Essay Example on Psychoanalytical and Postcolonial Discourses based on the work of two very influential figures

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The aim of this essay to see how the idea of Third space was appeared and defined in psychoanalytical and postcolonial discourses based on the work of two very influential figures in contemporary cultural discourse Slavoj Zizek and Homi Bhabha. It starts with my reason of choosing Zizek's Architectural parallax and Bhabha's essay DissemiNation for this analysis the comparing of their methods and style of writing. I position next to one another their views on the following questions architecture and its role in the modern world the binary system and its tensions the definition of Third place, its location and possible way of developing in order to come to the view on the impact of this idea for architectural history and theory. Both authors are originally from non-Western cultures have no architectural background and came to the architectural discourse when their main concepts were created and established Slavoj Zizek is Slovenian cultural and psychoanalytical philosopher, influenced by Lacanian school of psychoanalysis and famous by his radical cultural and political critic. He follows Fredric Jameson in his definition of the western modern world as cultural capitalism and criticizes it as an egalitarian project.

 Zizek's book The Parallax view was published in 2006 summarized his critical theory. The Architectural parallax with his thoughts about architecture and its role in the modern world was first published in 2009 Homi K Bhabha an Indian literary critic and philosopher one of the key figure in postcolonial studies whose theory of cultural difference provides us with the concept of hybridity, and Third space Among most crucial writers for his work Bhabha mentions Derrida Lacan Said and Foucault. His work Dissemination was published in 1990 and was about the Western nation as an obscure and ubiquitous form of living the locality of culture. From 2007 Bhabha admitted his several years working on the Aga Khan Award for Architecture Jury and steering committee. The reason to choose Dissemination for my analysis instead of other texts of Bhabha like Architecture and Thought or Third space which seems to be directly connected with the question of the essay is following hybridity, as Bhabha told in his interview to me is the third space which enables other positions to emerge and DissemiNation which is part of Bhabha's the most influenced book. The Location of the culture where the concept of Hybridity in culture was defined the first time. Both authors are using psychoanalysis is a method in their work, Zizek as his main one Bhabha as one of his methods. For Bhabha, the enigma of language namely that it is both internal and external to the speaking subject the linguistic is an important part of his analysis which combines a method of critical reading with the psychoanalytic concept of ambivalence. His concept of translation is an instrument for developing deconstruction critique which is open the possibility to use it for non literal subjects, including visual arts, human rights heritage and architecture. The main part of Bhabha's work is a postcolonial criticism that emphasizes the unequal and unbalanced forces of cultural representation in the modern world. And in this part of his method, Bhabha is close to Zizek for whom his political critic.

In contrast with Bhabha's discreet, successive and methodological way of describing his thought, Zizek has a very impulsive and extravagant style of writing unusual for academia. Jameson defined it as what Eisenstein liked to call a montage of attractions a kind of theoretical variety show in which a series of numbers succeed each other and hold the audience in rapt fascination. Zizek less focuses on the straightforward subject through his essay but shares with a reader the flow of his thoughts. His way of writing could be described as a movement by touching and receiving an impulse from one point which could be a movie or building or story to another. It reminds me code manner of playing with secret associations and euphemisms which was common among intelligent people in totalitarian Russia. Maybe this is also the reason why Zizek so widely uses in his Architectural parallax according to the buildings, of course, more movies than literature as an example. Traditionally the symbolic realm of movies was commonly used for hidden obscene repressed thoughts in a totalitarian state. It seems also that Zizek keeps Slavic way of thinking he is using a double negative grammatical structure which is common for Slavic languages for intensify his thought. It is important to pay attention to how they see architecture that they see in architecture for analysis in their work. Bhabha values the architecture as thoughts. In the text of his speech for AKA Awards he wrote To reconstruct the hidden meaning of a building is less like looking for a phrase in a language you know than it is like interpreting an embedded genetic code. This comparing reminds also that language is the main instrument for Bhabha and he constructs his vision of the world through language linguistic structures.

 Bhabha transfers his concept of Hybridity as the place where the most interesting cultural identity appears to the architecture. The scale is a measure of complexity not size, and detail is often the most expressive element of the whole enterprise. Something almost imperceptible emerges at the border or margins of cultural constructions, be it building or books and becomes the harbinger of what is new and innovative. In postcolonial critique Architecture as a pedagogical narrative was one of the most important methods which were used by colonizers to impose a new social and political order. Zizek claims that the same way Architecture serves to the dominant group in any society. A clear indication for my Marxist mind that architectural projects are answers to a problem that is ultimately socio-political. In Zizek's account, the mute language of building materializes that disavowal belief without explicit our committing to them our longing to utopia. In Zizek's view, any architectural project is an imaginary solution to a real contradiction in capitalist society. And in late-stage capitalism cultural capitalism based on Jameson's definition, the architecture became a cultural capital and services to obfuscate social antagonisms. Quoting Wittegstein about what we cannot directly talk about can be shown by the form of our activity Zizek defines that what the official ideology cannot talk openly about can be shown by the mute signs of a building.

The views of both authors on architecture reflect their slightly different perception of the binary system and two groups the tensions between which make a base of the contemporary world. The concept of Others takes an important place in the work of both authors. They are looking for the possible place of mediation of these tensions and using the deconstruction in order to find it. The dominant aspect of Zizek's understanding of the architecture is clear from the title of his essay. Architectural parallax Sprandel and other Phenomena of Class Struggle. What is it class in modern society by Zizek. The two main definitions pointed in his essay Class connotation is encoded in cultural ways of life and Even non-class issue ecological feminist racist can be interpreted through the reference to class antagonism except the direct reference to class antagonism which needs a reference to another antagonism. The last point explains also why Zizek ignores any minority critics in his essay. In whole 34 pages, he did not quote or mentioned any women or non-western authors. Zizek took this definition from Levi Strauss's spatial disposition of building in Winnebago to define our developed universe which is dominated by the same logic. Two subgroups those who are from above and those who are from below which have two mutually exclusive endeavors to cope with this traumatic antagonism to heal its wound via the imposition of a balanced symbolic structure. Bhabha as Indian who was born only two years after his homeland received independence and who was educated in western culture assumes that the main tensions happen between the diametrically opposed world views of master and slave. To illustrate his concept Bhabha refers to Barrell's analysis of the status of the English gentleman within the social diversity of the 18-century novel and Baker's reading of sounding interpreting and speaking the Negro in the Harlem Renaissance. Again as an example for two accounts of national narratives, Bhabha used two analyses of language structures of texts written and spoken.

Both gentleman and slave with different cultural means and to very different historical ends demonstrate that the forces of social authority and subversion or subalternity may emerge strategies of signification in the production of the nation as narration there is a split between continues accumulative temporality of the pedagogical and the repetitious recursive strategy of the performative. It is through this process of splitting that the conceptual ambivalence of modern society becomes the site of writing the nation. This statement illustrates how the subject in between which is not able to be accepted by any of two parts fully dismantles by Bhabha a binary system of social antagonism.

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