The social semiotics of space: Metaphor, ideology, and ... soc semiotics of space.pdf · temologically non-sensical. Already in 1964, Roland Barthes pointed to the di¤erence between

The social semiotics of space:Metaphor, ideology, and political economy*

ALEXANDROS PH. LAGOPOULOS

Abstract

The aim of the present article is the study of the connotative meaning of

space, but special theoretical attention is given to the wider theoretical con-

text of such an enterprise. I argue that the whole domain of spatial studies

is split between two major and conflicting epistemological paradigms: ‘ob-

jectivism,’ which studies ‘space’ as an external object, and ‘subjectivism,’

which approaches space as ‘place,’ that is, as a meaningful, semiotic entity.

The existence of these two parallel orientations, both legitimate, points to

the need for a holistic approach, allowing the articulation of semiotic phe-

nomena with social structures. The holistic approach helps to clarify three

di¤erent semiotic approaches: the immanent, the Greimasian sociosemiotic,

and the holistic social semiotic approach.

The relationship between space and meaning is a metaphorical one, and

metaphor belongs to the semantics of connotation. The whole connotative

field of a society constitutes its world view or ideology, which is structured

by a classification system. The study of the metaphorical meanings of space

is set in this article against three di¤erent social backgrounds. The first are

precapitalist societies. As a case study, I use the example of the Sudanese

Dogon of southern Mali and show that cosmogony and cosmology, inextri-

cably linked to an anthropomorphic code, constitute the nucleus of their

world view and preside over the organization and morphology of space.

The second is western modernism. I conclude that the major ideological ur-

ban models of modernism are ruled by an organicist code. The last context

studied is western postmodernism. I argue that the postmodern approach

to space (which is not a radically new phenomenon) adopts a pseudo-

historical stance and uses the overarching metaphor of genius loci. In the

context of postmodernism, the ‘metaphorization’ of built space goes hand

in hand with its ‘Las Vegasization’ and ‘Disneylandization,’ and meaning,

spatial experience, and the search for identity are integrated into the circuit

of capitalist profit.

Semiotica 173–1/4 (2009), 169–213 0037–1998/09/0173–0169

DOI 10.1515/SEMI.2009.007 6 Walter de Gruyter

Keywords: social semiotics; ideology; connotation; metaphor; code; mod-

ernism; postmodernism.

1. Objectivism and subjectivism in spatial studies

Built space — architectural, urban and regional — is a complex social

product and is produced by an equally complex set of economic, techno-

logical, social, political, and semiotic processes. Consider, for example,

the views of Manuel Castells on urban space. For Castells, there is

no such thing as a specific theory of space, but the theory of space is a

specialized case of the theory of society. Following the logic of Louis

Althusser, he argues that the social structure is composed of three funda-

mental ‘instances’: the economic system, which is determinant in the lastinstance, the political system, and the ideological system. These social sys-

tems are manifested in space, and thus spatial organization is defined by

them and their interrelations. The spatial manifestation of the ideological

system consists of a system of signs, in which the signifiers are the spatial

forms and the signifieds are the ideology corresponding to these forms

(Castells 1972: 153, 163–172, 276, 457–476, 489–490).

Just as there are many facets to the production of space, so there are

many points of view, that is, relevancies, through which space can bestudied. Thus, for example, beyond the interest in the meaning of archi-

tecture, it is clearly legitimate to study methods of construction, construc-

tion materials, the functional organization of buildings, or the building

code. And if we turn to urban space, we may study plot size and cover-

age, the location of uses, densities, other urban indicators, or tra‰c flows.

In the case of urban space, mainstream urban geography up to the mid-

1960s adopted these kinds of point of view in respect to physical space.

To put it in epistemological terms, urban space was considered as an ob-ject external to the observer, an object ‘out there,’ and the observer as an

external observer observing this object. But in the mid-1960s, some years

before the emergence of the semiotics of space, there appeared a new

school of human geography, humanistic geography, inspired by phenom-

enology, for which space became a meaningful entity, or as this school

expressed it, space became place. This radical transformation of the epis-

temological object of spatial analysis founds one of the two major episte-

mological paradigms for the understanding of space, marking not onlyhuman geography, but the whole domain of spatial studies and indeed

all the approaches to space, paradigms which I have called objectivism

and subjectivism (Lagopoulos and Boklund-Lagopoulou 1992: 7–13). Ob-

jectivism studies space abstractly and neutrally as an objectified external

170 A. Ph. Lagopoulos

reality, a reality conceptually and thus indirectly approached by an ob-

server external to it (see, for example, positivist ‘new’ geography or

Marxist geography). For subjectivism, space as place is an internalized

and concrete semiotic entity, directly and intimately experienced by a

human subject in consciousness and thus invested with understanding,

symbolic meaning, value, and feeling.For humanistic geographers, this existential recuperation of space as

place contains and makes accessible the original inner structure of space.

Place is not only semiotically experienced, but also semiotically produced,

and in the production process human thoughts and feelings are material-

ized in the built environment, which is thus shaped by them (Tuan 1977:

5, 17). Finally, human geographers came to define place in terms of semi-

otics. Thus, James and Nancy Duncan (1988: 117), writing in the context

of the postmodern tendency in geography, state that ‘landscapes are readin much the same way as literary texts,’ a view that converges with the

point of departure of classical semiotics. In fact, space may be considered

(though, in my view, not exclusively) as a cultural text, or rather as cul-

tural texts, given that di¤erent social groups in the same society may

have di¤erent ‘readings’ of space.

During the last decades objectivism and subjectivism have been living

parallel and conflicting lives. The arrival of postmodernism as the domi-

nant epistemological paradigm brought with it the elimination of thisconflict by simply eliminating ‘space’ as a problem, but this is too simplis-

tic and epistemologically indefensible. Both ‘place’ and ‘space’ are legiti-

mate objects of study; indeed, they are necessary and complementary as-

pects of space and must and can be combined in the context of a unified

spatial theory. Below, I shall attempt to define such a perspective, which

will also allow me to clarify what I mean by the ‘social semiotics of

space.’ In order to do this, I need to begin with a discussion of the articu-

lation between social structures and semiotic phenomena.An approach that allows for a dialectics between social structure and

social practices is Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. Bourdieu defines

habitus as a historically defined system of durable dispositions that comes

into existence by the interiorization of structures. It is thus structured by

structures and tends to secure the stability of structures over time. Struc-

tures preside over habitus and practices, though not on the basis of a me-

chanical determinism, and impose limits on habitus and its inventiveness.

There is no mechanical determination by the structures, because they arecontinuously activated and filtered through habitus and are subject to its

own specific logic. The result is that habitus generates revisions and trans-

formations, thus in its turn structuring structures and leading to social

change (Bourdieu 1980: for example, 88–96, 101–102).

The social semiotics of space 171

A similar approach is adopted by Anthony Giddens in his theory of

structuration. For Giddens, cultural practices are central to social dynam-

ics. These practices use as a medium the structural properties of institu-

tions, which they produce and reproduce. The structural properties of

institutions are connected to large-scale social processes and to macro-

time, and their change is inherent in social dynamics (Giddens 1981: 15–16, 19, 26–28).

For both Bourdieu and Giddens, then, social structures are negotiated

through the practices of social groups, including the politics, strategies,

and power games of their actors, both within the groups and in their

interrelationships. Built space is manifestly one of the structures that are

negotiated in this manner. It is both the product of socio-economic pro-

cesses and part of the material culture of a society, and as such it is both

a commodity and a cultural value. It circulates within society, activatedby the dynamics of habitus.

Though he does not refer specifically to built space, Bourdieu discusses

the dynamics of this circulation in respect to cultural goods. According to

him, in European societies there have been constituted relatively autono-

mous fields of production, circulation and consumption of intellectual

and artistic goods, which integrate commodity and symbolic value (what

I above called cultural value). The various perspectives and values con-

veyed by the cultural aspect of these goods, their symbolic functions,and the attached symbolic practices are di¤erentiated in accordance with

the position they occupy within each symbolic field, i.e., each habitus.

This position, and hence the cultural perspectives conveyed by the goods,

follows from the position of their agents, i.e., actors, in the cultural

(sub)system composing the field. The perspectives in these fields arise

from the cultural as well as other interests of the groups of agents that

are competing for cultural legitimation — and, I would add, domination.

Thus, it is these groups that activate the cultural circuit of each field,which is governed by its own logic, but is ultimately founded on the wider

context of class relations (Bourdieu 1971).

Like other commodities and symbolic goods, built space is produced,

circulates, and is consumed within a semi-autonomous social field, and

has two aspects, a commodity aspect and a semiotic one. The first aspect

is studied mainly by political economy and covers two di¤erent values of

space, common to all commodities: a use value and an exchange value.

The second aspect, studied by semiotics, adds a third value: culturalvalue. Here, space as an exchange of signs is ruled by the well-known

communication circuit: addresser-message-addressee. I would like to

stress the coincidence of the structure of the model of economic exchange

in political economy with that of the communication model, which indi-


cates the deep structural similarities between the life cycles of all products

in society (see also Lagopoulos 1993: 274).

