Ch. 4, pp.152-155
- I thought this week I’d reach the part with the Tokyo municipal apartment plans and didn’t factor in on having to translate quotes from Foucault. It was hard going in places so read with caution. It’s also a reason why this week’s installment is relatively short compared with recent ones.
- I was beginning to think I’d bitten off more than I could chew but Yamamoto kept me going by using Foucault and social theory to describe the relationship that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office of Housing Policy has with its contractors, gently reminding me that all this is being written to explain why our built environment is the way it is.
- It wasn’t made easier by many sentences having brackets within parentheses within the Japanese equivalent of quotation marks, and not unlike an Excel formula. I was reminded of the 1980s and the early days of what was then called “machine translation” or “automatic translation” where so-called natural Japanese had to be “pre-edited” into sentences that could be translated, and the results of that translation then “post-edited” into so-called natural English. Now I think of it, it’s not unlike the current state of AI and architectural design.
• • •
2. Power comes from below
Bureaucracy doesn’t create a hierarchy of governance
It was Michel Foucault who said “Authority comes from below.” (The Will to Truth”, p121) It was Hannah Arendt who said “Bureaucracy is the most social form of governance.” (The Human Condition, p.63) Bureaucracy doesn’t create a hierarchy of governance. There is no commanding authority at the top of a pyramid. A bureaucracy has no centre.
“The relationship with power is intentional and at the same time non-subjective. It can be understood as fact that the decision-making mechanism does not operate through a relationship of cause and effect, but from calculation that pervades it corner to corner. There is no exercise of power without a series of objectives and goals. However, this does not mean that authority derives from an individual subject’s (= subjective) decisions or choices. The rationality of power does not require a a government office in order to rule. The governing caste, the bodies that control the assorted mechanisms of the state, and even the persons who make the most important economic decisions, do not all function as a single society that operates and manages a network of authority as a single thing (that enables that society to function). The rationality of power is the “rationality of strategy that can be said to be shamelessly and often blatantly written into specific levels.” (Foucault, The Will to Truth, p.122) “The reasons are completely clear and the objectives can be clearly read but nevertheless, there is no-one that conceived it, and practically no-one who can articulate it.” (ibid., p.123) .
Bureaucratic power becomes clearer at local extremities
The rationality of power is strategic rationality for the sake of a series of goals and objectives. Goals and objectives are “for the maintenance of special rights, for the accumulation of profit, for the exercise of legal authority and for the implementation of tasks and duties.” (quoted from Yanagi U. [Uchitaka? 柳内隆] Foucault’s Thought, p183) The goals and objectives are decided within each bureaucratic level (society) of the administrative system. There is no objectivity (in the sense of some other method of decision making that would explain this). Bureaucratic power is a system in which giving orders and obeying them are divided across each level (each society) of the bureaucracy. At each specific level (society), the system becomes clearer towards its end points. The rationality of power becomes clearer. These local end points become the places where the persons in charge of municipal housing construction at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office of Housing Policy (there administration), meet the designers (contractors) of the actual buildings. It is at this extremely local level that there is a relationship of supporting and supported. “This is also a relationship of command and execution if the command of knowledge is viewed as the supporting, and the follow-up activity is viewed as its execution.” (Arendt The Human Condition, p.355, also refer to Ch. 2 of this book) Foucault calls the relationship between the administration (command) and the contractors (the executors) one of ”local shamelessness”. The bureaucratic style of power can be seen at its local extremities. It is not the case that a commander sits at the top of the pyramid. This is the meaning of power comes from below. But why did Foucault call the relationship of giving the order and following the order at the local extremities, one of local shamelessness? It is because, at the local extremities, the command is recognized as having a rationale. It is because the command is non-subjective. The command itself has no character of its own. The non-subjective command is dressed up as a social need and the command is recognized as having a rationale with objectivity. But why is it recognized as such? It is because the command has “materialized” (= “architecturalized” [= made into matter]). “By materializing the command, reality is obtained and the command is seen as having a basis.” (Ref. Ch. 2) Even we assume for the moment that the command has no basis, then the thing (building) can still be built. The building of the building is recognition that the command has a social rationale (objectivity).
