Actuality's absence and a reliance on representation

ABSTRACT
     This paper analyzes the differences between truth as an abstract idea and concrete representations of this truth. The importance of this explication reflects its medium: regarding the speech and content, how the two should play a role in the argument for or against limitations of free speech; regarding formal intentions and human experience within architecture, how the process of design should or should not be reconsidered and reshaped. Despite truth’s instabilities and intangibilities, despite the fact that we cannot purely convey our ideas without communication or give a space meaning without form, I would contend that because these shadows of reality are all that we have, they should be allowed to develop and mutate as our knowledge, perception, and interest changes. Words are not just noise; form is not just an imposed system. The two are worth pursuing and protecting because it encapsulates the pursuit and protection of their more abstract counterparts.

AN INSTABLE TRUTH
     Regardless of whether or not it is possible for truth to exist outside of abstraction, it is in its most comprehensible way conceptual, or a collection of ideas, one that merits discussion for the understanding of our own being, one that is fundamental to human philosophy and development. As all ideas, realized in reality or not, these can be represented. The most common type of representation of truth is language: spoken, written, or signed. However, truth can be diagrammed through a multitude of media. Art or science, exploratory or analytical, these representations provoke response, and again, most often via words, but this is not necessarily exclusively linguistic. Since this progression of logic lends itself to supports of the ideology that truth is not only dynamic – as Linda Ray Pratt of the academic sphere writes, “truth is not certain, or stable” (99) – but intangible and impossible to pierce its way through what we know to be our realm of reality, it produces a significant amount of resistance: people like to know things, they like to understand and for all of their senses to match up without misalignment to their experience, and these contested symmetrical truths confuse and misinform that experience outside of their control. How truth is represented, the media, the lighting and maintenance of the scene, effects our perception of what truth is, but also our perception of our living experience. Truth is a collective, not limited to what any one type of physical representation of any one conceptual model might be. It is up to us to make these parallel lines converge.
     It is important to come to terms with the fact that all of these forms are not the actual embodiment of truth; they are projections, shadows of understanding that allow the discussion to continue. This returns to Pratt’s idea that even when we think we have decided upon some scientific truth, we become aware of our own uncertainty. Our representative truths are sequential but fleeting. Running concurrently alongside them is the concept that allows for the possibility of separation of form from context. Through the debate regarding restrictions on free speech, for example, most authors, aligning on little else, would argue it is possible to divide speech and what we understand to be reality – that is to say, speech in the abstract, speech on anything and everything and nothing – from what is being spoken about, or the context of their communication.
     And this can be applied to most, if not all, of these representations of truth. Architecture, too, is often analyzed as an empty shell; the actual human experience and interaction with a building is disregarded while attention is turned to formal elements of design. Most critics and theorists would assent that in both speech and architecture, context far outweighs its cloak in importance, regarding the impossible quest for truth. Others, though, recognize that speech itself, or the form of architecture on its own, can contribute significantly to the discussion of truth, though its influence may be noticeably subtler.

SHADOWS OF REALITY
     Plato’s Allegory of the Cave sets up a scenario where shadows are literally the only reality known to a set of people:

[H]uman beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before then, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing in the distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way, like the screen [that] marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets. (409)

As people pass, the prisoners see their shadows and the shadows of things they carry, and can hear warped versions of the sounds they make, the cave echoing. Because this is all they know, and have never considered the possibility that a second, more real reality exists beyond the fire, this is their reality. “To them, […] the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images” (410). However, they would, nonetheless, be only representations of true reality.
     The prisoners name the projected images and make predictions and try to better understand their world, as limited as it might seem to outsiders. Their need to understand and their need to define are not unlike our own, and it might be said that to us, too, shadows are all that there is. Maybe there is no truth projecting the shadows; maybe they can be seen as forms on their own. If so, the sanity and well being of the society, of our society, would rely on constant discussion of these shadows, of this existence. True meaning may be unknown or misunderstood, but that intangible truth must be protected.

THE WHAT AND HOW OF SPEECH
     In this allegory, shadows are the manifestation of what is real, a physical symbol of an idea. Regarding communication, speech could be recognized as the shadow of what is being spoken about, a way to represent or portray an idea, as some sort of secondary medium is required to do so. Similarly, a building or physical elements of architecture are shadows of the meaning or experience masked by design. The separation of the sign from what it signifies comes up often in critiques of both language and architecture.
     An early perspective on this topic comes from British liberal thinker, John Stuart Mill. He writes that speech is beneficial whether it is proven to be right or not, in explaining why speech should not ever be suppressed: “If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error” (10). By saying this, Mill recognizes there is a difference between speech on its own and what is being said. In fact, Mill emphasizes the importance of the former in saying all speech, right or wrong, should be expressed. However, also dealing with the suppression of discussion, he writes of instances when “the words [that] convey it cease to suggest ideas, or suggest only a small portion of those they were originally employed to communicate” (23). Without constant expression of opinion, the ideas disintegrate, and only a handful of words stand alone to signify the original thought. Mill’s tone suggests that these words are not enough, can never be enough to completely capture the essence of a truth, but are nonetheless all we have. So Mill’s separation of form and meaning has to do with tolerance – we cannot ever have the real thing, so we should expose ourselves to everything that might be some fragment of truth.