Within the context of such a holistic approach to space, it is possible to

clarify certain crucial issues concerning the semiotics of space. First, any

formalist approach to space based exclusively on semiotic theory is epis-

temologically non-sensical. Already in 1964, Roland Barthes pointed tothe di¤erence between the level of meaning and that of use objects,

though he also linked the two levels with his concept of ‘sign-function,’

the manner in which any object can become a sign of its own usage

(Barthes 1964: 106). The use aspect of space is tied to the dynamics of

political economy and shows that space is not produced primarily as a

communication system. Space is produced jointly by material processes,

which are fundamental, and semiotic processes, and as such cannot be

analyzed solely by semiotic theory.Second, a holistic approach helps us to clarify the distinction, within se-

miotics, between semiotics in the strict sense and sociosemiotics. In their

discussion of what might be included in a potential field of sociosemiotics,

Algirdas Julien Greimas and Joseph Courtes define as sociosemiotic the

approach to linguistic communication that goes beyond the text, the object

of semiotic analysis in the strict sense, to study the relation between linguis-

tic communication and its complex semiotic setting. They also include in

sociosemiotics the typology of literary discourses and genres, the typologyof cultures, the study of the domain of connotation, and that of the relation

between groups in society and linguistic practices. Greimas’s narrative se-

miotics describes, among other things, action in narration, and the authors

propose to extrapolate from narrative texts to actual actions in social life.

Thus, a ‘semiotics of action’ is constituted, which is also manifestly a part

of sociosemiotics (Greimas and Courtes 1979: ‘Action,’ ‘Sociosemiotique’).

In spite of this great expansion of the object of semiotic analysis, socio-

semiotics remains a purely subjectivist perspective, enclosed within theuniverse of meaning, and thus constitutes an independent, free-floating

approach within the social sciences. It forms an isolated theory of culture,

without any grounding in a theory of society as a whole. The need to in-

tegrate a theory of culture with a theory of society compels us to focus on

the articulation of the cultural with the social, of the semiotic with the

exosemiotic, and of semiotics with political economy. This articulation,

revealing in the last analysis the dynamics of the production of the semi-

otic, leads beyond sociosemiotics to what I would like to call social semi-

otics, which studies semiosis not only as a cultural phenomenon, but also

as a social one.

I believe the concepts introduced above allow us, on the one hand, to

surpass both the apparent contradiction between spatial objectivism and


subjectivism (and the one-sidedness of postmodernism, which is wholly

limited to the subjectivist paradigm), and thus, on the other hand, to find

a fertile synthesis between the two paradigms (see also Lagopoulos 1993:

273–275). They show that the meaning of the ‘social meaning of space’ is

that meaning is produced, negotiated, and transformed within and by so-

ciety, and that it di¤ers, both from one society to another, and in accor-dance with the di¤erent social groups composing society.

I will examine in this paper the connotative meaning of space as place,

a perspective belonging, as we just saw, to what Greimas calls the socio-

semiotic domain. This relationship between space and meaning is often,

and crucially, a metaphorical one, hence the need for a discussion of the

concept of metaphor, which I shall also integrate below with its larger

cultural context. In addition, I shall make a connection, if only on a

very general level, between the spatial meanings under study and theirsocial backgrounds, which is a first move towards the integration of

socio-semiotics within social semiotics.

2. Metaphor, connotation, and ideology

In order to discuss the issue of metaphor as it applies to the organization

and form of space, it is necessary both to delimit the general concept ofmetaphor and, in so doing, locate the related concept of metonymy, that

is complementary to the analysis of metaphor. It is necessary to discuss

metonymy together with metaphor, not only because in semiotics they

are usually treated as related and opposed concepts, but also because, as

we shall see, there is no metaphor without metonymy.

Roman Jakobson (1963: 61, 63, 66–67) elaborates on the concepts of

metaphor and metonymy in his writing on aphasia. Based on Saussure,

he observes that the development of discourse takes place according totwo di¤erent semantic processes: one topic is related to another either

through similarity, that is, the metaphoric process, or through contiguity,

that is, the metonymic process; these processes would find their more con-

densed expression in metaphor and metonymy respectively. The varieties

of aphasia move between two poles consisting in a dysfunction either of

the faculty of selection and substitution, or of that of combination and

putting into context. Jakobson points out that the principles of magic

rituals are split along the same lines, and applies the same concepts toliterature, poetry, and painting.

There are also more technical definitions of metaphor. Greimas and

Courtes (1979: ‘Metaphore,’ ‘Metonymie’) define metaphor in semantics

as the substitution, in a given context, of one lexeme (a lexeme, according


to these authors, is a set of sememes corresponding to a word) for another

on the basis of a semantic equivalence, i.e., a partial semantic identity.

Since the process, they write, of ‘metaphorization,’ paradigmatic in na-

ture, is based on substitution, we may conclude, as Jakobson implies,

that all the sememes of a language that share an identical seme can poten-

tially be involved in metaphors. They point out, however, that Jakobson’spoetic function is solely attached to substitution within paradigms of sim-

ilarities and not of di¤erences. This viewpoint would theoretically abolish

meaning in paradigmatic relations, since in every case of the production

or comprehension of signification, meaning is produced by di¤erences,

through oppositions between what is retained (similarity) and what is

excluded (di¤erence) in each paradigm. Similarity is for Greimas and

Courtes the intuitive understanding of an identity between two or more

units, something that presupposes the existence of alterity.Metonymy, like metaphor, is a theoretical trope and, for Greimas and

Courtes, also the product of a substitution: one seme, which is the opera-

tor of substitution, is replaced by another belonging to the same sememe,

the two semes being connected by a formal hierarchical relation which is

either ‘hypotactic’ or ‘hypertactic’; examples of these formal relations

are the relations of part to whole (this relation of pars pro toto leads to

metonymy in the narrow sense), principal-subordinated, determining-

determined (cause-e¤ect), containing-contained. Thus, metonymy wouldbe a kind of ‘deviant’ metaphor, given that for both a substitution is

made on the basis of semantic equivalence.

Comparable is the view of Umberto Eco (1984: 87–91, 94, 96–97, 113–

124 and 1976: 109, 279–281, 283), who, however, gives a more complex

and precise definition of metaphor. Eco is interested in the cognitive value

of metaphor and not in metaphor as an ornament, because in the latter

case, in which metaphor is viewed as saying the same thing but more

pleasantly, it can be explained by the semantics of denotation. He thuschooses to emphasize, not the substitutive nature of metaphor, but its ad-

ditive nature. We may conclude that in this manner he is led to a seman-

tics of connotation in respect to metaphor, an issue I shall discuss below.

Eco’s semantic analysis of metaphors leads him to the conclusion that a

metaphor includes a whole series of operations. We first observe the met-

onymic passage from one sememe to another, e¤ected with the help of a

seme. Then come into play two synecdoches: each of the two sememes is

integrated within one or more synecdochic trees, each built on the basis ofproperties that belong to the same category (for instance, they both refer

to material) but that are di¤erent for the two sememes. In this manner,

each sememe is transformed into a species of this property, the latter

being possibly a species of a following genus, and so on. Each pair of


synecdochic trees presents corresponding nodes that are dissimilar or

identical. The lower corresponding nodes are dissimilar and the con-

junction of the two trees takes place at a higher node. Finally, within

this intertextual context, the second sememe substitutes for the first one.

Metaphor, thus arrived at, is open, or at least virtually open. We under-

stand why the cognitive value of metaphor is for Eco a matter of thesemantics of connotation: one sememe refers to something other than

but connected to itself. This relation of metaphor to connotation is also

indicated by Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1977: for example, 91–92,

150–160, 180). However, Eco’s encyclopedic model accommodates only

a limited type of connotation: that created in the synecdochic tree

through reference to a species starting from a genus (Eco 1976: 281). But

all possible connotations are not accounted for by this model, which thus

should be extended. Whatever the kind of path in the encyclopedicmodel, it is clear that, while metaphor always involves connotation, con-

notation is wider than metaphor.

As we saw above, the production of urban and architectural space is

composed of two linked and interacting processes: the first, and founda-

tional, is a material socioeconomic process linked to a political one, and

the second is ideological, i.e., semiotic. This semiotic production of space

may be of two di¤erent types. Some decisions involved in the production

of space are ideological in origin but not specifically concerned with pro-ducing spatial meaning. According to this first type, ideology has a cer-

tain cause-and-e¤ect impact on space (which of course has nothing to do

with metonymy, since the process that produces it is not rhetorical but

technical). In this case — with the exception of extreme cases — the space

produced does not signify its cause. But in the second type of semiotic

production of space, meaning is inscribed in and on space, and the latter

becomes the signifier of this meaning, which is thus transformed into its

signified. Since it is only this second type that allows for the realizationof metaphor, I shall concentrate on this mode of semiosis.

As every other signification, each partial spatial meaning belongs to a

wider context of signification, and this wider context to an even wider

one, and so on, the widest possible context being a society’s world view,

or its ideology (in the most general sense of the word). World view, the

essential part of the cognitive and emotional culture of a society, is man-

ifestly a very large pool of signification, but it is regulated by a much

narrower classification system and its structuring principles. Spatial meta-phors may be looked for in the articulation of the di¤erent components of

the world view, and the classification system, with space — the second

type of semiotic production of space referred to above, where meaning is

inscribed in and on space.