If I’m understanding this correctly, then it means the presence of a building is not only its own justification, but the justification of the power structures that led to it coming into being. I’d always believed and have mentioned more than once in this blog that, just as fire requires 1) fuel, 2) oxygen, and 3) a source of heat in order to exist, buildings need 1) land, 2) money and 3) somebody with a desire to build, in order to exist.
“Materialization” allows the command to be seen as something with a basis
That a command at the end of a bureaucracy can have a rationale as a requirement of society is because of the link that command has to the process of materialization. The command is recognized as a requirement of society because it has undergone this process of materialization. Or, to put it another way, the process of materialization is extremely important for a command to be recognized as a requirement of society. A command gains the rationale of a requirement of society by supporting this process. Designers (contractors) designing in accordance with the commands at the tail end of the bureaucracy (administration) that is the Office of Housing Policy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, is the behavior that makes all this real. The commands of the bureaucratic system acquire their rationale as commands at the bureaucracy’s extremities where they are materialized.
Materialization is what changes things such as actions, words and thoughts that cannot be touched, into things that can be touched. (Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 150) The format of ideas and intentions must be materialized in order to shared with other persons.
“Municipal housing is typical buildings based on standard designs.” The materialization (“architecturalization”) is as standardized housing. The thinking of the Office of Housing Policy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government is to continue to supply into the future and without change, the same municipal housing as they always have. Standardization means that the same housing will be supplied irrespective of the location, irrespective of any characteristics a region might have, and with no relationship to any characteristics of place. Standardization must continue because the same and equal housing must be guaranteed for everyone no matter if they are already living in municipal housing or if they are going to be living in municipal housing in the future. The standardization of housing has equality as its goal and the question as to what must be equal is decided by the supply side. The actual building of standardized housing is the materialization of the idea of “equality”. Materialization is what gives the idea of “equality” a reality and a continued existence.
The materialization of a command gives that command something that can be seen as an objective basis, viz. the appearance of objectivity. This is the foundation of the supporting logic. (Ref. Ch. 2).
• • •
It looks like buildings mean far more than we or at least I ever imagined and that whatever we thought they meant or represented was merely surface meanings we didn’t bother looking beyond. I’ll definitely reach the part with the municipal housing apartment plans next week but this week’s header image is from next week’s post illustrates what Yamamoto describes as the results of materialization at the end points of bureaucracy where administrator command meets the contractor carrying it out.
• • •
2024/09/08 Ch. 4, pp.152–155
2024/09/08 Ch. 4, pp.146–151
2024/08/25 Ch. 3, pp.135–143
2024/08/18 Ch. 3, pp.128–135
2024/08/11 Ch. 3, pp.120–128
2024/07/21 Ch. 3, pp.115-120
2024/07/21 Ch. 3, pp.108-114
2024/07/14 Ch. 3, pp.101-107
2024/06/30 Ch. 2, pp.92-100
2024/06/23 Ch. 2, pp.87-92
2024/06/16 Ch. 2, pp.78-87
2024/06/02 Ch. 2, pp.69-78
2024/05/05 Ch. 2, pp.66-70
2024/05/05 Ch. 2, pp.58-66
2024/05/05 Ch. 1, pp.46-55
2024/04/28 Ch. 1, pp.35-46
2024/04/21 Ch. 1, pp.23-35
2024/04/07 Ch. 1, pp.18-23
2024/03/31 Ch. 1, pp.14-18
2024/03/24 The Space of Power vs. The Power of Space: Preface pp. 7-11
The fall semester has begun and I’ve been revisiting posts having something to do with either fixing things, or the history of modern Japanese architecture.
Revisited this week:
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