Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment

9. Semantics and Semiology

9 semanTics and semioLogy To begin this chapter,I assume the following statements or propositions to be self-evident. If the reader feels there is something arbitrary about these claims, I encourage him to investigate other sources, whose identity and content I leave it to him to discover.1 a. Language,speech,anddiscourseoccupyamentaltime-spaceanddesignate asocialspace,providingitwithorientationsandsituations,bymeans(mediation )of variousrepresentations,primarilythroughtheuseof propernames, place names, and so on. b. Mental space, the space of thought and language, of reflection and representation , is bound by social space. Beyond the horizon of social space is found the world, the horizon of horizons, the one I will discover if I go as far as I can go along the road of my perceptions. c. Discourse that is not directed toward a space is reflected back on itself, becomes self-contradictory, or agrees so closely with itself that it becomes logology,a vicious circle,tautologically coherent.Having lost any reference to“the other,”discourse has no reference outside itself.The objective social significations of reference disappear and meaning is lost—along with enjoyment .Thisdoesnotimplyaterm-by-term,point-by-pointcorrespondence between social space and mental space, any more than it does between objects and unspoken words (relations). d. I propose a moratorium on logology. Semantics and semiotics (or, if you prefer, linguistics and semiology) study meanings and significations.In principle,semantics,closely associated with linguistics,studies verbal signs,speech and language,discourse. 117 118 Semantics and Semiology Semiotics (semiology) studies nonverbal signs—we are all familiar with the simplest forms: highway signs. Having said this, however, we find that the competence of these two fields of research presents certain problems . In principle, architecture is based on semiotics, just as music or heraldry. But what about graphic designs, hieroglyphs, ideograms, writing systems? What about the voice and speech? There is a strong tendency to equate semiology with semantics,which is considered to be rigorous and which examines formal sign systems, languages.This focus subordinates nonverbal signs (including architecture and monuments) to verbal signs and, therefore, subordinates them to private signs and significations. The opposite focus subordinates the science of signifiers to semiology,which is broader and capable of appealing to whatever escapes the narrow rigor of verbal systems: the unconscious , depth, impulses, and so on. Within the context of this research, what happens to symbols that are endowed with imperceptible meanings : fire, light, streams, trees? Should they be categorized as belonging to nonverbal systems? As archetypes do they escape all formalization? This is an extremely difficult problem to address, for it involves poetry as much as architecture. I tend to think that there is a radical difference between symbols and signs, as there is between signification and meaning. The reduction of the symbol to the sign goes hand in hand with the reduction of meaning to signification. Monumental works, like works of art, like philosophy, are charged with symbols; they are symbolic because they have meaning , which is to say, values. That a multitude of objects have significations and could even be said to be sign-objects is obvious in the modern world.That meaning has disappeared to the benefit of a superabundance of significations is a less evident truth than that a space as such, rather than the objects occupying it, may have meaning, may continue to have signification.There were—and still are—spaces rich with meaning and beauty (a landscape being one example). There are signifying spaces: a subsidized housing project, for example. There are nonsignifying and, therefore, neutral spaces (an intersection) whose signification may have become obscured (a bank). I have already shown that a system of signs (and not just words or symbols but sign-things, signifying objects reduced to their actual signification ) tends to be formed into a closed system.It should be obvious,then, Semantics and Semiology 119 that architecture does not fall outside this system because the system of signs comes into being with the social system and tends to coincide with it. By reducing the “real” to this abstract minimum we approach nothingness . The list of reductive powers extends from language and merchandise to money (sign-objects marked for and by exchange), religion, morality, knowledge, and power (knowledge because it elevates the sign to intelligibility; power because it negates the“real”that might resist the State). In short, everything tends toward reductivism. Everything, that is, except the irreducible. Everything prohibits it, except the unspeakable .The irreducible...