In order to study metaphor, or any other paradigmatic relation con-

cerning texts, that is, the level of parole, it is convenient to use the concept

of semantic code. While there are very broad definitions of the concept of

code (langue is a code), I understand it as analogous to the ‘partial

semantic code’ and very close to the concept of isotopy as defined by

Greimas and Courtes (1979: ‘Code,’ ‘Isotopie,’ ‘Micro-univers’). Morespecifically, I consider it useful to define code as a structured set of se-

memes, or of sets of sememes, which constitute a classificatory matrix

through which reality is interpreted, i.e., invested with meaning. This set

follows from the existence of a seme common to all the elements of the

code or, to state it in another manner, from the use of a specific perspec-

tive on reality, or otherwise a certain relevancy within the context of the

cultural universe. Codes are, thus, components of the world view and the

classification system. This system is composed of a large set of codes,which are not only structured internally, but also in respect to each other.

The nucleus of the classification system can be seen as closely related to

the concept of episteme as defined by Michel Foucault (1966: 12–13, 170–

171). Foucault is not analytical in his theoretical presentation of this

concept, with which he wants to indicate the epistemological field, histor-

ically defined, covering the fundamental preconditions of knowledge. For

him, these preconditions detach from experience a possible domain of

knowledge, set the context in which a discourse recognized as true canevolve, define the mode of being of the objects constituting the above do-

main and o¤er the possible theoretical viewpoints. Thus episteme seems

to cover both the nucleus of the classification system — that is, the

nature of its codes, the ordered relations between them and their internal

structure — and the preconditions for its emergence.

I shall proceed below with the study of metaphors as part of two wider

contexts, the one cultural and semiotic, the other social and exosemiotic.

The first context is the world view within which the metaphors are em-bedded, and the second the social structure ordering the world view. In

discussing this social structure, I will refer to: a. precapitalist societies, us-

ing as a typical example the Dogon culture, b. Western modernism, re-

lated to the development of capitalism over more than two centuries,

and c. Western postmodernism, the cultural formation of late capitalism.

3. Spatial metaphors in precapitalist societies: The cosmos and the body

I shall start with an analysis of the spatial metaphors in a so-called prim-

itive society, namely the Sudanese Dogon of southern Mali. The Dogon

are a frequently cited example in anthropological and other sources, but


a certain familiarity with the Dogon mythology may help the reader

to better understand the issue under consideration. It is true that the

work of the two central anthropologists who studied the Dogon, Marcel

Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, has been criticized; in particular, Walter

E. A. van Beek (1991: 139–158) recently published a strong critique of the

ethnographic data and synthesis e¤ected by Griaule and Dieterlen. Thereare several reasons why van Beek’s experience of the Dogon might not

coincide with that of Griaule and Dieterlen. On the one hand, today’s

Dogon, living within the general conditions of the capitalist world econ-

omy, cannot be considered as identical to traditional Dogon culture and,

on the other, the level of cultural competence of Beek’s informants re-

mains unaccounted for. We might consider that Griaule and Dieterlen

gave an overly coherent and systematic account of the Dogon mythical

worldview and Dogon culture, but, with this reservation, their workseems to be generally reliable, something also attested through both close

and more remote ethnographic parallels (the following analysis of the

Dogon world view and culture is based mainly on data found in Griaule

and Dieterlen 1965). I have no doubt that the example of the Dogon is

typical of the subject under discussion for all precapitalist societies, a

concept that I take to include the ‘high’ civilizations of antiquity and

medieval societies of the East and of the West as well as contemporary

‘primitive’ societies (see Lagopoulos 1995, 1998: 377–381), in spite of theimportant di¤erences between them, which would necessitate a more de-

tailed social semiotic analysis.

In the Dogon cosmogony, before the creation of the world, only the

creator Amma was in existence, in the form of a quadripartite egg.

Amma had traced in himself the universe before its creation. The repre-

sentation of this egg is an oval with two oriented perpendicular axes, bi-

sected by another pair of perpendicular axes. Their common point of sec-

tion is a navel. The four parts of the egg are called ‘collarbones,’ and areconsidered to be oval in form and thus also like eggs. They prefigured

the four elements — earth, fire, water, air — that are situated clockwise

starting from the lower right. Each part contained 8 signs, ‘traces’

(bummo), and each of them produced 8 more. Thus, the egg contained

4 � 8 � 8 ¼ 256 signs, to which were added 8 (2 for each axis) and 2 for

the center, so that the ‘signs of Amma’ thus became 266; whence the egg

is the ‘belly of all the signs of the world.’

Even such a brief description is structured by a multitude of codes. Theoverarching code of course is the mythical. Then, the central actor is

Amma, referring to a religious code, closely related to the mythical code.

The remaining codes are: temporal (before the creation), cosmic (cosmic

egg, four elements), zoomorphic (egg), geometrical (four parts, oval


shape, perpendicular axes, bisecting axes, center), astronomical (orienta-

tion of the axes) — a subcode of the cosmic code, anthropomorphic (na-

vel, collarbones, belly, right), directional (clockwise, right), topological

(lower), code of signification (sign), and arithmological (2, 4, 8, 256, 266).

Amma created a first world starting from the seed of a specific tree, the

first of all the plants (phytomorphic code). The world (cosmic code) wasmade of an upright wooden spine (phytomorphic) supporting a bowl-like

wooden element (code of utensils) held in place by an inversed spine. The

upper spine is the male sky and the lower the female earth. The two

spines together compose the axis of rotation of the middle element, space.

The function of the latter was to receive everything that was in the sky

and then empty it on earth. The above axis and rotation belong to a

code of movement, of which the directional code is a subcode. The topo-

logical code now makes explicit the opposition up versus down. A sexualsubcode of the anthropomorphic code makes its appearance, composed

of the opposition male versus female; this opposition is isomorphic to the

opposition right versus left. Finally, in this description the cosmic code

appears in the form of a ternary structure of a dualist nature: sky – space

– earth, but the dualism is attenuated by the simultaneous synthesis of the

two opposites: sky þ earth ¼ cosmic axis and earth ¼ receiver of sky.

After the failure of this first world, Amma created a second one. Its

description again mobilizes a multitude of codes, among which I shallgenerally indicate only the main codes that we have not already encoun-

tered. He first created new seeds, po being the most important and situ-

ated in the center of the egg; after po, he continued with eight seeds of

other cereals, which also were twins, male and female. He also drew in

his egg, in himself that is, the yala images for this new world. The quad-

ripartite egg was closed and had a spiral central part corresponding to the

yolk of the egg. Amma’s action caused the emergence of the spiral that,

turning in a sense opposite to the rest, prefigured the future expansion ofthe world. There have been di¤erent stages of realization of this second

world.

Life (vital code) was placed in the seeds by way of the word (linguistic

code). As they germinated, they exploded and the world was ‘opened.’

The opening was due to the ‘work of Amma’ and started from the north,

the direction more particularly associated with him. The creation myth

shows Amma turning around himself clockwise and dancing (code of

practices), first facing west. Every two turns, Amma would lower his hor-izontally extended arms and with every turn he created ‘a sky and an

earth stuck together.’ He created fourteen such superimposed pairs; the

first earth was rectangular. He formed the spiral worlds of the stars. The

four collarbones were separated and determined the cardinal directions,


which they contained virtually; to each of them corresponded one of

the elements. The collarbones were placed on a horizontal plane like the

petals of a water lily and were united by one extremity around its calyx,

seat of Amma and cosmic axis (oriented N-S).

The egg of Amma became his double placenta, which was formed in

the center, the womb of the world. This double placenta is representedby a figure based on the form of the cross, also signifying the future

man. His head corresponds to the celestial placenta and his legs and gen-

itals to the terrestrial one, the two separated by his extended hands. Here

is also shown the nature of man as a microcosm.

In the interior of the placenta, Amma created the first living being,

nommo anagonno. Amma multiplied this being by first creating four

males and then their female twins (2 � 4), all called ogo. The first of these

creatures is the ‘grand Nommo.’ The figure representing his body isserpent-shaped; the serpent connotes the earth, i.e., is a metaphor for it,

and is made up of four concentric contours of di¤erent colors (chromatic

code) connoting the elements: from the outside in, they are black (water),

red (fire), white (air), ochre (earth). The four colors together are a meta-

phor for the rainbow (meteorological code), itself a metaphor for the

‘path of Nommo,’ the connection between sky and earth. Also, the four

colors are metaphors for the four male ancestors of humanity and the

four Dogon lineages issued from them (social code).The fourth of the four original males, Ogo, revolted against Amma.

The ruptures of his placenta, 3 on the body (3 connotes the male sex)

and 4 on the face (4 connotes the female sex; 3 þ 4 connote reproduction

and multiplication), are associated to the colors of the rainbow and the

seasons to come on earth. They also prefigure the form of the earth of

Ogo, which, like his placenta, is a rectangle divided by a grid into 5 � 12

squares (figure 1). Ogo emerged prematurely from his placenta and tore

o¤ from it a square piece. The latter became his ark (code of transport),which rotated around itself. Seeing the disorder caused by Ogo, Amma

transformed it into the earth, an earth oriented E-W. Ogo dug furrows

covering the earth, starting from the east. He moved in straight lines,

used angles, and created 5 rows of 12 holes each. These holes were an at-

tempt to create the first field. In the image of the latter, the world was

divided into 60 parts.

