Foucault and the idea of “architectonic discourse” or how to read others’ history

Abstract

Ethnicity is a problematic concept. For many non-Western cultures, history became a linear passage of names, dates and events without any pragmatic dimension. A vague territory under the name of tradition, with the connotations of home and authenticity, separates these cultures from the alienated modern world. In order to surpass this traditional/modern binary here in the domain of architecture, the first step is to come to the conclusion that these histories do not inhabit a continuous space. Foucault’s genealogical division of history as a method for creating a concept like “architectonic discourse” can be an apparatus to reach this goal. The advantages are to pluralise these linear histories and to surpass the rupture between ethnic and universal, and traditional versus modern division wrongly divided these territories into one as practical and the other as phantasmagorical. In this paper, their Foucauldian epitomes of resemblance and web of sympathy, difference and representation and finally a modern organic structure are searched in Persian architectural history.

Keywords

• foucault
• history
• architectonic discourse
• episteme
• persian architecture