tradition. The discussionappeals direc t ly to the accultur ised reader of theChinese tradition, evoking the encount er of sentiment

and scenery. There is no sta tement here to the effec ttha t wha t is encount e red has been pre f igured andpre-determined in the mind of the designer,equivalent to Reptons pre-existing causes in thehuman mind. This in fac t accords with the genera ldisregard for a designers intentions in theappreciation of Chinese gardens in the wholetradition of records of famous gardens. Consideredin this light, borr owing views is not som ething thati s whol ly de te rmined by an au tonom ous des igne r sintentions in arranging a passive landscape. Inborrowing views, the designers intentions andscenery are co-arising, and the garden withborrowed views enjoins visitors to new occasions ofco-presencing, and approaches their experience half-way in further conjunctions of sentiment andscenery.

For this re ason, the re la t ionship of t ime and theborrowing of views is particularly significant. Thechapter on borrow ing views in Y u a n y e announcesthis explici t ly - O ne m ust consider the four t imes:that is to say, the four seasons and dawn, day, dusk,evening. 92 In th i s r egard , i t i s impor tan t t o r eca l l thefollowing characterisation of the C hinese tradition byHall and Ames,

The Chinese tradition does not have the separation betweent ime and ent i t ies that would al low for e i ther t ime wi thout entit i es, or entit ies with out t ime. T here is no possibili ty ofe i ther an empty temporal corr idor or an e ternal anyt hing(in t he sense of being tim eless). W hat encourages us withinthe classical Western tradition to separate time and space isour incl inat i on in her i ted f rom the Greeks to see th ings inthe world as fixed in their formal aspect, and thus,bounded and limited. If . . . we observe them in the light oftheir ceaseless transformation, we are able to temporalisethem and perceive them as events rather than th ings , where each phenomenon is some current or impulse within atemporal f low. 93

Retur n ing to the chap te r on bor row ing v iews inY u a n y e, w e can no t e how t he evocat ive nar rat ivepre sents us with what Hall and Ames might ca l levents rather than fixed views of spatial alignmen tsavailable in various times of the day or year:

Ex tend ing t o t he u tm os t one s gaze upon a l o f t y f i e l d ,distant peaks form an encircling screen. H alls are open sothat congenial air wafts over oneself , wh ile before the d oorSpring waters f low into a marsh. Amidst enchant i ng reds


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and beautiful purples, one delightedly encounters immortalsamong the f lowers . . . Sweep th e paths and protect the

you n g or ch ids so t h at sec lu ded ro om s m ay sh are i n t h ei rfrag rance. R ol l up th e ba mboo bl i nds an d invi t e th eswal lows to occasional ly cut the l igh t breeze . . . Ones

interests would be in accord with t he pure and the remote,and one can find pleasure amongst hills and ravines.Suddenly thoughts beyond the dusty world come and oneseems to be walking in a pain ting. From the shadows of th e

f or es t f i rs t com e th e or iol e s son g; in th e bend of amountain, one suddenly hears the farmers singing. Abreeze arises in th e shad e of trees, and the atmosphereenters the tim e of the Emperor Xi. 94

These events are narrated without subsuming theminto ca tegor ies of par t icular t imes or seasons so thatthey can be read as par t icular enti t ies in a temporalcorr idor . They are a lso the stuff t ransmitted in theli terary corpus. In summ ary then, t he borrow ing of views involves sentiment and scenery-sentime nt andscenery are not subjective and objective, butcorre la t ive . The person who notices borrowing isnot a universal subject; the moment whenbor row ing is not iced is not just happenstance orunde te rm ined . Ra the r , the bor rowing of views i sdiscussed in Yuan ye as eventful encounter anddepends on the no t ion of t r ad it ion , he re conce ivednot as a tradit ion of s tyl ised or designed o bjects butas em bodied pr actices of daily l iving - roll ing upbamboo blinds, listening to the orioles song, etc. -recorded, cata logued, (a gleaned list?95) and handeddown in the literary corpus of China.