Ogo returned to the sky and then descended again on earth with a sec-

ond ark along a tree. The first granary (architectural code) made by hu-mans imitated the shape of this ark, the future ‘field of the Fox (Ogo),’

which was a truncated square pyramid. In the upper face of the ark were

four square holes, where seeds were placed, around a circular hole, the ‘cen-

tral pillar of space.’ This ark is the metaphorical signification of the basket


tazu, which is considered as impure (ethical code). The disorder created by

this descent caused Amma to purify (ethical code) the world with the sac-

rifice of the third of the original males, Nommo, the twin of Ogo from the

other half of the egg, which also led to the reorganization of the world.First, Amma split in two the four body souls of Nommo and with this

action created four supplementary souls. During the sacrifice, Nommo

was seated in the center of his placenta, where the umbilical cord was at-

tached. His penis was bent over the cord by the second Nommo, who

then cut them both. From this act, Sirius was born as the center, the na-

vel, of the world. The blood shed impregnated the placenta giving it new

life. During this act, Ogo again returned to the sky. At that moment,

Amma placed all the elements of creation in the spirals of the female po,in order to protect them from him. The movement of Amma allowed the

po to explode, releasing all the things of the world, classified in 22 catego-

ries, and distributing them to the cardinal points. It poured them out into

the ark of Nommo, with which he was to descend to Ogo’s earth.

Ogo, after having been circumcised, descended again to earth with a

third ark, which is a metaphor for the sky and the earth and was ani-

mated by two major movements: the spiral and the vibration of the rays

of the sun. This ark is the metaphorical signification of the basket nugoro,which is like a bonnet and made of straw in the form of a spiral supported

by straight segments. Amma divided the body of Nommo into 60 parts to

which were added the 6 elements included in his semen. He made with

them seven piles; then he made four piles, prefiguring the four cardinal

directions of space, and opened the sky and threw them out in the four

Figure 1. The ruptures of the placenta of Ogo, prefiguring the form of the earth: a grid of

5 � 12 squares (from Griaule and Dieterlen 1965). Reprinted by permission of Ms. Genevieve

Calame-Griaule.


directions, thus purifying the world. After this act of purification, he as-

sembled the parts and resuscitated Nommo, in order to throw him once

more from the celestial opening into the world, which was to become an-

other body of Nommo. From the sacrifice was created the stellar system,

divided into an ‘internal’ and an ‘external’ one; the latter corresponds to

the blood shed outside the placenta. The stars revolve around an axis,uniting the polar star, the ‘eye of the world,’ the one eye of Amma, to

the Southern Cross, his second eye.

Amma extracted from himself the ark of Nommo, of a square or rect-

angular plan, a second earth, containing everything that would appear on

earth, and lowered it down from the celestial opening; the ark was made

from Nommo’s placenta. Ogo’s ark was impure and symbolizes the un-

cultivated brush, while Nommo’s ark was pure and symbolizes the culti-

vated land (cultural code). Nommo’s ark included 60 compartments, theearthly form of which is square, as many as the holes dug by Ogo, but in

4 rows of 15 each. The division into 4 is a reference to the distribution

among the four ancestors of the primordial family field to be created by

them. In fact, Amma had created the four male ancestors of the humans

and their female twins. They came to earth in Nommo’s ark together with

the resuscitated Nommo. Coming down, the ark rocked and spiraled in

the sky for eight periods of time. Nommo defined the cardinal directions,

and time was also divided in four periods determining the seasons of theyear (temporal code). The descent of the ark is the metaphorical significa-

tion of the shape of two of the four variants of the mask sirige.

After Amma had extracted the whole world from himself, he held his

collarbones open pointing to the cardinal directions. Amma placed the

22 principal signs inside his open collarbones. This act is represented by

figure 4. The circle in the center of the figure represents the seat of

Amma. Finally, he closed the collarbones and the whole took again the

shape of the egg. Since then Amma lives in the middle of the sky.The current calendar among the Dogon is lunar, but they also use the

solar calendar. The duration of the visit of Ogo to earth during which he

dug the 60 holes prefigured the division of the year into lunar months.

The whole of his placenta corresponds to the year and the piece of it he

tore o¤ and stole to one-twelfth of the year, a lunar month. The ‘dark’

new moon is a metaphor for Ogo’s circumcision, the beginning of its in-

crease for the formation of the earth and the full moon for the descent of

the ark of Nommo. The moon increases when Nommo breathes as heopens his mouth to speak. When Ogo first returned to the sky, his pla-

centa was transformed into fire on the order of Amma, who made the

sun out of it. He used the celestial opening from which he let down the

ark of Nommo as an exit for the sun. Nommo makes the sun move from


east to west and from north to south; it is considered to move in the

sky like the ark of Nommo. The sun is female and the word for it also

signifies ‘four,’ a female number. It has 22 rays, which depart from its

center and are distributed among the cardinal points.

The above elements of the Dogon cosmogony and cosmology make

up the nucleus of the Dogon worldview. I have tried to show thatthey belong to a set of codes. Though I have not here attempted a sys-

tematic analysis, either of the codes or of the relations between them,

we can perceive the determining codes: mythical-religious, cosmic to-

gether with astronomical, anthropomorphic, arithmological, geometrical,

and temporal.

At least until the time of the collection of the ethnographic data, this

creation myth presided over the social organization of the Dogon, since

their division into the four tribes Dyon, Arou, Ono, and Domno followedthe four mythical lineages issued from four mythical ancestors. It also

governed the kinship and matrimonial system, as well as individual and

collective social, agricultural, and religious practices (Griaule and Dieter-

len 1965: 358; Dieterlen 1956: 107–148). The same also holds for the

organization and the morphology of space, to which I shall turn after a

small diversion to political economy.

The prevalence of myth over the social and economic life of the Dogon

seems to defy the determining role attributed by Marxists to the econ-omy. Indeed, it has been argued that the determining role that in capital-

ist societies is assumed by the economy is instead played by the kinship

system in ‘simple’ societies, by religion in theocratic societies, or by poli-

tics in classical Greece. The Marxist counterargument has been coher-

ently formulated by Maurice Godelier, who points out that such systems

correspond to material social relations. They are systems of ideas, but

also — judging from his analysis of the kinship system — systems of ma-

terial relations of the societies in question. In precapitalist societies, these‘ideological’ systems are not a later e¤ect of the material social relations,

but an internal component of them. Among other things, they interpret

reality, o¤ering an invisible world that acquires a social existence, and

organize relations among people and between people and the world. Ac-

cording to the type of society, one of these systems of social relations is

dominant and as such assumes the function of the relations of production,

i.e., the economic structure (Godelier 1978: 156, 157, 160, 162, 168, 171).

In the case of the Dogon, the mythological complex and the kinshipsystem are dominant and function as the economic field of the society,

organizing the whole of social and cultural life.

The 266 signs of Amma are the prefigurations of all things to come, the

development of which is announced by the progression of the form of the


signs used, a development leading to the realization of things. The first se-

ries of signs is that of the abstract graphic signs: bummo means ‘trace.’

The ‘trace’ of a house, for example, is followed, as for all things, by its

yala, a dotted image, which equals the beginning of the thing. The yala

is also the ‘reflection’ of the thing in its final form. The foundations of

the house are marked with stones placed in its corners and these stones

are the yala of the future house (figure 2). The third series of representa-tions are the tonu, the figures of the thing. The tonu of the house are the

pebbles between the corner stones, placed where the future walls will be

(figure 3). The final series are the toy, the precise drawings, with which

the thing is identified.

The yala and tonu contain the vital force. The toy of the house, just as

the house itself, contains the four elements. The open position of Amma

after the extraction of the world (figure 4) is drawn on the ground of the

future house in real scale and its center, the seat of Amma, defines theplace of the central post of the house, thus identifying this post with

the cosmic axis (Griaule and Dieterlen 1965: 75–76 and 495, note 1). We

Figure 2. The yala of the house (from Griaule and Dieterlen 1965). Reprinted by permission

of Ms. Genevieve Calame-Griaule.

Figure 3. The tonu of the house (from Griaule and Dieterlen 1965). Reprinted by permission

of Ms. Genevieve Calame-Griaule.


see that the stages of the construction of a house refer metaphorically to

the development of the universe, and the representations corresponding to

these stages are metaphors for the structure of the cosmos.

The house also has other metaphorical significations. The plan of the

ginna, the ‘great house,’ of the Arou is a metaphor for the ark of Nommo

and for Nommo himself lying on his right side and copulating. The kitch-en is a metaphor for his head, the two stones of the hearth for his eyes,

the central room his trunk, the workshop his belly, the vestibule his penis.

Figure 4. The open collarbones of Amma after the extraction of the world (from Griaule and

Dieterlen 1965). Reprinted by permission of Ms. Genevieve Calame-Griaule.