CENSORING COMMUNICATION
     Beyond speculation and hypothesizing, it is important to explore how these theories might play out in an actual situation. Noam Chomsky of MIT became involved in the Faurisson affair when he came to the defense of Robert Faurisson, academic holocaust denier, purely on the grounds that everyone should have the right to express their opinion, true or not, offensive or not. Chomsky’s defense of speech as a concept was detached from the defense others tried to pin on him, a defense of the validity of what was being said. The American’s perspective is that there is nothing wrong with allowing any variety of speech since truth will emerge as truth, and our understanding will increase with our understanding of both sides of any argument. Chomsky writes of the incident, “Some time ago I was asked to sign a petition in defense of Robert Faurisson’s ‘freedom of speech and expression.’ The petition said absolutely nothing about the character, quality or validity of his research, but restricted itself quite explicitly to a defense of elementary rights that are taken for granted in democratic societies, calling upon university and government officials to ‘do everything possible to ensure the [Faurisson’s] safety and the free exercise of his legal rights.’ I signed without hesitation” (1).
     American theorist and historian John Durham Peters calls for a new liberalism, but does so by examining the broader liberal tradition. Again, there is a highlighted difference between the group’s defense of the right to speak and their defense of the content of that speech: “Liberals are confident that any doctrine, good, bad, or ugly, should be allowed its innings in the open air. […] ‘Let truth and falsehood grapple’ say some liberals in the fashion of a Roman emperor declaring the gladiatorial contests open” (7). While not stressing the benefits of the “bad or ugly” speech, Peters says its presence is a necessity, that speech should be defended regardless of what it represents. In an amused sort of way, he refers to free speech as a “stubborn utopia [that] will not go away” (20), implying restrictions to the way we say things will always be there, whether we establish them or not, but all the while retaining the optimism that perhaps the communication of some truth might work its way past these obstacles.
     Another American scholar to argue that free speech cannot actually exist is Stanley Fish. Since we value the content of what is being said, Fish sees restrictions on free speech as having a positive effect overall; we stay true to these principles and the contextual qualities of speech become even more important. He also points out restrictions of speech do not restrict us from actual pursuit of truth or knowledge, since that is found instead on the interior. “The good news is that precisely because speech is never ‘free’ in the two senses required – free of consequence and free from state pressure – speech always matters, is always doing work because everything we say impinges on the world in ways indistinguishable from the effects of physical action, we must take the responsibility for our verbal performances – all of them – and not assume that they are being taken care of by a clause in the Constitution” (114). Speech being fundamentally limited by the reactions it provokes means what we say matters, but the right to speak does not. Fish’s line of division deals primarily with a value of ideas over the value of speech, or meaning over noise.
     But because in most cases, we do value meaning over the noise – though Baudrillard would disagree – meaningless noise is, of course, meaningless. Nonsensical gibberish and racial slurs both mean nothing unless we attach meaning to them. And since meaning needs this secondary translation to be spread from person to person, since it relies on communication to be shared and reviewed and examined before it dies, some noise is necessary to record reality and to question it.

MEANING OF REALITY
     Regarding their relationship to reality, American architect and professor Michael Benedikt compares written language to a building:

The novel and the poem, though each an act of communication, are windows to a reality empty of the intention to ‘communicate,’ a reality neither potential nor ideal, but actual: to a world of things-in-themselves seen clearly. The house as such, on the other hand, seems intended as little more than communication, a knowing and somewhat insolent manipulation of symbols at arm’s length to create the ‘proper’ message. (8)

This suggests that it isn’t reality trying to communicate with us; rather, by projecting meaning into things, we are trying to communicate with each other, and to give our own existence meaning. To Benedikt, a tree is not actually meaningful, or trying to convey meaning on its own, but we can find meaning in a tree. We can provoke and respond, and we should, because “the ‘world,’ […] is an ever evolving, socially constructed, personally projected solution to (what can one say?) the problems of existence” (20), and architecture that begins to embody realness will show that, through “presence, significance, materiality, and emptiness” (32).
     Like Fish, Benedikt recognizes that perhaps there is no truth behind Plato’s shadows, but does not allow that to stand as an excuse for conformity and near nihilism. He contends that we make our own shadows anyway, so making them all the same is useless, and anyone can make a shadow. Free architecture, like free speech, does not necessarily produce good architecture, but does allow for the creation of real architecture, or architecture that we can find meaning in. It seeks to understand something about itself, and seeks to redefine the shadows on the wall of our cave.

