Carnal Language and the Reversibility of Architecture
What does a building mean? Twenty-first century architecture has been engaged as a problem of language, but the dichotomization of the role of language by modernist and postmodernist approaches to architecture leads to a built environment that can either not reference itself or not reference the world. Modernist architecture attempts to make architecture speak by reducing meaning to transcendence while postmodern architecture attempts to reduce meaning to immanence. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy rejects this dichotomization of the role of language and instead sets up language and the flesh as diacritical structures. His theory of language can be substantiated by a broader understanding of the role of signs in the built environment. When extended into the practice of architecture, Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy can effectively explain language in a way that references both immanence and transcendence, and thus guide against approaching meaning in a reductive manner.