The plan of the house can be inscribed into an ellipse; this latter is a met-

aphor for the cosmic egg and placenta (figure 5). Each room of the house

is a metaphor for a being born from the semen of the reclining father; the

di¤erence in height between rooms expresses the di¤erence between these

beings (Griaule 1949: 86–87).The plan of the two-storey great house of the Dyon is again a metaphor

for Nommo, resuscitated, this time lying on his belly. During its construc-

Figure 5. Plan of the ‘great house’ of the Arou (from Griaule 1949). Reprinted by permis-

sion of Ms. Genevieve Calame-Griaule.


tion, seven yala are drawn in its angles, expressing the articulations of the

word inside po. An eighth yala is done where the door between the court

and the street will be placed; it is the metaphor for the life, the creative

word, given by Amma to this primordial seed. There is a theoretical zig-

zagging line uniting these representations, signifying the vibration animat-

ing the articulations of the word, also animating the Nommo of the house.The ground floor of the house includes five rooms, related to the division of

the placenta in which the four Nommo were conceived. The two-story

great house of the Dogon and its parts are also metaphors for the world

and its parts: the floor of the upper story is the space between earth and

sky, its roof is the sky, four small rectangular terraces are the cardinal

points (Griaule and Dieterlen 1965: 345–347; Griaule 1966b: 90).

If we leave aside momentarily the metaphorical significations of archi-

tectural space to examine those of urban space, we find the same meta-phorical relations governing the Dogon fields. These fields are divided

into squares or rectangles and compose a regular grid. The field of an ex-

tended family is a metaphor for the earth at the time of the descent of the

second ark of Ogo. The whole of the fields surrounding a settlement is a

metaphor for the world. Before the planting of the fields, the chief of the

family goes early in the morning to the ‘field of the ancestors’ and, after

clearing the land in the center of the field, draws a circle with the help of

an inverted tazu basket. Facing east, he draws in the interior of this circlea smaller one, the sky, and marks the center of the two circles. During the

day, he draws between the two circles a first zigzagging form and finally

fills this space with 22 such forms, which represent the 266 signs of Amma

and the stars. The space of this ritual is not planted. Around it dung is

placed in four points on the cardinal directions (Griaule 1966b: 71–72,

108, 177; Griaule and Dieterlen 1965: 204, note 4). We see that the pro-

jection of the world system onto geographical space is independent of

scale, since the same system may be the metaphorical signification of awhole set of fields or only of the center of an individual field.

The Dogon settlement, like the earth and the fields must, according to

tradition, have a grid-form street network and be square and oriented to

the cardinal points — though this ideal is not realized in practice. An-

other variant of the Dogon settlement model is shown in figure 6. It is a

metaphor for a human body lying on its back and extending from north

to south. Just as the ginna of the Arou, it has an elliptical contour with

the same connotations. In the north is located the principal square, whichis a metaphor for the primordial field and the sky. The council house in

the square is the head of the settlement. In the center of the settlement

the stones for crushing fruit are a metaphor for the female genitals and

normally should be beside the foundation altar of the settlement, the


Figure 6. Model of the Dogon settlement (from Griaule

1966b). Reprinted by permission of Ms. Genevieve Calame-

Griaule.

Figure 7. The bipartite settlement of Ogol (from Griaule and Dieterlen

1965). Reprinted by permission of Ms. Genevieve Calame-Griaule.

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metaphorical signification of which is a penis. But respect for women dic-

tates that they be located outside the settlement. Frequently the Dogon

settlements are bipartite, symbolizing the double placenta of the egg of

Amma (figure 7 — Griaule 1966b: 92, 150; Griaule 1966a: 82).

Even when the street network of the settlement is not a grid, the power

of the metaphorical cosmic meaning of the grid pattern is such that thismeaning is still semantically reproduced with the settlement as its vehicle.

In this case, the alternative squares of the grid are metaphors of the alter-

ation of the sunny terraces and the shadowed courts. The power of the

grid allows the articulation of a whole complex of metaphors. The sunny

terraces and the shadowed courts correspond respectively to the white

and black squares of the blanket of the dead and the totemic priests, and

the streets running from north to south to the seams that connect the

eight strips of squares composing the blanket. The settlement is also ametaphor for the facade, with its 80 niches, of the house of the ancestor.

The niches of the facade of a great house, forming a grid pattern, are

metaphors for the division of the fields of an extended family (figure 8 —

Griaule 1966b: 72, 92–94, 107–108; Dieterlen 1956: 136). To this com-

plex we should add the whole of the rich mythical metaphors of the grid.

The Dogon settlement of Ogol is composed of Upper and Lower Ogol.

A pattern of altars inside and outside Upper Ogol is combined with the

pattern of built space. It starts from a central altar, located on a terracein the southern extremity of Upper Ogol and surrounded by eight other

altars; the latter form an elliptical contour and belong theoretically to

two oriented axes and two intermediary ones. This central system of al-

tars, all located on the same terrace, has two linear extensions: one to

the north including four altars and another to the west with three altars.

The whole of the system has powerful and rich metaphorical significa-

tions and defines a mythical territory. The general metaphor is the sacri-

fice of Nommo. The theoretical lines from the central altar to the altarmarking the southern end of the elliptical contour, from the altar marking

its northern end to the northernmost altar, and from the western altar of

the contour to the westernmost altar are metaphors for the flow of the

sacrificial blood when the umbilical cord and the penis of Nommo were

cut o¤. The place of the central altar is where this act, as well as Nom-

mo’s resurrection, were performed. The altar is the placenta of the sacri-

ficed Nommo and also Sirius, born from this act as the navel of the

world. The terrace with the central system of altars, accessible only tothe competent priests, is the sky, where the sacrifice took place, and also

Nommo’s placenta. The drawing of certain representations accompanied

the foundations of the altars. The altars and these representations refer

mainly to Nommo and his sacrifice, and then to stars — mainly Venus


Figure 8. Facade of a ‘great house’ (from Griaule 1966b). Reprinted by permission of Ms.

Genevieve Calame-Griaule.


— and constellations. The central altar and those of the northern line out-

side the elliptical contour are reminiscent of the equinoxial and solsticial

positions of the sun and of the middle positions between them. The whole

set of altars is related, in addition to the solar calendar, to the two other

liturgical calendars, based on Sirius and Venus (Griaule and Dieterlen

1965: 226–229, 320–342, 479–480).As a general rule, for the Dogon every construction is a metaphor for

the world, and the same is true for all spatial scales, from the individual

construction through the neighborhood and the settlement to the region

(Griaule 1957: 30, 33 and 1949: 87). The intermingling of spatial entities

and cosmology pulls the former from profane space and time, and proj-

ects them into sacred space and in illo tempore — to use Mircea Eliade’s

expression (Eliade 1959: 20–21) — that is, the sacred time of the begin-

nings. The mythical metaphors not only animate built and organizedspace, but also attach to elements of the natural landscape. They are

also projected on parts of buildings. Thus, the main codes articulating

the world view of the Dogon o¤er to them a vast domain from which

the metaphorical meanings of every kind of built space and all geograph-

ical entities are drawn. These metaphors are multiple and culturally cen-

tral for each spatial element and consequently they give it a rich symbolic

and emotional depth.

The spatial metaphors in precapitalist societies, as we can see from theDogon case, are not simple references, but participate actively in the

shaping of space and in a deeply involved reading of already built space.

Precapitalist metaphors are extremely rich and activate a whole set of

codes. Also, they are not open to free interpretation, as is the case in

modern Western culture, but culturally patterned. Of course the classifica-

tion system may evolve historically and open the metaphorical chain, but

this occurs slowly, and at any one time the metaphor is in principle

closed. As is clear from the Dogon case, the metaphor is deeply emo-tional, and the emotions o¤er a profoundly metaphysical experience.

4. Spatial metaphors in Western modernism: The Enlightenment and the

organism

The codes structuring conceptual space in Western modernity are very

di¤erent from those in precapitalist societies. While in the latter no auton-omous architectural or urban code is found, but these codes depend on

the cosmic code, in Western societies architecture and urban space from

the Renaissance on have formed an independent domain of knowledge

and thus a new and delimited code. While in precapitalist societies there


is a cosmic model of built space, in Western societies there appeared ar-

chitectural and urban models, formulated in the context of the new spatial

discourse. These models, acting as the nucleus of architectural ideology,

guided and still guide the drawing of plans and the construction of built

space. They o¤ered and still o¤er the ideal behind actual built space,

functioning thus as its metaphorical meaning.The work of Francoise Choay (1965: 15–17, 21, 28–29, 31, 33, 34, 45–

46) is especially enlightening with respect to Western urban models. Bas-

ing her analysis on urban texts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

up to 1964, she locates two major discursive modes traversing both

centuries: the progressivist and the culturalist mode. Since the nineteenth

century the progressivist model has been founded on faith in rationalism,

science, technology, and progress, that is, oriented towards the future;

it implies the idea of the existence of a universal man with universalproperties — as we see, all the core ideas of the Enlightenment. On the

contrary, the culturalist model is nostalgic and turns to the past, not the

future. A third model, originating in the U.S., was in the nineteenth

century identified with a strong anti-urban tradition founded on nostalgia

for nature, and in the present century took the form of a naturalist model,

incorporating elements of both the culturalist and the progressivist

paradigm.

While Francoise Choay turned to history, written sources, and the dis-course of specialists on the production of space, Raymond Ledrut (see

1973: 367–373, 377) studied the contemporary consumption of urban

space, i.e., how urban space is conceived by its inhabitants (namely those

of two French cities), using data from interviews, that is, non-written

sources. The comparison between these two works shows striking similar-

ities. In fact, Ledrut finds two opposed, but not contradictory models.