FORMAL DESIGN’S CREEPING INFLUENCE
     Like language, the form of architecture can be found meaningless without context, without human interaction or interpretation of their experience. As Mill, Chomsky, Peters, or Fish would suggest about speech and content, the two architectural equivalents can be separated and one could defend or attack either form or context on their own, but truth and understanding is much more easily found in the latter of the two. Form is structure and / or ornamentation, but by itself, it is not architecture. Like a corpse, it is a body without a soul, so can hardly be the person it physically represents. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is quoted as saying, “Architecture glorifies and eternalizes something. When there is nothing to glorify, there is no architecture” (Pallasmaa 242). It is the human element that makes it architecture, that gives it meaning and weight in our world. We define Wittgenstein’s “something” by our interactions with architecture, by injecting our own meaning.
     Juhani Pallasmaa, Finish architect and theorist of the mid-twentieth century, finds, “Design has become so intensely a kind of game with form that the reality of how a building is experienced has been overlooked” (243). As obsession with the formal aspect of composition and style overrides the impact of experience, ignorance towards the human condition grows and we are left with a building. One might call it beautiful, or strong, or interesting for some historical allusion it makes, but it remains empty of any emotion. Pallasmaa writes, “The quality of architecture does not lie in the sense of reality that it expresses, but in quite the reverse, in architecture’s capacity for awakening our imagination” (245). Reality to Pallasmaa is real reality, Plato’s travelers through the cave road who cast shadows; but the combination of individual realities, or Benedikt’s and Pratt’s understanding of a truth in flux, Pallasmaa’s “reverse,” is what does influence us and our understanding of meaning.
     Still dependent upon the physical to produce effect, we are chained to the manifestations of an unknown and indefinite truth, just as opinions thought but not spoken can never move beyond the mind of their initial conception. A void cannot imply ideas. That outside envelope is important, too, but the intangible contents must also somehow be conveyed. Architecture can be restricted by form, by means of code or convention, but restricting meaning is virtually impossible – meaning comes only from human explication, from the outside, not from the creator of the architecture him- or herself. In the words of Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi, “Architecture is constantly subject to reinterpretation. In no way can architecture today claim permanence of meaning” (249). Tschumi’s realization about the adaptive, animated quality of architecture releases a great deal of responsibility from the architect / speaker equivalent here, because one cannot possibly predict all future outcomes of a space designed to fit only one program, nor can you know what meaning the building’s users will take from it, whether or not you impart your own meaning into the architecture.

DIAGRAMMING TRUTH
     All these overqualified people say you can separate speech, as sound, from what you communicate, or form of architecture from its meaning, and these are the consequences, etc. Despite their multiple and varied voices of reason, to operate on this set of Siamese twins, you would kill them both. Speech without an idea is nothing, but so is an idea without speech. Form without meaning is just form, but meaning without form is incomprehensible. All of these philosophers and academics and theorists use the separation of the two for their own agenda – that the restriction of one is the saving grace of the other, in the instance of Fish, or that one has become too overbearing on its partner, as Pallasmaa suggests. But the two are codependent, feeding off of each other happily. Truth’s reliance on its outer shell is important to understand, and I would contend that form is also important in the investigation of truth, maybe not to the extent of meaning found inside experience, but in a subtler, curiously refined way; what you see is what you get, and it is that initial encounter that leads you inside.
     As Benedikt writes, “reality [may not be] so obliging as to be, in itself, meaningful, [but you] cannot catch the world unaware and naked of meaning” (10). An uncertain reality implies multiple meanings, and the necessity for multiple shadows. If shadows are all that we have, we must record and represent these projections of an original but now missing truth. Free speech is necessary, free form is necessary, so that we can do this, so that our fluctuating understanding is balanced. All too often, meaning and experience of reality is sacrificed thoughtlessly, and written off as a sacrifice for responsibility. But a greater responsibility, and an impossible task, is to chart these unbounded and unseen lands through audio, visual, and experiential means. In doing so, our words and our buildings, become the idea and the meaning; the sign becomes the signified, temporarily, and for one fleeting instance, we see truth, an unreachable point on the horizon, simultaneously tormenting and inspiring us.