APPROP RIATE EMBOD IMENT

In our discussion of interdependence andborrowing above, we have located two mainpoints: First, t he polar relationship of term s as a clueto their r eading, and second, eventful encounter as afunction of tradit ion. The terms t i (body,embodiment, bodying) and yi (appropriateness)appea r to q ua l i fy the tw o ways of ope ra t ing in thedesign of gardens, interdependence andborrowing. T i is literally body but normallyunderstood in this context as de ti being suitable orattaining propriety. Y i i s norm a l ly unde r s tood asappropriateness. The common understanding ofthese term s in Yuan ye construes them as synonyms. Aproper study of these two terms would enta i lreading them in re la t ion to other Chinese terms thatstand in polar or cognate re la t ion to them such as l i(ritual action), yi (rightness/ signification). Forconsiderations of space, we will reserve this task foranothe r occas ion . Here , we w ould l ike to o f fe r tw ogenera l remarks about how, taken together , t i

(body) and yi ( appropr ia teness ) a re r e la ted to thenotion of appropriate embodiment.

In contr asting W ester n and classical Chineseunder standings of the world above, w e indicated that

the Western understanding of knowledge as thegrasping of an unchanging rea l i ty behind the worldof appear ances is re la ted to the understanding of architectural knowledge as the knowledge ofuniversal principles of geomet ry and propor tion. Theabsence of these ideas in classical China can bere la ted to an emphasis in discussions of gardens, onpar t icular cases without understanding each of themas the outcom es of the application of general rules ofdesign to par t icular s i tes . Appropr ia teness is thusnot a judgement reached by applying universalpr inciples of design to par t icular s i tes , but r a ther isthe re sult of atte nding to the insistent particularity ofa situation such t hat its concret e det ails stand inharmonious relationship to each other.96

From the per spective of the W estern tradit ion, as wehave outl ined above, the notion of embodim ent, theconcre t e m anifest ing of a garden o r ot her de signs isimplic it ly understood in t erm s of dualisms. There isthe b ina ry oppos i t ion of fo rm and ma t ter , whe reform is conside re d the outcom e o f t he designersagency in changing and shaping raw mater ia ls . Thedesigned garden then becom es a conta iner in twosenses: as matter, it contains the spirit of thedesigner , inscr ibed in i ts form . I t is also a conta inerfor the actions of those for w hom it w as designed. As

cont ainer in bot h these senses, its design is a final orf ixed and sta t ic end. The possibil i ty for ac t ion andthe com petency of the designer are judged in relationto a specific programme of design. In modernistdesign, embodiment always eschews a symbolicdimension alluding to tradition, foregrounding afunctionalist approach to rational design. In theChinese context of de t i (being suitable) , t here is noexplic it s ta teme nt in Yuan ye th a t the garden a s abody is to be judged according to its functionalpro gramm e, which is a lways lef t vague and open,and neve r i t emised in to the modern equ iva len t o f abr ief. Fur ther , for the eventful encounter of gardenstha t depends on a no t ion of t r ad i t ion embodied inl i tera ture and other cultura l forms, properembodiment, with a sense of decorum, is itselfcontr ary to avant-gardist individualism even tho ughchange is not p recluded in it. As Ames points out , Aperson en gaged in the p e r form ance of a pa r t icu larformal ac t ion, appropr ia t ing meaning f rom it whileseeking himself to be appropriate to it, derivesmeaning and value from this embodiment, andfur the r s t r eng thens i t by h is con t r ibu t ion of nove lmeaning and value. He pursues rightness and


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significance both in an imitative and a creativesense.97 The appropr ia te embodiment o f ga rdens a sdiscussed in Yuan ye can the re fore be unde r s tood intw o ways: First , as somet hing under taken withoutre cou rse to universal principles of design, b ut as

something pursued by a t tending to the par t icular i tyof situations; and second, as the polar relationship ofthe body of the ga rden and t he ac t ions o f dwe l le r sand designers in the embodiment of culturaltradition.

WE

In the foregoing discussion, we have had occasion toperform a juxtaposit ion of mater ia ls f rom Chineseand Western contexts of discussion. By way ofconclusion, we propose to foreground two levels of cons ide ra t ion r evo lv ing a round the w ord W

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Dualism and Polarism