The less widespread is the abstract functionalist or practical model, which

is akin to operational urban planning and envisages the city as an instru-mental object. The other model is the concrete hedonistic or eudemonic

model, which is founded on a ludic conception of, and a personal bond

with, the city. It is founded on an ethical and vital order, and anchored

in the historical monuments that semantize the city with a mythical his-

torical signification. Ledrut himself acknowledges the near-identity of his

‘abstract,’ functionalist model with Choay’s progressivist one. His second

model, which would be ‘concrete,’ is manifestly close to Choay’s cultural-

ist model.Similar results were obtained in a study on the conception of (micro-)-

regional space among the inhabitants of Northern Greece (Lagopoulos

and Boklund-Lagopoulou 1992: 219–225). The authors detect two op-

posed models. The first is objectivist and revolves around groups of codes


concerning society, economy, and the built environment, its nucleus con-

sisting, first, of a code of economic activities, and then of the codes of the

natural environment and of lifestyle; in this model, the presence of the ex-

periential code is slight. The second model is subjectivist and is grounded

in a personal attachment to space, though it also includes occasional

references to society and economy; its nucleus is dominated by personalexperience, though codes of ecology, leisure, aesthetics, economic activ-

ities, and lifestyle are also present.

The above data converge in the conclusion that, both today and in the

previous century, both in the discourse of specialists and the semiotic pro-

duction of space, and in respect to users and the semiotic consumption of

it, both in written texts and in spontaneous oral discourses, two major

and opposed models mark modern Western urban thought. These two

models result in two di¤erent kinds of urban space, and are governed bytwo major and distinct metaphors.

On the production side, the progressivist model is turned towards the

future and a new space. It fragments urban space in accordance with its

di¤erent functions (zoning) with the goal of e‰ciency, thus segregating

functions and transferring to space the Fordist model of factory organiza-

tion (figure 9). It is open, giving the city no precise limits; thus, the city

spreads into the countryside and vice versa, and this intrusion of nature

into built space is also sought for in the individual building. The result isthat the progressivist model emphasizes open and green spaces, an em-

phasis due to the primary importance of the health factor. It shows simple

and rational arrangements of volumes with aesthetic aims (figure 10),

founded on the idea that the beautiful follows directly from the func-

tional, an idea that was expressed in the slogan ‘form follows function.’

However, the model also incorporates a distinctive aesthetics, which re-

jects the curve, adopts a more or less strict orthogonality and strives for

equilibrium between the horizontal and the perpendicular. Finally, itprivileges standardized individual housing, which is in accordance with

the democratic and socialist, but scarcely anthropological, idea of the

universal man.

The culturalist model, on the other hand, is not oriented towards the

future, but draws its inspiration from the cities of the past, the cities of

the ancient and particularly the medieval world (figure 11). This anti-

industrialist model does not emphasize e‰ciency, but cultural and per-

sonal life. It gives the city precise limits and clearly di¤erentiates it fromthe surrounding nature, attempting to create an atmosphere of urbanity

through dense construction. It employs no simple geometrical forms and

privileges community and cultural buildings at the expense of private

housing, for which no standards are used, each house having its own


Figure 9. Plan of the Ville Radieuse by Le Corbusier and Jeanneret, 1931. The zoning pattern is in parallel bands: at the top o‰ces,

in the middle housing, and then industry (6 F.L.C./Adagp-OSDEETE, 2008)

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Figure 10. View up the o‰cial N-S urban axis of Brasilia, 1956–1963, towards the ‘tail’ of the city; Oscar Niemeyer, architect (from Frampton 1985)

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Figure 11. Section of the accurate perspective drawing of Venice by Jakopo de Barbary, around 1500 (from Egli 1962)

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Figure 12. Wright’s Broadacre City, 1934–1958 (from Frampton 1985). Reprinted by permission of the Frank Lloyd

Wright Foundation.

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specificity. To these models a third may be added, the naturalist model of

urban space, exemplified by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City (figure

12). Like the culturalist model, it is anti-industrialist; in fact, it practically

eliminates the city in the name of nature. The urban functions are isolated

and dispersed within a natural continuum, and are connected through

rich road and air networks; urban space is a-centric and simultaneouslyopen and closed (Choay 1965: 17–19, 21, 23–24, 36–38, 40–50).

These three models are both related and opposed to each other. The

progressivist and the naturalist models conceive of space as external phys-

ical ‘space’ — though this does not imply that they ignore social consid-

erations. On the other hand, the culturalist model operates with a cultural

space, which is the expression of a community and thus becomes ‘place’

for its members. The relationship between the city and nature is radically

di¤erent for the three models. In both the progressivist and the culturalistmodels, the city imposes itself upon nature, but for the culturalist model,

city and nature are exclusive of each other, while for the progressivist

model, nature penetrates within the city. Contrary to both of these, for

the naturalist model the city is incorporated within, or dissolved into,

nature.

We noted above that these epistemological models of space do not only

result in the production of di¤erent kinds of space in Western societies,

but are governed by major and distinct metaphors. But, while in pre-capitalist societies the fundamental model of space is derived mainly

from a multi-layered metaphorical whole in which the cosmic model

holds a preeminent position, the above models combine the specialist’s

knowledge of space with metaphors. In fact, each of them is guided by a

major metaphor. Of course, the specialists of built space, urban designers

and planners, as well as architects, do not operate only with symbolic

meaning, that is, exclusively within the semiotics of space, but also en-

gage in technical operations such as construction methods, as well as thelocation of uses, the calculation of densities and other urban indicators.

The operations of the specialists thus concern both place — symbolic

meaning — and space, the operations in the second case being of a

technical, hence metalinguistic, nature. However, even if these technical

operations are not symbolic as such, in many cases the choice of which

operations to perform follows from the symbolic level of the models dis-

cussed and more specifically from their dominant metaphor.

Which are these dominant metaphors presiding over the Western urbanmodels? For the progressivist model, which is the model that greatly influ-

enced actual built space, the overriding metaphor for space is the tool —

the city as machine — a concept belonging to an instrumental code; it

is undoubtedly accompanied by an experience of space, but one that


objectifies space to the status of a functional (and aesthetic) tool. The dis-course animating the progressivist model revolves around the synthesis

of parts in a whole, rationality, functionalism and e‰ciency, beauty and

domesticated naturalness, all rendering aspects of the metaphor of the

tool, as well as around openness and individualism. The tool-machine is

explicit in the discourse of progressivist architects, as we are reminded by

Le Corbusier’s statement that the house is a machine for living, and quite

frequently in their plans, as we can see from the Tokyo Bay Plan by

Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Team or the Takara Beautilion byKisho Kurokawa (figure 13). The ideology supporting this metaphor is

that of modernity.

For the culturalist model, on the other hand, the central metaphor is

the self itself and its fulfillment and identity within a community, concepts

Figure 13. Kurokawa’s Takara Beautilion in Osaka, 1970 (from Jencks 1973)


belonging to a psychological code. A historical dimension — in the form

of personal micro-history or cultural macro-history — is closely attached

to space, interwoven with nostalgia. Space is no longer an external object,

but internalized by the subject as place. The ideology of the culturalist

model and metaphor is turned towards pre-modern times and represents

a Romantic reinterpretation of the past in the context of modernity. Thediscourse of the culturalist model follows the metaphor of self-fulfillment

and identity through the nostalgic turn to the city of the past, its form, ur-

banity, and community. Finally, the naturalist model, with its emphasis

on integration with nature, is focused on the metaphor of the naturalness

of the city, but is also marked by an ideology of technologism.

There is a common thread between these three models. Foucault (1966:

276–279, 321, 366–369) observes that in the context of the modern epis-

teme, starting at the end of the eighteenth century emerged in biology theconcept of function. Foucault considers this as one among a set of con-

cepts from the three scientific fields of biology, economy, and philology

that organized the whole domain of the human sciences; these concepts

were not limited to the interior of the field where they first appeared, but

extended to other fields as well. At the same time, man is conceived as, by

his nature and like all other beings, integrated with nature. It is clear that

both the concept of function and that of man as a biological being con-

verge in an organicist conception, which as a whole marked the domainof the human sciences.

This conception guides the idea of the progressivist city as a function-

ing tool, an organic whole consisting of interrelated functional and func-

tioning parts (the city has a ‘heart,’ its center; it has ‘lungs,’ the green

spaces; it is provided with ‘arteries’; it may be ‘ill’ and need ‘curing’); it

is a machine, but an organic one. For this approach the city itself is an

organism. The same conception is behind the culturalist quest for iden-

tity, because identity is only attainable within a small, organic commu-nity. Foucault (1966: 369) makes a reference to this sociological view of

society as a whole of individuals organically related to each other. In

this case, it is the community that is an organism. Finally, the very same

conception founds the ‘natural’ (non-)city, which disintegrates in order

to be integrated with nature. This integration is achieved through the

integration of man as an organism with (living) nature. We may thus

conclude that the major ideological urban models of modernism and

modernity followed directly from the episteme of the times. The guidingconcept is the organism, in an era when what had previously been natural

history became biology (Foucault 1966: for example, 219–220, 323), and

thus the overriding code is an organicist (super)code; a code functioning

metaphorically for all three models.


5. Spatial metaphors in Western postmodernism: The neo-Romantic

genius loci

The above metaphors, marking the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,

are representative of the modern era. Now, the last decades have wit-

nessed the emergence in advanced capitalist societies of a new culturalformation, postmodernism, the nature of which has been the cause of in-

tense theoretical debates. The critical issue is if postmodernism is just a

new aspect of modernity or represents an altogether new phenomenon.

In spatial studies, the central theoretical displacement e¤ected by post-

modernism in respect to progressivism/functionalism is the downgrading

of the concept of function in favor of the symbolism of built space or sim-

ply, in the case of architectural deconstruction, of spatial forms. Thus, the

main opposition is that between the focusing on function in space, func-tionalism, and the focusing on the meaning of place. There are various

and di¤erent tendencies within architectural postmodernism, but it is nev-

ertheless possible to distinguish certain main — not necessarily in the

sense of general — traits. As we shall see immediately below, they are sys-

tematically opposed to progressivism/functionalism.

Postmodern architectural and urban designers generally state that they

want to express the history and tradition of particular localities, thus re-

vealing nostalgic tendencies. Locality is strongly connected to urbanity,while it is opposed to modernist universalism; in the context of this oppo-

sition, new forms, which are supposedly adapted to each locality, are

counter-proposed to the universally valid forms of architectural modern-

ism. In order to express locality, architectural postmodernism makes

eclectic choices among historical styles, which result in imitations or rein-

terpretations of historical forms. Usually these choices lead to intertextual

operations of montage and collage, the products of which are discontinu-

ous, fragmented, disordered, and heterogeneous; postmodern design isthus kitsch and pastiche. Through such operations, postmodern design

pretends to be a non-style, in contrast to the universal style of modern ar-

chitecture. On the other hand, it violates all the modernist principles of

composition, harmony, proportion and scale, and equilibrium. Postmod-

ern urban form is also frequently the product of montage and collage, is

considered as ‘pluralistic’ or ‘organic,’ and is opposed to the modernist

comprehensive plan. Modern architecture in its more o‰cial manifesta-

tion was monumental and conveyed a sense of stability; postmodernarchitecture is depthless, transmitting a sense of ephemerality, but also

functioning as display and spectacle.

In the last analysis, however, postmodern architecture is not historical,

but pseudo-historical and historicist, creating a simulacrum of historical


reality, in a manner similar to postmodern urban design, which hides

actual social dynamics behind a superficial view of the city as spectacle.

The characteristic of historical borrowing is coupled with what Charles

Jencks calls ‘double-coding,’ which is opposed to academic elitism and at-

tempts to bring together the tastes of both established and mass cultures.

Often postmodern architecture, as a reaction to the established academicseriousness and elitism of modernism, incorporates ironic and humorous

elements which are related to a playful intention (see Jameson 1984: 58,

65–67; Harvey 1989: 87; Jencks 1992: 12–13).

It seems clear from the above that the postmodern ideology in re-

spect to space is not a radically new phenomenon. We saw that the

culturalist model is systematically opposed to the progressivist model.

But we just found that the postmodern logic is also systematically op-

posed to the progressivist logic. The conclusion to be drawn is that post-modernism is a new form of culturalism. Compared to the culturalist

model, the historicity of this neo-culturalist model is weakened in the

extreme. As with the culturalist model, it is the vehicle for a personal

relationship to space on the part of its user, but this relationship no

longer derives from an experiential metaphor used by the postmodern

designer, but is simply his alibi for a commercialized architectural

vision.

This personal relationship to space is of a peculiar kind. Postmodernspace purports to realize our fantasies and desires, in particular those of

self-realization and of identity. Now the concept of identity presents a

double aspect. On the one hand, it is the individual identity which springs

from the subjective sense of a continuous existence. On the other, it is

a psychosocial identity resulting from the complementarity between the

individual’s subjective identity and his/her role integration in his/her

group; an integration negotiating the social position and status of the in-

dividual, and internalizing the group’s ideology. One major way to createa feeling of identity in a fast-moving world has been the nostalgic attempt

to find an anchor-point in the past. Postmodern space o¤ers this past, as

well as other devices, in a superficial, shallow manner, by creating a vehi-

cle for this peculiar kind of nostalgia that is attached to the retrospective

mode. As in the culturalist model, nostalgia plays a crucial role in the

postmodern model, but it has a di¤erent quality that is related to the ar-

bitrariness and superficiality of postmodernism’s pseudo-historical recon-

structions. And, as in the culturalist model, the atmosphere of urbanity isa major goal. At the consumption end of the communication circuit, the

experience of postmodern space on the part of its users is not superficial

in quite the same manner. It is in a sense experiential, but this is coupled

with playfulness, thus with a certain distancing; it is no longer an existen-


tial experience of space, but a frivolous or ironic ‘experientialness’ (cf.

Gottdiener 1997: 70, 75–76, 128, 145, 151).

This experientalness in the nostalgic mode, embracing a certain feeling

of identity, is no longer attached to a community, today lost in the areas

where postmodernism is emerging, but to place itself. The aim of the cul-

turalist model was to achieve, through the immersion in a community, adeep sense of identity. Postmodernism o¤ers the user a shallow, unstable

and temporary identity. Finally, is postmodernism dominated by the

same metaphor as culturalism? I do not think so. Given the lack of com-

munity, the metaphor of postmodernism is attached, not to people, but to

space. Its overarching metaphor is no longer the self, but a kind of genius

loci, a spirit of place, which is meant to derive from the historical, physi-

cal, cultural and/or natural features of a place, but may be simply im-

planted in it, and in either case is individually conceived by the designer.Thus, the dominant code is today no longer the organic but the cultural;

in fact, postmodern design displays culture as spectacle.

The genius loci is variously expressed in postmodern design. It guides

the general form of buildings or parts of them, the colors used and even

the interiors of the buildings. We may find certain examples of it in mod-

ernist design, such as the Villa Savoie by Le Corbusier and Jeanneret, that

symbolizes a packet-boat, or the plan of Brasilia by Lucio Costa, combin-

ing the symbolism of the bird (the takeo¤ of the young Brazilian nation)with that of the cross (a repetition of the ritual the Spanish conquistadores

performed during the building of settlements).

But in postmodernism, the genius loci is omnipresent. In Rob Krier’s

writings and proposals it is combined with historicity. Thus, writing

about the square, Krier states that

it corresponds to the inner courtyard or atrium. The courtyard house is the oldest

type of town house . . . Market places, parade grounds, ceremonial squares,

squares in front of churches and townhalls, etc., all relics of the Middle Ages,

have been robbed of their original functions and their symbolic content . . . The

loss of symbolism in architecture was described and lamented by Giedion . . . No

contemporary public squares have been laid out which could be compared with

urban squares like the Grande Place in Brussels, the Place Stanislas in Nancy,

the Piazza del Campo in Siena, the Place Vendome and the Place des Vosges in

Paris, the Plaza Mayor in Madrid, the Plaza Real in Barcelona etc. This spatial

type awaits rediscovery. (Krier 1991: 19)

The eminent Austrian culturalist architect Camillo Sitte himself could not

have put the case more clearly.

We see that the major metaphor employed by Krier is ‘historicalness,’

which renders the nature of the genius loci of the place to be. This is, for


example, the metaphorical meaning of his project for the Royal Mint

Square in the London Docklands (figure 14), which has ‘a traditional ur-

ban character’ (Krier 1993: 17). We also find in Krier the metaphor of

identity through community. He wants the courts of his housing project

close to the Reichsbrucke in Vienna to convey a ‘feeling of closure’

(1993: 95), his projected cultural centre for the village of Breitenfurt nearVienna to be a ‘communal gathering space . . . as should be the case in all

human settlements’ (1993: 97) and the Master Plan for Bruay in France

to ‘serve as a model for countless similar industrial towns, demonstrating

how a ‘‘housing scheme’’ can become a true ‘‘community’’ ’ (1993: 135).

In their search for inspiration — and provocation — postmodern archi-

tects have also mobilized long dead precapitalist codes. Thus, the zoo-

morphic code marks a twin complex of hotels in the swamps of Florida

designed by Michael Graves (figure 15). The two hotel buildings are theSwan Hotel and the Dolphin Hotel, and these two creatures accompany

the two buildings respectively: they figure in gigantic scale on top of the

buildings, and the motif of the swan proliferates in the interior of the

Swan Hotel. Apparently, these aquatic creatures stand for the genius loci

of the swamps, but they manifestly have been subject to a process of ide-

alization, replacing the actual local fauna of alligators and little predatory

birds.

An anthropomorphic code is explicit in the cases of Kazumasa Yama-shita’s Face-House, as well as in Minoru Takeyama’s phallic Hotel Bev-

erly Tom, a symbolic form inspired by shintoism and appearing through-

out the hotel, ashtrays included (figure 16). The same code is implicitly

used by Charles Jencks for a studio building (for the use of anthropo-

morphic metaphors by postmodern architects, see Jencks 1991: 92–95).

Jencks also, together with Buzz Yudell, built The Elemental House, com-

posed of small pavilions referring to a cosmic code, the pavilions (‘tem-

ples’) being named after the traditional elements Terra, Aqua, and Aer.There is another similarity with precapitalist societies in the conception

of this work. In precapitalist societies, as we saw, the same cosmic model

rules all kinds of space. The architects of the Elemental House compare

this small-scale architectural work to a village, thus using a settlement

code.

The genius loci of this complex is cosmic but also regional. It was built

in Los Angeles and this environment is symbolized by the shape of the

swimming pool, which is an abstracted form of California, its lightsmarking the major cities. A geographical code together with the historical

code underlies the genius loci of Charles Moore’s Piazza d’Italia (figures

17 and 18). This circular square within a city block is cut across by a rep-

resentation of the Italian peninsula, functioning on the denotative level,


Figure 14. Krier’s project for the Royal Mint Square (Docklands, London), 1974 (Krier 1993)

Th

eso

cial

semio

ticso

fsp

ace

20

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Figure 15. Graves’s Swan Hotel in Florida, 1987 (from Jencks 1991)

20

6A

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La

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s

which culminates in a monumental architectural scenery connoting the

Italian Alps. The complex includes an iconoclastic reinterpretation of the

five orders of Italian columns that culminate in a new order invented by

the architect; Moore humorously called it the ‘Deli Order’ since it marks

the entrance to a restaurant (for the data on which the above discussion

on postmodern architecture is based, see Jencks 1991: 115, 116–118, 138,

166–170).Thus, the overarching metaphor conceived by the designer, with possi-

ble ramifications or additions, shapes the postmodern built environment

either partly or as a whole, down to the architectural and decorative de-

tails. The proliferation of these ‘themed,’ that is, metaphoric, environ-

ments in the U.S. is admirably recorded by Mark Gottdiener (1997: 75,

77–85, 91, 94–96, 100, 104, 108, 115–121). Gottdiener presents the di¤er-

ent urban functions that have been invaded by symbolic metaphors and

observes a tendency to totally themed environments. He also discussesmajor cases of such environments and themes, such as the Las Vegas

hotels and casinos: Caesar’s Palace, a huge reinterpretation of a Roman

villa with interiors rendering a fantasy version of Rome; the Luxor,

Figure 16. Takeyama’s phallic Hotel Beverly Tom in Hokkaido, 1973–1974 (from Jencks

1991)


Figure 17. Aerial view of the scale model of Moore’s Piazza d’Italia in New Orleans, 1976–

1979 (from Jencks 1991)

Figure 18. The complex of the architectural orders (from Jencks 1991) of Moore’s Piazza

d’Italia in New Orleans, 1976–1979 (from Jencks 1991)


shaped like an Egyptian pyramid with a sphinx in front of it; the Excali-

bur, a medieval castle related to a King Arthur fantasy.

Gottdiener also observes that certain restaurant chains have started

creating totally themed environments: the Hard Rock Cafe chain uses

nostalgic elements from the 1950s, and the Olive Garden restaurants use

elements recalling Italy. This tendency to globalize the metaphor is strongin the shopping malls: the Olde Towne Mall in Orange County, Califor-

nia, exemplifies the ‘ye old kitsch’ metaphor and its individual stores imi-

tate forms of the past; the huge Mall of America in Bloomington, Minne-

sota, was given a facade painted in red, white, and blue and decorated

with stars and stripes, and combines this overarching metaphor with

others operating in the major shopping sections, such as the use of a sky-

lighted ceiling nostalgically reminiscent of Parisian arcades.

We realize from Gottdiener’s account that not even airports escape thetendency to total theming; their architecture is converging with that of

shopping malls. He also reminds us that theming is a fundamental factor

in entertainment installations, whether of an established nature, such as

Disneyland, or of a new conception, such as the entertainment spaces

within or beside stadiums. From airports to entertainment spaces, shops

and restaurants are represented in an expanded scale and presented in

new attractive manners through the use of metaphors.

With postmodern design, reacting to the hypo-significant built space ofmodernism, the societies of late capitalism set out on the search for a

meaningful built environment, something that was a given in precapitalist

societies. But now consumerism and profit regulate this search, and play-

ful identification with space replaces deep experiential identity with it. In

the past, public places meant deeply and were deeply felt; today they cre-

ate a ludic attitude and frivolous experiences (cf. Gottdiener 1997: 18,

20–21, 26, 31–32, 75, 126, 152).

The ‘metaphorization’ of built space goes hand-in-hand with its ‘LasVegasization’ and ‘Disneylandization.’ Meaning, spatial experience, and

identity are today integrated into the circuit of capitalist profit and thus

depend on it. This is how place refers us back to space and its commodity

aspect. David Harvey (1989) analyzes this relation between postmodern

culture and capitalist development in accordance with Fredric Jameson’s

thesis that postmodernism represents the cultural logic of late capitalism.

Jameson agrees with Mandel that postmodern society corresponds to a

new stage of capitalism and is not a completely new type of social forma-tion, an alleged ‘post-industrial’ society. Postmodernism, for Jameson, is

not a clear-cut phenomenon but a ‘cultural dominant,’ which has a dif-

ferent function in the economic system of late capitalism from the one

modern culture had in the previous phase. Contrary to the postmodernist


assumption of the autonomization of culture, he argues that it is precisely

late capitalism that destroyed the relative autonomy of culture and that

culture has become inseparable from each and every component of soci-

ety, including the economy (Jameson 1984: 55–58, 87).

Harvey observes that crises of over-accumulation (the first of which oc-

curred in the mid-nineteenth century) set o¤ the search for new spatialand temporal resolutions, which in turn led to a strong sense of time-

space compression — that is, a sense of the shrinking of the spatial world

and the shortening of time horizons — expressed with and in important

cultural and aesthetic movements and philosophical insights. The last cri-

sis of over-accumulation, starting in the late 1960s and reaching a peak in

1972, is associated with postmodernity, which is a historico-geographical

condition. Postmodernity is associated with local transitions from Fordist

modernity to flexible accumulation and the emergence of new culturalforms.

Like Jameson, Harvey argues that postmodernism represents the exten-

sion of the power of the market over the whole of cultural production,

something for him already understood by Henri Lefebvre and evident in

contemporary architectural and urban design. For Harvey, to the degree

that spatial barriers become less important, capital becomes more sensi-

tive to the special qualities of place. Increasing economic competition in

a crisis condition leads firms to use such qualities as relative locationaladvantages in a fragmented world, and flexible accumulation integrates

them as elements internal to its logic. The great cities of the advanced

capitalist world are also competing to attract a highly mobile capital and

people, and a means of doing that is to create spectacular urban spaces

conveying what I would call euphoric connotations.

Cities strive to create an ambiance of place and tradition, as well as a

distinctive image, a situation resulting in an insecure and ephemeral de-

velopment. But at this point a double contradiction emerges. On the onehand, although the special qualities of place are emphasized, this is done

in the context of an increasing abstraction of space and homogeneity of

international exchanges. On the other hand, the attempts to di¤erentiate

physical space ultimately produce monotonously similar results; through

the search for di¤erences, postmodern culture reproduces in space the

uniform social and symbolic order of capitalism.

We may now come to a condensed overview of the political economy

of metaphor. In precapitalist societies, the dependence of the communityon natural forces and the anthropocentric understanding of nature led to

a general dominance, in the precapitalist world view, of the cosmic and

the anthropomorphic codes; the articulation of these codes with space

created a culturally patterned, powerful metaphorization of space and


transformed it into a strongly experiential collective place. During the

earlier life-cycles of capitalism, liberal and monopoly capitalism, marked

by Fordism, three major metaphors guided both spatial intervention and

the experience of space. The first one is the fully modernist metaphor of

progressivism, the metaphor of the tool-machine, with its roots in the

Enlightenment. This reached its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, with theacademic and to an important degree ossified high modernism that ac-

companied monopoly capitalism. The second is the humanistic metaphor

of identity, part of the modernist reaction to modernism, that is, of

Romanticism. The last is the modernist metaphor of nature, with its tech-

nological extensions. The oil crisis of 1972 was the starting point of a

global economic restructuring and marked the advent of late capitalism.

With late capitalism there emerged the consumerist major metaphor of

genius loci, related to postmodernism or neo-Romanticism or otherwise‘neo-pre-modernism.’ This metaphor plays the central role in the post-

modern search for meaning. Metaphor has always been central in the

history of the built environment. But the semantics of spatial metaphor,

the intensity of its use and the depth of feeling it provokes vary in history.

These aspects of metaphor are not determined by the choice of either ar-

chitect or consumer, but by the deeper dynamics of the socio-economic

system.

Note

* The present paper is a synthesis, oriented to the argument developed here, of three pre-

viously published papers: ‘Metaphor and code: Space as a complex cultural practice,’

presented in a plenary session of the 7th International Congress of the International

Association for Semiotic Studies in 1999, ‘The social meaning of space: metaphor and

politics,’ which appeared in El futur de l’arquitecte: ment, territori, societat, and ‘Raum

und Metapher,’ which appeared in Zeitschrift fur Semiotik.

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The social semiotics of space: Metaphor, ideology, and ... soc semiotics of space.pdf · temologically non-sensical. Already in 1964, Roland Barthes pointed to the di¤erence between